KNOLE _and the_ SACKVILLES
[Illustration:
_John Frederick Sackville, 3^{rd}. Duke of Dorset K.G._
_From the portrait at Knole by Gainsborough._
]
KNOLE
_and_
THE SACKVILLES
by
V. SACKVILLE-WEST
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1922
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1456 KNOLE _bought by_ Archbishop BOURCHIER
1486 _Death of Bourchier. Succeeded by_ Cardinal MORTON
1500 _Death of Morton. Succeeded by_ HENRY DEAN
1502 _Death of Dean. Succeeded by_ WAREHAM
1532 _Death of Wareham. Succeeded by_ CRANMER
1539 KNOLE _given by Cranmer to_ HENRY VIII
1546 _Death of Henry VIII. Succeeded by_ EDWARD VI
1550 KNOLE _granted by Edward VI to_ JOHN DUDLEY, Earl of Warwick
1552 KNOLE _resold by Warwick to_ EDWARD VI
1553 _Death of Edward VI. Succeeded by_ QUEEN MARY
KNOLE _granted by the Queen to_ REGINALD POLE
1558 _Death of Mary. Succeeded by_ QUEEN ELIZABETH
1586 KNOLE _granted to_ THOMAS SACKVILLE _by Elizabeth_
Thos. Sackville, _Lord Buckhurst_, 1st EARL _of_ DORSET 1536–1608
1554 _Married_ CECILIE BAKER
1557 _Member of Parliament_
1563
1563 _Travelling abroad_
1566 _Death of his father_, Sir RICHARD
1567 _Created_ Lord BUCKHURST
1568 _Ambassador to France_
1569 _Lord-Lieutenant of Sussex_
1571 _Ambassador to France_
1586 _Execution of_ MARY _Queen of_ SCOTS
1586 _Given_ KNOLE _by_ QUEEN ELIZABETH
1587 _Ambassador to the Low Countries_
1589 _Ambassador to the Low Countries_
1589 _Knight of the Garter_
1591 _Chancellor of Oxford_
1598 _Ambassador to the Low Countries_
1599 _Lord High Treasurer_
1601 _Lord High Steward_
1603 _Death of Queen Elizabeth. Succeeded by_ JAMES I
1603 _Lord Treasurer for life_
1604 _Created_ Earl _of_ DORSET
1608 _Death at the Council Table_
Robert Sackville, 2nd EARL _of_ DORSET, 1561–1609
1579 _Married_ MARGARET HOWARD, _dau. of_ Duke _of_ NORFOLK
1585 _Member of Parliament_
1608
1592 _Married_ ANNE SPENCER
1608 _Succeeded his father_, THOMAS
1609 _Death_
Richard Sackville, 3rd EARL _of_ DORSET, 1589–1624
1609 _Married_ Lady ANNE CLIFFORD, _daughter of_ GEORGE, Earl of
CUMBERLAND
1609 _Succeeded his father_, ROBERT
1624 _Death_
Edward Sackville, 4th EARL _of_ DORSET, 1591–1652
1605 _At Christ Church, Oxford_
1612 _Married_ MARY, _daughter of_ Sir GEORGE CURZON
1614 _His duel with_ Lord BRUCE
1614 _Member of Parliament_
1616 _Knight of the Bath_
1621 _Ambassador to_ LOUIS XIII
1623 _Travels in Italy_
1624
1623 _Again Ambassador to_ LOUIS XIII
1624 _Succeeded his brother_, RICHARD
1624 _Lord-Lieutenant of Sussex and Middlesex_
1625 _Knight of the Garter_
1625 _Death of James I. Succeeded by_ CHARLES I
1628 _Lord Chamberlain_
1630 Lady DORSET _appointed Governess to the King’s children_
1631 _Commissioner for Planting Virginia_
1634
1638 _Granted the East Coast of America_
1642 _Outbreak of civil war._ Ld. DORSET _joins the_ KING _at York_
1644 _Lord Privy Seal_
1649 _Execution of_ CHARLES I
1652 _Death_
Richard Sackville, 5th EARL _of_ DORSET, 1622–1677
Before _Married_ Lady FRANCES CRANFIELD, _daughter of_ LIONEL Earl _of_
1638 MIDDLESEX
1662 _Succeeded his father_, EDWARD
1660 _Lord-Lieutenant of Middlesex and Sussex_
1670
1677 _Death_
Charles Sackville, 6th EARL _of_ DORSET _and_ EARL _of_ MIDDLESEX,
1638–1706
1660 _Member of Parliament_
1660 _Restoration of_ CHARLES II
1665 _Naval battle against the Dutch_
1667 _Living with_ NELL GWYNN
1668 _Ambassador to France_
