Knole at the End of the Eighteenth Century
JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE
3rd
Duke _of_ Dorset
§ i
The portrait by Gainsborough in the ball-room is of a man with a curved
mouth, deep grey eyes, and powdered hair brushed back off his forehead.
He looks out from the oval of his framing, beautiful and melancholy. “I
have always looked on him as the most dangerous of men,” said the
Duchess of Devonshire, “for with that beauty of his he is so unaffected,
and has a simplicity and a persuasion in his manner that makes one
account very easily for the number of women he has had in love with
him.” There is much in him which recalls his forefather, Charles, the
Dorset of the Restoration, but this is a personality less opulent, less
voluminous, more wistful and more romantic; all his accessories are
essentially of the eighteenth century—his Chinese page, his diamonds,
his scarf-pin, his Italian mistress who caused so much scandal by
dancing at the Opera in Paris with his Garter bound about her forehead.
He is the immediate precursor of the generation which replaced by Gothic
the Tudor windows in the Orangery, made serpentine some of the straight
paths in the garden, and decorated the windows in the Colonnade with
representations of knights in full armour. He himself escaped the
baronial tendencies. He belonged to an age more delicate, more
exquisite; an age of quizzing glasses, of flowered waistcoats, of
buckled shoes, and of slim bejewelled swords. When he had his mistress
sculpted, it was lying full-length on a couch, naked save for a single
rose looping up her hair. When he had her drawn, it was pointing her
little foot in the first step of a dance, a tambourine in her hand, and
the Chinese boy in the background. When he wrote to his friends, it was
in a bored, nonchalant style, half in English and half in French. His
manner was “soft, quiet, and ingratiating.” He treated the women who
loved him with an easy heartlessness which failed to diminish their
affection. He was possessed of no very great talents but those
calculated to render life agreeable to him in the circles into which he
was born, for it was his good fortune to be born handsome, rich,
charming, and a duke, in a century when those qualifications were a
certain passport to success.
John Frederick Sackville became Duke of Dorset at the age of
twenty-four. He was the son of that Lord John Sackville who passes
across the annals of the family early in life as a poet and cricketer,
and later as a sad and shabby figure, “always dirtily clad,” living
under mild restraint at Vevey, a victim to melancholia. There was,
however, no hint as yet of this hereditary strangeness of temper in his
son, the new Duke of Dorset. The young man came brilliantly into his new
possessions, paid the undertaker £66 6_s._ for the late duke’s funeral,
paid the Sheriff £418 2_s._ for “things taken at Knole”—from which it
would seem that the late duke had died in debt—bought four thousand
ounces of silver, and entertained his neighbours and tenantry to a feast
in celebration of his succession, at which sixty stone of beef, mutton,
and veal were consumed, thirty-four pounds of wax-lights used, and
musicians provided. It is curious to see how the price of wine had
altered between the days of Charles II and this time; namely, 1769.
Claret now cost 54_s._ a dozen, Burgundy 60_s._ a dozen, Champagne
97_s._ a dozen, and port for the servants’ table cost 20_s._ a dozen, in
comparison with the few shillings paid per gallon a century earlier. The
only thing which did not [_see_ p. 133] alter in proportion is beer, for
which 35_s._ a hogshead was paid in the seventeenth century and £2
10_s._ a hogshead in the eighteenth. The young duke’s time, we are told,
was “devoted to gallantry and pleasure among the fashionable circles as
well in France and Italy as in England,” a phrase which begins to
acquire a fatally familiar ring through the generations of the family.
Perhaps nothing else could reasonably be expected of him. Life offered
him too great an ease and too many advantages; why should he have
rejected them? Before he had been for a year in the enjoyment of his
honours and estates he had set out on the Grand Tour accompanied by the
celebrated Nancy Parsons and a train of singers, actors, and Bohemians,
who clustered round him in every European capital which he visited.
