SOCIETY IN THE COUNTRY HOUSE
Demy Svo, cloth^ 15/- net.
Studies in Biography. By Sir Spencer
Walpole, K.C.B., Author of " History of England
from 1815," " Life of Lord John Russell," etc., etc.
Contents.
Sir Robert Peel — Gibbon — Richard Cobden —
Prince Bismarck— Benjamin Disraeli — Napo-
leon III. — Lord Dufferin — Decisive Mar-
riages IN English History.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
d' r e I
• c e.
SOCIETY IN THE
COUNTRY HOUSE
T. H S. ESCOTT
AUTHOR OF "KING EDWARD AND HIS COURT," "SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS
OF THE VICTORIAN AGE, " ETC., ETC.
LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
ADELPHI TERRACE
MCMVII
(AU rights reserved.)
DEDICATORY PREFACE
TO
MAJOR H. P. MOLINEUX,
OF ISFIELD, SUSSEX, AND MORNINGTON, EASTBOURNE.
My dear Sir, — Of those who have been good enough to
interest themselves in the writing of this book and to enable
me to verify personal and local details, you are the only friend
with whom to-day I find myself in touch ; while, in all that
relates to the South of England, I have found your assistance
of the most practical value. To you, therefore, do I venture
to inscribe this work, merely adding that, whenever it has
been chronologically possible, the country houses mentioned
are confined to those with which I am personally acquainted.
Describing, therefore, chiefly, so far as was possible, persons
and places actually visited by me, as a native of the South-
west of England, I have naturally dwelt most on ground
familiar from its earliest associations. This book only con-
cerns itself with the social characteristics or story of repre-
sentative or interesting houses. It was, therefore, unnecessary
to dwell on architectural details, famous interiors, or their
contents, accurately and minutely catalogued by guide-books
already universally familiar or accessible.
With all respect and regard, obliged and truly yours,
T. H. S. ESCOTT.
Hove,
Brighton,
August^ 1906.
2G15?9
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE EVOLUTION OF THE COUNTRY HOST . . . .17
Introduction — The arrangement of the book in its chrono-
logical and geographical relations explained — The country
house unknown till Chaucer's day — Why — The franklin —
Baronial despotism — How the country house grew.
CHAPTER II
THE SUSSEX DUKERIES AND NON-DUKERIES ....
Arundel Castle : its development, mythical, feudal, con-
vivial, aristocratic, democratic — The eleventh Duke of
Norfolk (the "Jockey") — The twelfth Duke — The present
Duke — Petworth : its owners — Goodwood — The Dukes
of Richmond — Battle Abbey — The Brownes, the Websters,
and the Vanes — The Dukes of Cleveland — "Cheque on
Coutts" — Battle Abbey in the present day — Compton
Place, Eastbourne — The Duke of Devonshire and Lord
Randolph Churchill— Woolbeding Manor — Under Lord
Robert Spencer — A fashionable centre — Sir Thomas
Wroughton and Sir William Hamilton : their anecdotes —
Lord and Lady Lanerton— Stanstead — Lord North and
Charles Turner — Sir John Stepney — Stanstead under its
successive owners.
32
Contents
CHAPTER III
PAGE
THE FASHIONABLE SOUTH DOWNS 69
Hurstmonceux — Its tragic associations — The Naylors
and the Hares — Hurstmonceux a theological and literary
centre — Parham — The De la Zouches — Lord Selwyn,
Reynolds, Beauclerk, Johnson, and Gibbon — Dunford
House, Midhurst — Cobden — Bishop Wilberforce —
Lavington — The Sargents — Stopham — The Barttelots —
Field Place — The Shelleys — Chesworth — Warnham Court
— Stanmer — The Pelhams — Stanmer as the cradle of
Brighton — Harrison Ainsworth in Sussex — Cuckfield
Manor the origin of " Rookwood" — Ovingdean Grange —
Brighton Pavihon — Its origin — In the days of the Regency
— The Lades and the Barrymores — Lord Thurlow — Sir
John Irwine — The Muriettas at Lamberhurst — West Dean
— Mr. and Mrs. W. James — Lord Brassey's Normanhurst
— Thomas Brassey— Literary parties at Normanhurst —
Sir Julian Goldsmid's Fairlight, near Hastings — Butler
Johnstone and Ralph Earle — Later guests at Fairlight —
Mrs. Duncan Stewart and her anecdotes.
CHAPTER IV
BRIDGE AND THE KENTISH GANG 109
The First Marquis of Abergavenny and the Kentish Gang
—The first Earl, at Oxford— Fridge Castle— Mr. Mark-
ham Spofforth — The Junior Carlton Club as an Fridge
growth — Political movements at Fridge — Its earlier history
— Hayes Place — Its associations with the Pitts — Holwood
Park — Pitt and Wilberforce and the abolition of the
Slave Trade — Chevening — The Stanhopes and Pitts —
Chevening's wealth of Pitt memorials — Its nineteenth-
century parties and their national results — Knole : its
place in English literature, politics, and society — Its
visitors' book from Ben Jonson, Raleigh, Bacon to Sir
W. H. Russell and Ismail Pasha — Hever Castle : its hosts
and guests from the Boleyns to Dickens, Millais, and
Burnand — Leeds Castle — Famous guests of two centuries
— Beckenham and the lucky Burrell marriages — With
Darwin at Downe — Lord Avebury's guests and pets at
High Elms — Herbert Spencer on himself and others —
8
Contents
Lord Goschen at Seacox Heath — His Oxford visitors and
others — The Kentish country house as a theatrical
training school — Harbledown — The Canterbury " Old
Stagers " — With the laureate in the Ashford district —
Bedgebury : its personal and literary story — Hempsted
and Lord Cranbrook — Chilstone and Mr. Akers-Douglas
— Lullingstone, Sir W. Hart-Dyke and fish dinners on
the lower Thames.
CHAPTER V
PENSHURST AS A PARENT COUNTRY HOUSE . . . .IS©
Penshurst, the earliest country house of the better sort —
Its owners and name — The Sidneys — The origin of the
name — Sir Henry Sidney— Sir Philip Sidney — Robert
Sidney, first Earl of Leicester — His literary parties at
Penshurst — Ben Jonson a frequent visitor — Robert
Sidney, second Earl of Leicester, politician, administrator,
host — The Royal children, the Princess Elizabeth and the
Duke of Gloucester, for a time his paying guests at Pens-
hurst — "Sacharissa" (Lady Dorothy Sidney) — Immor-
talised by her rejected lover, the poet Waller — Algernon
Sidney, her favourite brother — Another brother, Henry
Sidney, Earl of Romney — Penshurst becomes a Whig
house.
CHAPTER VI
TWO CENTURIES OF WILTON 175
Success of Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" compared with
that of Lewis Carroll's " Alice in Wonderland " — Wilton
House — The Pembroke Herberts — William, third Earl of
Pembroke — Henrietta de Querouaille, wife of seventh Earl
— The "architect" (ninth) Earl — His widow's marriage
with Captain Barnard — The tenth Earl's elopement with
Kitty Hunter — Lady Pembroke, her pretty sisters and
smart contemporaries — English peeresses masquerading
as Greek girls — The Wilton visitors' book from Horace
Walpole to George Payne — Palmerston at Wilton and
Sidney Herbert.
9
Contents
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
MARSTON AND LONGLEAT 1 89
The first Lord Cork — His descendants — The Boyles and
the Cavendishes — The title passes to the fifth Lord Orrery —
Marston and its literary associations — Swift, Burnet, and
Gay — " The Beggar's Opera " — Lavinia Fenton and the
Duke of Bolton — Actresses and the Bolton peerage — The
seventh Countess of Cork — Longleat — Its history — The
Thynnes — Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, and
Thomas Ken — Friendship between them — Ken made
Bishop of Bath and Wells by Charles II. — One of the
" Seven Bishops " — Refuses to take the oath of allegiance
to William III. — Retires to Longleat — It becomes a centre
of learning — Izaac Walton marries Ken's sister — The party
at Longleat — Secular associations — Edward Seymour, first
Duke of Somerset — Thomas Seymour, Lord Sudeley —
Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton — Lucius Carey,
Viscount Falkland — The Earl of Carnarvon — " Tom of
Ten Thousand " — Thomas Thynne, third Viscount Wey-
mouth — Longleat's recent political associations — Mr.
Gladstone and the fourth Marquess of Bath in 1884 —
Intervention of Canon MacColl — The Longleat County
Franchise Bill of 1884— The fifth Lord Bath and the
Health Congress, 1904.
CHAPTER VIII
FROM WILTS THROUGH DORSET 210
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury and
Chancellor — His childhood, &c. — His political intrigues —
Wimborne St. Giles — The seventh Earl, the philanthropist
— His family anecdotes — Lord Palmerston at Wimborne
St. Giles — Monuments of the Earls of Shaftesbury — Can-
ford Manor — John of Gaunt and Geoffrey Chaucer — Sir
John Guest — Mr. H. A. Layard — Lord Randolph
Churchill — Milton Abbey — The Tregonwells — The Ham-
bros — Crichel — George III.'s journey from Cheltenham to
Weymouth — The Sturts and their property — George III.
at Weymouth — The King and the Prince Regent — James
I. and Anne of Denmark at Weymouth — Lulworth Castle
— The Empress Eugenie — The party at Lulworth — La
belle Americaine and the English peerage — The Welds —
— Abraham Hayward at Westhill.
10
Contents
CHAPTER IX
PAGE
FROM TRESCO ABBEY TO POLWHELE 237
The Scilly Islands — Their place in legend and history —
Tresco Abbey — " King " Augustus Smith — John Douglas
Cook on the identity of the Islands — Other Tresco guests
— Douglas Cook at Tintagel — Details of the history and
" government " of Tresco — Miss Rhoda Broughton — " Only
just eighteen!" — Charles Reade — H. S. Stokes — Pen-
carrow : Sir William and Lady Molesworth — Literary and
political visitors — David Urquhart — Captain Gronow —
J. A. Roebuck — Mr. Leonard Courtney — Tom Hood,
the younger — Theatrical guests — Foreign royalties at
Pencarrow — Stow — The genealogy of the GranviUes and
Baths — Stow formerly a Royalist centre — The house as
it used to be — Lord Lansdowne's advice to his clerical
nephew — The Moncks of Cornwall and Devon — Berry
Court — Werrington — The Rev. H. A. Simcoe at Penheale
— His encouragement of village industries — The Rev. R. S.
Hawker at Morwenstow — Tennyson — The sermon and
sack of potatoes — Lord Falmouth's Tregothnan — The
Laureate's recognition of a Homeric precedent in the
park — Carnanton : its Disraelian and other associations
— Boconnoc : its story and its cricket week — Polwhele, a
type of the smaller Cornish country house — The
descendants of Maria Theresa's favourite noble.
CHAPTER X
A ROUND OF DEVONSHIRE VISITS 271
Port Eliot, formerly a Republican centre, compared with
Stow, a Royalist centre — Portraits of the Eliots, John
Hampden, &c. — Other pictures — The Eliot family — Sir
John Eliot ' and Hampden— Pitt at Port Eliot— The
Grenvilles — A contretemps — Pitt at Plymouth — The St.
Germans peers — Mount Edgcumbe — The Rev. Barter of
Cornworthy and his three sons — Cothele, the ancient seat
of the Edgcumbes— Its antiquities — Royal visitors at
Mount Edgcumbe — Chatham in the West of England —
An anecdote of Chatham and the Duke of Newcastle —
Heligan, the home of the Tremaynes — Mrs. Boscawen —
The Duchess of Portland — Mount Edgcumbe a resort of
II
Contents
beauty and learning — Hayes Barton, Raleigh's birthplace
— Bicton — The RoUes, first Whigs, afterwards Tories —
John, Lord RoUe, the mock hero of the " RoUiad " — Its
writers, Colonel Fitzpatrick, &c. — Modern Bicton — Pea-
more — The Kekewiches — Archbishop Cornwallis — A legal
precedent — Peamore guests — Pynes — The Northcotes —
Memorials of the first baronet. Sir John Northcote — Lord
Iddesleigh and his visitors.
CHAPTER XI
WHERE DEVON AND SOMERSET MEET 301
The West-country seats of the Acland family, Killerton
Park and Holnicote — Holnicote the meeting place of
Wilberforce and his allies — The origin of Grillion's Club
— Ashley Combe — Byron's daughter, Ada, first Countess
of Lovelace — Robert Southey at Ashley Combe — The
Lovelace progenitors — John Locke — The seventh Lord
King, father of the first Earl — The connection of Ashley
Combe with the Byron name — Castlehill, a political
country house — The Earls of Fortescue — "A School of
Manners" — Pixton — The second Lord Carnarvon — Egges-
ford — The fifth Earl of Portsmouth — His relations with Sir
Thomas Acland — Doubts and conjectures about Acland's
speech — The Church militant in the Exmoor district —
Canon Cook — Bishops Wordsworth and Browne — The
Greek Archbishop Lycurgus — Sir George Williams —
Orchard Wyndham — Sir William Wyndham and his
guests — St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, &c. — Atterbury
Trelawny and Dean Swift — Dunster Castle — The Luttrells
— Colonel Luttrell — Temple Luttrell — Henry Luttrell, the
wit — Gladstone and the ancient Greeks — St. Audries —
The two Sir Samuel Hoods — The Mallets and the Balches
— Sir Peregrine Acland's Fairfield — Dr. Johnson on the
origin of the word "Quantock" — The Acland-Hoods —
"Shake an ass and go " — St. Audries a centre of Unionism
— A curious memorial of the Palmers — Enmore Castle, the
home of the Egmont Percevals — Chapel Cleve — Thomas
Poole — Wordsworth and Coleridge at Alfoxden — The
last St. Albyn owner, the omnibus driver — Quantock
Lodge — Lord Westbury and Lord Selborne — Country
houses round Quantock Lodge — Sydney Smith at Combe
Florey — Enmore Castle and Quantock Lodge to-day.
12
Contents
CHAPTER XII
PAGE
IN SQUIRE western's LAND 327
Halswell — The Tyntes — The Bridgwater elections —
" The Man in the Moon " — Baron Tripp, the introducer of
the waltz and his colleagues — Bulwer Lytton's presence of
mind — Brymore, the home of John Pym — Its connection
with Francis Bacon — Pym's mother, Lady Rous, and wife,
Anna Hooker — Lady Rous's funeral sermon preached by
Charles Fitz-Geoffrey — Wentworth (Strafford) at Brymore
— Pym and Hampden — Brymore's later owners — Guests
at Brymore during Pym's life. Sir John Popham, Thomas
Coryate — Cricket-St. Thomas, the house of Sir Amias
Preston — Ralph, Lord Hopton — Ralph Cudworth — Dr.
Joseph Wolff at Ile-Brewers Rectory — Archdeacon
Denison at East Brent Rectory — Freeman at Sommer-
leaze — Sir William Pynsent of Burton-Pynsent — His
legacies to Chatham — William Pitt's childhood at Burton-
Pynsent — Ralph Allen's Prior Park, standing in the same
relation to Bath as Stanmer to Brighton — Allen, the
original of Squire Alworthy in " Tom Jones " — Prior Park
an open house — Its guests — Warburton — Literary Visitors
— Dean Swift — Bowood — First Marquis of Lansdowne,
his descent from the Pettys and the Fitzmaurices — His
grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Kerry — Bowood
parties — Bentham, Dumont, Priestly — Lansdowne's house-
hold accounts — The third Marquis — Thomas Moore and
other visitors — Bowood in the present day — The poet
Bowles at Bremhill — Barley Wood, the home of Hannah
More — Raikes, the founder of the Sunday School and his
Cotswold guests — Blaise Castle, the home of Wilberforce's
friend, Harford.
CHAPTER XIII
SOUTH-EAST BY EAST 357
Mr. Percy Wyndham at Clouds — The Clouds house-parties
and modern politics — East Knoyle House — The Seymours
— Breamore — Fonthill — William Beckford — Samuel
Rogers as his guest — Beckford's eccentricities — His Lans-
downe tower at Bath — Beckford compared by Rogers with
E. A. Poe — Ford Abbey — Jeremy Bentham and the Mills —
Life at Ford Abbey — Jean Nicolas Grou, the French
divine, at Lulworth — Bryanston and the Portmans —
13
Contents
Hambledon House and the Pitt ladies — The Grange —
Lord and Lady Ashburton and their guests — Carlyle —
His snub to John Forster — Mrs. Carlyle — Highclere — The
cedars — Highclere owners, the Pembroke and Carnarvon
Herberts — The fourth Earl of Carnarvon — Political parties
at Highclere — Boer guests — Hurstbourne — Count Munster
— Lord and Lady Granville — Memorials of Isaac Newton
J. C. Jeaffreson — Tedworth — Thomas Assheton Smith,
the celebrated sportsman — At Eton — As a Parliamentary
candidate— His fight with the coal-heaver — Smith as a
Hampshire squire — His opinion of Canning — Hursley —
Sir William Heathcote and Keble — F. Rogers (Lord
Blachford) — Hursley to-day — Strathfieldsaye — Anecdotes
of the great Duke of Wellington — The second Duke —
The Rev. G. R. Gleig — " Copenhagen's " grave — The
Duke of Malakhoff's shooting performance — Henry Irving
and other guests at Strathfieldsaye.
CHAPTER XIV
FROM THE HAMPSHIRE AVON TO THE THAMES . . . 384
Heron Court — The second and third Earls Malmesbury
— Heron Court anecdotes — The duel between O'Connell
and Alvanley — The American lady in Italy — Heron Court
guests — Sir Henry Drummond Wolff at Boscombe Tower
— Henry Reeve's Foxholes — The Longmans at Farn-
borough Hill — Sclater-Booth (Lord Basing) and Disraeli —
Farnborough Hill as the home of the Empress Eugenie —
Her household — Hazeley, the home of Mrs. Singleton
(Lady Currie) — Lady Strangford, her only rival in con-
versational qualities — Matthew Arnold as the guest of
Lord and Lady Greville — John Evelyn's house at Wotton
Mr. F. Leveson-Gower's Epsom parties at Holmbury —
" Mr. Simpson " at the Rookery — Mrs. George Grote and
her eccentricities — Henry Reeve and Mrs. Grote — Mrs.
Craven — Her admiration for General Gordon — Her
imitations of public men — Her comment on Palmerston
— " Conversation " Sharpe at Fridley Farm — The Fridley
portraits — Sir James Mackintosh — Marden Park — William
Wilberforce and the French emigre — " The Gallic tem-
perament " — Marden's associations of Pitt — Robert Lowe
— Nelson's farewell at Merton— Henry Hope's home, the
Deepdene — Hope's influence on Disraeli's novels—" Young
Englandism " — The Duke of York's guests at Oatlands
14
Contents
PAGE
Park — Francis Jeffrey — Lord Yarmouth — The Duchess of
York and Lady Culling — Thomas Raikes and the Duchess's
pets — Madame de Stael — Chiswick House — The Boyles —
Sir Humphry Davy — Cliveden — The meeting of Prince
George and Lord Bute — Cliveden's various owners —
Other riverside houses — Edmund Yates's parties at Marlow
— Lichfield House — Mr. and Mrs. John Maxwell (Miss
Braddon) and their literary guests.
CHAPTER XV
FROM OSTERLEV TO ASCOT 423
Lord Petersham — Osterley Park — Lady Jersey's parties —
Lady Melbourne — Lord Byron — The future Emperor
Napoleon HL, aged twenty-one — Lady Jersey's troubles —
Modern Osterley- — Sion House — Edward Irving — Henry
Drummond — The conferences at Albury — "Honeymoon
Hall " — Lord North and Colonel Barre at Bushey Park —
Charles James Fox at St. Anne's Hill— Fox and Rogers in
Paris — Mrs. Fox in the cupboard— Fox at Holland House
— Gibbon's and Lavater's impressions of Fox — Earl (Lord
John) Russell at Pembroke Lodge, Richmond — Owen,
Dickens, and Forster — Reminiscences of Napoleon IIL
and Carlyle — John Bright as the guest of Sir Coutts
Lindsay at Shepperton — Strawberry Hill — Lady Carling-
ford and her husbands — Mr. Henry T^abouchere's parties
at Pope's Villa— Sir M. E. Grant-Duff at York House-
Lord Reay — The Oxford Movement— E. B. Pusey — Pusey
House — Nuneham — Mrs. Montagu's Sandilands — The
Country House era of Oxford— The academic parties of
Jowett, Pattison, and Wynter — Jowett anecdotes — Lord
Granville's account of Bishop Wilberforce's death — Mr.
Ralli's parties at Cranleigh — Lord Kitchener — Lord
Rendel's Hatchlands — ^Sarsden Rectory — Anecdotes of
Bishop Wilberforce — Lord Rosebery's guests at the
Durdans — Frank Lawley — Mr. Angerstein — The Marquis
of Hastings.
CHAPTER XVI
THE NEW HOSTS OF THE HOME COUNTIES .... 455
Mr. A. Brassey's Heythrop — " History Hut " — Mrs.
Duncan Stewart's stories — Kingston, Lisle, and Beckett —
Squire Aitkins — -Old Lady Stanley — Broughton Castle —
Fawsley — John Pym — Canon Jelf and the King of
15
Contents
Hanover — Lord Saye-and-Sele and Augustus Hare — Lady
Granville's story apropos of the Battle of the Nile —
Daylesford, Warren Hastings' home — Hastings and the
Countess Inhoff — Lady Ducie's reminiscences — Hatfield
tragedy and pastime — Under the third Marquis and
Marchioness — Famous guests — Count Herbert Bismarck
— King Edward VH. as Prince of Wales — Lady Salisbury
and her journalistic guest — Wrest : its various owners —
Henry Greville and croquet — Alfred Montgomery on " A
moral Cremorne " — The dandies — Lady Cowper's stories
of Mr. and Mrs. "Poodle" Byng— Brocket— The Lamb
family — I^ord and Lady Melbourne (Lady Caroline Pon-
sonby) — Brocket, Byron, and Lady Melbourne — Lord
Palmerston — Knebworth — Anecdotes of Bulwer Lytton —
Houghton and Woburn — Samuel Whitbread at South Hill
— Baron Ferdinand Rothschild's Waddesdon — Its trees
and visitors — Other Rothschild palaces — Mentmore and
Halden — Disraeli as a Buckinghamshire squire — His
Hughenden guests. Sir William Harcourt, Lord Glenesk,
and Thomas Hamber — Primroses and peacocks — Disraeli's
reminiscences of the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe, 1848
— Disraeli's obligations to the Midland Dukeries — Rayners
— Belvoir Castle — The Earl of Shrewsbury's Alton Towers
— " You call them savages ! "
CHAPTER XVII
FROM THE CHILTERNS TO THE CHEVIOTS .... 476
Westwood Park — Sir John Pakington, afterwards Lord
Hampton — C. N. Newdegate — Sir Stafford Northcote —
Expressions that originated at Westwood — The Anglican
Deputation to Disraeli — Kinsham Court — Byron and his
guests — The Countess Guiccioli's visit to England — The
Duke of Beaufort's Troy House — Sir Richard Hill at
Hawkstone — Lord Dartmouth, " the psalm-singer " — Row-
land Hill, the evangelist — Edmund Burke's Butler's Hall
— An asylum for religious refugees — Famous visitors — Sir
Joshua Reynolds and the "infant Hercules" — Lord
Nugent (" Squire Gawkey ") at Gosfield — Lord (Squire)
Western of Rivenhall — His hatred of Canning — Twentieth-
century Essex hosts and guests — Mr. Chamberlain's High-
bury — Alnwick and Raby as social patterns for Gunners-
bury, Tring, Highbury, and West Dean.
INDEX 487
16
CHAPTER I
THE EVOLUTION OF THE COUNTRY HOST
Introduction — The arrangement of the book in its chronological
and geographical relations explained — The country house un-
known till Chaucer's day — Why — The franklin — Baronial
despotism — How the country house grew.
"It snowed in his house of meat and drink,
Of all the dainties whereon one could think."
CHAUCER'S portrait of the fourteenth century
franklin is a sketch from life of the mediaeval
country gentleman who was the first representative
and lineal progenitor of the hosts that are to figure
prominently in the following pages. The rural home
of the English gentleman appears as a centre of social
or political life and interest during the period covered
by the " Canterbury Tales." I shall briefly sketch
the conditions under which the country-house system
became possible. I shall next pass to the most
typical and interesting instances of its complete
organisation in Tudor times, showing how it then
discharged many of the functions fulfilled to-day by
the newspaper, by the circulating library, or by more
exclusive methods of information ; how, at the same
17 B
The Evolution of the Country Host
time, it began to occupy a recognised place in the
organisation of party politics; and how, from the
seventeenth century to the present hour, in all
the great movements of English life, the oppor-
tunities of the country house have proved the
necessary and the eventful supplements to the
agencies of parliament and platform. The same
houses have supplied the scene for events equally
interesting, but belonging to widely separated periods.
To each house one visit must suffice. The unities
of time must therefore be sacrificed to the unities of
place. Geography will supply the only practicable
principle of grouping. The series of country-house
visits that the reader is now invited to pay will
conveniently commence with the south-east corner
of England. The route will then proceed through
the southern and western counties. The line taken
through the Midlands will bring us fairly into East
Anglia. Thence progress will be made in a northern
direction. At all points there will be the opportunity
of illustrating differences between the new and the old
rSgime in country-house life.
Nor will the connection of the country house
with other national interests and occupations, often
of a mutually opposite character, be ignored.
Anglicanism, evangelicalism, the social and spiritual
awakening which resulted in the reform of the prison,
of the poor-law system, and in the abolition of the
slave trade, are as rich in country-house associations
as the chase, the turf, the stage.
Before attempting to work up into a consistent
picture the available details of country-house society
i8
The Shipman In Society
during the franklin period, it may be as well to
summarise the obvious reasons why the country house
could only have begun to exist between the thirteenth
and the fifteenth centuries. The fusion of Norman
and Anglo-Saxon gentry had not, at an earlier date,
come within measurable distance of completeness.
The very idea of middle-class traders being socially in-
corporated into the aristocratic or squirearchical order
would have been unintelligible. The condition of
England was, as will presently be seen, one, not
merely of social disorganisation, but of chronic and
dangerous disturbance. Agricultural depression,
long lasting and intensified by a continuance of
bad seasons, had rendered quite impossible anything
like regular hospitalities on the part of landlords,
small or great. In Chaucer's day, prosperity in
foreign commerce had given timely relief to hosts of all
degrees. In every part of the country were well-kept
houses, belonging to representative owners, of the
commercial class, but of aristocratic associations and
prejudices. Chaucer's Shipman in the "Canterbury
Tales " may have hailed from Dartmouth. That
western seaport, in the opulence of its suburban
residents, as well as in its collective contributions to
the State navy at times of national peril, was charac-
teristic of the nation and the times. It was the
age in which a London Lord Mayor, John Philipot,
by successful ventures like those of Chaucer's
"Shipman," had amassed a fortune; he had manned
a squadron, ready, as occasion might arise, for
incorporation into the royal navy. Nor was this
the only way in which, like other great citizens, he
19
The Evolution of the Country Host
served the State. His business skill brought him
into requisition with the Court for arranging the
subsidies in the French wars. His influence must
at least have been as great on land as on sea.
The "Shipman" of the "Canterbury Tales," possibly
something of a pirate as well as a trader, seems
to have come from the banks of the Devonshire
Dart. John Philipot, to his estate near Dartford in
his native county of Kent, added houses and lands in
other parts of the country. He was, in fact, one of
those large and hospitable proprietors whose clientele
included a number of vavasors or smaller owners
who saw their natural patrons in their many-acred
and wealthier neighbours. To Philipot and others
in his position belonged the house where —
"His table dormant in the hall alway,
Stood ready covered all the longe day."
These rural homes of mediaeval England were
much more than mere centres of hospitality. The
trade routes to the Baltic, the Mediterranean, the
\ Levant, and to remoter parts were also those followed
\ by the chivalry, the diplomacy, and the literature of
England in their communication with the world
beyond seas. Among the guests of the Chaucerian
Franklin or of the historic Philipot, were business
men who had seen the practical working of the
commercial policy pursued by Edward HI.; its
alleged injuries to native manufactures and trade ;
the increasing severity of Flemish and German
competition with British fishermen and weavers ;
above all, the dangerously growing monopoly by
20
Fashion-Books as They Were
foreign companies of the world's banking business.
Such were the conversational topics discussed by
experts at these mediaeval week-end parties. In
the way already described, Philipot and others of his
class had given practical proofs of their patriotism.
Their social comments on the imperial policy of the
Court in its relation with national industry and trade
often reached the ears of the kinor and his ministers.
In this way, therefore, something of the work allotted
to chambers of commerce to-day was performed by
the hospitalities of provincial mansions in the Middle
Ages. The entertainments given at the castles of
the great aristocracy, a Percy or a Nevill, were for
princes and nobles. Of such places nothing was
known by common folk except the largess of food
to all comers. Such was the English version of
the sportula of imperial Rome. Colossal structures
like those of Alnwick and Raby were not in those
early days popularly associated with good cheer any
more than they were with the promotion of national
interests in Church or State, in council chamber or
mart. With the true founders of the English country
house, the franklins or squires, there was talk as
well as food to suit all tastes. The men had their
politics. The ladies learned what were the latest
novelties and vagaries in dress. Comparing notes
of impressions among themselves, they soon repro-
duced the originals which they knew from travel-
lers' tales, in such a way as to set the fashion for
a village, a neighbourhood, a town, or an entire
county. Other personages of the famous Prologue
mingled with the franklin and his guests. The
21
The Evolution of the Country Host
whole of social England at that time, it must be
remembered, was suggestive rather of a family
party than of a complex, diversified, and hetero-
geneous nationality. The four great pestilences
between 1348 and 1376 had, on the accession of
Richard II., reduced the whole population of the realm
to two millions and a half. Classes in the community
were separated from each other by none of the modern
gulfs. All persons of liberal calling or education
were at least mutually as well known among them-
selves as the average members of a modern club.
The Churchmen, the man of law, and the physician
who met at the Southwark Tabard, before starting
for Thomas a Beckett's shrine, found themselves
habitually guests beneath the same country roof.
The doctor seems to have been more in con-
sideration as the franklin's ofuest than amongr his
brother pilgrims on the Old Kent Road. An unwritten
law, if not a formal statute, limited the ecclesiastic's
visit to three days, lest he should be tempted to stay
away too long from his spiritual cure. The professor
of the healing art was exempt from any such restriction,
and, if he did not outwear his welcome, was apt to
presume on the elasticity of its limits. Still, his purple
overcoat and professional hood of blue with white
fur were undoubtedly in social demand, during this
insanitary period. The greater the distance from a
large town, the more desirous were the rural hosts
of securing the presence of the faculty at their week-
end parties. What the physician was in Chaucer's
day he practically remained to the end of the Middle
Ages. Most departments of human knowledge have
22 ~
Homoeopathy Anticipated
been doomed to go through a preliminary state, In
which the true science has been so obscured by vague-
ness of doctrine, or so stretched beyond Its Hmlts by
pretenders, as to excite against It the prejudice of the
world. Astronomy began in astrology. Chemistry
was the child of alchemy. Geology had once been
cosmogony. History grew out of a mere confusion
of legends, genealogies, and superstitions. Medicine
had been witchcraft ; its professors, throughout the
whole of the franklin's epoch, retained many signs of
its unscientific origin. That fact, however, made the
doctor of the day more, rather than less, acceptable
as a ofuest. The ladies of the families he visited were
interested, as well as impressed, by his conversational
knowledge of professional mysteries.
Receiving with pious gratitude the remedial drugs
produced from the recesses of his ample cloak, they
listened with reverent credulity to the array of
authorities which his memory or his Invention enabled
him to quote in support of any medicine that his
ingenuity prescribed. He began his dinner with
citations from Galen, Hippocrates, at a classical house
from the Podalirius and Machaon of the Iliad, or, at
a religious house, from the beloved physician, St.
Luke. By the time the table was being cleared and,
for the better repose of the company, servants were
bringing fresh rushes Into the hall, the prophet of the
healing art was treating his hearers to a little antici-
pation of Hahnemann's leading doctrines and, with
instances well known to his hearers, was illustrating
the homoeopathic cure for inflammation by a course of
gazing at red draperies.
23
The Evolution of the Country Host
The great householder, the St. Julian ^ in his own
country, so fond of all good living as much for his
friends as for himself, valued his ease and dignity too
highly to become a shire knight like Chaucer,
or a borough member like Bailly the host of the
Tabard Inn. Thus he lived all the year round
on his own estate, kept open house at every season,
asked nothing more of his visitors than that they
should bring him the latest information from those
parts of the world of which they knew something,
and bring perhaps also, as gifts for his womenkind,
specimens of the latest vogue in headdresses and
gowns. As the name indicates, he was first a freeman,
then a freeholder. A country gentleman, whose
estate consisted in free land and was not subject to
feudal service or payment,- he anticipated the most
intelligent, profuse, and modish of twentieth century
St. Julians.
As a national institution, his life was too merry not
to be short. In the next century to Chaucer, indeed,
Fortescue speaks of the franklin as the head of a
family, enriched with great possessions.3 According
to the New English Dictionary, the franklin in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a landowner
of free, but not noble, birth, ranked next below the
gentry. Later the designation so depreciated in value
as to mean little more than a well-to-do farmer. So
much at least may be inferred from the position given
' The patron saint of hospitality also expressed the idea of the
perfect host.
2 Warton's "History of Poetry," vol. ii. p. 202, edition 1841.
3 " Paterfamilias magnis ditatus possessionibus."
24
The Franklin at Home
to the franklin by Shakespeare. Thus (Cymbeline,
3. ii. 79) Imogen asks to be provided with "a riding
suit no costlier than would fit a franklin's housewife."
Again (Winter's Tale, 5. ii. 173) boors and franklins
classed together, under the title of common people,
are contrasted with orentlemen. Its social connotation
went through further depressions till, in the seventeenth
century, the term seems quite to have gone out of use.