1674 _Death of his mother; he succeeds to the Cranfield estates_
1675 _Created_ Earl _of_ MIDDLESEX
1677 _Succeeded his father_, RICHARD, _as_ Earl _of_ DORSET
1678 _Married_ MARY, Countess _of_ FALMOUTH
1685 _Married_ Lady MARY COMPTON, _daughter of_ JAMES Earl _of_
NORTHAMPTON
1685 _Death of Charles II. Succeeded by_ JAMES II
1688 _Accession of_ WILLIAM _of_ ORANGE
1689 _Lord Chamberlain_
1697
1691 _Knight of the Garter_
1701 _His poems published with_ SEDLEY’S
1702 _Death of William III. Succeeded by_ QUEEN ANNE
1704 _Married_ ANNE ROCHE
1706 _Death_
Lionel Sackville, 7th EARL _and_ 1st DUKE _of_ DORSET, 1688–1765
1706 _Succeeded his father_, CHARLES, _as_ Earl _of_ DORSET _and_
MIDDLESEX
1709 _Married_ ELIZABETH COLYEAR
1708 _Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, intermittently till 1728_
1714 _Knight of the Garter_
1714 _Death of Queen Anne. Succeeded by_ GEORGE I
1720 _Created_ Duke _of_ DORSET
1725 _Lord Steward_
1727 _Death of George I. Succeeded by_ GEORGE II
1730 _Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland till 1737_
1746 _Lord-Lieutenant of Kent_
1750 _Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland till 1755_
1760 _Death of George II. Succeeded by_ GEORGE III
1765 _Death_
Charles Sackville, 2nd DUKE _of_ DORSET, 1711–1769
Before _On the Grand Tour_
1734
1734 _Member of Parliament intermittently till 1754. Lord of the
Treasury and Master of the Horse_
1744 _Married_ GRACE BOYLE
1765 _Succeeded his father_, LIONEL, _as_ Duke _of_ DORSET
1769 _Death_
John Frederick Sackville, 3rd DUKE _of_ DORSET, 1745–1799
1769 _Succeeded his uncle_, CHARLES
1783 _Ambassador to_ LOUIS XVI
1789
1788 _Knight of the Garter_
1769 _Lord-Lieutenant of Kent_
1797
1789 _Lord Steward_
1799
1790 _Married_ ARABELLA DIANA, _daughter of_ Sir JOHN COPE, _of
Bramshill_
1799 _Death_
George John Frederick Sackville, 4th DUKE _of_ DORSET, 1794–1815
1799 _Succeeded his father_, JOHN FREDERICK
1815 _Death_
TABLE OF DESCENT
[Illustration: TABLE OF DESCENT]
_HERBRAND DE SACKVILLE_, _temp._ William the Conqueror
|
_SIR RICHARD SACKVILLE_, _temp._ Henry VIII
|
THOMAS SACKVILLE _m._ _Cecilie Baker_
_b._ 1536 _d._ 1608 |
LORD BUCKHURST _and_ |
_1st_ EARL _of_ DORSET, K.G. |
|
ROBERT SACKVILLE _m._ _Lady Margaret Howard_
_b._ 1561 _d._ 1609 |
_2nd_ EARL _of_ DORSET |
|
+---------------------+------------------------+
| |
RICHARD SACKVILLE _m._ EDWARD SACKVILLE _m._
_Lady Anne Clifford_ _Mary Curzon_
_b._ 1589 _d._ 1624 _b._ 1589 _or_ ’90 _d._ 1652
_3rd_ EARL _of_ DORSET, K.G. 4_th_ EARL _of_ DORSET, K.G.
|
+----------------------------------------------+
|
RICHARD SACKVILLE _m._ _Lady Frances Cranfield_
_b._ 1622 _d._ 1677, 5_th_ EARL _of_ DORSET |
|
CHARLES SACKVILLE _m._ _Lady Mary Compton_
_b._ 1637 _or_ ’36 _d._ 1706 |
6_th_ EARL _of_ DORSET, K.G. |
|
LIONEL SACKVILLE _m._ _Elizabeth Colyear_
_b._ 1686 _d._ 1765 |
7_th_ EARL _and_ _1st_ |
DUKE _of_ DORSET, K.G. |
+-----------------------+--------------------+-------+
| | |
CHARLES SACKVILLE LORD JOHN SACKVILLE LORD GEORGE SACKVILLE
_b._ 1711 _d._ 1769 _d._ 1765 _b._ 1716 _d._ 1785
_2nd_ DUKE _of_ DORSET | _cr._ VISCOUNT SACKVILLE
| |
JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE |
_m._ _Arabella Diana Cope_ of Bramshill CHARLES SACKVILLE
_b._ 1745 _d._ 1799 _b._ 1767 _d._ 1843
_3rd_ DUKE _of_ DORSET, K.G. 5_th_ DUKE _of_ DORSET, K.G.