Echoes of his extravagance and his escapades come down to us from Paris
and from Rome. He entertained lavishly every evening, inviting only
those who could amuse his already blasé appetite; he rescued his Nancy
Parsons in the nick of time as she was about to be abducted from a
masked ball by a noble Venetian; he indulged his taste for the fine arts
“even beyond the limits of his fortune”; he bought a Perugino, he bought
a doubtful Titian, and a number of Italian primitives; he bought from a
Mr. Jenkins in Rome “_the figure of Demosthenes in the act of delivering
an oration_, a fine Grecian relick in marble,” and a bronze cast of the
Gladiator Repellens, on whose shield he caused his own coat-of-arms to
be embossed. This kind of existence he continued to lead for two or
three years, when he threw over Nancy Parsons, returned to England, and
became the lover of a Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead. Meanwhile, it appears
from his account-books that large sums were being spent by his orders on
both outdoor and indoor repairs at Knole. He put down new floors,
altered some of the windows, and bought further enormous quantities of
silver, 5920 ounces in one year alone, costing £2463 17_s._ 7_d._, and
including a hundred and forty-four silver plates, eight dozen each of
forks and spoons, dishes of all kinds, covers, and tureens. Occupied
with Knole, love affairs, and cricket, he dawdled away a particularly
gilded youth. Details from his account-books give a good idea of his
expenses and occupations:
£ _s._ _d._
Mrs. Gardiner, lace ruffles 41 0 0
Butler, new chain 80 0 0
Opera, expenses last winter 17 19 0
Opera, subscription 21 0 0
Paid Sir Joshua Reynolds 78 15 0
Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead reigned for three years, but the duke had other
diversions in other circles: the gay, frivolous, and wanton Lady Betty
Hamilton, trailing from ball to ball with her suitors in her wake, set
her heart upon him, and he, not unresponsive, was ready to trifle so
long as he was not expected to marry. Lady Betty was finally married off
to Lord Derby, reputed the ugliest and the richest peer in England.
Many were the means employed till Lord Derby’s constant and assiduous
care veiled the ugliness of his person before the idol he worshipped.
Time and despair made Lady Betty give a hasty and undigested consent.
After a day of persecutions from every quarter, while a hair-dresser
was adorning her unhappy head, she traced the consent with a pencil on
a scrap of paper, and sent it wet with her tears to her mother.
A re-shuffle now took place: the duke became the new Lady Derby’s lover,
and Lord Derby became the lover of Mrs. Armistead. This arrangement,
however, was not of long duration. Lord Derby fell in love with
Elizabeth Farren; Lady Derby, it was rumoured, ran away and had to be
brought back by her brother, the Duke of Hamilton: still bent upon
marrying the Duke of Dorset, she wished to divorce Lord Derby, but was
foiled by the prudence of Miss Farren. The gossips of London were much
excited by all these occurrences. Lady Sarah Lennox wrote: “It is no
scandal to tell you it is imagined that the Duke of Dorset will marry
Lady Derby. I am told she has been and still is most thoroughly attached
to him.” It would be satisfactory to know exactly what part Dorset
played; I fear not a very creditable one. Lady Derby was an impulsive,
headstrong, attractive creature, capable of real passion under all her
lightheartedness and easy virtue; her husband was unfaithful to her; her
rival more sage and experienced than she herself; her lover ready to
take what he could without incurring an irksome responsibility. My
grandfather’s sister, Lady Derby, used to show at Knowsley the window
through which the Duke of Dorset was reported to have been admitted to
the house, disguised as a gardener, and it was commonly supposed that
the infant Lady Elizabeth Stanley was in reality the duke’s daughter.
But when the affair threatened to become too serious he was only too
ready to resume his travels abroad.
I can only suppose that it was during one of his absences that Horace
Walpole went to Knole and found it not at all to his liking, for he
draws a picture of the place in a state of desertion which would surely
not have been warranted had the duke and his household been in
occupation:
I came to Knole [_he writes to Lady Ossory_], and that was a medley of
various feelings! Elizabeth and Burleigh and Buckhurst; and then
Charles [_he means Richard_] and Anne, Dorset and Pembroke, and Sir
Edward Sackville, and then a more engaging Dorset, and Villiers and
Prior, and then the old duke and duchess, and Lady Betty Germaine, and
the court of George II.
The place is stripped of its beeches and honours, and has neither
beauty nor prospects. The house, extensive as it is, seemed dwindled
to the front of a college, and has the silence and solitude of one. It
wants the cohorts of retainers, and the bustling jollity of the old
nobility, to disperse the gloom. I worship all its faded splendour,
and enjoy its preservation, and could have wandered over it for hours
with satisfaction, but there was such a heterogenous housekeeper as
poisoned all my enthusiasm. She was more like one of Mrs. St. John’s
Abigails than an inhabitant of a venerable mansion, and shuffled about
in slippers, and seemed to _admire_ how I could care about the
pictures of such old _frights_ as covered the walls.
§ ii
I have said that cricket as well as love affairs occupied the duke’s
time, and in this he was only carrying on the tradition begun by his
father and his uncle, who were both enthusiastic cricketers and took
part in the first match recorded as having been played at Sevenoaks, in
1734, between Kent and Sussex, Lord John Sackville and Lord Middlesex
playing, of course, for Kent. Six years later Sevenoaks played London on
the famous Vine cricket ground at Sevenoaks—the first match recorded on
the Vine. The young Duke of Dorset inherited his father’s taste, keeping
in his employ professional cricketers such as Bowra, Miller, and
Minskull, and we have endless details of the matches played, an old
print of one match taking place on the Vine between the duke’s men and
Sir Horace Mann’s men, which shows the players all wearing jockey-caps
and finally a number of cricketing ballads, more noticeable for their
enthusiasm than for their excellence:
_His Grace the Duke of Dorset came_ [we read],
_The next enrolled in skilful fame.