But in the early part of the mediaeval period not
only did the lord of the manor, so often absent and
hampered by mortgages, yield in importance to the
franklin ; he was often of less social consideration
than the well-to-do miller. The franklin's residence
always bore without, as well as within, the marks
of comfort and wealth. The mediaeval manor-house
was habitually distinguished from the labourers'
cottages, rather by standing at some distance from
them than by superiority of accommodation. The
franklin's house was often called a hall. Some-
times fresh rooms were added on the basement
floor ; the house became a castle. As in the
village economy the parson represented the prin-
ciple of the Church, so for about a hundred years
the State impersonated itself in the franklin. Those
were the days when constituencies prayed for
relief from the obligation of returning members to
Parliament. The franklin's public duties were limited
to local politics and manor courts. His hospitalities
made him a power in the land. He was far too wise
a man to let them exceed his means. From the first
he had supplemented his income by well-judged in-
vestments in the wardship of neighbouring properties ;
25
The Evolution of the Country Host
these placed in his pocket the profits of the land during
the ward's minority. His fortunes expanded with
those of his age and nation. His Chaucerian friend
the " Shipman," the forerunner of the Elizabethan
adventurers, gave him early notice of any particularly
good business there might be on. The country gentle-
man therefore of the Middle Ages, in his commercial
and territorial character, is to be regarded as the
lineal ancestor of those whose hospitalities — the
Buckinghamshire Rothschilds, the Tranby Croft
Wilsons — have been thought the twentieth century's
exclusive products.
Sportsmen and courtiers, politicians, leaders of
society as well as pillars of commerce, celebrities
of all kinds, well-introduced travellers from every
part, were, during his palmy period, the franklin's
habitual guests. Was his residence passed by any
one primed with the latest gossip about the quarrel
between John of Gaunt and Speaker de la Mare,
or concerning the former's social or political intrigues
generally, that wayfarer took his place at our franklin's
dinner table. There he found himself sitting next
to a king's messenger, full of Court small-talk from
London or travellers' tales from Europe.
The franklin's establishment thus became a local
centre, whence radiated throughout the district the
latest news of Yorkish intrigue with the Court of
Burgundy, of changes in the crusaders' plan of cam-
paign or the quarrels of the chiefs, Coeur de Lion,
Barbarossa, and Philip of France, who had each
vowed to be the first in wresting the Holy Sepulchre
from the infidel.
26
Decline of the Peers
Above the franklin, as the representative of the
untitled gentry, in political power but not in social
importance, still less as country hosts, came the
larger landlords and nobles. The latter of these,
after the Battle of Bosworth, had deteriorated in
physique as well as diminished in numbers and power.
From beingr cast in the maornificent mould of Warwick
the Kingmaker, their persons were now, for the most
part, small and weak. And visitors, high or humble,
expected to find the master of a stately mansion built
of something like the same scale as the structure
which he owned. Usually possessing town houses
at York or some other provincial capital, these peers
owed their decline in influence less to lack of money
for supporting their traditional state than to the fact
that they compared disadvantageously, in point of
ability and attainments, with the prosperous country
gentlemen of the time. Their estates, indeed, were
for the most part heavily mortgaged. Court cere-
monials and costly dresses often drained them of
their ready money. Comparative poverty would not,
however, have proved fatal to their national influence,
had it been compensated by great qualities like those
of Warwick, or fearless sympathy with the higher
interests of life and the nobler aspirations of the age,
such as, before Warwick, had animated Stephen
Langton's colleague, Pembroke. Thus early did
the titular aristocracy of the realm justify their
description in " Lothair " as living in the open air,
never reading, and speaking no language but their
own. They had fought shy of the renaissance. They
had held aloof from each subsequent stage in the
27
The Evolution of the Country Host
revival of letters. Failing to represent the best
life of the nation, they had not so much forfeited
public respect as disqualified themselves for being
its object. They may even be said in many cases
to have sacrificed their own identity. Impoverished
by pecuniary mismanagement, they often broke up
their own establishments and took their place among
the retainers of the wealthier and more powerful
members of their order. Thus, at the end of the
fifteenth century, several nobles, once of great position,
had accepted a voluntary degradation by entering
the households of men who often proved as formidable
rivals to the Crown as Richard Nevill himself. Of
that select class at the time just mentioned, the
wealthiest member seems to have been Edward,
Duke of Buckingham, descended from Thomas
Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, the Earl of North-
umberland's brother-in-law and father-in-law of the
Duke of Norfolk. The Venetian ambassador Giusti-
nian, reputed an adept in such calculations, estimated
his income at 30,000 ducats, about ^180,000 of
English money. In the great hall of Thorbury,
the daily average of guests at breakfast and dinner
was two hundred. The pages who waited on them
were often noblemen's sons. Buckingham may have
surpassed all his peers in opulence. Northumberland
had no superior in power. The state kept at Alnwick
was only less than that of the royal Court at Windsor.
Wherever these uncrowned kings happened to be,
they lived upon the same magnificent scale. If
travelling, they were accompanied by retainers whose
numbers and equipment made them a warrior host.
28
Rightly Called '' Pulle "
The whole country had not yet got out of the dis-
turbed condition which was the social ground-swell
following the tempest of civil wars. The turbulent
oligarchy of nobles which misgoverned it may have
fed their retainers, but did not diffuse an influence
favourable to an interchange of rural hospitalities
between their neighbours or themselves. Six oxen
were slaughtered daily to furnish Northumberland's
followers with breakfast on the journey to London.
But these supplies of beef were requisitioned, not
bought and paid for. From the Stanleys in the North
to the Courtenays in the West, the lawless patricians
owned the soil and bullied the countryside. The
Ear] of Devon, finding no cash in his chest, proceeded
to rob Exeter Cathedral of its plate, just as he might
have seized some local Jew's strong box. With a
force of 800 cavalry and 4,000 foot soldiers, he held
the country gentlemen to ransom. Elsewhere, ab-
duction was not less the noble vogue than sacrilege.
Sir John Botler's widow, of Beausey, Cheshire, vainly
sought deliverance from, or redress against, an
amorous territorialist named Pulle who, having
removed her to Bidstone, dragged her by brute force
to the altar.
Yet there is Hallam's authority for believing
that, in comparison with continental Europe, England
enjoyed domestic tranquillity. The tumultuary epoch
of baronial despots was not without its socially
harmonising aspect. The provincial mansions of
these men were not, indeed, so much private homes
as national caravanserais. The hospitality dispensed
may often have been seasoned with contempt ; it
29
The Evolution of the Country Host
recognised many invidious distinctions among the
guests. Still, beneath those feudal roofs, all classes
met and began to know each other. In the retinues
of the nobles, whose normal condition seemed one
of civil war, might be found all the materials for
organising the ^enerosz. Here were the men of gentle
birth who derived their lineage from ancestors who
wore coat armour. These comprised the knight,
whether banneret or bachelor, and the squire. These
were they who from the first had made their ancestral
homes agencies of domestic civilisation. That was
the class which, at all periods, has formed a link of
union between the great lords of the land on one
hand and its cultivators, whether yeomen or tenant
farmers, on the other. With the men just described
there mingled, in a constantly increasing degree, the
born representatives of the trading class who had
used commercial success as a means of incorporation
into that order which was above their own, only
by the accident of origin and the conventions of social
precedence. The old House of Lords was the true
parent of the modern House of Commons. The
country gentlemen who created the country-house
system were the neighbours, sometimes the kinsmen,
of the baronial " creatures of flood and field," to whom
sufficed "the good old rule, the simple plan,"
" That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."
How the lawless greed, the unbridled and despotic
self-indulgence of these men proved in their social
30
The Country Host Evolved
results unfavourable for the interchange of friendly
visits between country neighbours has been already
shown at sufficient length. At the same time, even
amidst the feudal autocracy and the baronial tyranny
of that wild age, there were growing up habits of
social intercourse and ideas of a mutual inter-
dependence of classes which really served as a pre-
paration for the country-house developments of a later
day. On the lines already indicated and at first
following the course of the sun, we begin with the
Sussex dukeries. These will be visited in the next
chapter.
31
CHAPTER II
THE SUSSEX DUKERIES AND NON-DUKERIES
Arundel Castle : its development, mythical, feudal, convivial, aristo-
cratic, democratic — The eleventh Dukeof Norfolk (the" Jockey ")
— The twelfth Duke — The present Duke — Petworth : its owners
— Goodwood — The Dukes of Richmond — Battle Abbey — The
Brownes, the Websters, and the Vanes — The Dukes of Cleveland
— "Cheque on Coutts" — Battle Abbey in the present day —
Compton Place, Eastbourne — The Duke of Devonshire and
Lord Randolph Churchill — Woolbeding Manor — Under Lord
Robert Spencer — A fashionable centre — Sir Thomas Wroughton
and Sir William Hamilton : their anecdotes — Lord and Lady
Lanerton — Stanstead — Lord North and Charles Turner — Sir
John Stepney — Stanstead under its successive owners.
" T T is a nothing on a fine hill. The site is fine.
X There are some good tombs of the Fitzalans
at the church. Of the castle little remains. In its
room is a modern brick house. In the late duke's
time the ghost of a giant, Oliver Cromwell incog. ^
walked there. The present Duke has laid it in the
Red Sea of claret." Such in the eighteenth century-
seemed to Horace Walpole the chief features of the
Sussex stronghold that, according to the route already-
explained, forms the natural starting-point of the
present country-house expeditions. What chiefly
impresses one about Arundel Castle, to-day, is that
it dominates the south coast landscape not less con-
spicuously than Windsor fills the prospect of Thames
32
An Apocryphal Arundel Tooth
valley or St. Peter's and its dome enter into every
view, near or distant, of the city on the Tiber. This,
not because the Duke of Norfolk's pile competes
at any point in height with the loftiest parts of the
English palace, still less with the Italian cathedral.
The apparent ubiquity of Arundel in the panorama
arises less from the height of its towers than from
the vastness of the whole structure and the command-
ing aspect of the elevation on which it is set. As a
building, Arundel Castle existed in the tenth century
and was mentioned by King Alfred in his will. The
Norman Conqueror's followers and councillors in-
cluded one of his relatives, Roger de Montgomery.
Commanding at the Battle of Hastings the archers,
one of whose arrows pierced Harold's eye, he received
for a reward an earldom and the manor of Arundel
to support the title. In the twelfth century, reverting
to the crown, the estate fell to Henry I.'s second wife.
She, in her widowhood, married a foreign knight who
had come over with the Duke of Normandy and who
belonged to the Albini family ; he was best known
as " William of the strong hand." A tooth, said
to have come from the mouth of the king of beasts,
discovered in coniparatively recent times among the
Arundel treasures,^ supplied the explanation of the
name. Cast, as the story runs, into a lion's den for
refusing to marry the Queen of France, Albini put
his hand into the animal's mouth and tore out its
heart. As Lord of Buckenham, Albini, with his wife,
^ The best refutation of this local legend comes from the Duke of
Norfolk himself: "I have never heard of this tooth, and I think I
might have done so had it really ever been found."
33 C
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
kept almost royal state at the castle, made Arundel
the great baronial centre of the south and entertained
claimants, as well as possessors, of crowns. The most
memorable among the earliest royal visits to Arundel
took place in the twelfth century. Albini's guest then
was Henry I.'s daughter, the Empress Maud, the
true heiress to the throne violently filled by Stephen.
The usurper laid prompt siege to Arundel. Albini
not only beat off the beleaguering force ; he caused
the siege to be permanently abandoned. He thus
enabled the royal lady safely to reach Bristol and
take ship for the Continent. This service to his
mother was rewarded by Henry II. with the gift
of the earldom of Sussex to the owner of the castle,
already Earl of Arundel and Chichester. The
marriage of an Albini to a Fitzalan, on the Albini
family's extinction, gave the castle to the Fitzalans.
In the reign of Elizabeth, it formed the marriage
dowry of Mary Fitzalan who married Thomas, Duke
of Norfolk.
The Arundel of Horace Walpole's day belonged
to the ninth and tenth of its ducal owners. The more
modern recreator of the place is the eleventh duke.
This peer, familiarly known as the " Jockey," began,
with his hospitalities, the social history of the place.
A shrewd, tolerably read, voluble man, with a smatter-
ing of literature and science that passed, in a duke,
for learning, he said some clever things, about Ireland
in particular, but more that were merely coarse, on
all subjects in general. His habitual table-talk was
a choice selection of conversational flowers that come
to maturity in the stable-yard or in the smoking-room,
34
" The Jockey " and " Barny "
towards the small hours. Belonging to that section
of the party which shared Fox's detestation of Shel-
burne, he stood foremost among: those Whig's to whom
the leadership of Lord Grenville seemed not less
intolerable than the Tory ascendancy of the younger
Pitt. Such were the men who, wearied of the tra-
ditional style, were now ready to adopt the radical
faith and name. Of these the "Jockey" posed as
the patron, and made his Sussex home their holiday
ground.
" Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad.
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies.
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies."
Pope's familiar lines alone perhaps can do justice
to the eleventh Duke of Norfolk as a talker. With
those themes others mingled. On the morning after
a particularly wet night, his grace, renovated by
sleep, showed himself indifferently ready to discuss
the Deity's foreknowledge or his own henchman's
claims to a share in the Tory plunder. His tamest
parasites were forced to confess that their Arundel
visits wanted one Christian-like person to enjoy them
with and a few comforts such as towels, soap, and
water to make the thing complete.
The Arundel house parties had, as has been seen,
first acquired notoriety under the "Jockey," Duke
Charles. They were continued by the twelfth duke
(Bernard Howard) who, like his predecessor, had
many intimates below his own station. With these
he answered to the diminutive of " Barny." During
the earlier part of his reign the socio-political re-
35
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
sources of Arundel conspicuously contributed to the
collapse of the bill against Queen Caroline. What
the Duke called "a jollification" followed. The
country round was ablaze with bonfires. The castle
keep and the adjoining streets ran red with burgund
and port. A decade later, during the period of the
Grey Reform Bill, from this scene of carnival the
place transformed itself Into a political auction mart.
No ducal dealer in seats at St. Stephen's drove harder
bargains for rotten borouo'hs than was done both
by the " Jockey " and " Barny " with the agents of
the Grey cabinet at Arundel. While the principals
were negotiating in the grand drawing-room or
library, other apartments, pleasantly called by the
master of the mansion "the indoor kennels," swarmed
with the parliamentary creatures of the great house.
They whimpered and fawned on the author of their
political being like frightened spaniels. Surely they
were not to be sent adrift without some provision
for their future by the magnate for whom they had
faithfully fetched and carried. They might have
served for the originals of Taper and Tadpole in
" Coningsby," who, between the schedules of the bill
and the shifting relations of their patrons with the
premier, found their parliamentary lives not worth
a day's purchase. Among these threatened and
abased suppliants was a gentleman of mature age,
whose exuberance of snowy frilled shirt-front and
caressingf blandness of manner at first seemed to
identify him with the family physician. He was,
however, the Duke's Irish henchman, the diarist
Thomas Creevey, whom his patron had just elbowed
36
Mother Stafford and Ducal Eccentricities
out of Thetford, for which he had sat as the Arundel
deputy. To the Duke's mother-in-law, then supreme
at Arundel, " Old Mother Stafford, always as sulky
as be d d " (the Duchess of Sutherland), Creevey
thought he owed his dismissal.
Arundel uniquely combines radicalism and eccle-
siasticism in the past with recognition of social
democracy in the present. The priors of Pynham,
near Arundel, divided with the Arundel burgesses
the privilege of pasturing cattle in the castle fields
and of fellinof timber in the castle woods. After the
dissolution of the monasteries under the Tudors,
these rights belonged exclusively to the Arundel
citizens. The civic interest in the ducal demesne is
symbolised to this day by the Mayor of Arundel being
also, in succession to the monastic holders of the
office, bridge-warden of the castle. The highest
order of the peerage occasionally furnishes first
magistrates to provincial municipalities. His eighth
grace of Devonshire has been mayor of Eastbourne.
The fifteenth Duke of Norfolk may not have served
similarly elsewhere than in the Yorkshire capital of
cutlery. His popular affinities, however, show them-
selves really more at Arundel than at Sheffield. The
chief characteristic, indeed, of the place is the dramatic
meeting of picturesquely ancient traditions and
prosaically modern associations. In the fourteenth
century, the parish church of St. Nicholas was the
chapel of a college, consisting of a master and twelve
canons ; its stately dimensions have submitted to no
contraction ; the Gothic monuments and the splendid
tombs of Fitzalans and Howards are only in a less
37
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
perfect state of preservation than when they were
visited by Horace Walpole. The oldest, the collegiate
portion of this church, containing the family sepul-
chres, is walled off from that part of the building
where the Protestant parishioners still worship.
" The Church," as Disraeli in his " Lothair " makes
the cardinal say, "glories in being the friend of inven-
tion and science." Appropriately enough, therefore,
the Catholic cathedral, dwarfing the older temple
into insignificance, had for its architect, in 1873,
Joseph Aloysius Hansom, who, thirty-nine years
earlier, had made his family name a household word
by the cab called after it.
Under its twentieth-century possessor, Arundel
has become the most impartially enlightened, the
most representatively comprehensive and the most
demonstratively sympathetic with the modern spirit
among the Sussex dukeries. In 1879 Pope Leo
XHI., by way of showing his own enlarged sense of
spiritual and intellectual merit and of confirming the
moderates in their allegiance, sent for John Henry
Newman at the Birmingham oratory to place the hat
of the sacred college on his head. Returning from
Rome, the newly made cardinal consented to become
the lion of the London season, In addition to the
state dinner parties at Norfolk House, St. James's
Square, there were garden fetes at Arundel. The guest
of all these occasions filled the place of honour, in his
character, not so much of a great ecclesiastic, as of
a fellow citizen in whom all Englishmen took pride.
Manning, if I remember rightly, was abroad at the
time. Disraeli and Gladstone may both have been at
38
Sussex Houses Characterized
the London dinner. Neither of them seems to have
been at the historic Sussex garden party. Here the
guests, both Papal and Protestant, had been purposely
taken from the masses rather than the classes. Not a
great Catholic house of business, metropolitan or
provincial, whose heads of departments, over and
above their own invitations, had not been asked to
mention members of their staffs whom it would be
proper to ask also. At the neighbouring Petworth
smartness is a speciality ; the thing is unavoidably
recognised at Goodwood also. There is nothing of the
sort at Arundel. That baronial stronghold of mediaeval
history, the political emporium or the convivial
rendezvous of a later age, so far as concerns the habit-
ual composition of its guests, has become, to its own
great credit, a popular institution. Of other Sussex
homes on the grand scale — Goodwood for comfort,
Petworth for rank and splendour — some may have
been in earlier years disposed to add for iciness of social
temperature ! Before the house at Petworth is entered
there may as well be some introduction to its owners.
The Leconfield title is Yorkshire. The family name,
Wyndham, a contraction of Wymondham, suggests
that the descendants of the pure Saxon stock who
bear it were originally settled in Norfolk. Thence,
in the sixteenth century, a migration to Somerset-
shire, and the consolidation of the Wyndham estate
in the Quantock country, to be reverted to hereafter.
Now for the house. The ground on which it stands,
like the whole family property, in Sussex and else-
where, first belonged to the Percies. From them by
marriage, by royal grant or by purchase in the
39
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
market, these territories passed to the Wyndhams.
As a country house Petworth may claim an earlier
pedigree even than this. Belonging to her brother,
Jocelyn de Louvaine, it often received the widow
of Henry I. She, while mistress of Arundel, as
wife of William Albini, organised and, to the minutest
detail, superintended the Petworth house-parties of
the twelfth century. By a coincidence worth notice
in passing, Albini of Arundel himself, brother-in-law
of the first owner of Petworth, found a grave in
that East Anglian Wymondham whence, as has
been seen, the Petworth Wyndhams derive their
patronymic. The desolation of magnificence, an
infinite vista of chambers, passages, and halls opening
out of each other, apparently peopled only by human
forms carved in marble. Such, on entering the
house, was the general effect produced on the visitor
of a bygone day. The severity of its splendour has
since been mitigated by the introduction of graces and
comforts unknown when, in 1825, Lord Sefton and
his companion Creevey, having passed into the grand
hall, found their eyes and senses for some moments
dazzled and dizzied by the glories of an apparently
uninhabited palace. Gradually recovering themselves,
they were received by their host. Lord Egremont.
"The best pictures that I consider here," he at once
began, "are those which pleased Horace Walpole,
Sir Joshua's Prince Boothby and his mistress." The
male original, it may be added, was a rather second-
rate dandy of the period whose Christian name had
been given, as to Mr. Turvydrop's son, from the
Regent. The shrewd, eccentric peer, who, with
40
Sefton and His Toadies
these words, began his duties as cicerone, affected
as nearly as a man with ;^ 100,000 a year alone can
afford to do, the dress and bearing of a day labourer.
On he shambled through the rooms of his palace,
delivering all the time an entertaining commentary
on their contents, till at last he brought the new
guest to his bachelor's bedroom, some thirty feet
long by twenty broad, high in proportion, with a
bed large enough to hold six people without the
slightest inconvenience to each other.
With the nineteenth century began the building
of Goodwood by the third Duke of Richmond.
Dying in 1806, he lived long enough to finish the
house but not to furnish it. That was taken in hand
by later dukes, who gradually completed the work
at the rate of a room a year. The perfected work
was pronounced as faultless as its progress had been
gradual. "Defies improvement" formed, in 1827,
the universal verdict of the guests. These included
the then ubiquitous Creevey and Greville, both
chaperoned by the Lord Sefton of the day, who
kindly undertook the task of towing favourite
commoners through the palaces of his own order.
Only a few of the Holland House luminaries had
then begun to blaze. But to Goodwood followed
Samuel Ro^jers in the condescending: Sefton's train.
" I am obliged," said the banker-poet, " to say sharp
things about people, because, my voice being weak,
no one would trouble to hear me if I spoke more
charitably. Creevey 's disgust knew no bounds when,
entering the new drawing-room, sixty feet long, just
furnished with the brightest yellow satin, the first
41
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
person he saw was Rogers ; "what a snarling beast
this Rogers is ; such a fellow for talking about the gran-
dees he lives with and his 'bonnes fortunes.' Sefton
and I think him a d d bore." Sharp and clever
talk abounded in this latest addition to the Sussex
dukeries. In the apartment just described, the ladies
of the family founded the conversational tradition which
their successors have often illustrated. Hence perhaps
came the inspiration of a Duchess of Richmond's
remark to her daughter in 1842. On going rather
late to the Chapel Royal they could find no places.
" Come away, Louisa ; at any rate we have done the
civil thing." Even before the existing house was
entirely finished, the race meetings in the Park and
the house-parties had begun. In 1845 the place had
become the greatest of the Conservative sporting and
political houses in the south. In 1846 it was used
by Lord George Bentinck, with Benjamin Disraeli
for right-hand man, to rally the Tory malcontents
against the free traders, Peelite and Whig. It had
also become the cradle of the imperialism, then in its
infancy, whose later development was postponed for
the next century. In 18 19 a Duke of Richmond
had died from the bite of a fox during his term of
office as Governor-General of Canada. There had
gone out with him as secretary one of the most
frequent and esteemed of the Goodwood guests.
This was General Ready, Lord Milner's grandfather,
who afterwards accompanied his chief to Ireland
in the same capacity as to North America, and who
himself ended as Governor of the Isle of Man. He
had married the daughter of one of George Canning's
42
"The Lady's Last Stake"
strongest local supporters, the great Liverpool
ship-owner, Sir John Tobin. Tobin was brought
more than once by his son-in-law to Goodwood.
He communicated to the most phlegmatic among
his Tory fellow-guests at the place something of
that enthusiastic faith in the greatness of England's
future beyond the seas, which he had derived from
the statesman who boasted of having called a new
world into existence to redress the balance of the
old. The exact spot in the Goodwood grounds
where these exalting subjects were discussed seems
to have been beneath the magnificent cedars, bodily
transplanted from Lebanon. Here too is commanded
that superb view of the racecourse with the strange
ravine dividing its two extremities. The pictures
then chiefly admired in the Goodwood galleries were,
first of course, the Vandyke and other portraits ;
then Sir Joshua's incomparable " Third Duchess."
There were, however, two canvases, both absolutely
unique, neither of them so well-known that they need
be unmentioned here. These were respectively the
"Cenotaph of Lord Darnley," and Hogarth's most
curious work, "The Lady's Last Stake."
During the sixties or seventies of the nineteenth
century, the next of the Sussex dukeries now to be
visited was the scene of a rencontre worth, perhaps,
a passing mention. A middle-aged man, indistin-
guishable from an ordinary tourist, with the student's
stoop in his figure, and the air of one looking for
something, was wandering through the grounds of
Battle Abbey. To him, a man whose dress pro-
claimed the gardener: "Allow me to show you the
43
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
spot you are looking for." "My good fellow," came
the reply, "don't bother me. I have a letter from
the Duke of Cleveland permitting me to wander by
myself where I want." " But," returned the other,
" I am the Duke of Cleveland." The stranger was
the historian of the Norman Conquest, E. A.
Freeman.
" The best situation of the sort in England " was
Horace Walpole's remark on the Sussex building,
which successively belonged to the Brownes and
Websters, before it passed to the Vanes. The local
title found by the scientific historian for the Norman
victory still survives, not in the Abbey grounds but
in that portion of Battle town or village, east of
the church, known as Sanguelac or Senlac. Science,
however, has still to decide whether the sanguinary
association of the name is due to the fight in which
Harold fell, or from the ruddy waters of some local
chalybeate springs. Built as a thankoffering for his
success in the field by William, the Abbey, as a
monastic foundation, whatever may have been the
deserts of other like institutions, abundantly merited
its destruction by Henry VHI. and Thomas Cromwell.
From 1067 to 1539, a monastery; from the latter
date to the present time, a country house. Such in
brief are the two periods in Battle Abbey's history.
Sir Anthony Browne was not only Master-of- Horse
to Cromwell's sovereign ; he had been the king's proxy
in the formalities preceding the marriage with Anne
of Cleeves. Cromwell, as a return for his part in that
marriage, lost his head ; Browne obtained a grant of
the Battle estate. "What charming things we should
44
Barn, Church, or Dining-room ?
have done," exclaims Walpole, " if Battel Abbey had
been to be sold at Mrs. Chevenix's as Strawberry
was ! " The repairers of the Norman Abbey, or
the defacers and despoilers as they were in Walpole's
eyes, were not its first owners, the Brownes, but
those who followed them, the Websters ; it was a
miss of that family who clothed a fragment of the
old monastic portico with cockle-shells. This portico,
part of the ancient cloister, is incorporated into the
front of the existing house. The later buildings
were begun and carried some way by Sir Anthony
Browne after he became the first Lord Montacute.
Montacute religiously respected all remnants or
suggestions of antiquity ; even the vandalism of the
sacrilegious Websters did not prevent Horace
Walpole, in his minute examination of the place,
from making a discovery for which he took special
credit to himself; hitherto an outlying building,
which had become a barn, had passed by an un-
questioned tradition for the old refectory. Walpole,
on his visit to Battle in 1752, returned from an
archaeological morning in the park with an unusually
radiant air ; had he not lighted on reasonably con-
clusive evidence that the modern barn had never
been used of old for eating purposes, that, in fact,
it was the original church ? How many of the rural
homes of England are there that, like Battle, built
on the morrow of the Conquest, 838 years ago, still
retain, visible and almost intact, so much of their
earliest masonry ? In addition to the structure
specially investigated by Walpole, be it refectory or
church, there are still in good preservation the
45
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
Conqueror's cloisters, as well as the great gateway
and outer wall, built between 1327 and 1377. The
conversion of the place from a monastery into a
country house, was not only begun but practically
completed by its first private owner, Sir Anthony
Browne. He certainly built the banqueting hall that
has since disappeared ; he may have begun the great
feature of the house, the arched drawing-room with
its Purbeck marble columns. Then came the Webster
additions, as to Horace Walpole they seemed deface-
ments. The Websters had purchased the property
from that member of the Browne clan, who became
the fourth Lord Montacute. After his family had
held it for about a century and a half, Sir Godfrey
Webster, in 1857 sold it to Lord Harry Vane, the
future Duke of Cleveland. Of late the Websters had
wanted the money for the proper maintenance of the
place. Its nineteenth-century purchaser repaired the
disastrous dilapidations, extensively renovated and
added to the fabric. Amongst his creations was the
fine library, to-day the chief reception-room. It may
be well here to review the steps in the peerage which
gave Battle a place in the Sussex dukeries. The
viscountcy of Bernard and the earldom of Darlington
had been created in 1754. William Harry Vane
( 1 766-1 842), succeeded his father as third Earl of
Darlington. Most of his time he spent as a sportsman,
rather than as a great noble or a politician, at his
Durham castle of Raby, to be visited in a later
chapter. One of the revolution Whigs, he united keen
partizanship with courageous conviction ; he showed
himself one of the Whig stalwarts amid the intestine
46
Raby Keeps Battle
agitation and intrigue against the Grey Reform Bill.
Under him, therefore, Battle became, in the south of
England, what Raby had already proved in the north
— a social agency for counter-working the political
disaffection, lone grrowina ag^ainst the Prime Minister.
Among the noble borough-mongers of the time none
was more heavily threatened in influence and purse
by the Whig disfranchising proposals than this master
of Battle. He not only pocketed the loss, he expended
all the resources of his station and wealth in urging
on " the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the
Bill." Already, in 1827, he had been created
Marquis of Cleveland. The day of Whig triumph
decorated Battle Abbey with the strawberry-leaf.
The new title was worn successively by its first
bearer's three sons ; none of them left an heir to
inherit it. The youngest was the Duke of Cleveland
of our own day. His wife was that Duchess of
Cleveland who, born Lady Wilhelmina Stanhope,
had become, by her first marriage with Lord
Dalmeny, Lord Rosebery's mother.
With her begins the latter-day visitors' book of
Battle Abbey. The place, already, as has been
seen, a headquarters of Whiggism, now became the
most interesting as well as distinguished of Sussex
country houses. The taste and judgment of the
Duchess made the Battle gardens what visitors see
them to-day. Battle owes much to the sister estate
of its dukes, Raby, in Durham. The Sussex
revenues would have been unequal to its progressive
beautification without the colliery income from the
district whence its owners took their title. The
47
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukcries
first Duke of Cleveland died in 1842, worth ;^i 10,000
a year, and with nearly ;^ 1,000,000 in hard cash at
his bankers'. His eldest son, though inheriting only
the entailed property, had an assured annual income
of ;^70,ooo. The two other sons were left equally
well off The Duke of Cleveland of our day owed his
reputation to other causes than the wealth whose
inheritance rendered his hospitalities possible. In
1836, before coming into his title, he added to the
prestige of his rank at home the distinction of being
the most polished and agreeable Briton abroad ; he
was a great figure in the Comtesse de Mailly's salon.
"My handsome Duke," said the hostess, pointing to
the destined lord of Raby and Battle, "is the only
Englishman who was ever perfectly at home in the
best French society, and therefore as popular in Paris
as in London." Nothing in later years more delighted
him who had known the Faubourg St. Germain as
well as he knew St. James's Street, than to gather
round him, at his Sussex house-parties, citizens of the
world, as varied in their antecedents or vocations as
in their nationalities, who had brought introductions
to him in London, or whom he had first known in
Paris, at Geneva, at other capitals, at Spa, then the
smart watering-place. The vivacity of the Duchess,
her unobtrusive but unfailing attention to her guests
of all degrees, had won her an European fame that
lasted throughout her life. Some among the brightest
and most representative of these Battle gatherings took
place in 1876. Here in the drawing-room is the host
talking to his particular old friend, Henry Reeve,
editor of the Edinburgh. The Duke is Gladstonian
48
Battle Turns the Tide
up to a point, but believes the Bulgarian atrocities
agitation, then going on, to be mischievously over-
done. "Why not," he says to the editor, "protest in
your next number?" The hint is taken; " the old
buff-and-blue " comes out with an article which the
fifteenth Lord Derby called " the first thing that
turned the tide." " That," said the Duke of Cleveland
at his next Battle party, " is only the beginning.
Another month or two and the people will be as loud
for attacking the Russians as they have been for
coercing the Turks." The other visitors on this occa-
sion contained the Mrs. Stanley of those days, some
of the Lincolnshire Banks-Stanhopes, the Duchess's
kinsfolk, Lord Raglan Somerset, the Mercer
Hendersons and the two very popular Charles
Newtons. Each of these Newtons was a contrast to
the other — the one, the Marlborough Street magistrate,
the other, his exact namesake, the expert in Hellenic
art. "A brazen mask talking his own novels." That
was the description of Lord Beaconsfield's conversation
given by Mr. Arthur Balfour, the Prime Minister of
1905, at a Battle house-party (1881). Exception was
at once taken to the caricature by another of the
guests, the Duchess's kinsman, Mr Edward Stanhope.
But he, of course, had known Disraeli intimately,
whereas Mr. Balfour, only entering the House in 1874,
had been but two years in it before the great chief
was improved into Lord Beaconsfield, and indeed
only touched the great man's surface at one or two
chance meetings in society. At an earlier time the
great Lord Brougham might have been described
as one of the Battle and Raby "tame cats." His
49 D
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
twentieth-century successor, who had not then come
into his title, was also of the Battle company in the
last century. So were his friends Sir Richard and
Lady Musgrave, the latter of whom became Mrs.
Brougham in the course of the next year. Tennyson,
then Laureate but not Lord, seems to have been
expected, but did not appear. The future commander-
in-chief. General Roberts, made on this occasion
his first great country house success, was to have
stayed throughout the week, but had the earliest of
his pressing engagements in the Transvaal. Later
in this year the Duke of Cleveland entertained, at
almost a tete-a-tete visit, a life-long friend and a north-
country neighbour, the sixth Duke of Northumberland.
Their two graces were about the same age, were not
really unlike in appearance, and had each of them the
same little wheezy, auriferous cough, which I have
heard described as peculiar to territorial magnates
who are also overburdened with wealth. "These,"
remarked a business gentleman who appeared at lunch
one day, "are the persons who make the fortunes of
the great private West End banks ; they take a pride
in keeping a standing balance for which they never
receive sixpence, but whose interest would make a
hole in the National Debt." Presently the two
noble plutocrats fell to talking about the business
details of land-purchase. " When," asked one, " this
sort of business involves your paying out thousands
or millions, how do you manage? " "Simplest thing
in the world ! " rejoined the other : " cheque on Coutts."