|
+-------------------------+-----+---------------+
| | |
LADY MARY SACKVILLE GEORGE JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE |
_b._ 1794 _d._ 1815 |
4_th_ DUKE _of_ DORSET |
|
LADY ELIZABETH SACKVILLE
_m._ _John West, Earl de la Warr_
_b._ 1796 _d._ 1870
|
+-----------------+-------------------+-------------+--------+
| | | |
CHARLES MORTIMER LIONEL WILLIAM
EARL DE LA WARR _1st_ LORD SACKVILLE _2nd_ LORD SACKVILLE |
_d._ 1873 _b._ 1820 _b._ 1827 |
_d._ 1888 _d._ 1908 |
LIONEL, _3rd_ LORD SACKVILLE
_b._ 1867
CONTENTS
_Chronological Table_ _vii_
_Table of Descent_ _xii_
_Ch._ I The House p. 1
II The Garden and Park 20
III Knole in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth 28
IV Knole in the Reign of James I 48
V Knole in the Reign of Charles I 82
VI Knole in the Reign of Charles II 111
VII Knole in the Early Eighteenth Century 152
VIII Knole at the End of the Eighteenth Century 176
IX Knole in the Nineteenth Century 201
_Appendix_ 221
_Index_ 223
_The dome of Knole, by fame enrolled,
The Church of Canterbury,
The hops, the beer, the cherries there,
Would fill a noble story._
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE, 3RD DUKE OF DORSET. _From the
portrait at Knole by_ GAINSBOROUGH _Frontispiece_
NORTH-EAST VIEW OF KNOLE. _From the drawing by_ T.
BRIDGEMAN _To face page_ 2
THE GREEN COURT, BOURCHIER’S ORIEL 6
THE STONE COURT, BOURCHIER’S GATEHOUSE 10
THE STONE COURT 16
KNOLE FROM AN AEROPLANE 20
THE GARDEN SIDE 22
A GATEWAY INTO THE GARDEN 26
A CONFERENCE OF ENGLISH AND SPANISH PLENIPOTENTIARIES AT
SOMERSET HOUSE IN 1604. _From the painting by_ MARC
GHEERHARDTS _in the National Portrait Gallery_ 32
LEAD PIPE-HEADS. _Put Up by_ THOMAS SACKVILLE _in 1605_ 38
THE GREAT STAIRCASE (UPPER FLIGHT). _Built by_ THOMAS
SACKVILLE 1604–8 46
RICHARD SACKVILLE, 3RD EARL OF DORSET, K.G. _From the
miniature by_ ISAAC OLIVER _in the Victoria and Albert
Museum_ 52
LADY ANNE CLIFFORD, _wife of_ RICHARD SACKVILLE, _3rd
Earl of Dorset. From the portrait at Knole by_ MYTENS 56
LADY MARGARET SACKVILLE, _daughter to_ RICHARD
SACKVILLE, _3rd Earl of Dorset, and_ LADY ANNE
CLIFFORD: “The Child.” _From the portrait at Knole by_
MYTENS 68
THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR’S BEDROOM 72
EDWARD SACKVILLE, 4TH EARL OF DORSET, K.G. _From the
portrait at Knole by_ VANDYCK 84
THE TWO SONS OF EDWARD, 4TH EARL OF DORSET: RICHARD,
LORD BUCKHURST _and_ THE HON. EDWARD SACKVILLE. _From
the portrait at Knole by_ CORNELIUS NUIE 106
CHARLES SACKVILLE, 6TH EARL OF DORSET, K.G. _From the
portrait by Sir_ GODFREY KNELLER _in the Poets’
Parlour at Knole_ 116
THE BROWN GALLERY. _Built by_ ARCHBISHOP BOURCHIER _in
1460_ 148
LADY BETTY GERMAINE. _From the portrait at Knole by_ C.
PHILLIPS _To
face page_ 168
LADY BETTY GERMAINE’S BEDROOM AT KNOLE 172
HWANG-A-TUNG, A CHINESE BOY, page to the 3rd Duke of
Dorset. _From the portrait at Knole by Sir_ JOSHUA
REYNOLDS 192
JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE, 3RD EARL OF DORSET; ARABELLA
DIANA, 3RD DUCHESS OF DORSET; THE EARL OF MIDDLESEX;
LADY ELIZABETH SACKVILLE, _and_ LADY MARY SACKVILLE.
_From a silhouette by_ A. T. TERSTAN 1797. _The
property of_ LADY SACKVILLE 196
GEORGE JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE, 4TH EARL OF DORSET;
LADY MARY SACKVILLE, _and_ LADY ELIZABETH SACKVILLE.
_From the portrait at Knole by_ HOPPNER 204
ROCKING-HORSE, once the property of the 4th Duke of
Dorset: A RECEIPT _from_ GAINSBOROUGH 208
CHAPTER I
The House
§ i
There are two sides from which you may first profitably look at the
house. One is from the park, the north side. From here the pile shows
best the vastness of its size; it looks like a mediaeval village. It is
heaped with no attempt at symmetry; it is sombre and frowning; the grey
towers rise; the battlements cut out their square regularity against the
sky; the buttresses of the old twelfth-century tithe-barn give a rough
impression of fortifications. There is a line of trees in one of the
inner courtyards, and their green heads show above the roofs of the old
breweries; but although they are actually trees of a considerable size
they are dwarfed and unnoticeable against the mass of the buildings
blocked behind them. The whole pile soars to a peak which is the
clocktower with its pointed roof: it might be the spire of the church on
the summit of the hill crowning the mediaeval village. At sunset I have
seen the silhouette of the great building stand dead black on a red sky;
on moonlight nights it stands black and silent, with glinting windows,
like an enchanted castle. On misty autumn nights I have seen it emerging
partially from the trails of vapour, and heard the lonely roar of the
red deer roaming under the walls.