Equalled by few, he plays with glee,
Nor peevish seeks for victory,
And far unlike the modern way
Of blocking every ball at play,
He firmly stands with bat upright
And strikes with his athletic might,
Sends forth the ball across the mead
And scores six notches for the deed._
There is in particular a great contest between Kent and Surrey,
celebrated in a ballad of sixty-five verses, in which
_The fieldsmen, stationed on the lawn,
Well able to endure,
Their loins with snow-white satin vests
That day had guarded sure_,
and it is related that in this match also the Duke of Dorset was playing
for the honour of his county, for we are told that
_Young Dorset, like a baron bold,
His jetty hair undrest,
Ran foremost of the company,
Clad in a milk-white vest._
Despite the efforts of the duke and the men of Kent, they were defeated
by Surrey, and the duke met with disaster:
_“O heavy news!” the Rector cried,
“The Vine can witness be,
We have not any cricketer
Of such account as he.”_
It is satisfactory to learn that in the return match Surrey was beaten.
§ iii
We come now to the period when “the gay Duke of Dorset became ambassador
in Paris,” and “his encouragement of the Parisian ballet was the
amazement and envy of his age.” It is entertaining, and rather sad, to
read both his official despatches from Paris and his private letters to
his friends, and to reflect that while he was writing to the Duchess of
Devonshire, “I suppose you will hear talk of my ball, it has made a
great noise at Paris”; or to the Foreign Office, “It is hardly possible
to conceive a moment of more perfect tranquility than the present, the
French government, free from the late causes of its anxiety, appears
entirely bent upon improving the advantages of peace,”—it is sad, and
certainly ironical, to reflect that the taking of the Bastille was
distant by a paltry three years. With no foreboding of those tremendous
events, which more than any war, more even than the career of Napoleon,
were to change the fortunes of humanity, the Court of France and the
English envoy continued on their course of enjoyment. The Duke of Dorset
became, naturally, extremely popular in Paris. He was himself not sure
that he wholly liked the French:
All the French are _aimable, si vous voulez_, but they are capricious
and inconstant, especially the women [_he wrote home to the Duchess of
Devonshire_]; in short, I have really no friend here but Mrs. B.
[Marie Antoinette], and then I see her so seldom that I forget half
what I want to say to her. The Frenchmen are all jealous and
treacherous, so that between the capriciousness of the fair sex and
the want of confidence I have in the other _je me sens vraiment
malheureux_, I assure you, my dearest duchess.
But the French had no corresponding fault to find. The English
ambassador was princely and lavish; he was spending money, as he himself
owned, at the rate of £11,000 a year; he was greatly in the Queen’s
favour, so greatly that he has been included by certain authorities
(notably Tilly) in their lists of her lovers. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall,
who, although an inaccurate was yet a contemporary writer, says that
this was not so, and that he has seen a letter-case, preserved by the
duke, full of Marie Antoinette’s notes addressed to him. Wraxall says
that they were written on private concerns, commissions that she
requested him to execute for her, principally regarding English articles
of dress or ornament, and other innocent and unimportant matters.
Whether Dorset was or was not her lover is not of the smallest
importance; and surely no one would grudge, at this distance of time,
any pleasure that a princess so young and so unfortunate might have
enjoyed in life.
A question in which the Duke was naturally much interested was the
affair of the diamond necklace. His despatches to the Foreign Office are
full of references to the story, from August 1785 onwards:
The usually credited account is, that the Cardinal [de Rohan] has
forged an order from the Queen to the Jeweller of the Crown to deliver
to him diamonds to the amount of 1,600,000 livres, and which diamonds
he actually received. What makes this event the more extraordinary is
that the Cardinal is known to be a man of extremely good parts, and is
in the enjoyment of the greatest honour and revenues to which any
subject in the Church can aspire.
And again:
Mme. de la Motte, from an apprehension that her life is in danger,
affects to have lost her senses. The jailer, upon entering her room
the day before yesterday, was some time before he discovered her, and
at length found her under her bed, quite naked.
It would, of course, take up too much space to give all Dorset’s
despatches on this subject. I mention them chiefly because a large
proportion of the diamonds composing the original necklace are at Knole,
one half having been purchased by the Duke of Dorset after the necklace
had been split up and brought to England, and the other half by the Duke
of Sutherland. This, at least, is the tradition; and there is some
evidence to support it, in a receipt among the Knole papers:
=Received= of his Grace the DUKE of DORSET nine hundred and
seventy-five pounds for a brilliant necklace.