The last Duke of Cleveland died in 1891, leaving
Battle to his widow for her life. After her death the
50
Ruined by Dowagers
place went to his grand-nephew, Captain Francis
Forester. The Webster connection with Battle
would not have been thus broken but for an in-
conveniently noticeable incident in the family fortunes.
When the place was bought by the Duke of Cleveland,
five dowager Lady Websters were all simultaneously
drawing their jointures. These were the good Lady
Webster, Grace, Lady Webster, the great Lady
Webster, and two others undistinguished by any
special epithet. Each of these lived chiefly at
Hastings, and each seems in her day, however brief,
to have reigned like a queen at Battle. A property
impoverished by this remarkable coincidence of
claims could only be recuperated by wealth beyond
that of the Cleveland heir. Captain Forester's
necessity was to prove the Webster opportunity,
and to bring Battle back to a descendant of its earlier
owners. Its purchaser from Captain Forester was Sir
Augustus Frederick Walpole Edward Webster, the
grandson of the possessor from whom Lord Harry
Vane had boug-ht it. He having" been fortunate
enough to marry the daughter and heiress of a
Halifax capitalist. Miss Crossley, found himself in a
position, not only to buy his family estate, but to keep
it up. As a fact, however, he has never lived there,
and has let Battle on lease to Mr. Michael Paul
Grace, the well-known American banker, already a
brevet territorialist in the old country, as the owner or
tenant of a fine Hertfordshire property, one of whose
daughters is married to Lord Donoughmore, the
(1905) Under-Secretary for War. The gardens and
park remain to-day what the last Duchess of Cleve-
51
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
land left them. The interior, however, has been
much improved by the present tenant. The vandalism
of which Horace Walpole accused the Websters is
not at least chargeable against the Graces. The
comfort and health of the place have been increased
by the modern improvements. The drainage, withir
and without, has been thoroughly overhauled ; there
are bathrooms on every floor ; the electric light
penetrates every corner. With these exceptions, no
extensive modernisation has been attempted ; every
fitting or piece of furniture, made to suit the antiquity
of the place, remains. Thus, the only gilded decorations
in the whole Abbey are those left by the Duchess
of Cleveland, and belong to the pictures in the
drawing-room, chiefly portraits of the Webster family
or of Cabinet ministers, modern as well as antique.
The last of the Sussex dukeries, architecturally and
historically, is not to be compared with Arundel,
Goodwood, or Battle. Its recent associations have
made it a real centre of social or political gravity.
Dukedoms have a way of connecting themselves with
watering-places as well as with collieries. Tynemouth,
where the German Ocean receives the river that
washes the Northumbrian coal capital, is an annex
of Alnwick. On the south coast, the spot that mimics
Brighton, in a greater degree than the inland spa of
the Derbyshire Buxton, owes its existence to the
Cavendishes. The amalgamation of four fishing
hamlets constitutes the Eastbourne that we know ;
the name is taken from the largest of the four villages
now fused into one town. Something of international
significance clinging to the neighbourhood in the
52
A Compton Place Celebrity
eighteenth century presaged the cosmopoHtan charac-
teristics that to-day mark the spot generally, and
especially its ducal patron's house Compton Place.
The younger Pitt's martello towers, lining this portion
of the Sussex littoral, provided Sheridan with several
jokes much appreciated by the smart Whig society
of his time. The Cavendishes, whether in their
Piccadilly mansion, at Chatsworth, or at their East-
bourne pied de terre, have divested themselves of
some of their Whiggism ; they have found compen-
sation for the loss in taking on a smartness that their
ancestors of a hundred years ago might not have
understood. Eastbourne itself, if the Brighton of a
younger growth, presents aspects which are entirely
its own. The collective power of British matronhood
carried to the wth, would convey an imperfect idea of
the intensity of decorum pervading every pleasure
ground and promenade in the town resting under the
shadow of Beachy Head. The austere orthodoxy
of the Mrs. Tanquerays with a past may some-
times be mistaken for the unsophisticated inno-
cence of the debutante. To whichever of these
classes Eastbourne may belong, no earthly spot
could perhaps be so virtuous as Eastbourne looks.
It has, however, its secular and cosmopolitan
side as well. , Rolling out from the Compton Place
grounds, might, at the last century's end, be seen a
citizen of the world, for whose malady, " une certaine
protuberance abdominale," his Paris physician had that
year prescribed the Sussex shore instead of his usual
^* etretat." This lumbering man-mountain of mind
and matter was, of course, none other than the most
S3
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
cosmopolitan guest entertained by a Cavendish, the
famous Times correspondent, the Chevalier de Blowitz
himself. Talking of Eastbourne, he conveys his idea
of it to his host by comparing it less to a professional
religieuse than to a once frisky matron now leading
a secluded or devout life, but who has not quite died
to the after-dinner thirst for a cigarette and a
small glass of green chatreuse with the black coffee.
Near the Chevalier and about this period one used to
meet Musurus Pasha the First, his chief European
friend then Algernon Borthwick, now Lord Glenesk,
upon one memorable occasion Lord Beaconsfield him-
self between the two, somewhere hoverino; near them
Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett and Mr. Herman Meri-
vale, dramatist and poultry farmer. But now for the
Duke of Devonshire's marine villa and its visitors'
book. Compton Place, as regards the personnel of its
habitual guests, is as universal as becomes the pretty
town whose social citadel it constitutes. When the
head of the Cavendishes is not entertaining his sove-
reign at Chatsworth or being entertained by him at
Windsor, King Edward VII. has perhaps arrived or
is expected at the seaside chateau of his " right trusty
and well-beloved cousin." The other guests symbolise
in their names and persons the various foreign ententes
which, as the greatest diplomatist of his time, his
Majesty periodically promotes. Prince Kinsky, in
the intervals of steeplechasing, finds time to be of the
company ; the dinner table would lack its centrepieces
with the Grand-duke Michael and his wife, the
Countess Torby. Not that from these gatherings
are excluded the national representatives of statesman-
54
Churchill and Cavendish
ship, fashion, or sport. Lord Abergavenny doubles
the parts of Sussex squire and tutelary genius of the
British constitution ; genial, natty, and knowing Sir
Walter Gilbey, though the first Hertfordshire squire
of his line, had, even in youth, perfectly acquired the
expression and manner which are, as a rule, the out-
ward and visible sign of ancestral conversance with
horsiness and its attendant spirits. The collateral
descendant of the kingmaker, Warwick, and the father
of the wine trade a la mode respectively personify
feudalism and commerce, Compton Place was also
the scene in the last quarter of the nineteenth century
of another visit, so significant and, in its results, so far
reaching as to be historical. The relations between
the Cavendishes and the Churchills had not for some
time been remarkable for cordiality ; over personal
as well as political issues the former leader of the
"fourth party "and the Lord Hartington of old had
often crossed swords. Then Mr. Gladstone's possible
conversion to Parnellism began to be whispered. Of
late Lord Hartington and Lord Randolph had been
observed to avoid each other less pointedly at the
Turf Club. By and by one heard that Mr. and Mrs.
Henry Oppenheim had arranged a little dinner in their
pretty Bruton Street house, already in a way ennobled
by its associations with the second Lord Granville and
the fourth Lord Carnarvon. At the Oppenheim ban-
quets the chief guests were to be the two men between
whom a common interest in the turf had long been exer-
cising a mediatorial influence. In those days Churchill
had a Brighton/zV^«?'^ terre at the Orleans Club. Why
should he not run across to Eastbourne, inspect some
55
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
improvements in the Compton House stables, and see
taken out for their exercise some drafts lately made
into the Eastbourne foxhounds. The visit was paid.
Its fruits were seen in Lord Randolph Churchill's
Manchester speech (March 3, 1886), announcing the
formation of the Union Party. Among country
houses, therefore, Compton Place is historical, if for
no other reason than that it shares with Waddesdon
Manor, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild's Buckingham-
shire seat, hereafter to be visited, the distinction of
having cradled the political combination that ruled the
country from 1886 to 1905.
North-west Sussex abounds in monuments of a
country-house regime, represented to-day only by
memories and names. Cowdray, Hurstmonceux, and
Stanstead are mentioned all together by Horace
Walpole because they were each visited by him during
his Sussex progress in 1778. The first Earl of Egmont
accumulated great wealth out of his official salaries.
As President of the Court of Admiralty he bought,
from his annual savings, Nork House in Surrey,
and about the same time Cowdray Park in Sussex.
After the Cowdray fire in 1793, the chief ornaments
of the place were transferred to the contiguous
Woolbeding. Amongst these was the fountain
designed by Benvenuto Cellini. Of that, writing
in 1827, Creevey had heard enough from Horace
Walpole to make him say, "This Italian, they tell
me, was a famous man ; look him up in the diction-
ary, that I may not expose my ignorance." Wool-
beding, socially speaking a branch of the Oxfordshire
Blenheim, was the most interesting and instructive
56
Won at Play
of Sussex houses in the eighteenth century. Its then
grave, venerable owner had bought it about 1792, with
his winnings at " faro," the game which proved so
fatal to Charles Fox. The lucky gamester was Lord
Robert Spencer, the third Duke of Marlborough's
third son. " This is indeed exquisite," was Sheri-
dan's exclamation, as the owner of Woolbeding
pointed out his beautifully arranged plantations
and the surprising variety of unexpected views that
they disclosed. The associations of the place were
as diversified as the prospects of the grounds. In
the next village, the fifteenth-century lord of the
manor had been the Lord Camoys who commanded
the left wing of the English at Agincourt ; his wife,
depicted in brass effigy by her husband's side in
Trotton Church, had been Hotspur's widow, daughter
of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. To the author
of " The School for Scandal," Woolbeding would
have recalled the fact that the dramatist Otway had
been born in the parish. The archaeological Barre
delighted in the Agincourt relics, gifts from the
Trotton neighbours. The quality admitted by all
to be its distinctive charm, was the cosmopolitan
diversity of its guests and table-talk. All its most
regular habitues were citizens of the world, who had
been everywhere, done everything, known everybody,
and who could be variously reminiscent without
lapsing into boredom. Charles James Fox had a
standing invitation from the host to bring with him
any friends he chose. Those selected were his
particular disciples, social as well as political. Their
personal appearance attested at once fidelity to their
57
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
chief and the characteristic influence exercised by him
upon the costume, as well as ideas, of the period.
Till the middle of the eighteenth century the
fashionable country-house dress for men was that
which a few years later restricted itself to the levee
or the drawing-room. The Whig" leader struck out
a new line of his own, and made its adoption a
sign of smartness ; he had already brought a certain
affectation of indifference about externals into fashion
at the clubs (where, a little earlier, Fox and his
friend Lord Carlisle had flattered the revolutionary
dandyism of France by wearing the red shoes,
which were to that day what the ruby necktie, set
off by the white hat, has been to ours). A costume
blending that of the artizan and the gamekeeper
displayed Charles Fox as the Jacobin a la viode
in 1793. In that year, thus habited, he electrified
his WoolbedinCT friends as he entered the drawino--
room with cropped hair, no hair powder, neither
ruffles to his sleeves nor buckles to his shoes, but
as a substitute for the latter positively nothing less
vulgar than strings. "My dear Charles," said Lord
Robert Spencer, with a twinkle in his eye, as he
looked at his visitor, " I protest, to make the thing
complete, you must give us your friend Jean de
Lille's Marseillaise hymn." Women of fashion
piqued themselves on quickly catching the inspiration
of "dear Charles." Hitherto a lock of hair like
that stolen from Miss Arabella Fermor by Lord
Petre, immortalised by Pope, had been the universal
vogue. Suddenly these tresses disappeared ; ladies
of all ages and of all ranks exhibited heads, rounded a
58
Woolbeding Table-Talk
la victime and a la guillotine, as if ready for the stroke
of the axe. At the same time the more Conservative
of the rural dames in the Woolbeding drawing-room
could scarcely stifle an expression of surprise when
their London cousins appeared in draperies, classic,
elegant, luxuriant and picturesque, but more suited
to the climate of Greece or Italy than to the keen
south-down air, with grass whitened by the first
autumnal frost.
Among Woolbeding's eighteenth-century guests
were many others as important as and, from society's
point of view, more interesting than those already
mentioned. The best raconteur of his period. Sir
Thomas Wroughton, never seemed in greater force
than at the Woolbeding dinner-table. In his youth
he had been the handsomest member of the European
corps diplomatique. Even after he had crossed the
threshold of middle age, the polished animation of his
manner and the easy flow of anecdote remained.
With years he put on a little too much flesh. So, for
that matter, had another of the Woolbeding guests.
Lord Alvanley himself. Neither years nor corpulence
prevented him, any more than they prevented Alvanley,
from being a good shot, a bold, well-judging rider, the
brightest, the wittiest, and the most informatory of
country-house talkers. Wroughton went in the diplo-
matic service to St. Petersburg when little more than
twenty. He brought back to England nothing less
than conversational omniscience about the inner life,
not only of the Russian Court, but of every palace in
central or eastern Europe. No Englishman had
lived so intimately with the two Czarinas, Elizabeth
59
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
and Catharine. Wroughton had heard her physicians
tell Elizabeth that her life depended in moderation in
drinking. She gave no heed to the caution ; persisting
in her excesses, she actually died with a glass of cherry-
brandy at her lips. Catharine's favour had given
Wroughton more than one step in professional pro-
motion. The Empress may have admired his imposing
figure in the flower of his handsome youth. *' It is,"
he was careful to add to his country-house listeners,
" a pure lie to say that this great and sage sovereign
ever gave me the slightest encouragement of a gentler
kind. If you must know, Count Poniatowski was her
lover ; I was only her humble friend and servant."
The Platonic character of the friendship did not prevent
the Empress's husband from being desperately jealous
of the debonair Briton. The best houses of those days
as in England, so abroad, were famous for the strength
of their construction. That did not keep off a dry
rot. "I was," said Wroughton, "one of a dinner
party in the Russian palace near San Souci when, as
the dessert was being placed on the table, a large
piece of ceiling fell down, covering the company with
confusion and dust. A few years later, as the guest
of the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe, I witnessed a
similar casualty. The next day I heard of exactly
the same mishap disturbing a banquet at Lansdowne
House, Berkeley Square." As a raconteur, Wroughton
had his match in another of the Woolbeding and
Stanstead guests. Sir William Hamilton, the ambassa-
dor at Naples, the husband of Nelson's Emma, and
the son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, whose wife had
attracted the favour of Frederick Prince of Wales.
60
A Fond Husband
Among the distinguished strangers entertained by Sir
William Hamilton at Naples was the Grand-duke Paul
of Russia, accompanied by the Grand-duchess. "On
the first drive," said Hamilton, "that I took them,
unconscious apparently of my being in the carriage,
my visitor threw his arms round the Grand-duchess
and began kissing her with all the warmth of a newly
made bridegroom. I tried not to see ; I affected
abstraction in surrounding objects. It was no good.
Turning to me the Grand-duke said, * You see,
Monsieur le chevalier, that I love my wife very much.'
After this the embraces were resumed. The ceremony,
with the comment ' faime mafemme beaucoup,' was
repeated through the successive stages of our drive."
The story was made the droller by the unemotional
and smileless solemnity with which it was told.
Hamilton's and Wroughton's stories sometimes wore
a more sombre hue. Lady Hamilton had discovered
a good deal about the extensive use in high society of
the Italian poison ''aqua tufana,'' so called after the
Greek woman who first employed it, bringing large
stores of it with her to Italy. As early as 17 17 the
British ministers at Naples and Genoa had told
Addison, when Secretary of State, of what was going
on ; he peremptorily warned the Commissioners of
Customs in England to be on their guard against the
introduction of the deadly drug. Lady Hamilton,
said Sir William, personally knew a Sicilian lady of
the highest rank, who was in close confinement for a
series of secret assassinations by poison. On calling,
as she had been requested. Lady Hamilton found
the murderess a gentle creature, under twenty-five,
61
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
with the softest manner and the most intensely
feminine presence one can conceive. It was the
beauU de diable of the Poppaea Sabina type.
About the same time an acquaintance of Hamilton
and Wroughton, a young Irish doctor, practising at
Rome, named Ogilvy, was driven off in a stranger's
carriage to attend, as he was told, a critical case some
little way out of town. "Your patient," said the
messenger, ** is a lady of ancient family, whose name
and address are to be a profound secret. Before
entering the house your eyes must be bandaged for a
few minutes." After a narrow staircase had been
ascended, the use of his eyes was restored to him. It
had become necessary, he then heard, to deprive of
life a lady who had dishonoured her family. A refusal
to perform the office could only, Ogilvy was assured,
cause his immediate death without averting that of
the lady. Eventually the doctor took out his lancet,
opened her veins. Having thus bled her to death
with all the celerity of science, he was offered a bag of
gold as his fee. According to his own account he
refused it. To regain freedom in the light of day was
the only payment he wanted. And so after another
drive he found himself again at his own door. Many
other experiences of the same kind, though none from
Italy, had reached Sir William Hamilton's ears. On
the banks of the Danube, when a guest of the Prince
of Tour and Texas, near Ratisbon, he had seen at
least two castles, inside whose walls similar terrors
had been enacted. Sir Horace Mann, Walpole's
friend, British minister at the Court of Tuscany, was
another of the Sussex country house guests, full of
62
A Prince of the Empire
curious or interesting reminiscences. " The last of the
Medici Grand-dukes," he said, "John Gaston, was
quite the most accompHshed man of his nation I ever
knew. The want of an heir threatened his Hne with
extinction. He had, however, in the prime of man-
hood a clerical, therefore an unmarried uncle, Cardinal
Francesco Maria. Surely, to save the Medici duchy
from incorporation in some European monarchy, the
holy father would absolve a prince of the Church from
his celibacy vows. The dispensation was given ; the
ecclesiastic took a princess for his wife. Even thus,
no heir appeared. The combined energies of Church
and State could not prevent the grand-ducal line
ending with John Gaston." Tuscany, however, was
yet to have a better ruler than any of the Medicis in
the Grand-duke Leopold ; under his sway Florence
first ofrew into Eno"lish favour and fame. At a house
which, like Woolbeding, was socially the creation oi
the Spencer-Churchills, it seemed appropriate to hear
how the Grand-duke Leopold had secured for an
Englishman, Earl Cowper, the only princedom of the
German Empire bestowed on a British subject since
the great Duke of Marlborough. Leopold himself had
asked the future Lady Cowper to be his wife. She
gave him so winningly sweet a refusal that the rejected
lover could not be less magnanimous than to secure for
the lady's husband the title of prince. The Wool-
beding of to-day retains its gardens and grounds in
the same beauty that delighted Hamilton, Wroughton,
Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, and is still approached
through the loveliest of Sussex lanes. The house
itself has of course shed those distinctive features
63
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
which its eighteenth-century visitors admired and loved.
An avenue of magnificent Scotch firs leads up to the
gorgeous flower-beds ; these are looked down upon
by the high roof and dormer windows of the famous
house. Any modernisations that have taken place
are due to Lord Lanerton. Lady Lanerton continued
to entertain at Woolbeding till 1892 ; during that
period, Arundel Castle supplied Woolbeding with
some of its most interesting guests ; among these
was Cardinal Howard. Of him till then little had
been seen by his fashionable friends of old days
since he was the smartest of young guardsmen.
"Observe," remarked one of these, Mr. Augustus
Hare, " the air of stately self-satisfaction with
which he marches along the garden walks, holding
back his robes on one side as a lady does her
dress." '' E troppo soldato,'' murmured an Italian
priest who happened to be of the company. The
rheumatism which confined Lady Lanerton to her
wheeled chair, did not impair the gravely gentle
urbanity with which she received her guests, or
mar the beautiful expression of grateful patience
and humble hope as of one awaiting the last
summons. Woolbeding's twentieth-century associa-
tions have not severed its traditional connec-
tion with the best varieties of Whiggism. Its
owner is Colonel Henry Arthur Lascelles, the son
of a well-known Whig privy councillor, who used
periodically to reappear in the earlier part of the
Victorian age. He also is a grandson of the sixth
Earl of Carlisle, a descendant of Charles Fox's
chief crony, who frequently entered the Wool-
64
Charles Fox at Woolbeding
beding drawing-room in the red shoes already spoken
of, before Jacobinism had discarded those and other
vanities of the toilette.
Near Woolbeding, a few miles closer to the
Hampshire border, is a house whose predecessors,
mostly destroyed by fire on the same spot, supplied
Sussex with a famous, as well as to a large extent
politically, neutral mansion, remarkable for the
human curiosities often to be found within its walls.
Before mingling with the guests, let us learn
something about the place. An earlier edifice had
suffered severely from Sir William Wallers attack
during the Civil War. In 1687 it was replaced by
Lord Scarborough, with a mansion, most of which
still remains, after designs by Wyatt and Bonomi,
who made it their business to extend the earlier work
of William Talman. The exterior was cased with
white brick ; for the removal of the old wings com-
pensation came in the addition of two porticoes of
the Doric order ; these also connected a new wing
with the main structure. An entirely fresh feature
in the eighteenth-century dwelling was the in-
genious hydraulic arrangement for ensuring a
good water supply. The castellated building in
the park, now a ruin, was the work of another
occupant, Lord Halifax. Among the habitues of
the place stands forth the diplomatist, the stately
and polished Sir John Stepney ; he, indeed, was to
the Stanstead of Georgian days what Hamilton and
Wroughton were to Woolbeding. The chief social
interest of Stanstead lay in its being a place of
picturesquely strange and unexpected meetings, set
65 E
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
in the beech-wooded park (formerly called " the
forest ") which, on his progress to the sea at
Shoreham, after Worcester, sheltered Charles II.
Issuing from a recess in these same beech woods,
was espied from the windows, by one of the
eighteenth-century Stanstead guests, evidently bound
for the house, a gentleman in a green coat, with
tally-ho buttons. " Charles Turner, by all that is
amazing!" murmured the observer, Lord North,
as he beheld the most violent and eccentric of his
St. Stephen's assailants walk up to the door. Turner,
a Yorkshire member of immense wealth, dressed the
part of Squire Western to the life. His character,
however, was rather that of Allworthy. Rockingham
had just made him a baronet. This was how the
two Stanstead guests entered into conversation : —
North : " You have often accused me of falsehood,
but never was I guilty of any lie so gross as that
which I have just read in the Gazette : ' The
King has been pleased to appoint Lord Rockingham,
Mr. Fox,' &c." It was only a week or so earlier that
Turner had raised roars of laughter in the House
against North, whose supporters had called the
Opposition "a rope of sand." "The noble lord in
the blue ribbon and his companions," came the retort,
"are a rope of onions, for they stink in the nation's
nostrils." " How is it, Wilkes," asked a fellow-guest
of the demagogue at Stanstead, " that you sat silent
through all the French Revolution debates.'*" "The
fact is," came the reply, " I am a burnt-out volcano."
The rejoinder, of course, suggests Disraeli's "ex-
hausted volcanoes" at Manchester, 1872. It was
French Politicians at Stanstead
however, no case of plagiarism, only an undesigned
coincidence. The present writer, mentioning the
words of Wilkes to Lord Beaconsfield, was told,
"Thanks, it looks like a crib, but it is the first time
I knew Wilkes ever said anything worth repeating
and fit for publication." Thanks chiefly to Sir John
Stepney, even into the nineteenth century, Stanstead,
like so many other country houses, abounded in
French Revolutionary stories. At the first sitting
of the Directory, irritated by something Carnot had
said, Barras exclaimed: "Your remark is, within
your own knowledge, a lie." The lie was given
back, with the added words : "In proof of what
I say, I lift up my hand to heaven." " Pray do
nothing of the kind," rejoined Barras, "or drops
of blood will run down upon the table." Throughout
its existence as a social centre, Stanstead never
wanted the international cachet. Nowhere else were
the French Orleanists more at home in Enpfland.
Here the Due de Broglie and Guizot first made their
d^but in an English drawing-room — de Broglie
the picture of a French nobleman ; Guizot, of the
intellectual face, but with something of the school
usher in his presence. The rooms that were the
scene of these cosmopolitan meetings, in point of
historic interest and picturesque charm do not yield
to the exterior or to the park that surrounds it. The
ornamental carving and woodwork are to-day what
they were when Grinling Gibbons had finished his
work. The Arras tapestry has neither received
alteration nor needed repair since being placed in
its present position by Lord Scarborough. Several
67
The Sussex Dukeries and Non-Dukeries
family lines of successive owners have, in different
ways, left their mark at Stanstead. The spot must
have been included in one of King John's southern
progresses, since in the January of 1215 that
sovereign dated a writ from Stanstead. Between
three and four centuries later, in the autumn of
1 59 1, Queen Elizabeth slept at the Stanstead mansion
of that date. Its less remote story opens, as has
been already seen, with the eighteenth century.
George I. was received there in 1722, six years
after his son, as Prince of Wales, had been Lord
Scarborough's guest. From the Scarborough family
Stanstead passed to the Ways ; one of these, a
clergyman, the Rev. Lewis Way, made, in 1800, the
most conspicuous of the modern additions to the old
structure. This was the private chapel, with its
strikingly beautiful stained-glass window at the east
end, representing "the Holy of Holies." Beneath is
a family vault, where rest the purchaser of Stanstead
from the Way trustees, Charles Dixon, and those
owners who have passed away since him. The
Dixons have been followed by the present Wilders.
68
CHAPTER III
THE FASHIONABLE SOUTH DOWNS
Hurstmonceux — Its tragic associations — The Naylors and the Hares
— Hurstmonceux a theological and literary centre — Parham —
The De la Zouches— George Selwyn, Reynolds, Beauclerk,
Johnson, and Gibbon — Dunford House, Midhurst — Cobden—
Bishop Wilberforce — Lavington — The Sargents — Stopham —
The Barttelots— Field Place— The Shelleys— Chesworth—
Warnham Court — Stanmer — The Pelhams— Stanmer as the
cradle of Brighton — Harrison Ainsworth in Sussex — Cuckfield
Manor the origin of " Rookwood " — Ovingdean Grange —
Brighton Pavilion — Its origin — In the days of the Regency —
The Lades and the Barrymores— Lord Thurlow— Sir John
Irwine — The Muriettas at Lamberhurst — West Dean — Mr. and
Mrs. W. James — Lord Brassey's Normanhurst— Thomas Brassey
— Literary parties at Normanhurst — Sir Julian Goldsmid's
Fairhght, near Hastings — Butler Johnstone and Ralph Earle —
Later guests at Fairlight — Mrs. Duncan Stewart and her
anecdotes.
FROM Stanstead we go to the next of Horace
Walpole's favourite Sussex houses, Hurstmon-
ceux. Its earlier story is darkened by the gloom of
melodrama and disasters recalling those of Greek
tragedy. Its later interest is that of a social centre,
much affected by the aristocratic and cultured
Anglicanism of the day. The old casde 's stern and
69
The Fashionable South Downs
weird exterior was in keeping with the sombre
incidents that took place within its walls. About
1720 it had come by inheritance to Miss Grace
Naylor, the most attractive and desirable heiress of
her day. A few years later, when little more than
twenty, the new owner perished mysteriously within
its walls, starved to death, as was locally believed, by
her former governess. The property then went to
the family with which, above all others, the modern
Hurstmonceux is identified. This was that of the
many-friended and extensively cousined Hares. Miss
Naylor's successor in the property, Francis Hare, had
for his father that chaplain of the Duke of Marl-
borough who had ridden by the great captain's side
at Blenheim, at Ramillies, and who afterwards, thanks
to the Pelhams and Walpoles, became the richest
pluralist of his age : he held simultaneously the
deanery of St. Paul's, the bishoprics of Chichester, and
of St. Asaph ; he thought himself hardly used because
he had missed being Archbishop of Canterbury.
This ecclesiastic's son, dying childless, left the Sussex
estate to his half-brother, a godson of Sir Robert
Walpole. "Let the boy," said the godfather, "go
into the Church, that I may make him a canon of
Winchester." Parson Robert Hare married succes-
sively two wealthy women. The second of these,
Henrietta Henckel, jealous to madness of the first
wife's sons, made her husband pull down the old
building and erect in its place a huge and hideous
castle, to be settled, with the lands, upon her own
children by a former marriage. Nemesis, as in a
Greek play, was near. The new structure had
70
The Two Beautiful Georgianas
scarcely been finished when it was discovered to
stand upon entailed ground. It thus passed to a
certain Francis Hare-Naylor ; the ill-starred building
itself became known as Hurstmonceux Place. Mrs.
Henckel Hare, in a remorseful dotage, bewailed her
destructive work ; wandering round the ruins night
and day, "Who," she idiotically exclaimed, "could
have been so wicked as to pull down this beautiful old
place ? " The Hurstmonceux estates were only saved
from sharing the ruin of the edifice by a miracle of
romance. At the darkest moment of his money diffi-
culties, the good looks of Mrs. Henckel Hare's eldest
stepson were noticed by Georgiana, the beautiful
Duchess of Devonshire. She introduced him to her
cousin, her rival or even superior in loveliness,
another Georgiana, the Bishop of St. Asaph's
daughter, Lord Peterborough's great-niece. The
father strongly disapproved the acquaintance. Her
Grace of Devonshire, however, arrayed the country-
house influences and opportunities on the side of the
lovers. In 1785 the young couple eloped, dividing
their time, for some years, between Carlsruhe and
Rome, on ^200 a year allowed them by the Duchess.
A little later Mrs. Francis Hare was brought back
to England by the death of her father-in-law. Sir
Robert Walpole's canon of Winchester. She settled
in the new building already mentioned, known as
Hurstmonceux Place. Her chief friends and visitors
belonged to her own family. The most regular among
the Hurstmonceux Place guests were the hostess' sister,
Lady Jones, and her husband, the famous Orientalist;
the latter, after Harrow and Oxford, became private
71
The Fashionable South Downs
tutor at Althorp and was helped by Earl Spencer, his
pupil's father, into the public service. Hurstmonceux
Place, which thus replaced the castle as the Hares'
country house, forms a massive square with projecting
circular bows at the corner. Its comforts inside have
received the addition of beauty in the staircase, floors,
and doors, as well as in the old panelled hall, with
its stags'-horns hangings brought bodily from the old
castle and ancient deer park. Long after the castle
had been shorn of feudal dignity and the latter day
representatives of its historic lords were sufficiently
depressed in the county scale, Hurstmonceux Place
witnessed many pleasant house-parties. The Hares,
who were its inhabitants from the close of the
eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth,
had brought back with them from their long" con-
tinental stay foreign habits ; their very dress was
un-English. The chatelaine of the place could be
recollected by many of her humbler neighbours, till
lately living, as riding daily on a white ass to the
mineral springs in the park, and as accompanied
everywhere by a white doe which, at church, stood
waiting for its mistress, during the service, at the pew
door. This was the lady who, after her husband's
death, sustained her reputation for intellectual interests
by a correspondence with learned men abroad, who
themselves had been deterred from visiting Hurst-
monceux, lest its master should insist upon reading to
them the dull plays he wrote and on their studying
themselves his duller histories. The Hurstmonceux
tent of the bewilderingly complicated Hare family was
pitched at different points in the locality, now at a little
72
Churchmen and Writers at Hurstmonceux
house called Lime, now at the Rectory. The latter of
these abodes in Archdeacon Hare's day became
famous and powerful throughout Europe. The south
of England possessed no other centre of Anglican
learninof and breeding whose influences saturated so
much of the nation's best social life. The Oxford
movement of 1833 needed for the permanent diffusion
of its influences the social organisation of the Hares
and Hurstmonceux as well as the spiritual energies
of Newman aud Pusey at Oxford. Conversational
vivacity, a quality of affectionateness, the best associa-
tions of English village life and of clerical life in its
aristocratic aspects ; — these were the things which
their contemporaries associated with the Hares, par-
ticularly with the archdeacon ; at his vicarage open
house was habitually kept. Hither came, on almost
weekly visits, Bunsen, the Mozleys, and all that was
highly educated, tolerant, polished in the thought, liter-
ature, or churchmanship of the time. Lay thought was
equally represented at the Archdeacon's house-parties.
The imposing person and imperious manner of Walter
Savage Landor occasionally imparted to these gather-
ings the bustling animation diffused around him by
Harold Boythorn in " Bleak House." In his Hurst-
monceux library Julius Hare wrote his "Mission of
the Comforter," but compromised himself with the
Evangelicals by writing also the affectionate memoir
of Sterling and by infusing into the "Guesses at
Truth," in which he collaborated with his brother
Augustus, the undenominational religion of Thomas
Arnold, Bunsen, Coleridge, and F. D. Maurice. The
younger Sterling, the Times "Thunderer's" son, as
73
The Fashionable South Downs
Hare's former curate, knew this library well, and had
hoped that if anything about him ever were written it
might be by his old rector, whose memoirs, already
mentioned, did indeed set Carlyle on his better known
biography of the man.
In purely secular letters the neighbouring or not
remote Parham is not less distinguished than the
semi-ecclesiastical Hurstmonceux. From the sixteenth
to the nineteenth centuries this Elizabethan roof has
periodically covered the most famous representatives
of European intellect and art. When occupied by its
early owner. Sir Thomas Palmer, it was among Queen
Elizabeth's halting places on her journey to Cowdray.
From the Palmers it passed to the Bisshopps ; a
representative of that family, the Lord De la Zouche,
wrote at Parham a book much talked of in its day,
" The Monasteries of the Levant." An ancestor of
that peer brought home with him, from a long stay
in Italy, the ambition of making his Sussex seat a
museum and a Tusculum. His predecessors had left
him the nucleus for a priceless collection of antique
gems, metal-work, and the earliest specimens extant
of the printing art. The most precious treasures
belonging to the last category were the first editions
of Homer and Virgil. There were pictures with a
history, as well as epitomes of epochs in the shape of
jewels. Such was Angelica Kauffman's portrait of
Lady De la Zouche. This had been hung, at Sir
Joshua's special instance, in the first Royal Academy
exhibition at Somerset House. It is the painting
particularly mentioned by Miss Thackeray in her story
based on the artist's strange fortunes. The most
74
Fashion, Art, and Letters at Parham
magnificent among the eighteenth-century visitors at
Parham was the chief ornament of the Court, that Lord
Hertford who held the white wand of Chamberlain
during half a generation, the master-mind in every
palace ceremonial. The most amusing of the visitors
was George Selwyn. It was in the Parham drawing-
room that Selwyn related his Paris experiences on a
trip he had just made, for seeing Damiens or Ravaillac
broken on the wheel. " A colleague, sir ? " asked the
executioner, on seeing the Englishman intent upon
gaining a good place, " Alas ! sir, no — I am but an
amateur ! " Of Voltaire's alleged visit to Parham
during his stay in England, if it ever occurred, no
record seems to exist. From Parham, however,
undoubtedly, English men of letters first heard of the
new light on Milton, thrown by Voltaire's researches.