§ ii
The other side is the garden side—the gay, princely side, with flowers
in the foreground; the grey walls rising straight up from the green
turf; the mullioned windows, and the Tudor gables with the heraldic
leopards sitting stiffly at each corner. The park side is the side for
winter; the garden side the side for summer. It has an indescribable
gaiety and courtliness. The grey of the Kentish rag is almost pearly in
the sun, the occasional coral festoon of a climbing rose dashed against
it; the long brown-red roofs are broken by the chimney-stacks with their
slim, peaceful threads of blue smoke mounting steadily upwards. One
looks down upon the house from a certain corner in the garden. Here is a
bench among a group of yews—dark, red-berried yews; and the house lies
below one in the hollow, lovely in its colour and its serenity. It has
all the quality of peace and permanence; of mellow age; of stateliness
and tradition. It is gentle and venerable. Yet it is, as I have said,
gay. It has the deep inward gaiety of some very old woman who has always
been beautiful, who has had many lovers and seen many generations come
and go, smiled wisely over their sorrows and their joys, and learnt an
imperishable secret of tolerance and humour. It is, above all, an
English house. It has the tone of England; it melts into the green of
the garden turf, into the tawnier green of the park beyond, into the
blue of the pale English sky; it settles down into its hollow amongst
the cushioned tops of the trees; the brown-red of those roofs is the
brown-red of the roofs of humble farms and pointed oast-houses, such as
stain over a wide landscape of England the quilt-like pattern of the
fields. I make bold to say that it stoops to nothing either pretentious
or meretricious. There is here no flourish of architecture, no ornament
but the leopards, rigid and vigilant. The stranger may even think, upon
arrival, that the front of the house is disappointing. It is, indeed,
extremely modest. There is a gate-house flanked by two square grey
towers, placed between two wings which provide only a monotony of
windows and gables. It is true that two or three fine sycamores,
symmetrical and circular as open umbrellas, redeem the severity of the
front, and that a herd of fallow deer, browsing in the dappled shade of
the trees, maintains the tradition of an English park. But, for the
rest, the front of the house is so severe as to be positively
uninteresting; it is quiet and monkish; “a beautiful decent simplicity,”
said Horace Walpole, “which charms one.” There is here to be found none
of the splendour of Elizabethan building. A different impression,
however, is in store when once the wicket-gate has been opened. You are
in a courtyard of a size the frontage had never led you to expect, and
the vista through a second gateway shows you the columns of a second
court; your eye is caught by an oriel window opposite, and by other
windows with heraldic bearings in their panes, promise of rooms and
galleries; by gables and the heraldic leopards; by the clock tower which
gives an oddly Chinese effect immediately above the Tudor oriel. Up till
a few years ago Virginia creeper blazed scarlet in autumn on the walls
of the Green Court, but it has now been torn away, and what may be lost
in colour is compensated by the gain in seeing the grey stone and the
slight moulding which runs, following the shape of the towers, across
the house.
[Illustration:
NORTH-EAST VIEW OF KNOLE
_From the drawing by_ T. BRIDGEMAN
]
On the whole, the quadrangle is reminiscent of Oxford, though more
palatial and less studious. The house is built round a system of these
courtyards: first this one, the Green Court, which is the largest and
most magnificent; then the second one, or Stone Court, which is not
turfed, like the Green Court, but wholly paved, and which has along one
side of it a Jacobean colonnade; the third court is the Water Court, and
has none of the display of the first two: it is smaller, and quite
demure, indeed rather like some old house in Nuremberg, with the
latticed window of one of the galleries running the whole length of it,
and the friendly unconcern of an immense bay-tree growing against one of
its walls. There are four other courts, making seven in all. This number
is supposed to correspond to the days in the week; and in pursuance of
this conceit there are in the house fifty-two staircases, corresponding
to the weeks in the year, and three hundred and sixty-five rooms,
corresponding to the days. I cannot truthfully pretend that I have ever
verified these counts, and it may be that their accuracy is accepted
solely on the strength of the legend; but, if this is so, then it has
been a very persistent legend, and I prefer to sympathise with the
amusement of the ultimate architect on making the discovery that by a
judicious juggling with his additions he could bring courts, stairs, and
rooms up to that satisfactory total.
A stone lobby under the oriel window divides the Green Court from the
Stone Court. In summer the great oak doors of this second gate-house are
left open, and it has sometimes happened that I have found a stag in the
banqueting hall, puzzled but still dignified, strayed in from the park
since no barrier checked him.
It becomes impossible, after passing through the formality of the two
first quadrangles, to follow the ramblings of the house geographically.
They are so involved that, after a lifetime of familiarity, I still
catch myself pausing to think out the shortest route from one room to
another. Four acres of building is no mean matter.