£975 For Mr. JEFFERYS and self, W M JONES.
and this receipt is endorsed “Paid 1790,” which tallies with the date
when the necklace was sold by De la Motte to Jefferys, a jeweller in
Piccadilly. They are beautiful diamonds, small, but very blue, and are
set at present in the shape of a tasselled diadem.
Another topic which temporarily exercised the duke while in Paris was
the “very extraordinary proposal” made to the French Government by a M.
Montgolfier to
construct a balloon of a certain diameter to carry sixteen persons.
The project [_the despatch continues_] is to carry on a trade between
this part and the South of France; Paris and Marseilles are the two
places named. The balloon is to be freighted with plate glass, and the
return to be made in reams of paper. M. de Calonne has hitherto
received the proposal with great coolness, as M. Montgolfier requires
an advance of 60,000 livres Tournais. It is, however, under
contemplation, as M. Montgolfier has declared his intention of making
the offer to our government in case he does not meet with
encouragement here. It is said that the Comptroller General rather
discourages enterprises of this sort, as any further progress in the
art of conducting balloons might tend to prejudice the revenues of the
City of Paris, which will shortly be surrounded by a wall, the cost of
which is estimated at four or five millions.
The duke naturally thought M. Montgolfier’s plans nonsensical:
I should almost scruple to mention to your Lordship an undertaking so
extraordinary [_he says_] had I not heard from exceedingly good
authority that such a plan is seriously in agitation. Great credit is
given to M. Montgolfier’s superior skill in these matters, and that
gentleman’s friends are sanguine in their expectations of his success.
The weight he proposes to carry _exceeds that of a waggon-load_!
He gives some further details of what M. Montgolfier, who “pretends to
have at last discovered means of directing the course of Balloons,”
proposes to do:
He has obtained the sanction of M. de Calonne for his first
experiment, which is to be made the first day of next May, when he
engages to depart from a town in Auvergne, distant from Paris 150
miles, and to descend at or near this City in the space of seven
hours.
A month later he writes:
The government has at last accepted M. Montgolfier’s proposal. 30,000
livres are to be granted to him in advance for the experiment, and if
it succeeds the whole of his expenses will be paid without any
examination of his accounts, a pension granted to him, and every
honorary recompense bestowed on him to which he can aspire. He
pretends to have discovered the means of guiding his machine, but it
was not till after his project to England, in case of refusal here,
that it was accepted.
On such topics as the diamond necklace and M. Montgolfier and current
affairs Dorset beguiled his leisure and that of the Foreign Office.
There is no indication that he detected any signs of the trouble in
store. It is true that occasionally he writes in this strain:
Their Majesties, the Dauphin, and the rest of the Royal family, are
removed from Fontainebleau to Versailles. The expenses attending these
journeys of the Court is incredible. The duc de Polignac told me that
he had given orders for 2115 horses for this service.... Besides this,
an adequate proportion of horses are ordered for the removal of the
heavy baggage.... It is asserted that M. de Calonne will be under the
necessity of borrowing at least eight millions of livres next year,
and that after the fall of the Bastille he was moved to write: “I really
think it necessary that some public caution be given to put those upon
their guard who may propose to visit this part of the continent.” But
beyond these occasional comments he does not seem to have been troubled
by any thoughts of the future. He did not foresee that his friend “Mrs.
B.,” to whom after his return to England he continued to supply English
gloves, would lose upon the scaffold that little head which had carried
so gaily the butterfly or the frigate, or that within two or three
years’ time the English newspapers would be writing: “The Duke of
Dorset’s seat at Knole is a place of rendezvous for the banished French
_noblesse_ at this time resident in England,” or that he would be
entertaining there as a fugitive his friend Champcenetz, a young officer
in the Swiss Guards and author of a “_Petit traité de l’amour des femmes
pour les sots_.” Dorset would no doubt have proved a perfectly adequate
ambassador in normal times, but that vast situation with its infinite
ramifications was beyond an intellect that accepted for granted the
existing régime under which dukes were born for pleasure and labourers
were not. But with all the foresight in the world it is difficult to see
what he could have done, or how the course of history could have been
affected, had he sent home grave warnings instead of babbling of the
diamond necklace and M. Montgolfier.
There was another distraction for him in Paris: Giannetta Baccelli, an
Italian dancer. The duke seems to have lost his head completely over her
for the time being, for he gave her his Garter to wear as a hair-ribbon,
with “HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE” in diamonds, brought her home to
England with him, sent her to a ball in Sevenoaks wearing the family
jewels—which provoked a great scandal in the county—and gave her one of
the towers at Knole, which to this day remains, through the
mispronunciation of the English servants, “Shelley’s Tower.” It was for
this lady, or so the rumour ran, that he finally rejected the faithful
and unfortunate Lady Derby. There was nothing that Dorset would not do
for Baccelli. He had her painted by Reynolds, and painted and drawn by
Gainsborough, and sculpted from the nude. He even wrote to his friend
the Duchess of Devonshire asking her to do what she could for his
protégée, “I don’t ask you to do anything for her openly,” he wrote,
“but I hope _que quand il s’agit de ses talents_ you will commend her. I
assure you,” he adds rather pathetically, “she is _une bonne fille_,
very clever, and _un excellent cœur_, and her dancing is really
wonderful.”