The poet, travelling as a youth in Italy, witnessed a
representation, at the Milan theatre, of Andreino's
comedy, " Adam, or the Original Sin." Dedicated to
the French queen, Marie de Medicis, the play,
abounding in absurdities, if not impieties, flashed
upon the English spectator the grand possibilities
of the theme. Discarding the frivolities of the
Italian original, Milton began with preserving
Andreino's dramatic form. As the work went on, he
soon saw it to be better adapted to the epic treatment
of Homer or Virgil.
Beneath any roof frequently visited by Selwyn, by
Sir Joshua, and by Topham Beauclerk, Samuel John-
son was sure occasionally to find himself. It was
Johnson's idea, first expressed at Parham, of going
into the House to support Lord North, that set the
75
The Fashionable South Downs
quid nuncs on speculating whether, if his idea were
fulfilled, he would be a failure, a silent member like
Addison and Gibbon, or achieve a boisterous notoriety
like a minor litterateur, Onslow, member for Guild-
ford, spoken of at Parham, as everywhere, by his
nickname, " Cocking George." At Parham, too, did
another guest, Horace Walpole, call Gibbon's
historical masterpiece " a tiresome compilation," the
first volumes of which he had scarcely patience to
read.
If Byron never visited Parham, he has associated
himself with it by one of his best known little poems.
It was Mrs. Wilmot Horton whose beauty and whose
dress, white spangles on black, suggested the lines
beginning " She walks in beauty." In the Parham
dining-room, attached to Gainsborough's portrait of
the lady, are the lines in the poet's handwriting.
Politics at Parham were only looked at incidentally
from the fashionable literary or artistic standpoint.
" So Sir Joshua Reynolds," said the Parham ladies,
with a scornful titter, '* is going to stand for Plympton."
'* He is not," put in George Selwyn, " to be despised.
I know no abler man on a canvass," " So, my dear
George," remarked the Whig magnate, Lord Carlisle,
"your seat is to be attacked by a timber merchant.
What, I should like to know, can be meant by a man
without an idea, apart from a square foot of Norway
deal, desiring to be in Parliament } " Edmund Burke
had been the brains of Administrations but had always
been kept out of the Cabinet. He was known to
resent the exclusion. " What a pity," exclaimed the
Parham drawing-room, " that so clever a man should
76
Parliamentary Exclusiveness at Parham
not know his place. The Cabinet, indeed, for him ! "
" My idea," said Selwyn, "is that our grandchildren
will see colliers privy councillors and day labourers
Cabinet ministers." Surely this was said with a pro-
phetic eye to the promotion in 1906 of Mr. John
Burns and Mr. Thomas Burt ! Parham itself was to
supply, a little later, an object lesson in the democratic
tendency which had so disgusted the fine guests of
the house. Disraeli's novels contain no more amusing
episode than that of the civil and obliging club servant
in "Sibyl," whom one of the members takes out to
India as his valet, who before the voyage is over is
advanced to private secretary, who, returning to
England a rich man, goes into Parliament and dies
a peer. The original of this story was Sir Thomas
Rumbold. From being a waiter at White's, he became
Governor of Madras; in February, 181 2, he died
member for Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, always visiting
Parham en route to his constituency. On like journeys
to his Lymington electors, Edward Gibbon revelled
in the patrician and learned atmosphere of Lord De
la Zouche's Sussex home. Gibbon, when he appeared
at Parham, had come over from his chief Sussex
headquarters, Sheffield Place, to-day best known in
connection with cricket and military manoeuvres. In
Gibbon's day it was not only the haunt of London
wits, but an asylum for French refugees during the
storms of revolution, and thus socially of kin with an
East Anglian and a Buckinghamshire country house,
hereafter to be visited.
" People tell me I want to abandon our colonies ;
the truth is I want to retain them by their affections."
77
The Fashionable South Downs
So said Richard Cobden at Manchester, January, 1849.
The poHcy expressed by the words had begun to
shape itself in his mind twenty years earher. When
revisiting the Sussex district where later he lived, he
meditated the programme of the Colonisation Society,
founded by his political friends in 1829. Born beneath
the farm roof known as Dunford, owned, with the
adjoining land, by his father, the future Free Trader
had seen it pass to strangers. This uprooting of his
family from their old soil inspired him with a reso-
lution like that of Warren Hastings in connection-with
the paternal Dalesford. Young Cobden determined to
buy back the old home from the hands to which it
might have gone. He did so in 1850, replacing the
farm building by the Dunford House, where, except
during his periodical Parliamentary absences in
London, he lived for the most part till his death in
1865. His Dunford guests numbered among them John
Bright, J. E. Thorold Rogers, his neighbour Lady
Dorothy Nevill, then living six miles off at Dangstein,
C. P. Villiers and T. Bayley Potter. Among the
Dunford visitors also were habitually the courtliest
as well as the most scientific of officials and economists,
Sir Lewis Mallet, Mr. and Mrs. Milner Gibson, and,
at least once, the first Lord Westbury. Of these, as
of many other visitors. Lady Dorothy Nevill is (1906)
the sole survivor. Charles Villiers, who, till late in
the nineteenth century, periodically reappeared in his
old Sussex haunts, was one of Cobden's most essential
allies. Newman has spoken of Pusey as bringing
to the Oxford movement of 1833 the social influence,
the impetus of aristocracy's learning, without which
78
Lord Aberdeen on Bloodguiltlness
it would not have become a national force. Some-
thing like that was the service rendered by Villiers to
the policy of freeing the ports. Thorold Rogers began
by recommending the cause to intellectual Oxford ;
he illustrated and enforced its principles by a rare
combination of genius and research. After the death
of his friend and master, he co-operated with T.
Bayley Potter in founding the Cobden Club. Mr.
T. B. Potter not only for twenty-five years represented
his friend's opinions in the House of Commons, but
presided over the association formed as a bulwark
against attack on Cobden's principles. On retiring
from St. Stephen's, he settled in Cobden's native
district. On the Dunford estate, now belonging to
Cobden's two daughters, is a house formerly known
as Hurst. Here T. B. Potter pitched his tent, and
here, in 1898. he died. Since that date there has
been a change of name ; what was Hurst has became
Oatscroft. Its hospitable traditions are perpetuated by
those of Richard Cobden's family whose country home
it is. Dying in London lodgings, 23, Suffolk Street,
Pall Mall, the destroyer of the Corn Laws was buried
in West Lavington churchyard, close to Dunford.
Samuel Wilberforce, in his Oxford diocesan days the
episcopal lord of Lavington Manor, was a neighbour
whom Cobden at Dunford frequently visited. At
Lavington, in the August of 1855, he met among
other guests Sir Roundell Palmer and the ex- Premier
of the Crimean epoch. Lord Aberdeen. '* Believe me,
Mr. Cobden," said the latter, " I shall never cease to
lament having suffered myself to be drawn into the
Russian War. I ought to have resigned." How the
79
The Fashionable South Downs
sense of something like blood-guiltiness haunted the old
statesman to the last may be judged from the fact that
he refused to rebuild the old church, now a ruin, near
Haddo House. " I must not," he said, "do it myself;
my hands are bathed in blood ; let it be done by him
who shall come after me." By the side of his son, in
the churchyard already mentioned, Richard Cobden
was laid to rest in 1865. Here, on the Sunday follow-
ing the funeral, his friend Thorold Rogers, then in
Anglican orders, preached the commemorative sermon.
In West Lavington Church, too, the future Cardinal
Manning preached his last sermon as an Anglican
clergyman (1850). Manning, indeed, was not only
Rector of Lavington, but the builder of West
Lavington Church, to supplement the older Lavington
Church. In Lavington (proper) churchyard. Manning's
wife and his brother-in-law. Bishop Wilberforce,
rest. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's marriage with
the Rev. John Sargent's daughter, the future Cardinal
Manning's sister-in-law, made him, like his wife's
father, a Sussex squarson. With woods both for
background and foreground, Lavington House is close
to the churchyard. Hither, on a certain July day,
1873, had come from far and near laymen and clerics
of all persuasions and schools of thought. " Bishop
of the diocese ; rector of the parish," rang out the
clear voice of Samuel Wilberforce's son, now Bishop
of Chichester. Thus hailed by names or titles, which
did or did not belong to all of us, we entered the
churchyard to say farewell to the coffin inscribed with
the words, " Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of the Church
of God." Lavington had been, in his father-in-law's
80
"A Confirmed Old Papist"
time, a country house, whose most welcome guests
scarcely belonged to the High Church school. Mrs.
Sargent, the mistress of the place, was decidedly
Evangelical, thinking Keble, of "The Christian
Year," and his curate, Wilson, went a little too far.
She never forgave Wilberforce for speaking disrespect-
fully of the Reformation. John Henry Newman, the
oracle of sect, was roundly stigmatised by the lady of
the house as "a confirmed old Papist." In the same
district as Lavington is a house which has always
belonged to a line of Sussex squires, each of them
from father to son a beau ideal of his order. Since
a time to the contrary of which memory runneth not,
Stopham has been the home of Sussex knights of the
shire of the Barttelot name. It was a favourite haunt
of Disraeli in Sir Walter Barttelot's day. That
chivalrous Tory gentleman thought he had done Mr.
Bradlaugh an injustice. He made the amend by
inviting the member for Northampton to visit him
at the family place near Pulborough. "You ought,"
said Lord Beaconsfield, with his grim smile, " to have
asked also Mrs. Besant, Henry Labouchere, and
Gladstone. ' The Fruits of Philosophy,' ' My old
Friend Homer ' and ' Truthful Tommy ' might have
made a mixture that would almost have blown the
Stopham roof off." We are now in that part of the
county abounding in Shelley associations. The poet's
collateral ancestors invested his natal house, Field
Place, with no literary or refining connections of any
kind. From father to son these Shelleys belonged
to the fastest set of men about town, and contributed
more than one ornament to the Regent's household
8i F
The Fashionable South Downs
at the Brighton PaviHon. Field Place had come to
the poet's grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, through
his marriage with the heiress of the Michell family,
to which it had immemorially belonged. The Shelley
owners of the property were famous for their week-
end gatherings of fine or fast London visitors and for
the racey stories told or the good things said by the
company. All were the personal intimates of Charles
James Fox. All, too, wished him to marry a rich wife,
and so end the periodical necessity of frequently
sending round the hat. Miss Pulteney, to whom
Pitt afterwards gave a peerage, was the greatest
heiress of the day and had, it was hoped, a liking
for "dear Charles." The lady's complexion was
light, that of Fox, of course, very dark. Speculating
on the possible issue of such a marriage, General
Fitzpatrick or Hare put the Field Place table in a
roar by suggesting that the offspring would be duns
with black manes and tails. Fox's marriage with Mrs.
Armstead, it should be said, was not acknowledged
till 1794. Field Place in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century was richer in Fox stories and
in good sayings about the Fox and North coalition
than any other country house in England. No one
took Pitt's rival seriously. "Charles, first Lord of
the Treasury ! " exclaimed his great friend Fitzpatrick,
at the Field Place dining-table ; "one can as easily
imagine the second Charles Stuart Archbishop of
Canterbury ! " Hearty were the laughs at Field Place
over Lord North's humorous vindication of his
union with Fox. The two men, who were not on
speaking terms, in the Eddystone Lighthouse, risked
82
Creevey and Greville at Field Place
the destruction of the English Navy rather than break
silence to each other. " Animated by more enlarged
sentiments we considered the safety of the vessel
of State our primary duty, and at all events agreed
that the fire in the lighthouse should not be ex-
tinguished." The most noticeable of the Field Place
hospitalities in the late years of the eighteenth century
or the first quarter of the nineteenth, had included
among the guests the two diarists of the period,
" Punch " Greville, the Clerk of the Council, and
Thomas Creevey. P. B. Shelley passed some time
there after leaving Eton in 1809, writing partly in
the house itself, more often in his boat on Warnham
Pond, a sheet of water covering one hundred acres,
"Queen Mab " and "The Wandering Jew." Ches-
worth, the next country house to Denne Park in
this neighbourhood, illustrates, in its vicissitudes, one
aspect of country house history. The stately home
of perhaps the most ancient and powerful Sussex
family, the Braoses, Chesworth was the rallying
ground of Stuart supporters till the eve of the
Restoration. It then passed to strangers. To-day,
like many other manorial mansions with a famous
past, it is a farm house. Warnham Court, directly
behind Field Place, has experienced changes of
ownership different from those known by Chesworth,
but still equally typical in the chequered narrative
of country house evolution. Under the trees of
Warnham Court, Nicholas of Horsham, the leading
Sussex physician of the fifteenth century, meditated
new methods of medical treatment, which afterwards
saved the life of Warnham Court's then owner.
83
The Fashionable South Downs
Nearly three hundred years later the publisher,
Bernard Lintot, also a native of the same Horsham,
read, before sending them to his printer. Gay's
" Trivia " and Pope's " Illiad," and " Odyssey."
Early in the eighteenth century the place was
rebuilt by the Sussex squire, to whom it had come.
Sir Henry Treadcroft. A generation or two later,
when inhabited by Sir H. Pelly, it was in high
favour with a little company of Christchurch "tufts,"
who were frequently its then owner's guests in the
i86o's. This company included the Duke of Hamilton
of that day, better known by his sobriquet, " ruddier
than the cherry," than by his title. That salutation,
by way of serenade, had often been heard outside
his grace's rooms in Canterbury quad. The Duke
was pleasantly reminded of it by his fellow-guests
at Warnham, including as these did the present
Lord Rosebery, Lord Tweedmouth, and the late
Lord Randolph Churchill. Since then this delightful
possession, a real microcosm of the county's most
characteristic charms, has passed into the family of
Lucas. Such a line of descent, conspicuously illus-
trated in the rural homes of England, does but bring
the country-house system into closer touch with the
tendency of national progress and the spirit of the
time. The men who have attained to wealth and
station by success in scientific or commercial enter-
prise, assimilate, as landlords or hosts, the best
attributes of their forerunners who, noble or
knightly, owed position and title to achievements
in the council-chamber or battle-field.
Like several interesting houses in the district, the
84
Stanmer as the Parent of Brighton
Sussex home of the Pelhams rises from a basin of
trees. A quiet country house cannot often boast
of a noisy watering-place as its offspring. Stanmer,
however, as will presently be seen, is the undoubted
parent of Brighton. The chance excursion of a royal
visitor at Stanmer to the adjacent fishing-village had,
for its direct consequence, the raising of the palace
by the sea, known as the Pavilion, and the consequent
conversion of Brighthelmstone into Brighton. Of
the Pelham habitations in Sussex, Plumpton Place,
Laughton, Bishopstone Manor, and Halland were
famous long before Stanmer. Henry Pelham, the
earlier of the two Prime Minister brothers, lived at
Esher, the Duke at Halland, at Bishopstone, and at
Pelham House, Lewes. At Halland especially.
Holies, Duke of Newcastle, Thomas Pelham, resided
in great luxury and extravagance. A beautiful
building picturesquely situated, it has, like the ancient
Braose seat, near Horsham, become a farm ; the
decorative design of the Pelham Buckle, still visible
on the walls, proclaims its original ownership and
character. Bishopstone is also a farm ; of the original
structure only the huge cellars remain. The local
account represents Walpole s personal friends, political
disciples, and ministerial successors, Henry Pelham
first, Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, afterwards,
as domiciled at Stanmer. This fiction has naturally
grown out of a confusion of names. Between 1744
and 1754 a certain Thomas Pelham undoubtedly
lived at Stanmer ; he was the Duke of Newcasde's
cousin as well as namesake. The Duke, therefore,
may have visited the place. The legend of his
85
The Fashionable South Downs
having been accompanied by his preceptor and
predecessor in office is easily explained. Sir Robert
Walpole, at Houghton, cared only less for forestry
and tree-planting than for his dogs or his game
preserves. "You should see," said the ducal Pelham,
"how they manage these things at Stanmer." The
fifth Lady Chichester obligingly went through the
family papers for some evidence of this visit having
been actually made by Sir Robert Walpole. It does
not, however, seem to have advanced beyond the
stage of intention. If not, like Stanstead and Wool-
beding, the resort of eighteenth-century statesmen,
Stanmer was the frequent guest-house of sovereigns
or their kin. These visits and their results form an
entirely unique chapter in country-house history. Its
later record has associated Stanmer with the encou-
ragement of, and the active participation in, various
philanthropic or useful enterprises, both in the
interests of the whole country side and especially
those connected with the town already described as
socially a child of Stanmer, in its turn to become
the parent of the smart rural hospitalities of a later
date, the neighbouring Brighton. This is how
Stanmer stands to Brighton in the parental relation
already claimed for it. In the August of 1782, the
Princess Amelia, the Prince of Wales's aunt, stayed
with the then Lord and Lady Pelham at Stanmer. A
chance excursion was planned to the adjoining Bright-
helmstone. The repetition of the visit next year
endowed Sussex with the most popular and fashion-
able of watering-places. Stanmer, the royal visiting-
house first, the centre of friendship and patronage
86
The Genesis of Rural Smartness
of all that is good and beneficent afterwards ; then
the Brighton Pavilion, combining the freedom of club
life with a sort of family existence, and thus, however
indecorously, providing the earliest pattern for the
respectable smartness of twentieth century country-
house life ; these seem the links in the present social
chain. Of that presently. Meanwhile let us pause
at two more houses in rural Sussex, which a popular
writer has made his own. In the first half of the
nineteenth century the novelist, Harrison Ainsworth,
was editing Bentley's Magazine and other periodi-
cals, with Charles Dickens among his contributors.
The two men made many excursions through different
parts of England together, including in their rambles
much of the South Down country. The Sergison
manor house, Cuckfield, with its labyrinth of secret
chambers within, its diversified and far-spreading park
without, seems to have given Ainsworth some ideas
for the scenery of the novel, " Rookwood," which first
secured his fame. Several seats in this part of
Sussex connect themselves with the wandering and
escapes of the second Charles, after Worcester.
They may, therefore, as was done by Ainsworth,
suitably be peopled with Stuart partisans and
followers. Whatever may have been the facts as
to this novelist's personal acquaintance with Cuckfield,
he knew every stone, within and without, of Oving-
dean Grange before composing his story of that
name. Evelyn in his diary mentions a present of
richly embroidered purple velvet and most noble plate
as given to the then newly built St. James's Church,
Piccadilly, by Sir R. Geere. This, at the period
87
The Fashionable South Downs
of Charles's stay, was the head of the family which
supplied the royal fugitive with his host. The Geeres
were succeeded at Ovingdean by a family whose
name is given in Ainsworth's novel. The Beard of
the book was the parish clergyman ; his historical
namesake's descendant became the possessor of the
Grange. A man of hospitable instincts and educated
tastes, he invited Harrison Ainsworth to one of his
literary parties. The invitation in due course bore
its fruit in the novel ; its author perpetuates the
historic name of the Stuart host, though not in the
historic context. The " Martin " Geere is mentioned
as a dependant of the household instead of its head.
The eighteenth century had yet eighteen more
years to run when his Stanmer hosts, under the cir-
cumstances already explained, planned an excursion
for the future George IV. to Brighthelmstone. In
the next year, 1783, came the Prince's formal intro-
duction to the place of which, as yet, he had merely
caught a glimpse. The Duke and Duchess of Cum-
berland, in the second of the years just mentioned,
1783, had established themselves at Grove House,
Brighthelmstone, for sea-bathing. On Sunday, Sep-
tember 7th, the heir-apparent was to pay his uncle
and aunt a visit ; at midday he was received not only
by his relatives but, with great ceremony on their part,
by the chief people of the place as well as of the
neighbourhood, including the Stanmer Pelhams.
After dinner in the evening, the Duke of Cumberland
took his visitor for a walk on the Steine. No Sabbatical
prejudices interfered with an elaborate show of fire-
works at night, in the then open space now covered
88
Prince George at Brighton
by the Pavilion Parade and Prince's Street. From
the Grove House windows the Prince viewed the
fireworks and the illuminations. On Monday came
more junketing by day, and at night the most splendid
ball ever known in the " Castle," then the first, if not
the only considerable hotel in the place. The festivities
were prolonged throughout the next week, till, indeed,
the 19th of the month. Delighted equally by his
reception and its surroundings, the departing Prince
left behind him the promise of soon returning for a
longer stay. The Brighton Pavilion still contains
some departments known as " Wellsher's rooms."
That is a corruption of Weltjie, the Prince's German
factotum. This man first introduced his enormously
stout body and ludicrously short legs to the admiring
Brighthelmstonians in the July of 1784 ; he had come
to engage for his employer a house belonging to
Thomas Kemp. In this way was the germ of the
Pavilion formed. The physicians had recommended
the Prince to follow his uncle Cumberland's example
of sea-bathing. The royal visitor would therefore
become a frequent resident on the shore to which he
had been introduced by his Stanmer hosts. About
daybreak, July 23, 1784, the august creator of the
modern Brighton took possession of the tenement,
which in three years and at a cost of, not the millions
mentioned by Byron, but several tens of thousands,
were expanded into the Georgian palace by the sea.
Mr. Kemp's roof, destined to so glorious an enlarge-
ment, was spoken of by the banker-poet Rogers as a
" respectable farm-house." Brighthelmstone's acces-
sibility to continental Europe had given it a certain
89
The Fashionable South Downs
cosmopolitan vogue even in the days of its aboriginal
simplicity. When, in 1784, the future ruler of Great
Britain may have dreamed of the Pavilion's coming
glories, he was saluted on the Old Steine by the Due
de Chartres, better known as Philippe Egalite, King
Louis Philippe's father and one of the royal victims,
after Louis XVI., claimed by the guillotine. Other
foreigners of equal distinction soon flocked to the
Sussex Court. The fishing-village had been changed
by a stroke into the world's place of pleasure. A few
weeks later (August loth) the English and French
royalties with their hangers-on went in state to the
Brighton races. Untold wealth and unbridled
debauchery had not improved the personal appear-
ance of the heir-apparent's chief guest. The Due de
Chartres's complexion had deepened to the colour of
burnished copper relieved by dark studs of carbuncles.
From the Brighton meeting of the princes of two
nations, followed the introduction to France of English
dress and customs, the method of English riding,
Yorkshire jockeys and English racers for the foreign
turf. The patron whom Brighton owed to the
Pelhams at Stanmer at once began to " make things
hum." The opening years of the twentieth century
enlivened the London and Brighton road with the
pedestrian competitions of Stock Exchange athletes,
waitresses and serving-men. It was all merely a revival
of a Georgian fashion. More than one hundred years
earlier the Regent gave the word and set the pace for
riding matches between the Old Steine and his
London palace. He himself rode the double journey
in ten hours. By and by that feat was surpassed by
90
Le Roi S'Amuse on the Sussex Coast
an officer of the Light Dragoons, who rode from
Brighton to Westminster on the same horse in three
hours and twenty minutes, stopping only at Reigate
to take a glass of wine, pouring the rest of the bottle
down his horse's throat. Such were only a few of the
items in the royal programme. The Prince was as
much at home with his gun as in the saddle ; he could
bring down pigeons with rifle-bullets on the Steine. If
he occasionally missed his bird, he did great execution
among his neighbour's chimney-pots. Some years
later, one of the royal suite. Colonel Hanger, planned
a foot-race on the Old Steine between his black
servant and the Horsham carrier. Hanger's great
success as Master of the Revels was a series of races
between women for a new smock and a hat, and
between twenty geese and twenty turkeys over a ten
mile course for ^500. Whether the debauch which
inspired this great idea took place at the embryonic
Pavilion or at Carlton House, it was on the Brighton
beach that Hanger troubled his patron to settle a bet
of several hundred or thousand pounds which he had
lost over the contest. When staying at Stanmer, the
Prince played at cricket in the park. " When you
visit me at Brighton," he said to his host, "you will
find the luxuries of a London club and country free-
dom combined beneath the same roof." Piquing
himself on his skill with the bat and ball, he started a
cricket ground on the Lewes Road, where now stands
Park Crescent. He kept the Duke of York, the
athletic Lord Egremont, the corpulent Lord Alvanley,
and one of the Shelleys from Field Place alternately
fielding and feasting for seven whole days. All this
91
The Fashionable South Downs
was healthy and decorous enough. On the slopes
towards the Downs the entertainment was less refined.
The ground covered to-day by Clifton Terrace,
witnessed " Jingling " races, run by blackguards
covered with bells, a favourite sport. Two oxen
having been baited to death and roasted whole, were
cut up and distributed to the crowd by the two chief
butchers of the place, Measor and Russel, both in high
favour at the Pavilion. Then there were cheeses to
roll down-hill as a prize for whoever stopped them,
tobacco doles to be grinned for, good hats to be
cudgelled for, a pig to go to whoever could catch him
by the tail. A little below the social level of the
butchers whom royalty delighted to honour were the
ex-groom. Sir John Lade, and his wife, her ladyship,
whose accomplishments can be judged from the fact
that " to swear like Letty Lade " passed into a proverb.
" Hellgate," " Newgate," and " Cripplegate " were the
names familiarised by the three Barrymore brothers.
Their sister must have been a good second to Lady
Lade, rejoicing as she did in the sobriquet of " Billings-
gate." There were state processions, almost daily,
from the Pavilion to the race-ground during the
summer season. First in order came the royal barouche,
or "German wagon " as it was then called, driven by
Sir John Lade, with six bay horses. In it were Beau
Brummel, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Jersey, Richard
Brinsley Sheridan, frequently, and, less often, Charles
James Fox. The gang included also more disreputable,
if less notorious rou^s — the Duke of Rutland, Colonel
St. Leger, Lord Headfort, Bradshaw, Sir William
Curtis, the Lombard Street banker, the clever, good-
92
sport and Feast at the Pattern Home
looking Irish card-sharper, O'Byrne, who, at a single
sitting at the Cocoa-tree Club, having won from
Admiral Hervey ^100,000, thought it well to lose
back to his antagonist ^90,000, that he might accept
^10,000 in full payment of all demands. Mrs. Fitz-
herbert limited her duties at the Pavilion to doing its
domestic honours, and seldom left its grounds. The
Prince himself was conspicuous, in green jacket, white
hat,[tight nankeen pantaloons, and shoes. It was well
that the high-bred manner and handsome presence of
the "first gentleman in Europe" secured for these
efforts to amuse his future subjects, the social and
moral support of the pillars of the peerage. The
Regent heard of his Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, being
at Brighton ; he graciously announced his intention of
calling on the keeper of the royal conscience. " Say
to His Royal Highness," answered Thurlow, " I shall
be honoured by his visit, and when he comes I hope
he will leave his scum behind him." The most critical
and consummate gourmet of the age, the Marquis de
Sillery, also read his host of the Pavilion a little
lecture of another kind. The Regent's hope that his
guest had liked his repast elicited the remark, " No,
sire, you have yet to learn how to dine ; I will try to
teach you." The practical lesson learned by the
Regent from accepting this offer was that the hours of
eating, between three and nine, were better employed
when there were never more than two dishes on the
table at once. There was another great country-house
figure of the period who gave as wide a berth to the
Pavilion as Lord Thurlow. His person, manners, and
conversation made Sir John Irwine the most univer-
93
The Fashionable South Downs
sally coveted guest of his day. His native grace and
dignity, set off by perfect dress with his ribbon and
star, realised St. Simon's description of Louis the
Fourteenth's most stately field-marshal. A brave
general, he was also a heavy drinker and not ashamed.
"They tell me, Sir John," said George III. to him,
"that you love a glass of wine." Bowing deeply,
Irwine answered, "Those, sir, who have so reported
of me, have done me great injustice. They should
have said a bottle." His friends, Lord Lake, who
first broke the Mahratta power in India, and
Admiral Payne, the ancestor of the turfite of the
Victorian age, George Payne, both Pavilion habituds,
were in vain commissioned by the Prince to secure
Irwine as his guest.
The county in which we are still lingering, in
perhaps unique abundance has produced, at different
times, every kind of the English rural seat, amongst
others that particular variety which, combining all
that is most sumptuous and ornamental in Babylon
with whatever is fragrantly decorative and charac-
teristically costly in Arcadia, constitutes the smart
country house of our own day. Without Stanmer,
as has been seen, there might have been no
Brighton. An undiscovered Brighton would have
meant an unbuilt Pavilion. " Smartness " was cradled
in the second Charles Stuart's Court. Without
the Regent's Villa on the Sussex coast there
would have been no eighteenth or early nineteenth
century type of "smartness" out of town. Stanmer,
therefore, has been remarkably prolific in its social
offspring. Brighton and the Pavilion were both its
94
At Ease with the Murlettas
children. From these there later descended Bayham
Abbey, Lamberhurst, and West Dean. Of these
places the two former bring us to the Kent and
Sussex frontier. Bayham, like Battle in the pre-
Webster period, belonged to the Elizabethan Brownes.
It became a fashionable centre when it passed to the
ennobled branch of the Pratt family, the Camdens.
The other mansion distinguishing Lamberhurst village,
Wadhurst Hall, now belonging to Mr. Julius Drew,
was in the last century a typical country house of the
new order. The family and the name of Murietta
figured prominently for many years in the chronicle
of fashion. The brothers Murietta became synonyms
for brilliancy of achievement on the polo-field and in
every form of sport which cements together the
various social or political sections constituting the
polity of ton. In 1894 came the Baring crash. The
Muriettas were submerged by it. Before that, how-
ever, the brothers of this family just referred to had
converted their South of England home into a resi-
dential club for non-paying guests. One left the
Orleans Club on the King's Road, Brighton, to find
oneself, after a picturesque journey, in another club,
better fitted up and located beneath a private roof.
Wadhurst Hall, under the Murietta dispensation,
formed the earliest instance of an English country
home whose arrangements were modelled upon those
of a fashionable restaurant or a Pall Mall club. To
begin with, breakfast was served at any hour liked by
the individual guest. As a fact, we most of us had it
between eleven and twelve in an apartment which
daily, till noon, looked like the coffee-room at a Metro-
95
The Fashionable South Downs
pole Hotel. For each one was a little table, presently
spread, with more than club or hotel speed, with the
English breakfast or the French dtijeuner. West
Dean is popularly regarded as having eclipsed Good-
wood as the resting-place of royalty at the close of the
season. To an earlier generation of sportsmen and
sportswomen Goodwood House, as we have seen,
seemed a social paradise on the rising of Parlia-
ment. When fashion and smartness began to be
synonyms, something less remote from the modish
caravanserai came into request. One of the special
providences of polite life had established Mr. and
Mrs. W. James at West Dean, a place socially so
characteristic of the Edwardian a^e that it mis^ht have
seemed the sudden growth of a single season. As a
house, however, it existed in Stuart times. On the
site of the present building there stood, at the opening
of the seventeenth century, the family home of the
Lewknors. By the usual vicissitudes of which the
reader has seen so much, the estate went to the
Peacheys while George IV. held his Court at the
Pavilion. In 1804 West Dean was acquired by Lord
Selsey, completely rebuilt by him and furnished with
a frontage of three hundred feet. Through Lord
Selsey's daughters it passed to the Vernon Harcourts,
of Nuneham ; by these it was sold to a China merchant,
Frederick Bower, who in turn disposed of it to its
present owner. Mr. W. James has made many
improvements and additions. The original plan of
the building, however, is still preserved ; all the living
rooms open one out of another on the same floor. If
from some points of view a blamelessly refined fulfil-
96
West Dean and Normanhurst
ment of the best Pavilion ideal, this home of sweetness
and light is also a museum of beauty and art. The
pictures are good, the carpets and tapestry are the
union of rich magnificence and educated taste.
The host was famous with the big game of South
Africa long before Cecil Rhodes had exploited its
mines. The hall with its panelled ceiling and the
minstrel gallery are decorated with Libyan trophies
of the chase and, like the rest of the house, furnished
in the Louis XV. style. West Dean may be a more
perfect specimen than many others of the class to
which it belongs. Neither it nor they would have
achieved their reputation as mere monuments of
wisely expended wealth alone. Taste, tact, intelli-
gence, accomplishments, and continual thought on the
part of the hostess form equally essential conditions of
their fashionable renown.
Mr. Michael Grace's Battle Abbey was conceded,
even by the historian Freeman, to occupy ground over
which Senlac Fight raged. Lord Brassey's Norman-
hurst looks down upon the entire length and breadth
of the authentic field, from the point where the
standard was set up to that where Harold fell.
Normanhurst, as may be gathered from its name,
marks the position occupied by the invading force.
Battle, on the other side of the litde valley which
separated the two armies, more especially indicates the
Saxon ground, confronting the Norman positions, and
beyond them the long blue line of the Channel. No
situation could be more interestingly picturesque than
that of Normanhurst, or by its international associa-
tions better suited to the home of a family created by
97 G
The Fashionable South Downs
a man who has left his impress in characters equally
clear upon all parts of England and France. The
Cheshire farmer's son, the Thomas Brassey whose
iron roads had become his enduring monument before
the Victorian age began, died at Hastings in the last
month of 1870. Thus the Sussex palace which,
inhabited by the son, has acquired, within and beyond
seas, a fame corresponding to that of the father's
labours that formed its foundation, was to be viewed
by the elder Brassey only in his dreams.
Twelve years before his death an event, equally
interesting to France and England, had powerfully
impressed the popular mind with the world-uniting
influence of Thomas Brassey's work. On the 4th of
August, 1858, the royal yacht Victoria and Albert,
exactly at noon, came up with the French squadron
that was to form the royal escort some six miles out
at sea from Cherbourg breakwater. This visit of
the Queen and the Prince- Consort with the future
Edward VII., then a boy of seventeen, had long been
looked forward to and was in all minds and lips. On
his way from Paris to meet his English visitors
Napoleon III. had opened the railway between
Mantes and Cherbourg. In that line the Queen's
subjects had taken an interest from the first, for,
like the railway from Rouen to Havre, it had been
designed by an English engineer and constructed by
an English contractor ; the former of these was Joseph
Locke, the latter the founder of the Normanhurst
family. As if to complete the line of communication
with all parts of the earth, Thomas Brassey the
second steered his yacht, the Sunbeanty into every
98
A New House as a Political Force
creek and corner of the oceans unfolded on our
planet. It was not enough for him to bring home
mementoes of his voyages that have given to 24, Park
Lane, and to Normanhurst the look of annexes to the
South Kensington Museum.