§ iii
Into the very early mediaeval history of the house I do not think that I
need enter. It is suggested that a Roman building once occupied the
site, and that some foundations which were recently unearthed beneath
the larder—evidently one of the oldest portions—once formed part of that
construction. The question of dating the existing buildings, however, is
quite sufficiently complicated without going back to a building which no
longer exists. Nor do I think that the early owners—the Pembrokes, or
the Say and Seles—offer the smallest interest; if we knew precisely what
parts of the house we owed to them severally it would be another matter,
but the mediaeval records are very scanty. It is safe to say, generally
speaking, that the north side is the oldest side; it is the most sombre,
the most massive, and the most irregular; there are buttresses,
battlements, and towers, but no gables and no embellishments—nothing but
solid masonry. Up in the north-east corner is the old kitchen, and the
old entrances through dark archways at the top of stairways. The
passages here, of thick stone, twist oddly, and their ceilings are
groined by semi-arches which have become lost and embedded in the
alterations to the stone-work. It is a dark, massive, little-visited
corner, this nucleus of Knole.
The house, or such portions of it as then existed, was bought from
William, Lord Say and Sele, by Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, on
June 30, 1456, and it is clear from the numerous bills among the
archives at Lambeth Palace that both he and his more notable successor,
Cardinal Morton, carried out extensive additions, alterations, and
repairs. It is, however, a very difficult task to determine what parts
of the building definitely belong to this period, for, what with the
additions of the archbishops and the alterations of the later
Sackvilles, all is confusion. It would appear, for instance, that upon a
foundation of Tudor masonry the Sackvilles constructed the Elizabethan
gables which are now so characteristic a feature of the house; but it is
less easy to say exactly how much the first Tudor archbishop found there
on his arrival of earlier workmanship. A further confusing factor is the
great fire which took place in 1623, and is reported to have destroyed a
large part of the building—but exactly where, and how much, we cannot
say. Nor are the accounts at Lambeth very illuminating:
In divers costs and expenses made this year [1467] for repairing the
manor of Knole, carriage for the two cart loads of lathes from Panters
to the manor, 14_d._ For carriage of thirty loads of stone for the new
tower, 7_d._ load = 16/9. Carriage of six loads of timber at 7_d._ =
3/6. Carriage of one fother of lead from London to Knole, 3/4.
The next year, 1468:
Repairs at Knole. One labourer for 6 days work in the great chamber
and the new _seler_, 2/-. Making of 700 lathes to the new tower,
14_d._ One labourer 4½ days in the old kitchen, 4_d._ Item, for 1 j
M^1 of walle prygge (_sic_) to the stable and other places, 13_d._ One
cowl to the masonry, 12_d._
[Illustration:
THE GREEN COURT: BOURCHIER’S ORIEL
]
The “great chamber” referred to here was in all probability the present
Great Hall, which we know to have been built by Bourchier about 1460,
although it was altered by Thomas Sackville, who put in the present
ceiling, panelling, and oak screen. Thomas also built the Great
Staircase in 1604–8, leading to the Ball-room, which is of the time of
Bourchier. I expect this is the “seler” referred to, meaning solar and
not cellar, as might be thought; or did it mean the present colonnade,
which is also of Bourchier’s building, in 1468? The position of the “new
tower” is nowhere specified, but I wonder whether it is not the tower
beside the chapel, where there is a stone fireplace bearing Bourchier’s
cognisance—the double knot—and the same device in a small pane of
stained glass in the window. This tower, moreover, goes commonly by the
name of Bourchier’s Tower.
There are a few more items mentioned in the Lambeth papers, 1468–9:
“Repairs at Knole. Repairs at one house set aside for the slaughter of
sheep and other [animals?] for the use of the Lord’s great house at
Sevenoaks, 113_s._ 2_d._” This, I think, is certainly the old
slaughter-house which forms one side of the Queen’s Court. It is
obviously a very old building. But there is one point in this account
which is of interest, namely, that Knole should at this date have been
referred to as the “great house.” This would seem to prove that the
greater mass of the building was already in existence, since by the
latter half of the fifteenth century there were already many houses and
palaces in England whose bulk would argue that the current standard of
greatness might be high and the adjective not too readily applied. The
Primate owned, moreover, up to the time of the Reformation no less than
twelve palaces and houses of residence in the diocese of Canterbury
alone, namely, Bekesburn, Ford, Maidstone, Charing, Saltwood, Aldington,
Wingham, Wrotham, Tenterden, Knole, Otford, and Canterbury. It seems,
therefore, unlikely that Knole should be singled out as a “great house”
unless there were good justification for the expression.
Bourchier also built the Brown Gallery about 1460, and at or about the
same date he put up the machicolations over the gate-house between the
Green Court and the Stone Court. Towards the end of the same century,
Morton, his successor, “threw out an oriel window which rendered the
machicolations useless, and showed that all idea of such fortifications
was at an end.” It is not known precisely how much Morton built at
Knole. It is even uncertain whether he or Bourchier built the Chapel.
The Lambeth records cease with some small repairs in 1487–88, so we have
nothing to go upon—all the more pity, for Morton was a great prelate,
forgotten now in the greater fame of the Tudor dynasty, “his name
buried,” says his chronicler, “under his own creation.” This cardinal,
having succeeded Bourchier in 1486, held the Primacy for fourteen years,
and died at Knole in 1500. I pass over his successors, Dean and Wareham,
for I do not know how much they did at Knole. Cranmer, the next
archbishop, enjoyed the house for seven years only, when he was
compelled—quite amicably, but nevertheless compelled—to present it to
Henry VIII, whose fancy it had taken. Here the accounts begin again,[1]
although they give very little indication: £872 by Royal Warrant in
1543, £770 in 1548, £80 in 1546—three sums which would now be
equivalent, roughly, to £30,000.