Gainsborough’s large full-length portrait of Baccelli, originally at
Knole, has been sold; but his pencil sketch for it remains, rather faded
and very delicate of line. It is drawn in the ball-room: Baccelli stands
on a model’s throne, pointing her toe and lifting up her skirt;
Gainsborough himself stands in front of her, a palette in his hand, so
that he turns his back towards the person looking at the drawing; the
Chinese page, in a round hat, stands by. It reconstructs with great
vividness the scene of her posing in the ball-room. The only pity is
that the artist should not have drawn in the duke, who was surely there,
looking on, and criticizing and making suggestions. The receipt for the
big picture is at Knole, though no mention is made of the drawing (_see
illustration facing p. 208_):
=Received= of his Grace the DUKE of DORSET one hundred guineas in full
for two ¾ portraits of his Grace, one full-length of Mad^{sle}
Baccelli, two Landskips, and one sketch of a beggar boy and girl.
£105 _THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH_, _June 15, 1784_.
One of the “two ¾ portraits of his Grace” mentioned in this receipt is
the one now in the ball-room, one of the most beautiful Gainsboroughs I
know—included with five other pictures for the ludicrous sum of £105.
Reynolds’ portrait of the dancer shows a mischievous and attractive
face, with slightly slanting eyes, peeping out from behind a mask which
she holds up in her hand. The duke even went to the length of ordering
the portraits of the servants he had provided for her, and among the
collection of servants’ portraits in Black Boy Passage are Daniel Taylor
and Elinor Law, servants of Mad^{me} Baccelli; Mrs. Edwards, attendant
on Mad^{me} Baccelli; and Philip Louvaux, servant to Mad^{me} Baccelli.
She evidently, with her servants and her tower, had a regular
establishment at Knole, and many receipts bearing her signature witness
the duke’s generosity towards her: “Received 7th April 1786 of Mr.
Burlington [the agent] the sum of fifty pounds on account of his Grace
the Duke of Dorset, Jannette Baccelli,” and so on. They had several
children, all of whom died in babyhood, except one, alluded to in the
following letter: “The duke has a very fine boy to whom Baccelli is
mother, now at school near Knole. This, we think, is the only surviving
progeny of the alliance,” but, much as I should like to know, I have no
idea what became of this romantically-begotten scion, or even of whether
he lived to grow up.
Perhaps the “heterogenous housekeeper” of Horace Walpole’s letter was
Baccelli’s importation, for in another place he writes disgustedly of
“Knole, which disappointed me much. But unless you know how vast and
venerable I thought I remembered it, I cannot give you the measure of my
surprise; but then there was a trapes of a housekeeper, who, I suppose,
was the Baccelli’s dresser, and who put me out of humour....”
The connection seems to have lasted for a long time, for it is not until
the end of 1789 that we come across an old newspaper cutting announcing
with curious candour that “the Duke of Dorset and the Baccelli have just
separated, and she is said to have behaved very well,” so that she
eclipsed the records of Nancy Parsons, of Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead, and
of poor Lady Derby. It is, I think, a not unpicturesque incident in the
story of Knole—the dancer sitting in those stately rooms to Reynolds and
Gainsborough, or descending from her tower to walk in the garden with
the duke, attended by the Chinese boy carrying her gloves, her fan, or
her parasol. Those were the days when the Clock Tower, oddly recalling a
pagoda, was but newly erected; when the great rose-and-gold Chinese
screen in the Poets’ Parlour was new and brilliant in the sun; when the
Coromandel chests were new toys; and the Italian pictures and the
statuary brought back by the duke from Rome were still pointed out as
the latest acquisitions. And no doubt then the statue of the Baccelli
reposing in her lovely nudity on her couch was not relegated to the
attic, where a subsequent and more prudish generation sent it, but stood
somewhere in the living-rooms, where it might be seen and admired in the
presence of the smiling model. Amusement was caused too, no doubt, among
the guests of the duke and the dancer by Sir Joshua’s portrait of the
Chinese boy squatting on his heels, a fan in his hand, and the square
toes of his red shoes protruding from beneath his robes. It was more
original to have a Chinese page than to have a black one; everybody had
a black one: “Dear Mama,” wrote the Duchess of Devonshire to her mother,
“George Hanger has sent me a Black boy, eleven years old and very
honest, but the duke don’t like me having a black, and yet I cannot bear
the poor wretch being ill-used; if you liked him instead of Michel I
will send him, he will be a cheap servant and you will make a Christian
of him and a good boy; if you don’t like him they say Lady Rockingham
wants one.” But the black page at Knole, of which there had always been
one since the days of Lady Anne Clifford, and who had always been called
John Morocco regardless of what his true name might be, had been
replaced by a Chinaman ever since the house steward had killed the John
Morocco of the moment in a fight in Black Boy’s Passage. This particular
Chinese boy whom I have mentioned, whose real name was Hwang-a-Tung, but
whom the English servants, much as they called Baccelli Madam Shelley,
more conveniently renamed Warnoton—fell on fortunate days when he came
to Knole, for not only was he painted by Sir Joshua, but he was educated
at the duke’s expense at the Grammar School in Sevenoaks.