In due course, when the Sunbeam was again riding
at its anchorage in English waters, Sir Thomas and
Lady Brassey received in London, or more frequently
on the south coast, the Empire's remotest citizens,
who recognised in the Brassey name and its associa-
tions the emblem and the earnest of solidarity of the
Anglo-Saxon race. With these mingled, of course,
a crowd of other guests. In the summer of 1885 Mr.
Gladstone had been cruising with the Brasseys in the
North Sea. At this time suspicions of the Liberal
leader's Home Rule proclivities were beginning to be
rife. His letters to Lord Hartington filled that states-
man with misgivings lest his own conviction of Irish
affairs should result in a severance from his political
chief. During this period Normanhurst remained in
a ferment of agitation, and, like other of the new
political houses, less splendid, the source of ceaseless
rumours concerning compromise or arrangement
between the leader and the led. At Normanhurst
the Liberal stalwarts declared the party would be
saved, and in 1886 the "Grand Old Man" made Tom
Brassey a lord. In 1895 immediate danger to Imperial
unity seemed to have blown over. The State could
spare the master of Normanhurst for a time to the
governorship of Victoria. Whatever his party ties or
Imperial preoccupations, the owner of the south coast
palace never neglected the duties of a literary and
The Fashionable South Downs
artistic Maecenas. The older generation of writers
was represented among the Brassey guests by the
reputed original of Warrington in " Pendennis,"
George Stovin Venables ; by Augustus Hare, of the
Hares of Hurstmonceux, already described, then
settled at Holmhurst, Hastings, the most variously
accomplished, the most socially omniscient of the
country-house " tame-cats " of his time, ready wherever
he might meet her, at Normanhurst or elsewhere, to
cap the venerable and voluble Mrs. Duncan-Stewart's
best peerage stories and personal reminiscences ; by
"Big Higgins," otherwise Matthew, the "Jacob
Omnium " of the Times, of the Cornhill Magazine
in its infancy ; by John Ormsby, the Spanish traveller
and scholar ; by two other pillars of the Saturday
Review under Douglas Cook — H. S. Maine, the
author of "Ancient Law," and Charles Austin, some-
time Fellow of St. John's, Oxford, who, in one of his
Saturday articles, had devised for the Daily Tele-
graph, when an infant print, the adhesive label of
"Jupiter Junior." At Normanhurst also Laurence
Oliphant made one of his occasional reappearances
in society, and a younger author, in something like
Oliphant's vein, Mr. W. H. Mallock, philosophically
wearing the laurels of his " New Republic," showed
himself as the literary lion of the London season.
Never did so much of visible delight beam forth from
the features of an aged artist as when at Normanhurst,
like the "Ancient Mariner," he held spellbound by his
glittering eye a knot of ladies captive to his tongue.
J. R. Herbert, R.A., had really persuaded himself
that his native land was not Wales, but Gaul. He
100
J. R. Herbert and Butler-Johnstone
pronounced his name in the Gallic fashion, as if "Air-
bair," and affected a broken English in his talk. A
fervently devout Catholic, he had recently seen in the
Oxford Bodleian an old manuscript on the Magdalen.
This discovery hurried him off to the mountain hermi-
tage of St. Maximin in Provence, where, according to
tradition, the sainted sinner died. In a glass case on
the altar was the Magdalen's skull ; by special favour
Herbert was allowed to take it in his hand. He thus
adoringly saw the outline of the profile of " our Lord's
dear friend herself." A vivacious young lady among
the artist's listeners at Normanhurst wanted to know
how one could be sure of all this. " How can one
help it," was the pained reply, " when it is all written
in the Acts of the Apostles ? "
** Will make the best maiden speech of his year,
have his pockets clean picked by the Turk, and die
in a Paris slum without a sou in his pocket." So,
as he rode down to a Harrow speech-day, did Lord
Palmerston prophesy to his companion concerning
a young Oxford man who had got into Parliament
in 1857. The prediction fulfilled itself nearly to the
letter. H. A. Monro Butler- Johnstone, shortly after
taking his seat for Canterbury, received Disraeli's con-
gratulations on his oratorical dSu^ with the cleverest
discourse about foreign policy which the great man
had heard for many a long day. He squandered
his princely wealth upon the Sultan and his
entourage. Towards the close of the nineteenth
century he did breathe his last, not in an absinthe
shop, but in a pharmacy on the boulevards, with
nothing about him to pay his funeral expenses. The
lOI
The Fashionable South Downs
subject of this literally fulfilled prediction at the time
of its making was a young man with an intellectual
countenance, not otherwise particularly well favoured,
with narrow chest, almost indeed none at all, and
generally with the physique of the thread-paper.
During the earlier seventies he was a frequent guest at
another Sussex country house, not far from Norman-
hurst. This was Sir Julian Goldsmid's Fairlight.
Owning a substantial slice of Brighton, Goldsmid
reserved his hospitalities at his house in Adelaide
Crescent in that town for the most distinguished of
his political friends and sometimes even of his foes. It
was upon one of those visits that Lord Beaconsfield,
revisiting, after many years, with his host, the Old
Steine, remarked : " Every great city is the embodi-
ment of a great idea ; every town of pleasure should
be the expression of a caprice ; but," he added, "for
me, like most people of maturer years, the memories
of this place make it rather too like a cemetery by
the sea." As the pair extended their ramble west-
ward, the guest stopped for a moment before the
house in Brunswick Terrace, where he mentally
located the card-party — one of his most powerful
bits of descriptive writing in " The Young Duke."
"Yes," he said, in meditative reference to the scene,
" there it was that, for two days and two nights on
end, the Baron de Berghem sat ankle-deep in cards,
no one speaking a word or showing any sign of
emotion till Temple Dice could not prevent an
expression of disgust when he found that a false
tooth had got loose." At Sir Julian Goldsmid's,
the Etonian Butler-Johnstone met a Parliamentary
I02
Ralph Earle and Disraeli
contemporary whose Harrow promise rivalled
Johnstone's own Eton performances. This was
Ralph Earle, a prodigy of political precocity and
Parliamentary promise while a sixth-form boy at
Harrow ; Earle, however, had too strong a suggestion
in him of the Randal Leslie, in " My Novel,"
for the prejudices of his time and too much
ambition of independent initiative to suit his chief;
he really possessed something of his master's aptitude
for turning fact into fiction by the employment of
qualities that recalled the Italian state-craft and
conspiracy of the Middle Ages. "If intellectual
power, decked out by subtlety and finesse, could
have made a great career, Ralph Earle," said
Disraeli, "would have been a success, instead of
being as brilliant a failure as his friend Lord Henry
Lennox, without Henry's eloquence." No man was
ever less fitted for a deliberative assembly than Ralph
Earle ; none had ever sacrificed so much to get there.
Disraeli, the object of his early idolatry, chanced to
meet him when an attache at the Paris Embassy,
took a fancy to him, and eventually found him a seat
in the Commons, a place at the Board of Control,
and made him his private secretary. The last of
these positions realised Earle's fondest dreams.
Those were the days in which the " Coningsby "
series of novels filled clever and showy lads with
Parliamentary ambitions, just as Thackeray's " Pen-
dennis " sent others into journalism, or James Grant's,
Charles Lever's, and Captain Marryat's romances
impelled others into the army or to sea. The acute
attack of Disraeli-on-the-brain eventually proved fatal
103
The Fashionable South Downs
to Ralph Earle's career. The months occupied by
the Derby- Disraeli Household Franchise Bill of 1867
were a period of plot and counter-plot, of secret
machination, of open desertion by followers from
leaders on both sides. As a relief to the uncongenial
rough-and-tumble work of Parliamentary warfare,
Earle's temperament impelled him to negotiation
with the malcontents. Liberal as well as Conservative.
These connections brought him into hostility against
the scheme of democratic enfranchisement, and so
into conflict with his patron as one of its authors.
At last he got up in the House and openly denounced
Disraeli for his betrayal of Tory principles. Disraeli,
sitting in contemptuous silence, took no notice
whatever of the attack. Leaving the place soon
afterwards, the great man met one of his private
secretaries, a peer. " I am not," was his sole
comment on the incident, "surprised at the moral
aspect of the thing, for I knew the man too well ;
I confess, however, to have been taken a little aback
by the stupidity of the performance." The statesman,
who had withdrawn Earle from the diplomatic employ-
ment, which exactly fitted his powers and tastes, to
the entirely unsuitable Parliamentary field, could, of
course, politically crush his ioxxxi^r protdgd ; he could
not, however, crush the brilliant personality of the
versatile rebel, nor prevent his finding a new and
pecuniarily profitable career in which Earle's diplo-
matic and Parliamentary experience were turned to
good account. At the time of his being a guest at
Fairlight he had bested all competitors as a negotiator
of concessions from foreign Governments to English
104
Sir H. Austin Lee at Fairlight
capitalists and contractors for public works. Helped,
it may have been, by the great mercantile position
of the Liverpool family whose name he bore, he
amassed in this way a small fortune, leaving behind
him not much less than half a million, greatly to his
friends' and family's surprise. It was characteristic
of the man's curious reserve that, with large sums at
his bankers', when, in his last illness, going off to a
German spa, as if to allay any suspicion of his real
resources he asked his father to lend him ;^50.
To a younger generation in politics or diplomacy
represented among the Fairlight guests, belongs the
most intelligent, resourceful, and r^pandu of Foreign
Office clerks of his day, now on the staff of the British
Embassy in Paris, and a member of the Suez Canal
Board, Sir H. Austin Lee, as well as the shrewdest
and most genial of Scotch baronets, successively
secretary to Lord Goschen and Mr. Gladstone, Sir
James Carmichael. Other guests presenting a
gravely picturesque contrast to the cosmopolitan
company, sometimes surprised the Fairlight visitors.
Doctor E. M. Goulburn, the Balliol contemporary
of Jowett, Lake, and Stanley, a former Rugby head-
master, afterwards Dean of Norwich, passing his last
days at Tonbridge Wells, with his silver hair as a
veritable crown of glory, was tempted more than
once to the Fairlight dinner-table. To keep him in
countenance came another cleric of his generation,
the Rev. James Pycroft, erectly bearing the burden
of his many years to the last, whose book, "The
Cricket-field," made him a father of nineteenth-
century literature on the game. Both these clergy-
105
The Fashionable South Downs
men, during the years they Hved at Brighton, had
first known there Julian Goldsmid as their ground
landlord. Additional variety was given to these
parties by two or three of the most remarkable old
ladies who, in unabated vivacity, ever survived
their generation. One of these, a dowager Lady
Donoughmore, abounded in Irish stories. " My good
woman," said a very stiff and starched, severe-looking
English settler in Galway to a Connaught mendicant,
" I haven't a penny to give you," " No, but your
honour looks like to die soon ; you've an awful ugly
face, I pity the poor worms that will have to eat
you." From Brighton, where she might be staying
with Mrs. Aid6, occasionally came over a lady whose
apparition reminded many of Cinderella's godmother
or of some other good -old fairy. This was the
Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who invariably opened her
anecdotal series with a Disraelian story really in the
great man's manner. " I hope you are quite well,
Lord Beaconsfield," she had said. " No one is ^ut^e
well," responded the oracle ; "I am tolerably well."
Mrs. Stewart piqued herself on being of the present
as well as on having a memory articulate with
phonographs of the past. Among her most modern
acquaintances were the actress, Miss Genevieve
Ward, and her mother. " Strange," some one had
said, "that this handsome and stately actress should
remain single.'" "She is nothing of the kind," put
in Mrs. Stewart, " and this is the story of her
marriage. A Russian nobleman. Count Guerra,
had made her an offer, had been accepted, but
indefinitely delayed or point-blank refused marriage.
1 06
Mrs. Duncan Stewart on Miss Anderson
The Czar, appealed to on the lady's behalf,
induced his noble to prove himself faithful to his
troth. "Good," was the Count's comment; "but
my wife shall suffer for it all her life." On the
day of the ceremony, the bride, as if dressed for a
funeral, entered the church with her mother. On
leaving the church after the nuptial service had been
gone through, the newly made wife was hurried into
a carriage by herself, a titular countess without her
count. She never saw her husband again." An
undercurrent of more or less serious thought seemed
to flow beneath Mrs. Stewart's show of conversa-
tional frivolity. She often talked about her interest
in a future state. " Whichever it is to be, I have,"
she would say, " good friends in both places."
Another of the Fairlight guests, old Lady Airlie,
united something like Mrs. Stewart's years with
conversation of a very different kind. "As a child,"
she said, " I was one of a decidedly quarrelsome
family, but we were taught that it was ill-bred
towards Heaven to complain, even of the weather."
This lady had known the Carlyles intimately.
Unlike some, she had never found the Chelsea sage
other than agreeable with his acquaintances and
pleasant to his wife. " To know," she continued,
" Lady Ashburton was to adore her; I, like others,
worshipped her. So did not only Carlyle, but
Mrs. Carlyle, jealous of her though she was."
Occasionally the Fairlight drawing-room supplied a
specimen of the aesthete as Dumaurier was then
drawing him in Punch. His dress was a complete
suit of black velvet and salmon-coloured stockings ;
107
The Fashionable South Downs
he joined the shooting party, but he generally fell
down when the gun went off. That, however, did
not prevent his charming the ladies. " You do
not look well, Mr. Maudle," said one of these.
" Thanks ; I am not ill, only tired. The fact is
I picked a primrose in the wood yesterday ; it seemed
sick, and I have been sitting up all night with it."
It may have been one of the divines already men-
tioned who contributed an episcopal story which
seemed new to the Fairlight conversation. The
Bishop of London, having given a cabman only
sixpence over his fare from St. Paul's Churchyard
to Fulham, was asked by the driver whether
St. Paul, if he came again, would be living in that
palace. " Certainly not," came the answer, " he
would be at Lambeth, and it would be a shilling
fare." The already mentioned Mrs. Duncan Stewart,
one of the most regular among the Fairlight guests,
posed as a patroness of writers and painters, but
uttered sharp criticism about both. James Whistler
was then at his zenith. "His pictures," said the
lady, " always look to me as if he had upset the
ink-pot and left Providence to work out the result."
One little entertainment always provided for the
Fairlight guests was unique. The excellent cook,
an Italian, had also a perfect mastery of sleight of
hand. After dinner the chef, attired as a conjuror,
performed with hats, handkerchiefs, watches, rings,
and playing-cards tricks that recalled the Egyptian
Hall in its prime.
io8
CHAPTER IV
BRIDGE AND THE KENTISH GANG
The First Marquis of Abergavenny and the Kentish Gang — The
first Earl, at Oxford — Eridge Castle — Mr. Markham Spofforth
— The Junior Carlton Club as an Eridge growth — Political
movements at Eridge — Its earlier history — Hayes Place — Its
associations with the Pitts — Holwood Park — Pitt and Wilberforce
and the Abolition of the Slave Trade — Chevening — The
Stanhopes and Pitts — Chevening's wealth of Pitt memorials —
Its nineteenth-century parties and their national results —
Knole : its place in English literature, politics, and society — Its
visitors' book from Ben Jonson, Raleigh, Bacon to Sir W. H.
Russell and Ismail Pasha — Hever Castle : its hosts and guests
from the Boleyns to Dickens, Millais, and Burnand — Leeds
Castle — Famous guests of two centuries — Beckenham and the
lucky Burrell marriages — With Darwin at Downe — Lord
Avebury's guests and pets at High Elms — Herbert Spencer on
himself and others — Lord Goschen at Seacox Heath — His
Oxford visitors and others — The Kentish country house as
a theatrical training school — Harbledown — The Canterbury Old
Stagers — With the laureate in the Ashford district — Bedgebury:
its personal and literary story — Hempsted and Lord Cranbrook
— Chilstone and Mr. Akers-Douglas — LuUingstone, Sir William
Hart-Dyke, and fish dinners on the lower Thames.
WHAT the Bloomsbury Gang- was under
George HI., the Kentish Gang became
and remained during the second half of the Victorian
age. The earlier coterie took its name from the
109
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
Duke of Bedford's London house ; the later from
the fact that its rural headquarters were at Eridge
Castle on the Kent and Sussex borderland, and that the
most active of its earlier members were connected
with the county of hop-fields and cherry-orchards. The
most strenuous spirit of the Bloomsbury cabal, the
Marquis of Stafford, survived to 1823. Three years
after that date the light was first seen by the
generalissimo of the Eridge division, the fifth Earl
of Abergavenny, who, appropriately enough, in the
year of Benjamin Disraeli's transformation into Earl
of Beaconsfield, 1876, became the first Marquis
of Abergavenny. " Burgeny " was the way in which
Lord Burleigh wrote it when penning his account
of Queen Elizabeth's six days' stay, in 1573. For
more than five hundred years the ennobled Nevills
have been settled at Eridge. The first marquis
of his line is also the first of his name since George
Nevill, third Baron of Raby, to append the initials
K.G. to his name. Just a century before the present
owner of Eridge attained his majority, his ancestor,
the earliest of the Abergavenny earls, filled his family
at home with sore misgivings during a certain Easter
vacation. In the April of 1747 a disagreeable
incident occurred at the Oxford college, in which Lord
Abergavenny was passing his rackety undergraduate-
ship. At the foot of the staircase on which were his
lordship's rooms, there was found one morning the dead
body of a servant with a fractured skull. "Wilful
homicide " was not alleged against the noble student
and his companions — the chief of these being Lord
Charles Scott of the Buccleuch family. Every one
no
Eridge Past and Present
seems to have been more or less tipsy ; the proba-
biHty is that one of the noble gownsmen kicked
the fellow downstairs. The man was too drunk
to fall discreetly, and so his end. Without any
reference, however implicit, to the Oxonian from
Eridge, the coroner's jury brought in the verdict
of " wilful murder, against a person or persons
unknown." The head of the family took, however,
rather a severe view of the escapade ; his son and
heir did not keep the next University term ; his
college days, indeed, seem to have come to an abrupt
end. The " My Lord Burgeny's house," visited by
the great Tudor queen, was, of course, not that
inhabited by his successors in the family honours.
The aspect of the present nineteenth-century built
castle contains no suggestion of the Nevills' feudal
greatness. The castellated tradition is perpetuated
by the square tower that surmounts the dwelling,
rather than by an imposing front of battlements.
That which most impressed Burleigh when attending
his royal mistress at Eridge was the grand variety
of its park scenery. This remains its most command-
ing feature to-day, and the Eridge rocks are as
perfect and imposing to-day as when they where
first admired by the Elizabethan courtiers.
Before the first Marquis of Abergavenny became
the master of' Eridge Castle, he had taken under
his special protection the renascent Conservatism
of his time. Asked by a neighbouring Sussex
agriculturist, in sympathy with the Eridge politics,
whether his lordship had a good head on his
shoulders, a Kentish farmer replied he could not
III
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
tell, for he had only seen that nobleman twice in
his life, and that out of doors. On both occasions,
it seemed, the master of E ridge was kneeling down,
and had thrust all his person above his shoulders
into a rabbit-hole, for ascertaining whether a ferret
was doing its work properly inside. From earliest
boyhood a working sportsman in every branch of
out-door amusement, Lord Nevill had mingled
with tenant farmers and their men in every kind
of open-air sport. In this he did but follow the
example of his family's founder, the mediaeval king-
maker. To win the commonalty on any subject
to his own patrician side he believed, with the
" last of the barons," that there was nothing like
letting his inferiors know and feel the great noble
to be of the same clay as themselves and a sharer
in their tastes. Long before the Conservative
Household Suffrage Bill of 1867 became law, or
had even been introduced, the heir to the Aber-
gavenny earldom never for a moment doubted the
existence of the Conservative working man. The
1868 elections gave the Liberals a majority of
nearly 130 for disestablishing the Irish Church.
Disraeli's resignation had scarcely been followed
by Gladstone's instalment in the premiership when
Lord Nevill, frequenting the London music-halls
for the better observation of the political signs of
the times, saw conclusive evidence of the reaction
being already fairly on foot. For the peerage
generally " the press " used to mean the Times
alone. Enlightened on these matters by its most
serviceable guest, Mr Markham Spofforth, E ridge
112
Genesis of the Junior Carlton
Castle first discovered that " the party " had a
natural ally and a most effective instrument in the
penny newspaper. By this time Lord Nevill had
developed into the fifth Earl of Abergavenny. E ridge
became as much the symbol and the shelter of the
new and progressive Conservatism as Mr. Markham
Spofforth's Inverness cape. Yet it really seemed
but the other day that the fourteenth Lord Derby
had appealed to Eridge to remonstrate with the
Kentish Gang on its lukewarm loyalty to Benjamin
Disraeli. " Pity that you could not find an English-
man," grumbled the Nevill division. " He is exactly
like the new ostler at the Tunbridge Wells inn,"
who was, of course, afterwards always known as
" Dizzy." As for the real Dizzy, Eridge had begun
by cold-shouldering him ; it was there, however,
that he was first recognised by the party Brahmins
as the one man whose genius could convert the
new democracy to the old Tory faith. Throughout
these operations the political master of the ceremonies
at Eridge, the already named Mr. Spofforth, the
Conservative election manager had made himself
invaluable. Equally good with the gun and the
billiard-cue, this clear and level-headed lawyer
had shown his good Yorkshire wits in mastering
the urban democracy created by the 1867 Bill, as
thoroughly as his fellow-countrymen know the points
of a horse. One product of the Spofforth visits
to Eridge was the foundation of the Junior Carlton
Club. It happened in this way. The steady spread
of the new Conservatism brought a fiood of applica-
tions, chiefly from country solicitors, for membership
113 H
Eridge and the Kentish Gang
of the Carlton. That club was then overcrowded.
The Conservative Club in St. James's Street closed
its doors against " gentlemen of the long gown."
Coming up from Eridge one morning, Mr. Spofforth
called on Disraeli, then leader in the Commons,
at his house in Grosvenor Gate. "A capital idea,"
was the verdict ; "see Lord Derby" (then Premier).
To St. James's Square the visitor accordingly
at once went. " I approve,"- were the peer's words,
" on condition that the curtain does not rise before
the house is full." At first members came in
rather more slowly than might have been expected.
The applications soon increased by leaps and bounds.
As Mr. Spofforth had foreseen, the completed new
institution soon furnished Conservatism with the
most powerful corporation it had known since, in
1832, the efforts of an earlier Tory wire-puller had
been instrumental in bringing into existence the
parent Carlton itself.
For some years later than the time now referred
to, Eridge maintained its old authority ; the Kentish
Gang parted with none of its power. A Kentish
baronet, Sir W. Hart Dyke, of Lullingstone Castle,
was one of the whips. Mr. Spofforth, indeed, had
for some time given up the work of election manage-
ment. It was a Kentish member, Mr. J. E. Gorst
(Chatham), who ruled in his place, himself to be
followed by another Kentish organiser of victory,
Mr. R. W. E. Middleton. The master of Eridge
continued to play a chief part in all matters touching
the internal discipline of the party down to the last
quarter of the nineteenth century. Dissatisfaction
114
The Nevills in their Generations
with Sir Stafford Northcote's languid leadership
began to organise itself below the Conservative
gangway in 1880, while Lord Beaconsfield still lived.
Eridge in council decided that discipline must be
maintained. From the Castle issued to Lord Randolph
Churchill the mandate that those who aspire to rule
must first learn to obey. Not that the master of
the Kentish pack objected to a reasonable amount
of sport. In 1884 it was the Castle henchmen rather
than the Whitehall or even the Carlton contingent
which put pressure on Lord Salisbury to insist upon
having the scheme of county suffrage before him
in its entirety as a condition of accepting the principle
of the Bill. How the Eridge ultimatum was met
by the Longleat negotiations will be seen in the
Wiltshire visits that we are about to make. The
authority thus exercised by Eridge in modern
politics may have been enhanced by the dignity
of age belonging to its associations, if not to the
actual edifice. Before the Norman conquest its
ten thousand acres of park land had belonged to Earl
Godwin, King Harold's father. Afterwards it
remained a royal possession till Edward HI., who
granted it to Hugh Despencer. His heiress, by
her marriage with Richard Beauchamp, Earl of
Worcester, brought it to the Nevills. To-day the
Nevill domain extends almost uninterruptedly to
Lewes and Brighton. Of this vast tract, a large
slice came, not from the Despencers, but from the
De Warrens, whose daughters " acred up to the chin "
their respective husbands of the Beauchamp, Howard,
and Sackville name. The commandership-in-chief of
US
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
the Kentish Gang comes to the owner of Eridge
originally from the Norman Conqueror's brother,
Odo, bishop of Bayeux, whose endowment with the
Kentish manor of Birling gave him that foothold
in the county which was to form the territorial germ
of the political suzerainty of Eridge.
The place of Kent in English politics had been
a distinguished one long before the Eridge pheasant
covers became famous. The organisation of a
Kentish Gang- had indeed beg-un while the Blooms-
bury Gang was yet in the plenitude of its power.
The political antidote and rival to Bedford Whiggism
proceeded from the Kentish country house just out
of Bromley village. Hayes Place, dear equally to
both the Pitts, was united by the closest links with the
life or death history of Chatham and his son ; it en-
joyed a celebrity with eighteenth-century Englishmen
rivalling that attached by the religious Greek to
Delphi or Dodona. " The oracle at Hayes," writes
Horace Walpole (March 26, 1778), "has been con-
sulted, but shrouds its dignity in ambiguity ; the god
himself takes the form of his own Pythoness, enve-
loped in flannels, that are the symbols of vast vigour
of mind beneath." This was the period in which
there were being submitted to Chatham names for
vacant offices of State. " Whether Lord Rockingliam
shall go to Ireland, the Duke of Richmond shall
be this, Charles Fox shall be t'other, Mr. Burke
shall be something else, &c., &c., after, of course. Lord
Camden, Lord Shelburne, the Duke of Grafton,
Barre and Dunning have been appointed to the
essential posts." Chatham bought Hayes from the
116
Holwood and the Pitts
Harrison family in 1757 ; the new house that he built
is the plain structure in white brick still standing.
Originally, however, the walls were of stone. The
outer brick shell was the work of Thomas Walpole,
who possessed the place for a few years, but restored
it at a price, in 1767, to its original owner. His own
improvements of the grounds so endeared the place
to the first Pitt as to grow into his very being. The
belts of trees, with which he surrounded the dwelling,
have not yet disappeared. The story of these
plantations is familiar. They were raised with a
rapidity till then unknown. Night was not allowed
to interrupt the work. With the help of torches,
successive relays of labourers continued their toil
through the hours of darkness to the dawn of day.
Associations of Chatham's son are not confined to
Hayes, where he was born, bred, and lived. At
a distance of two miles, close to Keston village, are
the grassy undulations and woods of Holwood Park.
Here was the scene of the birds'-nesting expeditions
of the younger Pitt, recalled to the poet Rogers by
Lord Bathurst who used to take part in them. Here,
too, it was that, walking with his son, Chatham
impressed on him the need of prudence, with the
remark, " Recollect when you have grown up, it is
not you, but your brother, who will be Lord
Chatham " ; " But," rejoined the spirited lad, " I shall
be William Pitt." "That," pointing to Holwood
House, " is the place I mean some day shall be
mine." Such had been the words of Chatham's
second son to Bathurst. It was not, as has been
said, at a tea-table on the Holwood lawn that the
117
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
second Pitt, then living in the house, had discussed
slave-trade abolition with his friend William Wil-
berforce. William Wilberforce's son, the bishop,
who will afterwards appear in these pages, pointed
out to the present writer in Holwood Park, where
it begins to descend into Keston Vale, the very oak-
tree beneath whose shade the outlines of the measure
were settled between the two friends in 1788. At
a later date, in 1863, when occupied by Lord
Cranworth, Holwood was the scene of many
conversations between its then owner and his guest
Lord Westbury about the " Essays and Reviews "
judgment. Westbury was then Chancellor; before
delivering his judgment on 'the subject, he talked
it over with Cranworth under the Holwood trees.
A later tradition identifies the same place with the
spot on which Benjamin Disraeli and W. E. Glad-
stone met for the last time as personal friends. A
more authentic tradition, however, gives Lord Derby's
house in St. James's Square as the site of the
incident.
The most famous of country houses in this
neighbourhood is connected by the ties of personal
association and family connection equally with
Hayes and Holwood. Chevening Park was the
home of Lord Chatham's daughter, the third
Countess Stanhope, the wife of the democratic
Earl, known indifferently as " Citizen Stanhope "
and "Citizen Charles." It was thus the haunt
of her daughter, the famous Lady Hester Stanhope,
before the future Queen of the Lebanon began
to keep house for her uncle, William Pitt the second,
118
Chatham Memorials at Chevening
in Downing Street. The picturesque road, winding
through the Park up to the brow of the opposite
hill, was made at Chatham's suggestion. The
house inside contains some Pitt relics not yet
catalosfued in the pfuide-ofooks. Thus there is the
elder Pitt's portrait, painted for Chevening at the
instance of Sibyl, the second Countess. Of
Chatham's son there remain the despatch-box in
which his papers were always carried to the House,
the original manuscript of a play in blank verse,
" Laurentius," written by the future statesman at
the age of thirteen, and twice acted at Chevening
exclusively by members of the Pitt family. There
is also a locket containing the younger Pitt's hair,
which formerly belonged to his devoted niece,
the imperial Lady Hester; of her, however, most
of the Chevening memorials have disappeared.
One link of union between Chevening and the
outside world was severed in the last quarter of
the eighteenth century when the road traversed
by Chaucer's wayfarers was closed and the Pilgrims'
Trackway, running westward across the Park,
ceased to be trodden by the general public.
Among the Chevening parties given by the historian,
the fifth Lord Stanhope, none surpassed in eventful
interest that with which the New Year opened in
i860. Three days before, the historian Macaulay
had died at Holly Lodge, Kensington. Of all
Lord Stanhope's friends he had been the most
intimate. The Chevening influence at once set
itself in motion therefore to secure for the dead
writer a place in Westminster Abbey. Henry Reeve,
119
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
editor of the Edinburgh, Abraham Hay ward,
Goldwin Smith, George Grote, the historian of
Greece, with his irrepressible wife, were among the
first to sign their names in the Chevening Hbrary
to a round-robin, begging the dean to assign a
place within the august precinct. There, on the
following 9th of January, the funeral took place.
Under three dynasties, like the London roof of
the family in Grosvenor Place, Chevening has been
famous as a guest house throughout Europe and
on both sides of the Atlantic. Its cosmopolitan
renown beean before the then Lord Mahon had
finished his history. It was augmented after he
had come into the title. It was perpetuated by
his successor ; under him, indeed, the interest of
the Chevening hospitalities was widened ; his brother,
Edward Stanhope, when Colonial Secretary, brought
with him to the place a constant succession of
visitors from Greater Britain.
As regards both antiquity and diversity of historic
interest or personal association, the neighbouring
Knole does not yield to Chevening. Almost a
part of English literature, Knole specially connects
itself with the revival of English poetry and poetic
genius, after having been almost crushed out during
the Marian persecutions. To that depression,
indeed, other than religious agencies contributed.
English literature was then strongly under Italian
influence. The spirit of melancholy, breathed by
Petrarch and his most widely-read disciples, possessed
the charm of congeniality for an age steeped in the
religious gloom, or at least in the sombre pensiveness
120
Knole as an Intellectual Force
of the Reformation. In England, too, the air was
heavily charged with the moral issues of theology
as well as of politics. The lighter forces of the
renaissance had spent themselves. The fates and
furies rather than the muses seemed the presiding
divinities of the period. Even thus might not
a popular appetite be created for poetry which, while
not less historically representative than Chaucer's,
should adapt its music to the sterner tune of a
vexed time. Such were the considerations and
questions often present to the mind of the then owner
of Knole. The very murmur of the trees in
his park, during his solitary rambles, seemed, in
his own words, " charged with strange, sad melodies."
Could he but interpret and express these aright,
the result might be verses which should form a link
between Chaucer and Spenser, which his contem-
poraries would be compelled, and which posterity
would be instructed or delio-hted to read. He had
already made for himself a place among the drama-
tists of the day. Thomas Sackville now conceived
the idea of essaying for his own time, in the
Chaucerian stanza, what had been done by the
father of British verse for an earlier age. The ideas,
the aspirations, the lessons, and the chief personages
of Tudor times were to be reflected by the
Elizabethan minister in his book, which was to
be a link between "The Canterbury Tales" and
" The Faerie Queene." Thomas Sackville, afterwards
to be known as Lord Buckhurst, High Treasurer,
had, in 1562, won literary fame at Court by his
" Gorboduc," the earliest English tragedy in blank
121
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
verse. It was then the fashion for noble and wealthy
courtiers to entertain their sovereigfn with theatrical
representations beneath their own roofs. Queen
Elizabeth is known to have witnessed and admired
this play. The performance, at which she assisted,
may therefore have been given at Knole, then,
as for years afterwards, the finest country house
in Kent belonging to a commoner. Spenser knew
it well ; having, as he courteously said, got the idea
of his •' Faerie Queene " from the " Mirror for
Magistrates," he pleasantly spoke of his own great
poem as in a way a product of Knole. For the
sixteenth-century owner of the place, Sackville's
father, though holding high financial office under
Henry VIII., was not noble, either by title or even
associations. He had married the daughter of
Lord Mayor Bruges. His Kentish home was famous
as a resort of city magnates or of State officials
with city connections before, in his son's day, the
founders of English prose, Francis Bacon and
Walter Raleigh, among poets, Ben Jonson and
Edmund Spenser, met at the Knole dining-table.
The place then acquired some of the special
distinction already belonging to Penshurst. Not
overvaluing themselves on their large share in
the great transactions of their time, the masters of
Knole were pleasant and kindly hosts, fond of
having their neighbours of all degrees about them,
specially interested in young people, ever making
friends among posterity by their kindness to children.