After Henry VIII Knole continued as Crown property, passing now and then
temporarily into the hands of various favourites, until in 1586 it was
given by Queen Elizabeth to her cousin, Thomas Sackville, and has
remained in the possession of his family ever since.
§ iv
The main block, therefore, meanders from Henry VII through Henry VIII to
Elizabeth and James I: that is to say, roughly, from the end of the
fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth. There may be
earlier out-buildings and later excrescences, but it is safe to say that
the greater portion was built in the reigns of the Tudors. It is all of
the same Kentish rag, with the exception of a row of gables which have
been plastered over, and which were probably once of the
beam-and-plaster fashion so prevalent at that date in Kent. With this
exception the walls are of the grey stone, in many places ten and twelve
feet thick, cool in summer, and, for some reason, not particularly warm
in winter. The rooms are, for the most part, rather small and rather
low; they break out, of course, now into galleries, now into a
ball-room, now into a banqueting-hall, but the majority of them are
small, friendly rooms—not intimidating; some people might even think
them poky, relative to the size of the house. I do not think that they
are poky. They are eminently rooms intended to be lived in, and not
merely admired, though no doubt a practical consideration was present in
the problem of heating to determine their size. Yet from an old diary
preserved at Knole, and from which in its place I shall have the
opportunity to give extracts, it is clear that in the early seventeenth
century at all events the life of the house was carried on largely in
one or the other of the long galleries. Now, none of the galleries has
more than one fireplace. It must have been very cold. The old braziers
that could be carried about the room as occasion required still stand in
the rooms where they were used, and so do the copper warming-pans,
shining and perforated, which were thrust into the beds to warm them
before the arrival of the occupant. The principal beds, of course, must
have been magnificently stuffy. They are four-posters, so tall as to
reach from floor to ceiling, with stiff brocaded curtains that could
completely enclose the sleeper. But on winter days I cannot believe that
the group ever moved very far away from the fireplace or the brazier;
and indeed, judging from the same diary, they seemed always to be
“keeping their chamber” on account of coughs, colds, rheumatism, or ague
when they were not keeping it because they were “sullen” with one
another, or “brought to bed” of a son or a daughter.
§ v
The galleries are perhaps the most characteristic rooms in such a house.
[Illustration:
THE STONE COURT: BOURCHIER’S GATEHOUSE
]
Long and narrow, with dark shining floors, armorial glass in the
windows, rich plaster-work ceilings, and portraits on the walls, they
are splendidly sombre and sumptuous. The colour of the Cartoon Gallery,
when I have come into it in the evening, with the sunset flaming through
the west window, has often taken my breath away. I have stood, stock
still and astonished, in the doorway. The gallery is ninety feet in
length, the floor formed of black oak planks irregularly laid, the charm
of which is that they are not planks at all, but solid tree-trunks,
split in half, with the rounded half downwards; and on this oak flooring
lie the blue and scarlet patches from the stained west window, more
subduedly echoed in the velvets of the chair coverings, the coloured
marbles of the great Renaissance fireplace, and the fruits and garlands
of the carved woodwork surrounding the windows. There is nothing garish:
all the colours have melted into an old harmony that is one of the
principal beauties of these rooms. The walls here in the Cartoon Gallery
are hung with rose-red Genoa velvet, so lovely that I almost regret
Mytens’ copies of the Raphael cartoons hiding most of it; but if, at
Knole, one were too nicely reluctant to sacrifice the walls, whether
panelled or velvet-hung, then all the pictures would have to be stacked
on the floor of the attics. The same regret applies to the ball-room,
where the Elizabethan panelling—oak, but originally painted white,
turned by age to ivory—is so covered up as to be unnoticeable behind the
Sackville portraits of ten generations. Fortunately, the frieze in the
ball-room cannot be hidden. It used to delight me as a child, with its
carved intricacies of mermaids and dolphins, mermen and mermaids with
scaly, twisting tails and salient anatomy, and I was invariably
contemptuous of those visitors to whom I pointed out the frieze but who
were more interested in the pictures. It always fell to my lot to “show
the house” to visitors when I was living there alone with my
grandfather, for he shared the family failing of unsociability, and
whenever a telegram arrived threatening invasion he used to take the
next train to London for the day, returning in the evening when the
coast was clear. It mattered nothing that I was every whit as bored by
the invasion as he could have been; in a divergence between the wishes
of eighty and the wishes of eight, the wishes of eight went to the wall.