[Illustration:
HWANG-A-TUNG
A CHINESE BOY, PAGE TO THE 3RD DUKE OF DORSET
_From the portrait at Knole by_ SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
]
§ iv
The year after the parting in which the Baccelli was reported to have
behaved so well, the duke married. His bride was an heiress, Arabella
Diana Cope, who brought the duke, according to his own statement, a
dowry of £140,000. She must have been an imposing figure, if one may
trust Hoppner’s portrait, which shows her walking in a white muslin
dress, a little dog frisking round her feet, and tall feathers on her
head; and Wraxall, who certainly knew her, says, with the touch of awe
and even dislike perceptible between the lines of all his accounts of
her, that “her person, though not feminine, might then be denominated
handsome; and, if her mind was not highly cultivated or refined, she
could boast of intellectual endowments that fitted her for the active
business of life.” Wraxall writes, possibly, with a prejudiced pen, for
at one time he was employed in sorting and classifying the Knole
manuscripts, and in this matter his views clashed with those of her
Grace and her Grace’s second husband; the business was abandoned half
way through, but Wraxall’s trace remains in the neat, ejaculatory notes
which I find on the reverse side of many of the papers—“curious!” or
“not without merit!” This may account for the subtle spitefulness of his
remarks. Nevertheless, I imagine that Knole perceived under the duchess’
régime a considerable contrast with the days of the merry and
pleasure-loving Baccelli. The new duchess was a severe and orderly lady,
“under the dominion of no passion except the love of money, her taste
for power and pleasure always subordinate to her economy,” and the duke
himself, perhaps under the influence of his wife, began to turn from his
extravagant ways towards parsimony, curtailing his expenses in spite of
the enormous increase in his income, and becoming, moreover, irascible,
fretful, morbid, and quarrelsome. The days of his patronage of opera and
Parisian ballet were over, the days when he was confident that the talk
of his ball in Paris would reach the ears of the Duchess of Devonshire
in London. His expenses at Knole were reported to be reduced to four or
five thousand a year, yet he could not endure to hear the praise of
other houses, for Knole he considered “as possessing everything.” It is
not an attractive picture of the gay duke’s declining years. Hoppner,
who had been staying at Knole for nine or ten days painting the three
children, described the duke as most unpleasant in his temper, anxious
and saving, humoursome and uncomfortable, “not suffering the dinner to
be all placed on the table,” and when, playing at Casino, he lost
fifteen shillings to Hoppner he “fretted when the cards he wished for
were taken up.” The three children were brought up with the utmost
severity; they were scarcely allowed to speak in the presence of their
elders; and little Lord Middlesex was sent out of the room in disgrace
at luncheon for asking his sister for the salt. Yet I fancy that the
real control, under a show of submission, was exercised by that
commanding figure, the duchess. She never betrayed any signs of
exasperation, whether the duke sent away the dinner, or grumbled that
Neckar was a man of no family, or that Mr. Hailes, the secretary, was a
man of no family either—much to Mr. Hailes’ discomposure. This dwelling
upon family was one of his many crotchets, and he was fond of pointing
out that the Sackvilles had never branched, but remained the only family
of that name in the Kingdom, and would draw attention to the coincidence
that Sackville Street was the longest street in London without branch or
turning. Prudent and long-suffering, no doubt the duchess had in her
mind the advantages she intended to secure when she should be no longer
a wife and sick-nurse, but a widow. Baccelli’s statue was in the attic,
and Mr. Ozias Humphrey, of the Royal Academy, was quite out of favour
because he went to Knole in the duke’s absence and took possession of a
room without previously showing proper attention to the duchess. She
presided calmly, while the duke fretted and economized, and quarrelled
with his friends, and deteriorated in intellect, and became a prey to
gloom, and grew old and sad before his time; she presided unruffled, for
all the while she rested satisfied in her knowledge of his testamentary
dispositions. He was, in fact, although only in the fifties, already a
very ill man. He was falling rapidly into a deeper and deeper
melancholy, and there is a tradition that towards the end he could only
be soothed by the playing of two musicians in a neighbouring room—the
room now called the Music Room, in which hang, rather ironically,
Reynolds’ portrait of the Baccelli peeping out from behind her mask, and