The sixteenth - century country houses may have
known no formal visitors' book. Famous g-uests
123
Guest Books in the Old Days
were in the habit, for the instruction of future ages,
of leaving behind them some tribute to their host's
quahties. This might take the form of an epigram,
a stanza, or a prose sentiment. Sir Philip Sidney,
on leaving Knole, attached to a copy of his host's
" Mirror for Magistrates " a prose compliment to
its notable morality. Spenser, a more frequent
visitor, dropped a metrical panegyric on the private
virtues of "its truly noble author." "Who," he
exclaims, " more loving to his wife, more tender
to his little ones, more fast to his friend, more
moderate to his enemy, more true to his word ? "
Buckhurst died the first Earl of Dorset. His
grandson must have degenerated from the cool,
practical sagacity of his Tudor ancestors. The
third Lord Dorset was conspicuous among the country
hosts of his time for two things — the magnificence
of his life and the frequency of his duels. The
former brought him to poverty ; the latter to his
death. He had already sold his Kentish estate
to a certain Smith of Wandsworth. By a process
that has been euphemistically described as repurchase,
but that seems to have been merely a resumption
due to favour in high places, his grandson, the fifth
Lord Dorset, restored Knole to the family. After-
wards he became the first representative of the
short-lived Dorset dukedom. The third Duke's
widow married Lord Whitworth, successively English
ambassador to Russia and France. This marriao-e
o
made the modern Knole the resort of diplomatic
society. From Knole first went forth Whitworth's
account of his interview with Napoleon, which
J23
Eridge and the Kentish Gang
produced an explosion of national feeling against the
French Emperor. Napoleon's insults had been levelled
personally, not only against the ambassador whom
he charged with complicity in the murder of the
Czar, Paul I., but against the English people.
" I find you've got Delawarr on your list ; pray
don't lick him, for he is a brother peer." So, with
a Harrow monitor named Wildman, interceded the
youthful Byron, vainly of course ; for the poet's
luckless friend promptly received a double dose of the
monitorial cane. Byron's chum was George John, the
fifth Lord Delawarr. Another of the poet's school-
fellows of Knole associations was the fourth and last
Duke of Dorset, often visited at Knole by Byron.
This final wearer of the dukedom, killed by a fall from
his horse (1815), left the estate to his sister, Lady Mary
Sackville. Dying in 1864, she bequeathed all share
in the property to another sister, her co-heiress. Lady
Elizabeth Sackville. This lady not only became
by marriage Countess of Delawarr, but was created
Baroness Buckhurst. Her son thus added the
barony of Buckhurst to the Delawarr earldom. That
peer, by his brilliant service in India under Lord
Gough, as well as during the Crimean campaign
at Alma, Balaclava, and Inkerman, associated the
modern Sackvilles with the chivalry and diplomacy
of his own age, after a manner becoming to their
sixteenth-century traditions. His brother and successor
was a clergyman, with a sober but sincere loyalty
to the picturesque ancestral genius of his house.
Benjamin Disraeli, when visiting Henry Hope at
the Deep Dene in Surrey, frequently went on to
124
Knole Visitors Old and New
his friends the Sackvilles at Knole. Thus, perhaps,
he became famiHar with the name he selected for
one of his characters in "Coningsby." The '* Buck-
hurst " of that novel was, in fact, none other than
the Baillie Cochrane who died Lord Lamington, and
whose daughter became seventh Lady Delawarr. In,
and for some years after, 1850, no resort of society
in the Sevenoaks district was visited by more
variously interesting guests than Knole. A Lord
Cantelupe of that period had died of rheumatic fever.
A frequent visitor at the place, Lord Malmesbury,
the Foreign Secretary, stricken by the same malady,
had recovered on a country doctor treatment of
calomel and strono" alkalis — the heir of Knole
having been plied by the fashionable medicine-men
with acids, principally lemon-juice. Dr. Quin, the
skilfully eclectic and unprecedentedly popular phy-
sician, was then at his fashionable zenith, curing
patients, more by the charm of his manner and the
wholesome suggestiveness of his talk, than by his
prescriptions. He seldom missed a week's end party
at Knole. The gatherings in which he took part
and the beneficent practical interest of the hosts
did much to bring the modern cult of the doctor
and the nurse into fashion. At the same time Knole
gradually became a recognised social rendezvous for
critical experts of foreign policy on both sides of
the House. Whiteside, overflowing with animal
spirits and Irish humour, meditated his oratorical
coups in Knole Park. Here the future Lord Cairns
had for the companion of his morning strolls the
cleverest and most animated Irish member of the
125
Eridge and the Kentish Gang
day, Seymour Fitzgerald, who sat for Horsham,
and who primed the most brilliant frondeur of his
period, the third Sir Robert Peel, of the trumpet-
like voice and the magnificent gestures, with the
latest news about the Danish duchies or the annexa-
tion of Savoy and Nice. With Peel was " Eothen "
Kinglake, ever preparing the most subtle and dainty
studies on these subjects, to be poured forth as
resonantly effective declamations by that son of his
first leader, whom Gladstone credited with the finest
organ in the St. Stephen's of his day. Penshurst
and Raby have never fully renewed the hospitable
splendours of their mediaeval meridian. Knole, how-
ever, throughout the Victorian age, continued to be
a social centre as interesting in its way, if not as
illustrious, as in Elizabethan days. Ismail Pasha
failed, indeed, to induce his host to give him the
opportunity of meeting either Lord Beaconsfield or
Lord Salisbury. But, as Lord Delawarr's guest in
the last century, that astute and agreeable Oriental
delighted his fellow-guests at Knole with a humorous
acceptance of ill-luck and a debonair gaiety which
never failed him in the darkest moment of transition
from splendour to obscurity or shame during the
parti-coloured melodramatic course that might have
been a plagiarism from the stage of opera-bouffe.
That happy quality elicited from another guest at
Knole, Sir William Howard Russell, the remark :
" Behold an Oriental whose philosophy blends the
fatalism of the Koran with the resignation of the
New Testament."
Social contrasts, as dramatically different and ex-
126
Hever, its Old Owners and New Tenants
tending over about as long a period as those of
Knole, have been witnessed at another Kentish
seat, Hever Castle, the birthplace of Anne Boleyn.
Hever at some points of its history illustrated the
sanguinary cynicism which was among the moral
endowments of Anne's royal husband. Waiting till the
death of his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Boleyn, then
Earl of Wiltshire, Henry VHI. claimed the property
in right of the wife he had beheaded. Having
thus possessed himself of the estate, he settled it
upon one of Anne Boleyn's successors in his con-
jugal affections. In the last quarter of the eighteenth
century and in a very different connection, Hever
Castle became a familiar name to visitors to the
Royal Academy of Art and to readers of Punch.
Attracted by the unique preservation of its most
ancient and characteristic features, by the diversified
beauty of the building, by its portcullised entrance,
above all by the surrounding moat, so redolent of
mediaevalism, a little company of artists, including
at least two future P.R.A.'s, — Millais and Poynter —
rented the place for their summer holiday. Among
their visitors, two were conspicuously frequent.
One of these was Charles Dickens, then dividing
his time between Broadstairs and Gad's Hill the
other was one of Mark Lemon's latest recruits on
the London Charivari, who afterwards succeeded
to his chair. While looking one Saturday evening
before dinner, with Millais at his side, into the moat
Dickens conceived the idea of that mystery of
" Edwin Drood " which he did not live to solve.
About the same time, F. C. Burnand, then writing
127
Eridge and the Kentish Gang
or meditating " Happy Thoughts " for Punch, found
inspiration for droll paragraphs with the natal strong-
hold of Queen Elizabeth's mother as their centre.
The contrasts of owners and visitors witnessed at
Hever are typical of those experienced by more
than one equally historical and picturesque house in
the southern counties. Hever of late years has
been so often let, notably to the artistic tenants
already mentioned, that one cannot be surprised at
the periodical, though as yet unfounded reports of
its being for sale. The same thing is, however, said
about another Kentish mansion that has seldom or
never been in any occupancy, except of its owners.
Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, resembles many or
most of the south of England fortresses in its past
associations with English queens. Before her im-
prisonment at Pevensey Joan of Navarre, wife of
Henry IV., found herself a compulsory guest at
Leeds. Among other queens, Katharine of Aragon
lived here. The unsolicited hospitalities of the place
were also extended by its tenant, the diarist Evelyn,
to six hundred Dutchmen, made prisoners of war.
From Charles H.'s friend Lord Colepepper, through
the Fairfaxes, Leeds passed to the member for Roches-
ter, Mr. Philip Wykeham Martin, who, in the May
of 1878, died suddenly in the library of the House
of Commons. In the hands of its present possessors,
the place is less widely known for its house-parties
than for the attraction it constitutes to visitors of
all classes when the building and gardens are thrown
open at flower shows and upon other such occasions.
The date of its first known hospitalities vindicates
128
Leeds Castle from Wyckliffe to Jowett
the claim of Kent to be considered the cradle of
the country-house system. In the fourteenth cen-
tury Leeds Castle was crown property, and belonged
both to Edward III. and Richard II. The former
of these sovereigns appointed William of Wykeham
Surveyor of Castles. That statesman did the
honours, Leeds among them, for the monarch.
Under his administration the ancient structure near
Maidstone received among its regular guests not
only Chaucer, who, from his position as Surveyor
of Works, might in any case have been free of such
buildings, but the historian Froissart and the reformer
William Wyckliffe, both before and after 1360, when
he became Master of Balliol. In connection, there-
fore, with Leeds two facts establish themselves
beyond doubt. The antiquity of its social gatherings
belongs to the same remote epoch as those of the
Chaucerian franklin. In his references to each,
the father of English poetry, as a country-house
chronicler, was drawing as directly from the life as in
the case of his other Canterbury portraits. Secondly,
it is interesting to learn that, five hundred years
before Benjamin Jowett came into request as a guest
beneath rural roofs of all degrees, his fifteenth-
century predecessor at the master's lodge in Broad
Street was as much in demand with the same rural
hosts as Jowett himself.
" Namquae Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus." The
old couplet on Austria's marriage-made prosperity
might have been written about a country house
in the now suburban Beckenham, belonging to the
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Burrells. Peter
129 I
Eridge and the Kentish Gang
Burrell, M.P. for Haslemere eventually, via knight-
hood, reached the peerage as Lord Gwydir, in
1796. Meanwhile, from his Kentish villa, his eldest
daughter had married the wealthiest commoner of
the time, R. H. Bennett, who had first seen his
future wife when examining at a neighbouring
country house, Shortlands, the embalmed head of
Oliver Cromwell. The second daughter found a
husband in his future Grace of Northumberland
(Duke Algernon). The youngest daughter also
became a duchess by captivating the eighth Duke
of Hamilton ; he was succeeded by, as her second
husband, the Marquis of Exeter. The father of
these lucky young ladies had set them a good
example in marrying the Duke of Ancaster's
daughter, subsequently, by her brother's death, left
a peeress in her own right. The beauty of the
Gunnings resolved itself into a combination of fault-
less features with queenly bearing. There was little
of classical loveliness about the Burrells ; they were
merely sweet girls with pretty faces, perfect figures,
and the most winning manners in the world. " I
have just seen," said Bennett, recounting to a friend
the meeting over the Protector's skull, " the most
captivating woman, from whatever point of view you
regard her, human eyes ever beheld." Even the
fastidious George Selwyn, one of the guests at
the Shortlands wedding-feast, admitted that Mrs.
Bennett was "well enough." Less ancient, generally
very different in kind, is the repute enjoyed by
another Kentish roof, long since a landmark in
modern science. Till his death in 1882 Charles
130
Kentish Homes of Science
Darwin's home at Downe, Farnborough, was to men
of science from all points of the compass what Lord
Stanhope's Chevening was to men of letters.
Downe, to this day, attracts the pilgrims of science.
The author of " The Origin of Species " had Sir
John Lubbock (Lord Avebury) at High Elms
as his neighbour in life. The entomological peer
may affect the Kentish squire less than Darwin
did ; he shows all Darwin's interest in Kent's
flora and fauna. " Same as I shot Captain
Marker," Rawdon Crawley's description of the
pistols in the inventory of his effects, was pleasantly
used by a former Lady Lubbock, when pointing
out a certain pair of hand fire-locks in the
High Elms armoury. The other "specimens" in
this little Kentish museum include curiosities of
nature from every land or sea, as well as insect life at
various stages of its progress towards human civili-
sation. The great attraction is, or used to be, a
room upstairs where one was permitted to smoke at
night ; it contained the celebrated ants. Here the
industrious little insects, with the naked eye or through
a glass, were seen in discharge of every domestic
duty, from giving their young a bath to teaching
them how to earn their living and set up house
for themselves. The High Elms investigations
morally rehabilitating the unpopular and unamiable
wasp, belonged to another period, and also had their
memorial in the collection. At Downe, Darwin was
never better pleased than when mistaken for an
ordinary country gentleman of an observant and
meditative turn. Visitors who looked a little below
131
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
the surface, saw in their Downe host a touching
simpHcity of character, which reminded those who
could recall the author of "The Christian Year" of
Keble in his Hursley vicarage.
That quality which in Darwin at once ripened
casual acquaintance into affection, was replaced by an
attribute, kin to it rather than like it, in the most cele-
brated among Sir John Lubbock's guests. Of all the
country houses at which the present writer frequently
found himself with him, none seemed to supply so
happy a framework and so humanising an environment
for Herbert Spencer as High Elms. Nowhere did he
expand more genially, talk with more freedom and
pleasant freshness, or reveal himself according to his
nature, transparent in honesty, free from whatever
might verge on affectation or pose. Huxley, often his
fellow-guest, was charmed by his intense and glowing
personality. What chiefly attracted and impressed
one in Spencer was the lack of effort to conceal his
essential humanity. " But," I recollect his saying,
" for a certain knack of co-ordinating and generalising
the facts of everyday life, I do not know in what I
should have differed from others born into and
educated into English Nonconformity of the middle-
class." Such in the High Elms garden was his con-
fession to his old friend Edward Smyth Pigott, who,
when the two were young men together, had given the
philosopher of the future his first literary opening in
a paper called the Leader. At the time of these
Kentish visits Spencer seemed unusually pleased with
himself and the rest of the world. Our host had induced
him to come out of his shell a good deal, to join, if I
132
Herbert Spencer's Faith and Friends
recollect rightly, the committee not only of the
London Library, but of the Athenaeum Club. At
this time the last novel of his old friend, " Daniel
Deronda," had just appeared. Apropos of it and of
its author's recent visit to High Elms, Spencer
remarked : " The papers, I see, charge me with spoil-
ing George Eliot's style by inoculating her with
scientific phraseology and a love of metaphors from
my own studies. They forget that she is actually my
senior in point of age, and immeasurably so as regards
knowledge and power. If either of us has been the
other's pupil, I have found a teacher in her. As for
the diction, if one wishes to put Lewes on one side,
let them look back to Vico, Helvetius, or Lamarck.
She was always much more widely read and better
informed than myself. Those," he continued, " who
think science an enemy to style had better look at
Huxley, a clear and pure writer if there ever was
one." That brought back to some of those present a
little piece of dialogue between the typical man of
letters and the typical scientist. James Hannay, the
blood-and-culture journalist of the Pall Mall Gazette
in its early days, had been a midshipman in the
same period that Huxley became a naval surgeon.
Years after the two met each other on the steps
of the British Museum. " Huxley," said Hannay,
" I care nothing for homo except as a creature
of historical tradition." " Nor I," was the answer,
" for him except as a compound of gas and
water. But if we were each of us better educated
men than we are, we should know how to respect
each other's studies more." Few people can have had
133
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
a sincerer contempt for the superficial infidelity and the
crass unbelief which to-day boast of Spencer as their
master. " All I say to those who assert or deny a
personal Creator and a Divine Revelation to man is,
* You have no evidence on which to discuss the
subject.' " To such effect at High Elms did Spencer
express himself, when pacing the grounds in company
with J. A. Froude. "You see," I remember the
historian turning round to say to the present writer,
"as Wilkes was never a Wilkesite, so nothing can
less bear out the vulgar idea of Spencerianism than
the author of the system's own words."
Lord Avebury's dwelling in the Farnborough
district forms Kent's social citadel of the new learning.
The older culture and the still older politics both
possess representative houses elsewhere in the county.
In the winter of 1903-4 Oxford University would
have lamented very many vacancies had any serious
accident happened to the trains freighted with an
academic cargo to the railway station at Hawkhurst,
Kent, from the I sis. On reaching their railway
destination the Oxford delegates at once went to
Seacox Heath, Lord Goschen's country house on the
Sussex frontier. The building itself stands on Sussex
soil ; the outskirts of the woods, part of the gardens,
and a few cottages are in the adjoining shire. The
boundary line between the two counties runs through
the garden. On the occasion now mentioned the
academic visitors were preceded by the official Poker.
Then came the two Proctors, without their " bull-
dogs." These were followed by Canon I nee of
Christ Church, then Regius Professor of Divinity,
134
Lord Goschen and His Oxford Visitors
formerly, in Lightfoot's Rectorship, a well-known
classical tutor at Exeter College, by Professors Gondy
and Gotch, by the Master of Pembroke, by the
President of St. John's, by the Master of University,
by the Warden of Wadham, by certain distinguished
Dons from Balliol, Oriel, University, and New.
Lord Salisbury had recently died ; Lord Goschen had
been chosen as his successor in the Oxford Chancellor-
ship. The delegates, on reaching his country house,
were shown into the library ; the spokesman saluted his
host, in official Latin, as the visible head and chief
guardian of the University whence he came. The
visitors epitomised and symbolised in their own
persons characteristic phases of Oxford development
from its mediaeval and cosmopolitan infancy down to
its periodically revolutionised present. The Chan-
cellor's deputy or vice is the product of a period in
which Gown professed to live in bodily terror of
Town. The most famous of the early Chancellors,
Grosse-teste, Bishop of Lincoln, could no more be in
regular residence than were any of his busy successors.
Hence the need of his deputy to protect the collegers
against the citizens. "Proctor" used to have a
protective as well as a disciplinarian meaning. The
fact of two of these officials having visited Seacox
Heath, takes one back to the time when the different
interests of students from the south and from the
north of England called for separate championship
and regulation. One of the colleges, Pembroke,
represented by its head at Seacox Heath, counted
among its seventeenth and eighteenth century under-
graduates respectively John Pym and Samuel John-
135
Eridge and the Kentish Gang
son. The place had been known as Broadgates Hall
in Pym's day ; it had scarcely become habituated to
the newer style in Johnson's. Two other Pembroke
men of later distinction were the younger Tom Hood,
Mr. J. Chamberlain's class-mate at University College
School, London, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill, some time a
fellow official of Anthony Trollope at the General
Post Office. Hill's sufficient title to fame is his
classical edition of the biography in which Boswell has
familiarised all time with the personality of Pembroke's
greatest alumnus. The younger Hood, during twenty
years in the literary London of the Victorian age,
exercised a refining influence upon all the departments
of journalism in which he worked. As for the new
Chancellor, Lord Goschen enjoyed the rare distinction
of having won a first class in the earliest examinations,
both for Classical Moderations (1852) and in Classical
Greats (1853), ever held.
Among the various intellectual interests served by
the younger Hood just mentioned was the stage.
The Kentish country house was, in the sixteenth
century, a creative and didactic force in English letters.
Especially in Elizabeth's time had it allied itself with
the English drama. Knole was only one of many
private roofs beneath which Crown and Court witness
theatrical performances, professional or amateur. The
county whose attractions have detained us for some
little time had acquired a reputation dear to the player
at the beginning of modern history. Canterbury,
with its adjacent district, may fairly style itself the
cradle of the non-professional stage. The Canterbury
cricket week in the early forties of the nineteenth
136
Theatrical Country Houses
century originated a movement that communicated its
impulse to amateur acting in halls, manor houses, and
rectories far and wide. In their beginnings the "Old
Stagers " were only cricketers seen in another aspect.
The best known member of the group was Sir
Spencer Ponsonby-Fane. He and his friends had
been playing the national game all day and every day.
There was, therefore, little time for rehearsals ; such
preparation of scenes as there could be took place in
corners of the cricket-field, in the dressing-tent, at any
odd moments that could be found. The stages of
development were much as follows. What was after-
wards known as the Beverley Ground, Canterbury, had
been first the lawn or paddock of a country house.
On this Beverley Ground, in 1841, an eleven of
England in a return match, played earlier during the
same year at Lords, beat the Kent Club. The match
proved a great social success ; the brothers John and
W. de Chair Baker and Mr. F. Ponsonby, afterwards
Lord Bessborough, each of them more or less "stage-
struck " as well as " cricket-struck," took in hand the
establishment of an annual meeting in the cathedral
town, that should combine the attractions of cricket by
day with theatricals by night. The country houses of
the neighbourhood united in supporting the idea and
in promoting its organisation. Among its friends
none were warmer than the family at Harbledown
Rectory, between one and two miles out of town. To
that household belonged the future Anglo-Indian
statesman and poet. Sir Alfred Lyall. As years
have gone on the regulations of the " Old Stagers "
may have become more elaborate. The rules were
137
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
finally drawn up at a meeting held about 1852 at the
Canterbury Hotel, so exclusively the resort of county
dwellers in the neighbourhood as to be little more
than an urban annex to the country house. Archer,
Butler, Bentinck, Seymour, Grimstone, Hartopp, are
names that, constantly figuring in the amateur
dramatic chronicle, proclaim the closeness of the con-
nection between the "Old Stagers" of the cricket
week and the country houses of Kent. In 1855 the
Canterbury " Old Stagers," recruited from many a
rural home in the country, took in hand the business
of amateur pantomime. Just a quarter of a century
later, the idea was revived and actively adopted by
a little company among whose members were Mr.
A. S. Wortley, Corney Grain, Augustus Spalding,
F. C. Burnand, and Montagu Williams. From the
Canterbury amateurs in their country-house setting
proceeded that histrionic afflatus which, animating
Mrs. Charles Crutchley, Mrs. William James, and Miss
Muriel Wilson, justified so expert a critic, himself so
good a stage artist, as Mr. William Yardley in giving
these ladies a place among the most accomplished of
non-professional players. Harbledown Rectory, a few
miles out of Canterbury, at times formed a recruiting
ground for Kentish country-house theatricals. It was
the birthplace of the distinguished Anglo-Indian
official Sir Alfred Lyall. His father. Dean Lyall,
was the most hospitable of his cloth and, as a host,
the most appreciative of theatrical talent. Amongst
the "stars " of the Kentish country-house stage whose
radiance owed something to his encouragement, were
Allan Ayresworth, Alan Mackennon, Holman Clark,
138
The Derings of Kent
Bromley-Davenport, T. Jeffcock, George Neugent.
The Kentish actresses came from the professional
stage, and often found their local experience the best
school for success on the public boards.
Some ten or fifteen miles from Canterbury, in the
Ashford neighbourhood, are two abodes whose
associations suggest that the Kentish country house
of the nineteenth and twentieth century has not
degenerated from its earlier distinction. Dering,
of Surrenden-Dering, cut his name deep in the Long
Parliament as well as elsewhere. Among the
independent Parliamentarians of his time, none was
more importunately critical of his associates or more
quick to discover weak points in his rivals and
opponents than Sir Edward Dering. His nineteenth-
century namesake inherited something of his
ancestor's controversial intractability and passion for
intellectual dissidence ; alone among the under-
graduates of his time, he could not be cowed by the
terrible E. A. Freeman at the viva voce examination
in the Law and History schools. His success in the
entire ordeal was due to a force and facility of
expression, also ancestral gifts. His youthful pen
was equally happy at criticising a picture show or
describing a prize-fight. On April 17, i860, the
Anglo-American combat between Sayers and Heenan
took place in Dering's county at Farnborough. The
best account of the battle was that written by
Edward Dering, in the Saturday Review. Delane
might have liked it for the Times. It was, too,
as a guest at a Kentish home not far from Surrenden-
Dering that the Times man, Nicholas Woods,
139
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
composed his story of the battle, appearing, as it did,
the next morning, before the Saturday was out.
This was the much-talked-of article, to which the
Tunes editor gave the finishing stroke by one of his
happiest touches : " Restore the prize-ring! as well try
to re-establish the heptarchy ! " Another tour de force
of a very different kind achieved itself some years
later in the Ashford neighbourhood. At Old Swinford
Manor, a pretty house in a perfectly delightful garden,
lives, at this moment of writing, Mr. Alfred Austin ;
he lived there in 1870, and in that year made a
notable addition to the feats of writing: well agfainst
time, achieved beneath the rural roofs of Kent.
Mrs. Beecher Stowe's " Lady Byron Vindicated "
involved an abominable charge against the poet.
The future laureate was then among the most
important and regular political writers for the
Standard. Telegraphically instructed as to his
subject from the editor in Shoe Lane, he daily sent
off by train his leader for the newspaper's next
number. One morning the editorial order came, not
for a leader, but a three or four columns refutation
of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's calumny against the
author of " Childe Harold." The pamphlet, to
be elaborately answered at such short notice, only
reached Mr. Austin simultaneously with his literary
brief, at 8 or 9 a.m. Before a late lunch, he had
not only mastered every detail in the indictment
against the poet ; he had collected a triumphant legion
of rebutting witnesses. The testimony furnished by
Byron's private life, by his vices as well as his virtues,
by his family relationships and by the references to
140
Mr. Alfred Austin's Home and Exploits
these in his poems, amounted, it was shown, to moral
proof that Mrs. Beecher Stowe's story was the
morbid product of her own imagination. Never were
the details of circumstantial evidence more ingeni-
ously and effectively marshalled than in the long
and practically conclusive answer sent off from his
country house by Mr. Austin. It reached London
that evening, and was published in the newspaper
the next morning. Adjoining Swinford Manor is
Hothfield Place ; its park was the scene of Jack
Cade's death, at the hands of Sheriff Iden, as
described by Shakespeare. Lord Hothfield, a suc-
cessful player at many games in his Christ Church
days, used to be the poet laureate's most successful
opponent on the lawn- tennis ground. In this game
King Edward the Seventh's laureate formerly found
the same mental relaxation which the object of his
own youthful idolatry and of the Countess Guiccioli's
passion discovered in pistol-shooting, the boxing-
gloves, and swimming. Near Hothfield and Swinford
is another social centre of rural Kent, scarcely less
rich than its rivals in varied associations. This is
Scott's Hall. The sixteenth-century head of the
family. Sir Thomas Scott, was to be the leader
of the Kentish militia when there seemed a danger
of the troops landed by the Spanish Armada over-
running the country. Appropriately enough, in view
of the later celebrity of their line, the Scotts of
Scott's Hall could boast descent from William
de Balliol ; for the master under whom the College
of Jowett began to achieve its modern pre-eminence
had the blood, as well as bore the name, of the Kentish
141
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
Scott. Born in Devonshire, Robert Scott, who in
1870 became Dean of Rochester, was connected with
Kent, by residence as well as family, when he died.
At the Kentish country house bearing his name it was
that, in his student days, he conceived the idea of the
famous Lexicon which, in early manhood, he was
to execute with his friend H. G. Liddell. The
hospitalities of the district now being traversed used
to be largely literary, and were not confined to a
single host. Among Mr. Alfred Austin's guests, two
great novelists, Anthony Trollope and Charles Lever,
were both often to be found at the same time. The
host had done much foreign correspondence for the
Standard ; he had sent home letters descriptive of the
Franco-Austrian campaign, of that between France
and Austria which opened the way to Italian inde-
pendence, and of the death-struggle which, three
years later, placed Germany at the head of the
European system.
The present chapter opened at the local residence
of the man who, for something like half a century,
ranked as the generalissimo of the Kentish forces of
the Victorian age. It will, therefore, appropriately
end with a flying visit to the Kentish homes belonging
to pillars or ornaments in the Conservative system,
long presided over by the master of Eridge. In
Kent, if anywhere, the personal extremes, so far as
age is concerned, of the Tory corporation domiciled
in the county, certainly touch each other. An earlier
chapter, mainly occupied with the Sussex dukeries,
revealed an ancestor of Lord Milner, General Ready,
among the Duke of Richmond's henchmen at Good-
142
Lord Goschen at Seacox Heath
wood. Among Lord Goschen's most regular guests
beneath his roof in the Hawkhurst district were
two of his private secretaries, trained by him into
becoming serviceable or famous as Conservative
officials. One of these was the late Sir Clinton
Dawkins, whose familiar record of achievements, in
Whitehall first, in Egyptian administration, on the
Viceroy's Indian Council afterwards, formed the
complete fulfilment of ambitions which, with less of
love and capacity for work, his premature death
would have left only visions. Among his fellow-
visitors at Seacox Heath used sometimes to be
another Balliol man, though of a little earlier genera-
tion, who, at the time these lines are written, is
Lord Chancellor in the new Liberal Administration ;
this was Lord Loreburn, better known still to many as
Robert T. Reid. For another reason than the con-
stant meeting of the two men at Seacox Heath, their
names may appropriately be mentioned together.
When, in the sixties, Mr. Reid began his Oxford
course, it was as a demy of Magdalen. He had
never, like other of his Cheltenham contemporaries,
stood for the Balliol. Even when established in
his Magdalen rooms, it was not, however, too late
to do so. On one condition for such candidature
the Magdalen authorities insisted. The demy must
first absolutely resign the smaller prize already in his
hands. It was a severe risk. The young man con-
fidently took it, and carried off, with flying colours, the
blue ribbon of Oxford freshmanship. In the same
way Dawkins, having done brilliantly in the open
competition for the English Civil Service, gained a
143
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
high appointment, though not in the India Office,
on which he had set his heart. The only way
of obtaining a transfer was to be absolutely first
in the next competition, Flinging up the appoint-
ment he had already won, he once more submitted
himself to the examiners, with the result that, coming
out at the top of the list, he had only to walk into
the department he coveted. Another of the then
Mr. Goschen's guests, exactly Dawkins's contem-
porary, was that descendant of the General Ready
of Goodwood associations, as accomplished a Balliol
scholar as the future Lord Chancellor himself, and
whose name in later years was to become a contro-
versial synonym for a particular school of South
African and Imperial statesmanship generally, Mr.
Chamberlain's High Commissioner.
Among the patriarchs of the Kentish Gang, one,
who chiefly charged himself with its intellectual health,
survived till 1887. This was a son of the Surrey
house, the Deepdene, presently to be visited.
A. J. Beresford-Hope, the life-long acquaintance
of Benjamin Disraeli, in his later years asserting
some independence of his leader, became the butt
of the future Beaconsfield's sharpest satire : "Batavian
grace" was Disraeli's way of alluding to the Dutch
origin of the Hopes. '* The contortions but not the
inspirations of the Sibyl," contained a pleasant
reference to Mr. Beresford- Hope's habit of swaying
his body to and fro in exciting moments of Parlia-
mentary debate. This representative of Cambridge
University in the nineteenth century's later years was
also the chief restorer of St. Augustine's, Canterbury ;
144
With Beresford-Hope at Bedgebury
where he rivalled in the munificence of his art patron-
age and the cost of his ecclesiastical structures the
splendour of the Florentine Medicis. He was also the
first great prototype of the nineteenth-century news-
paper founder. The neighbourhood of Goudhurst,
within which Bedgebury stands, abounds in those tra-
ditions of smuggling that were often effectively worked
up by the formerly popular novelist, G. P. R. James.
Bedgebury Park in the seventeenth century formed
a great meeting-place for those Parliamentarians who,
resisting the malignant influence of Strafford over the
king, were not yet prepared to go all lengths with his
enemies, and who, in several cases, eventually joined
themselves to Charles. Colepepper was himself a
Kentish man ; the lords of Bedgebury Manor were
his relations. Their house became the rendezvous
of Colepepper's political friends. Chief among these
was Falkland. The old house that, like Bridge,
among others in this region, had often received
Queen Elizabeth on her progresses, disappeared in
1688, to be replaced by a building in whose erection
Falkland had a share. " When next I come to
Bedgebury," had often been the farewell words to
his Kentish hosts of Clarendon's " incomparable
young man," " I hope to find you have done
something towards recovering the precious flotsam
and jetsam on your Kentish coast." The allusion
was to a Spanish treasure ship, sunk on the southern
shore at no great distance from Goudhurst. At last
the submerged treasure was brought safely to land.
It proved to be so valuable that all the funds wanted
for the new Bedgebury were at once forthcoming.
145 K
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
Where had formerly stood the moated house was now
the park lake. By 1688 Sir James Hayes had com-
pleted the creation of the modern building, which,
in Mr. Beresford- Hope's hands, was to grow into
an imposing specimen of Louis XIV. architecture with-
out and of Louis XIV. decoration within. The Bedge-
bury visitors' book suggests an entire chapter in the
modern narrative of periodical literature. The Peelite
Morning Chronicle was an outlying portion of the
Bedgebury Park estate. The Lord Robert Cecil of
those days, afterwards Marquis of Salisbury, Abraham
Hayward, and a rising young barrister, William Vernon
Harcourt, were amongst its regular writers. The
editor was John Douglas Cook, a choleric Aberdonian,
with a round, red head, a bull neck, a bon-vivant, a
man of pleasure, but also a first-rate man of business,
with few or no real literary tastes, but with a quick,
almost infallible, instinct for the literary article that
would take with his public. Bedgebury acquired a
reputation for its hospitalities in the Peelite interest,
with the illuminating presence of the literary lights,
who reflected their brilliancy upon the Bedgebury
newspaper. At the end of the forties, the fulfilment
of the Peelite programme left the Chronicle without
any special work to do. There, however, was an
exceptionally able journalistic staff available for a
weekly print of an entirely new and stirring sort. At
Bedgebury were settled, between Mr. Beresford-
Hope and Douglas Cook, the details of the Saturday
Review, whose first number appeared in 1855.
Douglas Cook edited it from his rooms in the
Albany, where he interviewed his chief writers on
146
Bedgebury Literary Growth
each successive Tuesday. The personal tastes of
the proprietor at once impressed themselves on the
new weekly with far more distinctness than they
had at any time done on the deceased daily.
Among Mr. Beresford- Hope's high Anglican friends
was the Rev. William Scott, then or afterwards
the clergyman of an East-end parish, at one time
concerned in the management of the High Church
Christian Remembrancer, with which the leading
men of the "Oxford Movement" had much to
do. A considerable scholar, accomplished, accurate,
sure-footed as a mule, "Parson" Scott afterwards
became Douglas Cook's assistant in the editorship.
At first, however, he was only one of the writers.