§ vi
There are other galleries, older and more austere than the Cartoon
Gallery. They are not quite so long, they are narrower, lower, and
darker, and not so exuberant in decoration; indeed, they are simply and
soberly panelled in oak. They have the old, musty smell which, to me,
whenever I met it, would bring back Knole. I suppose it is really the
smell of all old houses—a mixture of woodwork, pot-pourri, leather,
tapestry, and the little camphor bags which keep away the moth; the
smell engendered by the shut windows of winter and the open windows of
summer, with the breeze of summer blowing in from across the park. Bowls
of lavender and dried rose-leaves stand on the window-sills; and if you
stir them up you get the quintessence of the smell, a sort of dusty
fragrance, sweeter in the under layers where it has held the damp of the
spices. The pot-pourri at Knole is always made from the recipe of a
prim-looking little old lady who lived there for many years as a guest
in the reigns of George I and George II. Her two rooms open out of one
of the galleries, two of the smallest rooms in the house, the bedroom
hung with a pale landscape of blue-green tapestry, the sitting-room
panelled in oak; and in the bedroom stands her small but pompous bed,
with bunches of ostrich-plumes nodding at each of the four corners.
Strangers usually seem to like these two little rooms best, coming to
them as they do, rather overawed by the splendour of the galleries; they
are amused by the smallness of the four-poster, square as a box, its
creamy lining so beautifully quilted; by the spinning-wheel, with the
shuttle still full of old flax; and by the ring-box, containing a number
of plain-cut stones, which could be exchanged at will into the single
gold setting provided. The windows of these rooms, furthermore, look out
on to the garden; they are human, habitable little rooms, reassuring
after the pomp of the Ball-room and the galleries. In the sitting-room
there is a small portrait of the prim lady, Lady Betty Germaine, sitting
very stiff in a blue brocaded dress; she looks as though she had been a
martinet in a tight, narrow way.
The gallery leading to these rooms is called the Brown Gallery. It is
well named—oak floor, oak walls, and barrelled ceiling, criss-crossed
with oak slats in a pattern something like cat’s cradle. Some of the
best pieces of the English furniture are ranged down each side of this
gallery: portentously important chairs, Jacobean cross-legged or later
love-seats in their original coverings, whether of plum and silver, or
red brocade with heavy fringes, or green with silver fringes, or yellow
silk sprigged in black, or powder-blue; and all have their attendant
stool squatting beside them. They are lovely, silent rows, for ever
holding out their arms, and for ever disappointed. At the end of this
gallery is a tiny oratory, down two steps, for the use of the devout:
this little, almost secret, place glows with colour like a jewel, but
nobody ever notices it, and on the whole it probably prefers to hide
itself away unobserved.
There is also the Leicester Gallery, which preserves in its name the
sole trace of Lord Leicester’s brief ownership of Knole. The Leicester
Gallery is very dark and mysterious, furnished with red velvet
Cromwellian farthingale chairs and sofas, dark as wine; there are
illuminated scrolls of two family pedigrees—Sackville and Curzon—richly
emblazoned with coats of arms, drawn out in 1589 and 1623 respectively;
and in the end window there is a small stained-glass portrait of
“Herbrand de Sackville, a Norman notable, came into England with William
the Conqueror, A.D. 1066.” (_Herbrandus de Sackville, Praepotens
Normanus, intravit Angliam cum Gulielmo Conquestore, Anno Domini
MLXVI._) There is also a curious portrait hanging on one of the doors,
of Catherine Fitzgerald Countess of Desmond, the portrait of a very old
lady, in a black dress and a white ruff, with that strange far-away look
in her dead blue eyes that comes with extreme age. For tradition says of
her that she was born in the reign of Edward the Fourth and died in the
reign of Charles the First, breaking her leg incidentally at the age of
ninety by falling off a cherry tree; that is to say, she was a child
when the princes were smothered in the Tower, a girl when Henry the
Seventh came to the throne, and watched the pageant of all the Tudors
and the accession of the Stuarts—the whole of English history enclosed
between the Wars of the Roses and the Civil War. She must have been a
truly legendary figure in the country by the time she had reached the
age of a hundred and forty or thereabouts.
It is rather a frightening portrait, that portrait of Lady Desmond. If
you go into the gallery after nightfall with a candle the pale, far-away
eyes stare past you into the dark corners of the wainscot, eyes either
over-charged or empty—which? The house is not haunted, but you require
either an unimaginative nerve or else a complete certainty of the
house’s benevolence before you can wander through the state-rooms after
nightfall with a candle. The light gleams on the dull gilding of
furniture and into the misty depths of mirrors, and startles up a sudden
face out of the gloom; something creaks and sighs; the tapestry sways,
and the figures on it undulate and seem to come alive. The recesses of
the great beds, deep in shadow, might be inhabited, and you would not
know it; eyes might watch you, unseen. The man with the candle is under
a terrible disadvantage to the man in the dark.
§ vii
As there are three galleries among the state-rooms, so are there three
principal bedrooms: the King’s, the Venetian Ambassador’s, and the
Spangled Room. The King’s bedroom is the only vulgar room in the house.
Not that the furniture put there for the reception of James the First is
vulgar: it is excessively magnificent, the canopy of the immense bed
reaching almost to the ceiling, decked with ostrich feathers, the
hangings stiff with gold and silver thread, the coverlet and the
interior of the curtains heavily embroidered with a design of
pomegranates and tiger-lilies worked in silver on a coral satin ground,
the royal cipher embossed over the pillows—all this is very magnificent,
but not vulgar. What is vulgar is the set of furniture made entirely in
silver: table, hanging mirror, and tripods—the florid and ostentatious
product of the florid Restoration. There is a surprising amount of
silver in the room: sconces, ginger-jars, mirrors, fire-dogs,
toilet-set, rose-water sprinklers, even to a little eye-bath, all of
silver, but these smaller objects have not the blatancy of the set of
furniture. Charles Sackville, for whom it was made, cannot have known
when he had had enough of a good thing.