Vigée Lebrun’s portrait of the grave, greyhaired lady, Arabella Diana,
Duchess of Dorset. He sat in the library, his hands fumbling at the
breast-pin in his _jabot_, while the soothing strains reached him,
veiled by distance. Veiled by distance, too, the memories of his past
floated to him on the music, and melted with the music into the solace
of a confused and wistful harmony. The past, so luminous, was not wholly
lost, since in memory it was still recoverable. There had been the fun
of the masked ball in Rome; there had been the clandestine hours of
tenderness with Betty Hamilton; there had been Versailles; there had
been the days when he could glance down through the window and see
Baccelli flirting with Sir Joshua on the lawn. The musicians in the
neighbouring room played on. He had been twenty-four when Knole had come
to him; he had not had to wait for his good things until he was grown
too sober to enjoy them. It had been so easy to accept the urbanity, the
_empressement_, everyone was eager to lavish; so pleasant to move in a
world so bland, so obliging, and so polite. No effort had been
necessary; the fat quails had dropped ready roasted into his mouth. No
effort: a smile there; a gracious word here; tossed alike with a casual,
if good-humoured, contempt. Surveying himself in his mirror while his
valet knelt to buckle the diamond Order round his knee, flicking with a
lace pocket-handkerchief at a few grains of powder fallen upon his coat,
he had been secure in the safe conduct of his great name and his
personal charm. And if the faint ghosts whispered round him now in the
quiet library at Knole—a fair head thrust at him upon a pike, the
reproachful eyes of Lady Derby, the stilled limbs of those half-Italian
babies that the Baccelli had borne him—why, he could banish them: Lord
Middlesex slept in his nursery upstairs, and the tall duchess watched,
effaced though vigilant, from a corner of the library. But when she rose
and came towards him, thinking that he had fallen asleep in his nodding
over the fire, he repulsed her fretfully, with the gesture of an old
man, and wondered at himself in his confused and unhappy mind for this
anomalous discourtesy towards a woman.
Next door to the Music Room hangs the lovely full-length of the three
children, painted by Hoppner while on that uncomfortable visit. One is
bound to admit that their appearance bears no impress of the grand,
solemn, and gloomy household in which they were being brought up. The
little boy, rosy, flaxen-curled, in high nankeen trousers and a soft
frilly shirt, has his arms round his baby sister, who, with bare toes,
is looking sulkily at her elder sister’s shoes; they are out in the
park; nothing could be more natural or unconstrained. My grandfather
used to show me the baby girl, telling me that while Hoppner was seeking
for a pose for his picture a grievance arose between the two little
girls because one had shoes and the other had not, and that on Lord
Middlesex taking his sister into his arms for consolation, Hoppner
rushed at them exclaiming that he could not improve upon the charm of
this accidental pose. I think this story has a convincing ring about it.
Certainly it was the only anecdote which my grandfather had to tell of
any picture in the house; usually he did not know a Hoppner from a
Vandyck, a Kneller from a Gainsborough. He said that he had the story
straight from his mother, Lady Elizabeth, the sulky baby of Hoppner’s
picture, and the young woman in fancy dress of Beechey’s portrait in the
same room.
[Illustration:
JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE ARABELLA DIANA
3RD DUKE OF DORSET 3RD DUCHESS OF DORSET
THE EARL OF MIDDLESEX
LADY ELIZABETH SACKVILLE LADY MARY SACKVILLE
_From a silhouette by_ A. T. TERSTAN, _1797. The property of_ LADY
SACKVILLE
]
The only pleasant aspect of these later years of the gay duke’s life is
his friendship and constant employment of the artists of his day. Before
he fell into what Wraxall calls his “mental alienation” he counted
Reynolds among his intimates, was a pall-bearer at his funeral in
Westminster Abbey, and accumulated so many works of that artist at
Knole, including one at the back of which is written, “Sir Joshua
Reynolds, painted by himself and presented to his Grace the Duke of
Dorset in 1780,” that what was once the Crimson Drawing-Room became
known as the Reynolds Room; and the Reynolds Room it is to this day.
Madame Vigée Lebrun stayed at Knole, which she found too gloomy for her
taste, the duchess warning her, the first time they sat down to dinner,
“You will find it very dull, for we never speak at table.” Ozias
Humphrey, before he was so unfortunate as to offend the duchess,
contributed a number of canvases to the duke’s collection:
Two pastels, 12 guineas each.
KNIGHTSBRIDGE, _June 25th, 1792_.