H. S. Maine, in the middle of the nineteenth century,
had been tutor of Trinity Hall, Cambridge ; he
became one of the chief Saturday Reviewers, bringing
with him his most promising pupil, the Vernon
Harcourt, known to Cook from the Chronicle days.
These, together with Scott, G. S. Venables, and
one or two more, composed the early staff of the
Saturday, and were among the most frequent guests
at Bedgebury, while the early numbers of the paper
were planned.
Through several generations, in the hands of
many owners, Hempsted Park has been among the
Kentish Tory houses. Since its occupation by
Lord Cranbrook, the Gathorne- Hardy of earlier days,
it has been periodically resorted to by Conservative
leaders and their followers, for obtaining the practical
counsel of one who, in his day, combined dash and
judgment in debate, and who only left the House of
H7
Bridge and the Kentish Gang
Commons to become the sage and shrewd counsellor
of those for whom and with whom he formerly had
fought so well. Some ten miles to the north of
Hempsted is the home of one among the rising
hopes of that party which had its patriarch in Lord
Cranbrook. Chilston Park was bought by a family
named Akers, enlarged and beautified by money
made by successful years of West Indian trade. An
inheritance in the Scotch border country involved
the second surname of Douglas. Owned by Mr.
Aretas Akers- Douglas, the pretty little property of
Chilstone, traversed by a gleaming trout stream, has
annexed itself to the estates of the Kentish Gang.
Selected by Lord Randolph Churchill as Whip of the
Fourth Party, the squire of Chilstone rose to be
the useful auxiliary and often, in his absences from
St. Stephen's, the representative of Mr. Balfour.
To that minister Mr. Akers-Douglas gradually played
something like the part of Dundas to the younger
Pitt. Chilstone thus became a premier's week-end
haunt, where he took council with his second-in-
command, and often was provided with the opportunity
of using his charm of manner as a spell for the recall
of incipient seceders to personal loyalty. To a use
not unlike this had, in earlier days, been put the
Kentish castle, where dwelt and dwells one of
Mr. Akers- Douglas's predecessors in the patronage
secretaryship. Sir William Hart- Dyke, in respect
of historical position, stands midway between the
Cranbrook and the Akers-Douglas periods. A
contemporary and athletic rival at Harrow of Fred
Burnaby, who rode to Khiva, he did more than most
148
From Chilstone to Lullingstone
of his younger compatriots towards strengthening
and enlarging the authority of the county coterie
which has made the shire of hops a political force of
the first order. Brighton, as has been seen, owes
its first start in fashionable and civic life to its notice
by Stanmer. Tunbridge Wells is under a similar
obligation to E ridge, one of whose royal guests,
James I., detected the chalybeate in the waters of
the Kentish spa. The fish dinners of the lower
Thames might never have come into vogue, but that
a party from Lullingstone chanced to dine at a
Gravesend inn, afterwards know as the " New
Falcon," in the whitebait season.
149
CHAPTER V
PENSHURST AS A PARENT COUNTRY HOUSE
Penshurst, the earliest country house of the better sort — Its owners
and name — The Sidneys — The origin of the name — Sir Henry
Sidney — Sir Philip Sidney — Robert Sidney, first Earl of
Leicester — His literary parties at Penshurst — Ben Jonson a
frequent visitor — Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester,
politician, administrator, host — -The royal children, the Princess
Elizabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, for a time his paying
guests at Penshurst — "Sacharissa" (Lady Dorothy Sidney) —
Immortalised by her rejected lover, the poet Waller — Algernon
Sidney, her favourite brother — Another brother, Henry Sidney,
Earl of Romney — Penshurst becomes a Whig house.
THERE has purposely been reserved for a
separate chapter the first Kentish roof beneath
which were united the best features of country-
house society. The EngHsh constitution, as Disraeli
once put it, was born in the bosom of the Chilterns ;
the country-house system was cradled in the valley of
the Medway. For about two centuries — at least,
from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to the end of
the Stuart era, whose closing incidents were planned
in the home of the Sidneys — the higher possibilities
of a rural home were continuously illustrated at
Penshurst. Thence, in virtue of the Pembroke
ISO
Penshurst and its Early Owners
marriage, to Wiltshire first, to other parts of England
afterwards, radiated influences associating the Kentish
Sidneys with the higher activities — social, political,
intellectual, even physical — of the age. The place
thus became a school of breeding of manners and
of mind — a pattern for other country houses of that
and of succeeding ages. What the Sidneys were
among the actors in the drama of English affairs and
letters, their habitation became to the scenery amid
which the plot of the play was unfolded. The
Penshurst house has for some time been restored to
the appearance it wore when its halls and galleries
began to be trodden by guests more various and brilliant
than had before assembled beneath any Kentish roof.
Time, tempest, and the woodman's axe have dealt
gently with the trees in the park. The twentieth
century therefore sees, within an hour's journey from
Charing Cross, unchanged in all essentials, the place
that from 1547 to 1704 formed the most variously
interesting panorama of character and conduct.
From its first Anglo-Norman possessors it passed
to the Bohuns, Dukes of Buckingham. Of these
thirteenth-century owners, one fell in battle, two died
on the scaffold. Its name was a corruption of
that borne by its Norman possessors — Pencestre or
Penchester. Between 12 16 and 1377 Sir Stephen
Penchester, lord of Penshurst, was also Warden
of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle.
Famous for his learning and accomplishments, he
became a presage of those Sidney successors who
were specially to impress their character and fame
upon " the castle on the hill." Such was the meaning
151
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
of the term, abbreviated as years passed by, to its
existing form. Fortifications, of a kind, the ancient
Penshurst had. Its defences, however, were trenches,
mounds, and wooden palisades, such as may be seen
in the Bayeux tapestry. It never boasted a Norman
keep or moat. From the absence of all stone remains
the old house must have been entirely of timber.
The fourteenth-century owner of Penshurst, Sir John
de Poultney, four times Lord Mayor of London,
obtained special licence from Edward II. to embattle
the structure. After belonging successively to the
family into which Poultney 's widow married — to the
Duke of Bedford, who was regent, to his brother
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester — in 1447 Penshurst
passed to the Staffords. A little later, in 1521, it
was possessed by Edward, Duke of Buckingham,
who, having gratified Henry VIII. by the splendour
of his assistance at the Field of the Cloth of Gold
and, in other ways, humoured the royal whim, incurred
the royal jealousy, and after a mock trial went to the
block. " God have mercy on his soul, for he was
a most wise and noble prince, the mirror of all
courtesy " ; so ran the popular verdict as the crowd
saw Buckingham walk with quiet courage to his
death. Penshurst once more reverted to the Crown.
In 1550 Edward VI. granted it to Sir Ralph Fane,
who, in less than two years, lost his head for alleged
complicity with the Protector, Somerset. Sir William
Sidney had fought at Flodden, had been Edward VI. 's
tutor, chamberlain, or steward. His wife had been
Edward's nursery governess. To William Sidney
therefore the young king now granted Penshurst.
152
what Happened in Sacharissa's Walk
Authentic knowledge of the Sidney family begins
with its knightly representative, Sir William, in
the twelfth century. But the Sidney marriages
had connected the Penshurst family with many of
the chief English houses, amongst them with the
Egremonts, with the Harringtons, with the Fitz-
walters and the Fitzwilliams. William Sidney's son
Henry, became the husband of the Duke of
Northumberland's eldest daughter, and by her the
father of Sir Philip Sidney as well as of two other
sons, one of them Robert, afterwards first Earl of
Leicester, and of Mary, eventually the wife of Henry
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and possessor of Wilton.
With its succession of grassy quadrangles — the am-
bassador's court, the baron's court, the president's
court, and others — Penshurst presents an aspect
which is rather that of an Oxford college than of a
private dwelling.
It is a many fronted house. The longest faqade
of variously shaped windows looks out upon a park
whose picturesqueness comes even more from its
singularly graceful undulations than from the massive
symmetry of its trees. The grounds still have the
" Sacharissa's Walk," where, for the last time, the poet
Waller knelt at Lady Dorothy Sidney's feet and
received his decisive dismissal. On a bowling green
nearly parallel to what was afterwards " Sacharissa's
Walk," the poet Spenser often matched himself at
a rubber with his brother guest. Sir Walter Raleigh.
By what stages the property reached its most famous
possessors has been already seen. Their family
name, a corruption of the patron saint of France,
153
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
St. Denis, points to their having come from the Paris
suburb called after the saint. The name, originally
written " Sidenie," was always spelt by its pos-
sessors with "i," not "y," for the second letter.
The Sidneys, as has been seen, became a political
family under the Tudors. Their reputation survived
the Stuarts ; they were a national force in the
revolution of 1688. Their men are all brave and
their ladies all pure. That, at each successive stage,
formed the traditional character of the Sidneys. The
Sidneys of the original stock were not indeed con-
fined to Kent. Four centuries before the grant of
Penshurst to William Sidney, an earlier ancestor
of the same name, who had come to England with
Henry II., founded country houses in Surrey and
Sussex, The Sidney women were at least not less
remarkable than the men. Four daughters were born
to the sixteenth-century owner of Penshurst. Of
these three became the respective ancestresses of St.
John, Viscount Bolingbroke, of Lord North the
statesman, and of Lord Byron the poet, belonging
by birth to the third George's reign. Judged by
modern standards the Sidney portraits show the
beauty of the men to have been rather that of mind
and character than of person or face. The great Sir
Henry Sidney (i 529-1 586) has a countenance not
wanting in strength, but as featureless as that of an in-
fant in arms. His grandfather Nicholas had married
Anne Brandon, widow of Louis XII., aunt to Charles,
Duke of Suffolk, Henry VIII.'s sister-in-law. The
grandson, in character and bearing, was not less of
a purely Tudor product than by descent. This Henry
154
The Making of Philip Sidney
Sidney, by marrying (1551), the daughter of John,
Duke of Northumberland, united Penshurst with the
family which, from the fall of Somerset to the death
of Edward VI., gave the country its real rulers. The
shadow of death now fell heavily on the Kentish
mansion. Northumberland was beheaded in 1553.
Worn out with anxiety and ailments, his eldest son.
Lord Warwick, passed away next year in the welcome
quiet of Penshurst. During the troublous period that
followed. Lord Guildford, Lady Jane Grey, and the
Duke of Suffolk all perished. While his relatives
played a part in the great transactions of the time
and perished, Sir Henry Sidney, never leaving
Penshurst, preserved his head and his health. Of
all his line he showed himself the most cautious and
fortunate. Even during the Popish revival under
Mary he found a friend in Mary's husband, Philip IL
Henry Sidney's third daughter, by becoming Countess
of Pembroke, connected the life and letters of Pens-
hurst with those of Wilton. Her famous brother was
the idol of his own generation and the perplexity of
the next. How was it that in an age crowded with
great men and great achievements, Sir Philip Sidney
towered above his contemporaries.-* Horace Walpole's
answer suggests probably the true explanation. The
cause of his fame was the unique combination of
merit and learning- in a man of that rank.
Like others of his name, Philip Sidney learnt at
Shrewsbury more than he forgot at Christ Church.
He had, however, been personally trained by his
father with the same care that Chatham bestowed
on William Pitt. The most famous scion of this
155
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
Kentish house was, therefore, above all things, the
moral and intellectual product of Penshurst Place.
In the park may still be seen an avenue of trees,
under which the father, in his afternoon walks
with the boy, tested his recollection of the morning's
lessons conned with the tutor. Here, too, it was
that he impressed on the lad those maxims for the
conduct of life, afterwards emphasised in the corre-
spondence still extant among the Penshurst archives.
" Not empty of some advices " was the family
description of the letters that, during the half-year,
found their way from Penshurst Place to Shrews-
bury school. Philip was to begin every day with
lifting up his mind to the Almighty in hearty prayer,
as well as feelingly digesting all he prayed for. He
was also, early or late, to be obedient to others, so
that in due time others might obey him. The secret
of all success lay in a moderate diet with rare use
of wine. A gloomy brow was, however, to be
avoided. Rather should the youth give himself to
be merry, so as not to degenerate from his father.
Above all things should he keep his wit from biting
words, or indeed from too much talk of any kind.
Had not nature ramparted up the tongue with teeth
and the lips with hair as reins and bridles against
the tongue's loose use. Heeding this, he must be sure
to tell no untruth even in trifles ; for that was a
naughty custom, nor could there be a greater reproach
to a pfentleman than to be accounted a liar. Noblesse
oblige formed the keynote of the oral and written
precepts with which the future Sir Philip Sidney was
paternally supplied. By his mother, too. Lady Mary
156
Irish Visits to a Kentish Park
Dudley, the boy must remember himself to be of
noble blood. Let him beware, therefore, through
sloth and vice, of being accounted a blemish on his
race. " Your loving father, so long as you live in
the fear of God." So ended the epistles from home,
received by Philip Sidney at Shrewsbury School, and
duly answered in Latin and French, as well as in
his mother-tongue. Stationed at Ludlow while
Warden of the Marches, the father frequently visited
his son while pursuing his studies. Of the Welsh
whom he had been sent to keep in order, he warmly
said : " Better people to govern, Europe holdeth not."
Henry Sidney's life was spent in the service of the
State, within or beyond the four seas. After he had
reg-ulated the affairs of Wales he went on a mission
of help to the Huguenots in France. That business
won him the Garter. An errand to Ireland for
coercing or conciliating the native chiefs proved less
successful ; he began with losing all his stuff and
horses during the voyage to Dublin (1566). From
the Penshurst point of view the Irish episode proved
prolific of interest. By way of cementing the im-
proved relations between the English Crown and its
Celtic vassals, Henry Sidney invited some of the
Irish chiefs to visit him at home. Moved to admira-
tion by the natural beauties of the Kentish park, by
the brilliantly polished suits of steel armour almost
covering the walls of the chief rooms of the house,
and especially by the gallery for the musicians, looking
down upon the great baronial hall, they were appalled
by the store of books and manuscripts which had
always been features of the place. Long before the
157
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
Irish visit this country house had won fame as the
great letter-writing depot for the western world. In
later years Algernon Sidney, after the death of his
father, Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester, could
point to shelves groaning beneath the weight of
forty quires of paper written by his father, but never
published. The Sidney correspondence had, how-
ever, assumed formidable dimensions during the
sixteenth century. The heads of the Sidney house
had a trying fondness for reading selections from
the family papers aloud to their guests. After
some hours occupied by this ordeal, the Irish visitors
(1568-71) implored their host not further to tax his
voice. The specimens he had already given them were
enough ; the rest might be taken as read. Many of these
compositions were in the handwriting of the author
of "Arcadia"; for Philip Sidney accompanied his
father on most of the diplomatic travels, and himself
copied as well as drafted the more important
despatches. All, in fact, that a reading-room well
supplied with foreign newspapers is now, that for
successive generations, .three centuries ago, the
Penshurst muniment-room was. From the reign of
Henry VIII. onwards, the Sidneys of Penshurst
figured actively in the Court life, in the domestic
and foreign politics of their day. In every part of
the habitable globe was a resident or travelling
Sidney, who transmitted his epistolary narrative of
all that passed around him, not only to his relatives
at the old home, but to his acquaintances at every
capital or Court. Copies were generally kept.
Copious extracts were read to the Penshurst guests.
158
The Penshurst Letters and Leicester Earls
Those selections must have contained the pith and
marrow, the quintessence and cream, of the Euro-
pean chronicle of the period. This tradition did not
die out while Penshurst preserved its historic
character. Sir Philip Sidney's younger brother,
Robert (i 563-1 626), united in himself the Lisle
viscountcy and the Leicester earldom. His son
Robert, second Earl of Leicester (i 595-1677) added
to the family documents papers containing the secret
history of Charles L, Charles IL, and Oliver Crom-
well. The chief value of these lay in their disclosures
of foreign opinion about each stage in the events
that ended with the king's execution. Penshurst,
in the first Lord Leicester's ownership, had indeed
been a literary rather than a political centre. Among
the papers that descended to his son were notes
of conversations with master-minds which only
needed publication to become a part of English
literature. The letters written by him in his library,
overlooking the park, reflected the best thought and
the freshest information of the time. The first Lord
Leicester's epistles spread this knowledge from the
Medway to the Ganges. In every branch of litera-
ture, in all abstract studies, especially mathematics,
this nobleman seems to have been equally at
home. Concerning the second Earl of Leicester,
Sir William Temple was afterwards to write : "He
was the most observant and learned person of his
day, and only fell short of being a very great man
by reason of the staggering and irresolution of his
nature." That description, with a few little changes,
might equally have fitted the first Earl also. Under
159
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
his r^ghne the Penshurst housekeeping book, still
or till recently extant, shows the high-water mark
for that age of country-house hospitality. Had there
come down to us any companion volume, containing
the names of the visitors, we should have had a
catalogue of guests unrivalled for the brilliance and
variety of their genius. When the musicians, in
the minstrel gallery looking down upon the baronial
hall, were tuning their instruments for the evening's
entertainment, William Harvey, who discovered the
circulation of the blood — the most famous physician
of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and the greatest
consulting doctor who ever took double fees from
wealthy patients — was discussing in one corner with
Francis Bacon the recently formulated Third Law
of Kepler. In a window recess close by stood a
little gentleman of academic manner and dress,
fresh from his Oxford common room, mathematically
precise in his ideas and diction. This was the genial
and kindly author of " The Anatomy of Melancholy "
— Robert Burton of Christ Church, whose allusive
prose was afterwards to be copied by Algernon Sidney
himself in the " Discourses on Government." In
the Penshurst hall now Burton apologises to a brother
clergyman, also an author, Giles Fletcher, for not
quite understanding certain lines in " Christ's Victory
and Triumph." Fletcher notoriously took Spenser
for his model. The poet of the " Faery Queen "
himself, when in England, seldom missed the Pens-
hurst parties. Leicester's life-long hope was to bring
about a meeting between the great singers of the
day and the most variously accomplished friend of
1 60
Shakespeare at Penshurst
his youth, his comrade in military and political
service, who had found solace for imprisonment as
well as lettered fame in writing the " History of
the World." But Sir Walter Raleigh was always
prevented by adventures abroad or imprisonment
at home from paying the repeatedly promised visit
to the Kentish country house. Ben Jonson stayed
there for weeks together. Was a greater than
Jonson — the myriad-minded creator of " Hamlet "
and " Macbeth " — ever among the Penshurst guests ?
Local tradition, after careful sifting, prompts an
affirmative answer. The idea is also encouraged
by a fragment of documentary evidence which some
wind of chance has blown, it would seem, from
Penshurst itself to the present writer. It is merely
a two- or three-line memorandum about notes for
future use, made at Penshurst by William Shakespeare.
All the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century owners of
Penshurst, during their civil and military employments,
had combined an interest in letters with the part they
had played in affairs. The first Lord Leicester,
like his grandson Algernon, had an enthusiasm for
the stage. Some time before 1616, the year of
Shakespeare's death, he had made Penshurst an
intellectual as well as fashionable resort. That
character it never afterwards lost.
Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester, had
succeeded Strafford as Irish Viceroy. Penshurst, we
have seen, received its earliest visitors from Ireland
in Sir Henry Sidney's day. These were to be
followed by others of a very different kind in the
second Leicester's time. Ready and
161
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
to make his predecessor's policy his own, he packed
his Kentish seat with visitors whom he thought Hkely
to promote his project of rallying English and Irish
Catholics round the king against the Parliament. At
one time it seemed as if loyalty to his sovereign
would earn him the same reward as Strafford.
Warned by that example and distrusting Charles
in good time, he broke with the king soon enough
to save his life but not his estates. Marriage con-
nections had ever been a bulwark of the Sidneys.
His alliance with the Dudleys and the Lisles secured
Leicester the restoration of his estates first and
Parliamentary favour afterwards. Between 1644 and
1650 the country folk noticed two strange children
playing in the park and keeping entirely to them-
selves. Curiosity was aroused as to who they could
be. Their dress, it was thought, indicated high
birth ; but their manner and countenance bore signs
of depression. Their eyes were often red, as if
from weeping. Not till the little boy and his sister
had disappeared from the place in 1650 did the
neighbours know that they had seen the late king's
son and' daughter, the Princess Elizabeth and the
Duke of Gloucester. The children might never
have exchanged Penshurst for the Isle of Wight
at all but for money disagreements between Leicester
and the Commons. The custodian of the two little
Royalties was a keen bargainer. He received an
annual allowance of ^3,000 for his royal charges.
Applying for an increase and failing to get it, he
informed his wife that, by way of indemnifying
himself, he must deduct, from her housekeeping
162
Sacharissa and her Brother
allowance, a sum equal to the desired but denied
augmentation. At the same time he found himself
engaged in an undignified squabble with Parliament
on the subject of a jewel, a present from one of
his little guests, and now claimed by the Commons.
To this Leicester the Sidneys chiefly owed their
great cash resources. He found a Court life little
to his liking ; he hated the town as much as he
loved the country. Especially dear to him were the
autumnal tints on the Penshurst trees. On the plea
of health, he soon obtained leave to pass most of
his time at his old home. An absurd story represented
his son, Robert, as father of the Duke of Monmouth.
The paternal favourite was beyond doubt Algernon,
who perished for alleged complicity in the Rye House
Plot, and whose treatise on " Government " was partly
thought out and planned in Penshurst Park as he
lay on the grass. Another son, Henry, after having
served as Viceroy of Ireland, died Earl of Romney.
The same Irish office was also filled by his heir
Philip, who sat in Cromwell's House of Lords. Of
his daughters, one, Lucy, by her marriage with John
Pelham, became progenitress of George II.'s Duke
of Newcastle. His daughter Isabella married her
relative. Viscount Strangford. But, in that generation
of the Penshurst ladies, Dorothy Sidney eclipsed all
her sisters. She was the *' Sacharissa " whom her
rejected lover, the poet Waller, immortalised. Born
under James I., this lady lived throughout the entire
reign of Charles II. to be one of the few gifted,
as well as absolutely spotless, beauties of the
Restoration. The eldest of a family of thirteen,
163
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
born at Sion House, Isleworth, she was, by her
mother, Dorothy Percy, a granddaughter of the Earl
of Northumberland. To-day she is claimed as the
genius of a Sussex, not less than a Kentish, country
house. Her time, indeed, was almost equally divided
between Petworth and Penshurst. She had become a
reigning beauty at the age of sixteen. In her own
words, she fell in love with a sweet, old, moated manor
house, whither some friends had taken her on a visit
to the family of Edmund Waller. This was Groom-
bridge Place, famous as the abode in his captivity
of the Duke of Orleans, who had been made a
prisoner at Agincourt. At first sight Edmund
Waller fell in love with Dorothy Sidney. The
passion was not reciprocated and was discouraged
by the lady's parents. The poet's position and appear-
ance lacked the charm of romance. Twelve years
Dorothy's senior, he had now become a rather
corpulent and sleepy widower. No rebuffs prevented
his addressing to the Penshurst beauty the series of
love lyrics which, celebrating her as " Sacharissa,"
have made her name a synonym for every conceivable
charm of person and of mind. In the Penshurst
grounds is still pointed out the spot on which the
lover for the last time knelt at the feet of the obdurate
fair. In the house is still seen the original of his
farewell stanzas. The poet contrived to live on with
a broken heart for some half a century after (July 20,
1639) Sacharissa had married at Penshurst the young
Lord Spencer. Lady Leicester was the cleverest
matrimonial diplomatist of her day. For a time she
had favoured " my lord of Devonshire's " pretensions
164
Sacharissa'8 Suitors
to her daughter, but soon rejected him for another
suitor, the gay Lord Lovelace. Eventually he too
was passed over in favour of the lucky Sunderland.
In addition to farewell verses to Sacharissa, the dis-
missed poet wrote a congratulatory letter of the
bitter-sweet sort to Lady Leicester on the coming
Spencer marriage. He wishes the bride the like
passion for him she has preferred to the rest of
mankind that others have had for her. May this
love, he adds, before the year go about, make her
taste the first curse imposed on womanhood, the
pains of becoming a mother. May her firstborn be
a son, resembling her lord as much as herself. May
she that always affected silence and retiredness have
her house filled with the noise of her children and
of her grandchildren. May she arrive at that great
curse, so much declined by fair ladies — old age —
living to be old, yet seeming very young ; be told
so by her glass, and have no aches to tell her the
truth. Four years after his marriage. Lord Spencer
having been created Earl of Sunderland, fell, together
with Carnarvon and Falkland, at the Battle of Newbury.
Sacharissa now settled down to pass her peaceful
widowhood at Penshurst. She was still but twenty-
six, in the full flower, therefore, of her famous loveli-
ness. She was, of course, besieged by suitors ; for
a long time she showed no sign of favour to any.
At last one of the most indefatirable among- the
Penshurst neighbours and visitors, a Kentish squire,
Sir Robert Smythe Boundes, having vainly attempted
to amuse her with his vivacity and impress her with
the fineness of his equipages, suddenly fell into a state
i6s
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
of distressing despondency. His family lamented his
gradual consumption by the fever of a hopeless and
fatal love. Shortly it became known that Sacharissa
had accepted him out of pity. The match did not
gratify her own family. Lord Leicester abruptly
quitted Penshurst rather than be present at the
wedding-. The evil omens attending the second
marriage were not unfulfilled. Sacharissa once more
became a mother. Of the son thus born there is
little record. Her chief delight was in her brother
Henry and her son-in-law, Lord Halifax, the famous
" trimmer " of a later day. She had a constant source
of trouble in the love affairs of her son, Sunderland,
culminating as these did in his marriage with the
friskiest beauty of the time, Lady Anne Digby.
Other causes of unhappiness were the second Lord
Sunderland's quarrels with his uncle, Algernon
Sidney, the latter's long years of suffering exile
followed by his execution in 1683. That calamity
she only survived three months, dying in 1684.
Algernon Sidney had been attached to his sister by
ties of intellectual sympathy as well as family affection.
His " Discourses on Government," as a piece of
literary mosaic, in miscellany of interest and fresh
variety of illustration, may almost be classed with
Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy." It may well,
indeed, have been that Algernon's acquaintance and
conversations with Burton, as his father's guest, gave
him the idea of his political treatise. That work
may have been roughly drafted by its author in the
intervals of his diplomatic employments abroad. It
was put in order for publication during his sojourns
166
Shakespeare's Penshurst Book
at Penshurst with his widowed sister. "A keen critic
and a perfect sister " is Algernon's description of the
lonely Lady Sunderland. To her, during the summer
afternoons at Penshurst, he read specimens of his
morning's work. Other literary subjects were
suggested by the associations of the place to
Sacharissa and her brother. Algernon Sidney did
not, indeed, come into the world till six years after
Shakespeare went out of it, but the tradition of
the poet having been his grandfather's guest lasted
throuo^hout Alo-ernon's time. While Algernon was
working at his Discourses, the Penshurst library still
contained a book that may have been handled by
Shakespeare. This volume is a translation into
Latin verse of all the plays of Sophocles by George
Retailer, described as a councillor in the Royal
Belgian Senate at Mechlin and a Master " libellorum
supplicum " ; it also contains Henry Stephens' notes
on Sophocles and Euripides, an essay on the
imitation of Homer, another on Sophocles. It was
published at Antwerp in 1570." Such a book may
well have found its way into England at once. And
there were many agents on the Continent retained
by the lords of Penshurst for collecting important
publications. Such a work, therefore, may have
been consulted by the poet in the Kentish manor
house, when he was the first Lord Leicester's guest.
Ben Jonson was so frequent a visitor of the Sidneys
that, in any conversations between Shakespeare and
' The only extant copy, so far as I know, is possessed by Mr. T.
Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen, to whom I am indebted
for this description of the book.
167
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
his Kentish host, the author of "Every Man in his
Humour" probably would have been mentioned.
Jonson's remark about the scantiness of Shakespeare's
classical knowledge had been made in conversation
before it was put into a poem. The present writer
chances to have seen a manuscript fragment which, so
far as it can be deciphered, seems to refer to some
conversational protest by Shakespeare himself against
the notion of his not being thoroughly at home in
Latin versions of Greek plays. Sacharissa possessed
literary interests before she captured the heart of the
poet Waller. That experience and the loneliness of
widowhood deepened and widened her intellectual
tastes. She prized all records of the higher life that
from time immemorial had found a centre at her
Kentish home. She often talked about them with
her favourite brother, Algernon, who took a greater
interest than any other of his generation in the family
papers. As regards these documents, I have already
mentioned a fragment of manuscript that originally
seems to have come from Penshurst. So far as its
writing can be deciphered, it favours the idea that
Shakespeare conversed with his Penshurst host
about the Greek drama, and may have improved
his knowledge of the subject from the Penshurst
bookshelves. What, therefore, is antecedently more
probable than that, in their talks on literary subjects,
Algernon and Dorothy Sidney should have discussed
the Shakespearian associations of their Kentish home .'*
In the literary traditions handed down by their grand-
father, the first Lord Leicester, their family pride
might have enabled them to detect a proof that, from
i68
Shakespeare's Debt to the Sidneys
Penshurst itself, the poet of all time had derived some
first-hand knowledge of the masterpieces of the Attic
stage. In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's
death, Ben Jonson, in the verses written by him
for the first folio, had in the famous phrase mentioned
his great contemporary's " small Latin and less
Greek." That, the brother and sister might have
said, was an old charge. Had not thei Lady Dorothy
herself heard from her literary lover, the poet Waller,
of Greene's taunts aimed at Shakespeare as one who
owed nothing to learning, but everything to native
wit, and as having only fed on the crumbs from the
translator's trencher. What, Algernon might indig-
nantly have exclaimed, did this mean except that the
mightiest intellect of his agre had not been nourished
on academic food ? Our grandsire's friend, Ben
Jonson, he might have added, brought from West-
minster School a ripe scholarship which ranged him
with the professional academics who always derided
Shakespeare. And, as for Shakespeare himself, let
us remember his master at Stratford School — Walter
Roche — had come from that home of the new learning
at Oxford, Corpus Christi College, and taught his
boys to read Latin like their native tongue. Algernon
Sidney himself, a man of action rather than of books,
would have made it a special point to maintain the
sufficiency of Shakespeare's learning for all his
practical needs. But such references as his Dis-
courses contain to the place of education in national
polity suggest a familiarity with the school and
college curricula of his time, at home and abroad.
Contemporary observation would be likely to have
169
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
acquainted him with the same details as, at the
present day, Mr. Churton ColHns has gathered by-
research for continuing what was practically Algernon
Sidney's argument.^ One must not, indeed, read into
the slender memoranda of the Penshurst dialogues
between the brother and sister too many results of
Mr. Collins' Shakespearian research.^ To Algernon
and Dorothy Sidney, converse with the scholars met
and the books read at Penshurst seemed abundant
compensation for Shakespeare's lack of a public
school or university training. Moreover, speaking
from his own experience as to the acquirements of
seventeenth century schoolboys, the brother would
have reminded his sister that, by the age of sixteen
or seventeen, Shakespeare must have possessed a
good colloquial knowledge of Latin. Our poet's
acquaintance with Plautus, Algernon might have
added, was shown by his transformation of the
*' Mensechmi," of which no translation then existed,
into the " Comedy of Errors." Whether or not
Algernon Sidney used his acumen and knowledge
to anticipate any of the other positions taken up
by Mr. Churton Collins, the views now attributed
to him were merely those of the unprejudiced and
thouehtful criticism of the time. In the seventeenth
century the intelligence of the modern middle-class
public had still to be organised. On a rather higher
level, such as that of Penshurst, country house table-
talk reflected higher interests and covered more
edifying themes than those which, in the same circles,
' "Studies in Shakespeare," pp. 14 and 15.
2 " Studies in Shakespeare," but especially pp. 6 and 7.
170
" Waiting till you are Young Again"
have since become popular. The rural home of the
Sidneys registered the high-water mark of literary-
knowledge and insight known to an age that saw in
intellectual culture and taste a note of social breeding.
In that part of the grounds looked down upon by
Sir Henry's tower may still flourish the nut-tree
planted on the day of Sir Philip Sidney's birth. The
Sacharissa memorials are not confined to Penshurst.
Althorp and Petworth both possess some of her best
portraits. Nor does it seem quite certain that
Penshurst and not Petworth or Lady Wharton's
place, Wooburn in Buckinghamshire, witnessed the
well-known meeting between Sacharissa and the
rejected poet in later years. " Why," asked the lady
of her former lover, "have you not written verses
about me of late ? Surely you are growing old ? "
" I am waiting rather," replied Waller, *' till you are
young again, and as lovely as ever." Dorothy
Sidney's beauty had its monument in palace small
talk as well as in poet's lay. At Queen Anne's
Court it was still the theme of the grand old ladies.
*' To us," they said, " who have seen Sacharissa, her
graceful motion and her winning attraction, the finest
women nowadays are merely pretty girls." The
mercurial Waller long haunted the scenes consecrated
by the divinity he had vainly wooed. It may not
have been in the old Kentish mansion that the poet
met his former flame, when Lady Sunderland. It
was certainly the Penshurst drawing-room which
heard his witty rejoinder to Charles II., when
both were Penshurst guests. Waller, after long
oscillation between the royal and republican parties,
171
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
read to the second Charles at Petworth an ode on
the Restoration. "But," said the king, "your
masterpiece, I am told, is your panegyric on
Cromwell." "Ah, sir," came the ready reply, "we
poets never succeed so well in truth as in fiction."
Penshurst Place, in Algernon's earlier days, had
become a hotbed of royal enthusiasm for the South
of England. Lisle's lukewarmness in the reaction
against Cromwell seriously compromised him with
his brother-in-law, Algernon. The latter indulged
his passion for private theatricals by getting up a
performance at Penshurst of " Julius Caesar." Casting
himself for the part of Brutus, he embellished the
dialogue with an abundance of anti-Cromwellian gags.
The county guests who witnessed these performances
recalled, in their talk between the acts, how, some
years earlier, Algernon Sidney, then among the most
brilliant figures of European society, in his home
letters sketched from life the chief personages on the
stage of continental politics. These epistles were written
in cipher. The second Lord Leicester, after a day or
two spent in mastering their contents, read the long,
unforgotten descriptions of Cardinals Albizi, Azzolini,
Barberini, Borromeo, Gizi, and others, to a company
not unlike that which now applauded Algernon's
improvisations against Republicanism.