It is almost a relief to go from here to the Venetian Ambassador’s
Bedroom. Green and gold; Burgundian tapestry, mediaeval figures walking
in a garden; a rosy Persian rug—of all rooms I never saw a room that so
had over it a bloom like the bloom on a bowl of grapes and figs. I
cannot keep the simile, which may convey nothing to those who have not
seen the room, out of my mind. Greens and pinks originally bright, now
dusted and tarnished over. It is a very grave, stately room, rather
melancholy in spite of its stateliness. It seems to miss its inhabitants
more than do any of the other rooms. Perhaps this is because the bed
appears to be designed for three: it is of enormous breadth, and there
are three pillows in a row. Presumably this is what the Italians call a
_letto matrimoniale_.
§ viii
In a remote corner of the house is the Chapel of the Archbishops, small,
and very much bejewelled. Tapestry, oak, and stained-glass—the chapel
smoulders with colour. It is greatly improved since the oak has been
pickled and the mustard-yellow paint removed, also the painted
myrtle-wreaths, tied with a gilt ribbon, in the centre of each panel,
with which the nineteenth century adorned it, when it was considered
“very simple, plain, and neat in its appearance, and well adapted for
family worship.” The hand of the nineteenth century fell rather heavily
on the chapel: besides painting the oak yellow and the ceiling blue with
gold stars, it erected a Gothic screen and a yellow organ; but
fortunately these are both at the entrance, and you can turn your back
on them and look down the little nave to the altar where Mary Queen of
Scots’ gifts stand under the Perpendicular east window. All along the
left-hand wall hangs the Gothic tapestry—scenes from the life of Christ,
the figures, ungainly enough, trampling on an edging of tall irises and
lilies exquisitely designed; and “Saint Luke in his first profession,”
wrote Horace Walpole irreverently, “holding a urinal.” There used to be
other tapestries in the house; there was one of the Seven Deadly Sins
set, woven with gold threads, and there was another series, very early,
representing the Flood and the two-by-two procession of the animals
going into a weather-boarded Ark; but these, alas, had to be sold, and
are now in America.
[Illustration:
THE STONE COURT
]
The chapel looks strange and lovely during a midnight thunderstorm: the
lightning flashes through the stone ogives of the east window, and one
gets a queer effect, unreal like colour photography, of the colours lit
up by that unfamiliar means. A flight of little private steps leads out
of my bedroom straight into the Family Pew; so I dare to say that there
are few aspects under which I have not seen the chapel; and as a child I
used to “take sanctuary” there when I had been naughty: that is to say,
fairly often. They never found me, sulking inside the pulpit.
§ ix
There would, of course, be many other aspects from which I might
consider Knole; indeed, if I allowed myself full licence I might ramble
out over Kent and down into Sussex, to Lewes, Buckhurst, and Withyham,
out into the fruit country and the hop country, across the Weald, over
Saxonbury, and to Lewes among the Downs, and still I should not feel
guilty of irrelevance. Of whatever English county I spoke, I still
should be aware of the relationship between the English soil and that
most English house. But more especially do I feel this concerning Kent
and Sussex, and concerning the roads over which the Sackvilles travelled
so constantly between estate and estate. The place-names in their
letters recur through the centuries; the paper is a little yellower as
the age increases, the ink a little more faded, the handwriting a little
less easily decipherable, but still the gist is always the same: “I go
to-morrow into Kent,” “I quit Buckhurst for Knole,” “my Lord rode to
Lewes with a great company,” “we came to Knole by coach at midnight.”
The whole district is littered with their associations, whether a
village whose living lay in their gift, or a town where they endowed a
college, or a wood where they hunted, or the village church where they
had themselves buried. Sussex, in fact, was their cradle long before
they came into Kent. Buckhurst, which they had owned since the twelfth
century, was at one time an even larger house than Knole, and to their
own vault in its parish church of Withyham they were invariably brought
to rest. Their trace is scattered over the two counties. But this was
not my only meaning; I had in mind that Knole was no mere excrescence,
no alien fabrication, no startling stranger seen between the beeches and
the oaks. No other country but England could have produced it, and into
no other country would it settle with such harmony and such quiet. The
very trees have not been banished from the courtyards, but spread their
green against the stone. From the top of a tower one looks down upon the
acreage of roofs, and the effect is less that of a palace than of a
jumbled village upon the hillside. It is not an incongruity like
Blenheim or Chatsworth, foreign to the spirit of England. It is, rather,
the greater relation of those small manor-houses which hide themselves
away so innumerably among the counties, whether built of the grey stone
of south-western England, or the brick of East Anglia, or merely
tile-hung or plastered like the cottages. It is not utterly different
from any of these. The great Palladian houses of the eighteenth century
are _in_ England, they are not _of_ England, as are these irregular
roofs, this easy straying up the contours of the hill, these cool
coloured walls, these calm gables, and dark windows mirroring the sun.