£ _s._ _d._
His Grace the Duke of Dorset to Ozias Humphrey, for a
portrait in miniature 16 16 0
A small crayon picture of the crossing-sweeper at Hyde
Park Corner with a rich gold frame and glass 21 0 0
A portrait of the Duchess of Dorset in crayons 12 12 0
——— —— —
£50 8 0
=Received= of his Grace the Duke of DORSET the sum of fifty pounds in
full for the amount of the annexed bill.
OZIAS HUMPHREY.
It is perhaps significant of his new economy that the duke ignored the
eight shillings.
With Opie, too, he was on friendly terms, and amongst the other receipts
at Knole is one from Opie for the portrait of Edmund Burke for £24 3_s._
There is also a letter at Knole from Burke, who probably knew his
Grace’s weakness for his house:
DUKE ST., _Sept, 14, 1791_.
MY LORD,
I am just now honoured with your Grace’s letter, and am extremely
concerned that it is not in my power to accept your Grace’s most
obliging invitation. I have great respect for its present possessor;
and as for the place, I, who am something of a lover of all
antiquities, must be a very great admirer of Knole. I think it the
most interesting thing in England. It is pleasant to have preserved in
one place the succession of the several tastes of ages; a pleasant
habitation for the time, a grand repository of whatever has been
pleasant at all times. This is not the sort of place which every
banker, contractor, or Nabob can create at his pleasure.... I would
not change Knole if I were the Duke of Dorset for all the foppish
structures of this age.
Other receipts at Knole make it clear that the average price for a
half-length was £37, while for a full-length by Reynolds the duke paid
£300.
There is also a mention in a contemporary diary that the duke asked
Hoppner for his portrait, which he promised should be hung next to Sir
Joshua’s portrait of himself. The diary notes that Ozias Humphrey’s
_Selbstbildnis_ is “still in the room, but has been removed from its
place next the Reynolds.” It is “still in the room” now, a man with a
delicate face and a pointed nose, on the wall with Gainsborough’s _Lord
George Sackville_, Sir Joshua’s _Samuel Foote_, his _Oliver Goldsmith_,
his _Peg Woffington_, and his own portrait; but the Hoppner for which
the duke asked is not there, and never was; no doubt Hoppner was not
sufficiently encouraged by the uncomfortable visit to send so valuable
an acknowledgment.
At this period England lay under the fear of an invasion by the young
victorious Bonaparte, and a scheme was set on foot for raising a corps
of infantry to be called the Knole volunteers; I recently came across
some of their accoutrements in an old locker at Knole; they had an
amateurish look. A document bearing many blots and the signatures of all
the volunteers—or, in some cases, their mark—is also at Knole:
HIS GRACE _the_ DUKE _of_ DORSET’S offer of raising a Corps of
Infantry, to consist of Sixty Men, to be called the _Knole
Volunteers_, for the purpose of preserving Order and protecting
property in the Parish and Neighbourhood of Sevenoaks having been
accepted, and George Stone, Stephen Woodgate, and Thomas Mortimer
Kelson being appointed officers by his Majesty to command the same,
they propose the following Rules and Regulations, which they hope will
be cheerfully submitted to by all who have voluntarily come forward to
offer their services in the said Corps at this important Crisis:
1st. _That_ each individual attend twice a week for the purpose of
exercising from half after Six o’clock to half after Eight
o’clock in the Evening.
2nd. As a regular attendance is particularly essential, it is
proposed that the small Sum of Sixpence be paid by every person
not present to answer to his Name when called over at the time
appointed, unless it appears he is prevented by Sickness, which
forfeits, should there be any, shall be spent by the Corps at
the end of the year in any manner they shall think proper.
3rd. That every Man appears clean and properly accoutered.
4thly. That they do their utmost Endeavour to learn their
Exercise, paying proper respect to their Officers.
_Finally_, they wish it to be clearly understood that their Services
shall not be required to extend further than the Parish and
Neighbourhood of Sevenoaks, unless it be for the purpose of guarding
Prisoners or Convoys as far as one Stage.
KNOLE, _22 May 1798_.
But it is improbable that the duke had much to do with the raising or
organisation of this corps, for during the last twenty months of his
life his irascibility turned to definite melancholia, and he remained at
Knole more or less alone with the duchess keeping a jealous guard over
him. It is impossible not to draw the parallel between his end and that
of Charles the Restoration earl, his great-grandfather, remembering
especially the wildness and extravagance in which both had spent their
youth; but whereas Charles was carried away to Bath at the end by that
sordid woman Ann Roche, the duke was carefully tended in his own great
house by the reserved and prudent woman he had married, too dignified to
be accused save under the veil of polite phrases of intriguing to get
the control of his affairs into her own hands. So he sank gradually, and
in 1799, at the age of fifty-four, he died, when it was found that he
had so disposed of his lands, his fortune, and his boroughs that
Arabella Diana was left with so great an accumulation of wealth and of
parliamentary influence as had “scarcely ever vested, among us, in a
female, and a widow.”