Penshurst long maintained the political character
stamped on it by the second Lord Leicester. The
Henry Sidney, much younger than any of his
brothers, who became Earl of Romney, remarked to
his friend Halifax, some time after the events of 1688,
" I always curse the hour in which I brought Billy to
172
From Sidney to Shelley
England." Others, of equal authority on such a sub-
ject, though less partial to the Sidney clan, only saw
in the Penshurst king-maker the fly on the wheel.
Dean Swift denied him any part in these, on the
ground of his being an illiterate and frivolous old
rake. The invitation to William of Orange was, how-
ever, first conceived by Romney at Penshurst. Its
details were arranged at Hurley on the Thames.
The conspiracy against James had already got wind.
Romney, considering his life unsafe in St. James's
Square, took refuge in a Thames-side cellar until the
new dynasty was established. Penshurst now became
a Whig house. Afterwards, as a provincial ren-
dezvous for supporters of the Hanoverian regime ^
it lived socially on its early reputation, but gradually
lost distinctive character and interest. The first great
display of English fireworks was arranged in its
grounds by Romney to welcome William HI. on the
return from one of his absences in Holland. " To
Penshurst, but oh, how fallen ! It is forlorn. Instead
of Sacharissa's cipher carved on the beeches, I should
sooner have expected to find the milkwoman's score.
There are loads of portraits, but most of them seem
christened by chance, like children at a foundling
hospital." So, in 1752, Horace Walpole. The visit
prompting this description was paid nine years after
the last Lord Leicester's death. Throuofh marriages
of the Sidney women, the place had then become the
property of some people named Perry. From those
possessors it found its way to the Shelleys. These,
adding the Sidney patronymic to their own, soon
became known exclusively as Sidneys. Their de-
173
Penshurst as a Parent Country House
scendants have furnished Penshurst with the third
Lord de Lisle and Dudley, who is its present possessor.
Walpole, like others of his time, had been wearied by
the extravagance of the conventional panegyrics
bestowed upon Penshurst and its Sidney owners. In
the latter he saw men at least as noticeable for their
shrewd adaptability to the social and political condi-
tions of the time as for chivalry and patriotism. With
regard to the place, he admittted the unique interest
of some of its likenesses — especially those of Languet,
Sir Philip Sidney's friend, of the first Lady Leicester
with a vast lute, of Sacharissa herself, of the
primate, Fitzallen, of Wentworth, Lord Strafford, of
Humphry, first Duke of Buckingham. These portraits
were pronounced by Walpole as old as any extant in
England. He believed also in the genuineness of the
table and seats in the hall as the oldest of their kind in
England, and of the alleged specimens of Sir Philip
and Algernon Sidney's light-brown hair.
174
CHAPTER VI
TWO CENTURIES OF WILTON
Success of Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" compared with that of
Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" — Wilton House —
The Pembroke Herberts— William, third Earl of Pembroke —
Henrietta de Querouaille, wife of seventh Earl — The "archi-
tect" (ninth) Earl — His widow's marriage with Captain
Barnard — The tenth Earl's elopement with Kitty Hunter —
Lady Pembroke, her pretty sister and smart contemporaries —
English peeresses masquerading as Greek girls — The Wilton
visitors' book from Horace Walpole to George Payne —
Palmerston at Wilton and Sidney Herbert.
A LITTLE pamphlet of Sir Philip Sidney's in
defence of his uncle (Queen Elizabeth's Earl
of Leicester) gives me a much better opinion of
his parts than his dolorous ' Arcadia.' I don't think
he could have been warmer about his family if he
had been of the blood of the Cues (Montagues)."
It was, indeed, a standing marvel with Horace
Walpole that the pastoral romance about Musidorus
and Pyrocles should have recommended Sir Philip
to the Crown of Poland, as in our time the fifteenth
Lord Derby's sagacious and detached statesmanship
secured him the offer of the Greek monarchy. The
best idea of the sort of vogue secured by the
175
Two Centuries of Wilton
" Arcadia " in the sixteenth century will be gained
if one recalls the special kind of popularity won by
Lewis Carroll's " Alice in Wonderland " three hun-
dred years later. Both books immediately coloured
and enlarged the social vernacular of all classes.
The " Arcadia " at once influenced the colloquial
dialect of Court, Cabinet, and town. Its phrases,
expressive of compliment and love, passed straightway
into the conversational currency of the time. This
place they held till they were incorporated into the
dialogue of the polite comedy of the Restoration. In
Horace Walpole's time, the patience of a young
virgin in love might not be able to wade through
Sir Philip Sidney's romance. On its first appearance
and for some time after, Musidorus, Pyrocles, and
the Kalender were as often on the lips of the polite
world as, in the Victorian age, were the Jabberwock,
the Walrus, the Carpenter, and Alice herself, and
the sayings of each were quoted on the croquet lawns,
by curates and undergraduates, between 1865 and
the outbreak of the Franco- Prussian war.
At Wilton, nature has crowded the beauties of
half a dozen shires into the park and grounds.
Money and art have crammed the house itself with
the feudal lumber of Wardour Street. Next to the
marble statues inhabiting the hall and galleries, the
chief characteristics of the Wilton interior are the
complete suits or mediaeval armour and weapons
of war that, hung against the wall, form an effective
background for more modern works of art. George
Payne, Charles Greville's Newmarket friend, who
could be as pungently epigrammatic as Greville
176
Wilton Characteristics
himself, and who made the remark just quoted, hit
off at least one feature of the place. The unique
beauty of the exterior consists in the three rivers
that run through the gardens, the Palladian bridge
crossing them, not unlike that spanning the Serpen-
tine in Hyde Park, and the cedars, now, unfortunately,
disappearing from age. What George Payne when
visiting Wilton together with Greville and Palmerston
wished to convey is historically true enough.
Wilton is an old place. The Pembroke Herberts
are an old family. They are not, however, descended
from William Marshal, the Pembroke Earl of Magna
Charta celebrity. They derive their lineage from a
stock of Thomases, Herberts, and Fitzherberts, who
held Court offices under the Plantagenets and who,
in the time of the Tudors, acquired large estates
in a county wherein, before then, they held not an
acre. One of these sixteenth-century ancestors,
William Herbert, became territorially enriched under
Henry VHI., and stood so high in that monarch's
favour as to be appointed one of the executors of
his will. That distinction gave him the further
honour of sharing a seat in the funeral conveyance
to Windsor with Sir Anthony Denny. By his mar-
riage with Mrs. Gam, the widow of Sir Roger
Vaughan, he introduced the Christian name of Gladys
to the ladies of his family. By 1580 Sir Philip
Sidney's sister had become Countess of Pembroke.
With the opening of the seventeenth century Wilton
began to share the intellectual distinction already
enjoyed by Penshurst. William, third Earl of
Pembroke, then master of the place, was that nephew
177 M
Two Centuries of Wilton
of Sir Philip Sidney apostrophised in Ben Jonson's
well-known lines. In person he was the handsomest
of his race. As a host, he had no rival since his
uncle the first Lord Leicester of Penshurst. The
third Lady Pembroke, the granddaughter of Sir
William Cavendish of Chatsworth and of " Bess of
Hardwick," was famous for the taste, the splendour,
and the economy of her entertainments. The drama-
tist, Philip Massinger, a son of Pembroke's retainer,
brought up, if not born, at Wilton, acted as her major
domo, and secured both Shakespeare and Spenser
among the guests. Her best known, but not next,
successor as Wilton's chatelaine was the sister of
Charles IL's Duchess of Portsmouth, Henrietta
de Querouaille, who married the seventh Earl of
Pembroke. The next generation gave Wilton its
greatest beautifier. The "architect" Earl, as he is
generally known, did not limit his operations to his
Wiltshire home. One at least of the new lodges
in Windsor Park was designed by him. So, too, were
the river-side home of Horace Walpole's neighbour,
the Countess of Suffolk's Marble Hill, Twickenham,
and the waterhouse in Lord Orford's park, Houghton.
A more national monument of his structural accom-
plishments survived to the nineteenth century in
the bridge spanning the Thames at Westminster.
That dates from between 1739 and 1750. The design
was that of the Swiss architect, Labeyle ; but all
the arrangements were made by the ninth Lord
Pembroke.
In the eighteenth century Wilton became the most
fashionable and conspicuous country house soath of
178
The Pembroke Ladies
the Trent. That position was chiefly due to the
ladies of the Pembroke family. These began to be
in modish evidence in 1751. Then it was that Rigby,
the Duke of Bedford's man, as gossip-purveyor to his
patron, reported the latest feminine sensation from
Wilton. This was the marriage of the ninth, the
architect-Earl's widow to Captain Barnard of the Blues.
A studious, reserved, thinking sort of a philosopher,
the bridegroom differed from most guardsmen of the
period. There seems, however, to have been little
about him that explained his capture of the "stateliest
dame of quality of the day." The most self-interested
of great ladies, as Captain Barnard's bride was
accounted, filled her house, out of the London season,
with an unending succession of smart guests. The
glades and galleries which had heard the talk on great
subjects of the sixteenth century's master-minds, now
echoed with the cancans that frivolous letter-writers
were to distil into sheets of cream-laid post, con-
stituting the chronique scandaleuse of the period.
" Have you," writes one of these gossip-loving ladies
from Wilton, " heard about the Duke of Queensberry's
visit to Alnwick } Receiving his guests at the gate,
the Earl of Northumberland said, ' Now is the first
time that ever a Douglas and a Percy met here in
friendship.' And this from a Smithson to a true
Douglas ! " The Wilton company were particularly
interested in and communicative about the marriaoe
and coronation of George III. From distant Wiltshire,
Horace Walpole hears at Strawberry Hill the echoes
lamenting that there will be missed at the ceremony
two brightest luminaries of fashion — Lady Walde-
179
Two Centuries of Wilton
grave for beauty and the Duchess of Grafton for
figure. When the day of the royal ceremony arrived,
Wilton sent, at the head of the Countesses, Lady
Pembroke, who, looking the picture of majestic
modesty, shared the palm of loveliness with Lady
Kildare. Each of these ladies had consulted Horace
Walpole himself. " No profession, you see," he com-
placently writes, " comes amiss to me, from a tribune
of the people to a habit-maker." As for others who
assisted at these functions, the verdict of the Wilton
critics was that the ancient peeresses held their own.
Thus Lady Westmorland looked still as handsome
as any and with more dignity than all. Nor could
anything be more charming than the Duchess of
Queensberry, though her locks were milk-white.
Lady Albemarle impressed every one as " charmingly
genteel." Middle age had good reason to be proud of
its representatives in Lady Holdernesse, in Lady Roch-
ford, and in Lady Strafford, the last " the perfectest
little figure of all." Soon after the incidents mentioned
in these letters, early in George IIL's long reign,
Wilton became associated with a painful escapade.
The tenth Earl, a major-general and a bedchamber
lord, had married one of the most beautiful creatures
in England, Lady Elizabeth Spencer, sister of George,
Duke of Marlborough.^ The lucky husband, however,
as he was accounted, had been overcome by the charms
of Miss Kitty Hunter, a daughter of one of the
Admiralty lords. An elopement with her took place
from a ball at Lord Middleton's. Society, when it had
recovered composure after the shock caused by the
' She died in 1831, at the age of 93.
180
"Something of Nelly Brien for the Eyes"
news, sympathised with Lady Pembroke, the more
so as her husband cynically justified himself by saying
that, having failed to make his wife hate him, he had
no other course but this. After having deserted her,
Pembroke wrote apologetically to his wife, offering
to return. The lady briefly replied " she had no
wish to see him till he had redeemed his character."
Subsequently, however, a reconciliation was effected,
and the couple lived together at Wilton almost as
comfortably as if nothing had happened. Miss Hunter,
with whom Pembroke had run away, showed on her
part a spirit that went far towards condoning her
offence. Her father had offered to receive her home
on condition of her returning to Lord Pembroke his
money and the child that had been born. The former
she readily parted with ; as for the latter, it was, she
said, all now left her to live for. Lady Pembroke's
sister. Lady Bolingbroke, also a reigning beauty of
the period, sat to Sir Joshua Reynolds for her portrait.
Lady Pembroke it was who, coming to the studio,
whispered in the artist's ear a message from Lord
Bolingbroke : " You must be sure to give the eyes
something of Nelly Brien." That lady, as Horace
Walpole reminds us, was the frailest beauty of the
day. Her portrait, also by Reynolds (1763), was in
the Manchester exhibition of 1857, and afterwards
found its way into the Hertford collection. This
seventeenth century Lady Pembroke was the leading
spirit in the smartest section of the polite world of
her time. She was, in fact, the typical predecessor
of the ladies who, in the latter half of the Victorian
age, were known as professional beauties. Together
181
Two Centuries of Wilton
with Frances, Lady Brown, who loved laughing, she
formed one of the jury of matrons who insisted upon
George Montagu taking a house near Walpole at
Strawberry Hill. In conjunction with the dowager
Countess of Fife, she organised the first masquerade
ever witnessed in Edinburgh, and gave to the canny
Scot, Almack, the idea of starting the rooms that,
a little later, were the fashionable feature in King
Street, St. James's Square. " But for Lady Pembroke,"
is Walpole's comment, " the masquerade would never
have been known in that northern land where no
masquers were before." This was the Lady Pembroke
who, having first delighted her guests by rehearsing
the part at Wilton, appeared a little later as a pilgrim
in a fancy ball at Richmond ; the Duchess of Rich-
mond on the same occasion being a Persian sultana,
the Duchess of Grafton Cleopatra, Mrs. Fitzroy the
pride of a Turkish harem, Lady George Lennox and
Lady Bolingbroke Greek girls in "the most piquant
costumes you can imagine." The scene on which, on
the close of the eighteenth century, the curtain fell at
Wilton was one of fashionable cosmopolitanism. The
eleventh Lord Pembroke had married (1784) Elizabeth,
daughter of Dr. Johnson's Topham Beauclerk. On
her death in 1808 he took, as his second wife,
Catharine, daughter of Count Woronzow. That
Russian diplomatist, during the years in which Anglo-
Russian relations were embroiled by such questions
as the ownership of Malta and the right of search
at sea, had been repeatedly sent by the Czar to
England. Having for a time acted as permanent
ambassador at the Court of St. James's, he left the
182
Wilton, Woronzow, and Wraxall
Russian service, settled down to a country gentleman's
life in Hampshire, and, as has been seen, saw his
daughter become the eleventh Lady Pembroke. The
twelfth Earl also took to himself a foreign wife (1814),
a daughter of the Duke of Lorraine and widow of
the Sicilian prince, Buttera. Wilton thus became
the most fashionable rural rendezvous of Europe
as well as of England. Among its English guests
was one who contrived grievously to compromise
himself with its foreign connections. This was the
diarist, Nathaniel Wraxall, who had attributed to
Woronzow's authorship the report of the Prince of
Wurtemburg having connived at malpractices which
had brouofht his wife to her death. Lord Pembroke
himself was not only an influential Russian's son-in-law ;
according to Wraxall, he had other family connections
with highly-placed Russians. ^ It is not, therefore,
surprising that the next time the diarist visited Wilton
he thougfht his welcome less warm than usual. The
institution of legal proceedings soon explained to him
the reason. For some time to come the week's-end
guests at Wilton talked of little else than the great
cause celebre of the day. In much the same fashion,
seventy years afterwards, country-house companies
in several parts of England were to discuss the pro-
ceedings against Edmund Yates of the World, ending
as these did with Lord Coleridge's sentence of im-
prisonment at Holloway. Wraxall was condemned to
a fine of ^500 and six months loss of liberty. The
money having been paid and half the term served,
» "Wraxall," vol. i. p. 150. Note Raikes' Journal, vol. i.
P- 34-
183
Two Centuries of Wilton
the Anglo-Russian agencies, organised in the Wilton
drawing-room, set him at liberty.
Throughout the entire Victorian era Wilton
remained the chief social rallying ground in the South
of England for the political forces gradually being
raised against Whiggism. In 1839 the Melbourne
faction had disgusted and alarmed the fashionable
Tories by coquetting with the Radicals. In those
days the very charge of being a Radical was bad
enough. It was in the Wilton drawing-room that a
fine lady, hearing the unsavoury word mentioned,
languidly asked what it might mean. Then,
remembering herself, she said, ** Ah, I think I have
heard. They are a sort of people who go about with
Dissenters, vegetarians, homoeopathists and other
uncomfortable persons." If the mere suspicion of
Radicalism were a disgrace, the fact of not being clean
shaven grievously aggravated it. G. F. Muntz, who
had just got in for Birmingham, was not only the first
member of the House of Commons to wear a beard ;
he was also charged with Chartist associations. The
company at Wilton could scarcely contain itself for
disgust and alarm. When this same gentleman was
put on the commission of peace by the Government,
the Lord and Lady Pembroke of the day thought that
the reign of law approached its end. Nothing
remained, they said, but to consign their art treasures
to the cellars of Coutts' Bank, to shut up their houses
in town and country, and to live abroad till the Whig
tyranny were overpast. While such was the con-
versational strain of the Wilton drawing-room, news
came first of the odious charge, due of course to Whig
184
Wilton's Fashionable Scares
malignity, against one of the Duchess of Kent's suite,
Lady Flora Hastings. A little later Charles Greville
or George Villiers brought the news of Lady Flora's
death. The Whig ministers were, of course, as directly
responsible for this as for the bad seasons, agricultural
depression, and the big blue-bottle flies in the butchers'
shops. The attack on Whiggism, from the social
side, was ingeniously planned beneath the Pembroke
roof. Their connection with the Radicals easily
enabled the Wilton emissaries to represent Lord
Melbourne and his colleagues as not less the enemies
of humanity than the instruments of the Revolution.
These were the men who wished to see the monarchy
broken, provided they could hurl its fragments at the
head of their opponents. Such were the sentiments
uttered across the walnuts and the wine at the Wilton
dinner-table. They were really echoes from the
Times, whose slashing leaders were then talked in
country houses much as they have been from that day
to this. Things would not be so bad were there any
restraining force on the other side. But, alas ! the
Wilton quidnuncs who were behind the scenes knew
of course for a fact that the Duke of Wellington's
powers were failing. At Wilton, too, it was that, some
time subsequently to this, W. E. Gladstone, as the
guest of his friend's sister-in-law, was to hear the first
misgivings expressed about the then Tory leader.
Sidney Herbert told Gladstone at Wilton that Peel's
temper, though kept under thorough discipline, was
naturally so violent as to render him liable to break
out and do untold mischief at any moment. Among
several commentators on that estimate, the fourteenth
185
Two Centuries of Wilton
Lord Derby's Foreign Secretary was perhaps the best
informed critic. As a boy, the third Lord Malmesbury
used to spend his winter hoHdays at Wilton with the
Pembroke children for his playfellows. Agreeing with
his friend Greville as to Sidney Herbert being a "smart
fellow," not without some reason, as it proved some
years later, he spoke of Sidney's innate and impulsive
violence. The incident in question occurred in 1846 ;
it arose out of the ministerial secessions that eventually
left Sir Robert Peel and Lord Derby the respective
leaders of rival factions. On March 15, 1846, at one
of Lady Palmerston's Cambridge House receptions,
Sidney Herbert excitedly told Malmesbury that his
conduct in leaving Peel was unworthy a gentleman ;
all the Protectionists, he added, were a set of fools.
Lord Stanley was " the greatest fool of all, and Peel was
delighted at having got rid of us." Subsequently the
two disputants met amicably at Mrs, Norton's tea-
table ; before the week was out they were visitors
together at Wilton, reunited as they rambled through
the grounds in the same friendship as when they had
played there together in their childhood. The non-
political visitors at Wilton had always been among
the most interesting. In addition to those already
mentioned, there came in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the clerical kinsman of the house, the poet
George Herbert, from his neighbouring rectory Bemer-
ton, with his friend Izaac Walton, who often angled
successfully in the streams that flow through the park.
The most interesting figure in the category of gentle
and gracious visitors belongs to our own time and, at the
present moment of writing, still survives. Florence
186
Florence Nightingale and Palmerston
Nightingale, though born in the ItaHan town from which
she takes her name, is the daughter of a Hampshire
neighbour of the Wilton family. The accident of
locality had made her name familiar to Sidney Herbert,
long before he went to the War Office. When little
more than thirty, as Peel's secretary at the Admiralty,
he had heard that the Squire of Embley's daughter was
inspecting the European hospitals and contemplated
training herself as a nurse at Kaiserswerth. Shortly
before her visit, in 1856, to Queen Victoria at Balmoral
she was more than once a guest at Wilton. At
Wilton, too, was organised, in 1855, the national testi-
monial to Miss Nightingale, whose details were first
explained by Sidney Herbert himself at a Willis's
Rooms meeting, presided over by the Duke of Cam-
bridge (Nov. 29, 1855). Of Sidney Herbert's statues,
that in Pall Mall by Foley seems in all respects better
than Marochetti's work in Salisbury market-place.
Between his tall, handsome presence and that of one
who had borne the same surname before him, Lord
Plerbert of Cherbury, as well as between the chivalrous
characters of both, something like a family resemblance
exists. Among the contemporaries of the statesman
who died Lord Herbert of Lea, none visited Wilton
more frequently than Lord Palmerston or more
pungently put on record a sense of the moral value to
public life of his example and influence. Politics, he
said, threaten now, as they never did before, to
degenerate to mere thimble-riororina- or the three-card
o 00 o
trick. If, in the next century, they do not reach that
level, we shall have to thank men like Sidney Herbert.
A year or two later, on Herbert's death, Palmerston
187
Two Centuries of Wilton
delivered in the House of Commons perhaps the one
entirely pathetic speech he ever made. *' I had
trusted," said the aged Premier, "that after I was
gone, he would lead the gentlemen of England." As
he said the words his voice trembled ; he turned
aside to conceal the tears which had risen. Wilton,
indeed, abounds in Palmerston memories of the
pleasantest kind. Here, looking out upon the cedars,
is the schoolroom, in which the present fourteenth
Lord Pembroke and his brother were reading with
their governess. Suddenly the door opens, Lord
Palmerston enters, takes up the book, which happens
to be " Robinson Crusoe," and curtails the morning's
studies by talking to his young friends for more than
half an hour about it. Presently, rejoining another
visitor, Sir Thomas Acland, he goes down to the
grounds, and, under the cedars themselves, sees
a third young Herbert puzzling over some Latin
"longs and shorts," set him as a holiday task and
keeping him from his fishing. "Acland," says
Palmerston, " do that boy's verses for him." The
exercise is finished in a moment as by magic ; within
ten minutes the released captive is dropping his line in
the stream spanned by the Palladian bridge.
CHAPTER VII
MARSTON AND LONGLEAT
The first Lord Cork — His descendants — The Boyles and the
Cavendishes — The title passes to the fifth Lord Orrery —
Marston and its Hterary associations — Swift, Burnet, and Gay
— "The Beggar's Opera" — Lavinia Fenton and the Duke
of Bolton — Actresses and the Bolton peerage — The seventh
Countess of Cork — Longleat— Its history — The Thynnes —
Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, and Thomas Ken —
Friendship between them — Ken made Bishop of Bath and
Wells by Charles IL — One of the " Seven Bishops " — Refuses
to take the oath of allegiance to William IIL — Retires to
Longleat — It becomes a centre of learning — Izaac Walton
marries Ken's sister — The party at Longleat — Secular asso-
ciations — Edward Seymour, first Duke of Somerset — Thomas
Seymour, Lord Sudeley — Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of
Southampton — Lucius Carey, Viscount Falkland — The Earl
of Carnarvon — " Tom of Ten Thousand " — Thomas Thynne,
third Viscount Weymouth — Longleat's recent political asso-
ciations — Mr. Gladstone and the fourth Marquess of Bath
in 1884 — Intervention of Canon MacCoU — The Longleat
County Franchise Bill of 1884— The fifth Lord Bath and the
Health Congress, 1904.
THE autumn of 1904 witnessed the revival of
associations, equally interesting in society and
politics, at two country houses which may be described
as in the direct line of progress from Salisbury to
189
Marston and Longleat
St. Michael's Mount. The ninth Lord Cork's death
in the later months of the year not only deprived
Somersetshire of an adroit and active Lord-Lieutenant,
but closed a rural, as well as urban, rallying centre of
orthodox Liberalism. As Mr. Gladstone's some time
Master of the Buckhounds, the ninth Lord Cork,
essentially assisted by his wife, a daughter of the
house of Clanricarde, one of the wittiest as well
as most highly endowed of the great ladies of her
day, had been for many years among the enter-
tainers of his party, both in his London house and
at his Somersetshire seat. His ancestor in Eliza-
bethan times was the younger son of an incon-
siderable Herefordshire squire. That was the period
when England sent her impecunious gentry to make
their fortunes in Ireland. The founder of the Cork
earldom first settled on Irish soil in 1588, with, to
quote his own inventory of his possessions, less than
thirty shillings in cash, a diamond ring, a gold bracelet,
a taffeta doublet, a pair of black velvet breeches,
competent under-linen, other little unnamed neces-
saries, a rapier, a dagger, and two cloaks. He had
the knack of transmuting whatever he touched into
gold. Apart from real estate, houses and parks, he
soon could reckon his income at ^50 a day. The
basis of these fortunes had been a marriage with a
Limerick heiress. His success made enemies, who,
among other unkind things, said that he was in the
pay of Spain. Summoned to England to answer
these charges, he soon found himself in the Tower.
Restored to liberty by the Queen, he obtained a
snug Irish sinecure — Clerk to the Council in Munster.
190
The Rise of Marston
The confiscations following the Earl of Desmond's
rebellion further enriched this fortunate Boyle, who
also made a wise investment in buying Sir Walter
Raleigh's Munster lands at a bargain. At the
beginning of the seventeenth century the first Lord
Cork held most of the Irish property now possessed
by the Duke of Devonshire, and worth not much
less than ;^50,ooo a year. About a generation
later, Boyle, now squire of Marston in England,
supplied Charles I. with ^20,000 for the expedition
against the Scots. In repayment he received his
earldom a few years later. The extent of his
dominions and influence, the stately profusion in
which he lived, his power with the sovereign he
had helped so lavishly, caused him to be known
as the great Earl of Cork. In Ireland, he led the
movement having for its object the extinction of
Romanism, the extension of Protestant faith or
authority, and the substitution of English settlers
for aboriginal peasants on the fertile soil of Leinster.
He succeeded in converting his clerical brother into
an episcopal pluralist as Bishop of Cork, Cloyne,
and Ross. Other relatives became respectively
Archbishop of Tuam, Archbishop of Armagh, and
Bishop of Waterford. The head of the family died
Lord Chancellor of Ireland, bequeathing to his eldest
son his estates and the now extinct viscountcy of
Blesinton. Other sons, inheriting their father's good
fortune and brains, became peers. The most intel-
lectually distinguished of the number refused a
peerage. The eldest son, Viscount Boyle, after-
wards second Earl, made great additions to the
191
Marston and Longleat
family property in the North of England by marrying
into the Cliffords of Cumberland. His daughter's
marriage united the families and the estates of the
Boyles and the Cavendishes. The son of that marriage
has left a memorial of his building tastes in Cork
Street, in Burlington House, Piccadilly, and in
Chiswick House, afterwards known as the Duke of
Devonshire's cottage on the Thames. Upon the
death of the fourth Earl of Cork, the title passed
to the fifth Earl of Orrery ; he thus became the
fifth Earl of Cork and Orrery. The second of these
titles is perpetuated by the astronomical instrument
which its inventor, Graham, named after his Oxford
friend and fellow student; for Graham's contemporary,
the fourth Lord Orrery, had won a high reputation
at Christ Church before becoming involved in the
controversy about the Phalaris Letters. This was the
dissertation which first made Bentley's fame world-
wide. Marston abounds in memorials of these episodes.
They have always formed the centre of literary
interest. It would have been well for Anglo- Irish
relations if all Saxon adventurers who have achieved
prosperity on the other side of St. George's Channel
suggested to the Celtic mind associations not less
agreeable than those grouping themselves round
Marston. Jonathan Swift was only one of many
distinguished visitors from the sister kingdom to
the Somersetshire home of the Boyles. There he
met his pet aversion — the Hanoverian apologist,
Burnet, the tame cat of the place, and the poet
diplomatist, John Gay, a Barnstaple man by birth,
but in whose veins his Boyle hosts had discovered
192
State and Stage at Marston
some Irish blood to flow. Gay's sojourns at Marston
proved sufficiently eventful. It was here that a
suggestion of Swift sowed in his mind the seed of
the " Beggar's Opera." Twelve years later, in 1728,
the play made its immediate and extraordinary success.
The Lord Cork of the period assisted at its first
performance. In a letter, written after leaving the
theatre, to his wife, he spoke of the audience as
not at once recognising in Captain MacHeath, the
highwayman, Sir Robert Walpole. It was not, he
said, the Peachum and Lockit dialogues or song
which saved the piece and made its fortune, but
Lavinia Fenton's impersonation of Polly. This
actress, he adds, is not particularly pretty, but she
has the most piquant face and manner, as others
than his Grace of Bolton think, of any young female
now on the stage. The Duke of Bolton, a handsome
scapegrace, recently separated from his wife, first made
the " Polly " of the play his mistress and afterwards
his wife. The several children she bore him all came
before marriage, the youngest, a clergyman, dying in
1809. As Duchess of Bolton the actress visited at
Marston, and created among the company a perfect
enthusiasm by her finished manners, her bright intelli-
gence, and her delightful conversation. Lord Bathurst
and Lord Granville, each of them then between
seventy and eighty, nearly let their jealousy about
her provoke a duel between them in Marston park.
The Bolton peerage, belonging to the main line of
the Paulet family, died out with Harry, the fifth
Duke, in 1794. Lavinia Bolton was the second
lady described as an actress whose posterity belonged
193 N
Marston and Longleat
to the peerage. The first was the progenitress of
the Beauclerks — Nell Gwyn. Another was Miss
Farren, the twelfth Earl of Derby's second wife.
She became the ancestress of the Earls of Wilton,
but not of the later Earls of Derby, who sprang
from the twelfth Lord Derby's marriage with Eliza-
beth, daughter of the sixth Duke of Hamilton and
Brandon. The seventh Countess of Cork, to whom
Marston chiefly owes its hospitable reputation, was by
birth the first Viscount Galway's daughter. The
ninth Lady Cork could have had no more appro-
priate precursor than this hostess, who not only made
her husband's social fortune, but, in the political circles
of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, prepared
the way for the position, taken a little later by Mrs.
Crewe, with her favourite toast of " True blue and
all of you." Curiously enough, speaking of the
seventh Lady Cork, as she afterwards became,
Boswell uses the words " the lively Miss Moncton
who used always to have the finest bit of blue at
her parties." Born April, 1746, she died at the
end of May, 1840.
That curious whole length at Longleat of Frances,
Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, came from
Easton Neston, the Earl of Pomfret's seat. The best
picture of her is in Wilson's " Life of King James,"
and very diverting indeed. Horace Walpole's words
suororest the dominant characteristic of the Longleat
galleries. Their contents are, in a special degree,
pictures with a history. The country home of the
Corks, though close to the Wiltshire frontier, is within
Somerset by two or three miles. That of the Baths
194
Longleat's Story-
belongs to Wiltshire rather more decidedly than
Marston does to Somerset. The place takes its
name from the leat or watercourse which feeds the
fine lake in front of the house. A priory formerly
stood on the ground to-day occupied by a palace. Its
inmates first made the conduit for the stream, that it
miofht turn their mill. After the dissolution of the
monasteries the place was sold by Henry VIII. to Sir
John Horsey; he, eleven years later, in 1540, parted
with it to Sir John Thynne, a favourite of Protector
Somerset. The two men had first become acquainted
when they were prisoners together in the Tower.
Escaping his patron's end at the block, Thynne
became controller to the Princess Elizabeth during her
sister's reign. According to tradition, in the fine
house built by him Thynne had for his architect John
of Padua. The masons employed were, however,
entirely Wiltshire workmen. The structure had not
been long finished before, in April, 1567, it was
destroyed by fire. The rest of Sir John Thynne's
life was occupied with building the house that exists
to-day ; he left it incomplete. The work was not
fully done before the fourth Thynne (Sir James)
secured the services of Sir Christopher Wren, whose
personal contribution to the fabric seems to have
consisted of two stately staircases. In 1670 the
inheritance passed to the nephew of Sir James,
Thomas Thynne, the "Tom of Ten Thousand,"
whose shooting by Count Konigsmark in Pall Mall
is depicted on the well-known memorial to him in
the south aisle of Westminster Abbey. The next
owner of Longleat was Thomas Thynne, the first
195
Marston and Longleat
Viscount Weymouth. During his proprietorship the
place contracted the earhest of those ecclesiastical
associations that continued to the nineteenth century-
its social characteristic. On entering the library at
Longleat attention is at once fixed by the portrait, in
an old frame, of a keen, ascetic face, whose penetrating
eyes almost seem to follow and look through the
visitor in whatever quarter of the room he may be.
The dress worn consists of full canonical robes, whose
priestliness is brought out in stronger relief by the
black silk skull cap surmounting them. This, of
course, is the famous seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century Bishop of Bath and Wells. The Kens had
been settled in East Somerset before the Thynnes
were known in Wiltshire. The religious tradition of
Winchester School, which Warden Barter at a later
day did so much to revive, was less that of its founder,
William of Wykeham, than of Thomas Ken. If it
was not in the groves and galleries of Longleat that
Ken first meditated his Evening and Morning Hymns,
he certainly here impressed upon them the final shape
in which they have become classical. Here, too, it
was that he began to set both compositions to music,
singing them to his lute before rising in the morning
or retiring to rest at night. A little dark oak box
in the Longleat library used to contain, and may con-
tain still, not exactly the musical score for these com-
positions, but a memorandum by their author of his
ideas about their rendering. Ken, who was Fellow of
New College in 1657, came to Oxford, an ardently
devout and impressionable youth, some two years
earlier, matriculating in the same term as his con-
196
Ken and Thynne at Oxford and Longleat
temporary and life-long friend, the Thynne afterwards
Lord Weymouth. The shock of discovering the
University so little like their pious anticipations of it
drew still closer the sympathetic ties of the intimacy.
Instead of being a holy cloister, the place seemed a
pandemonium of Antinomian Puritanism and Republi-
can profanity. The Book of Common Prayer was still
forbidden. The proctor was a boisterous fellow, great
only at cudgelling and football. The vice-chancellor
went about in Spanish leather boots, huge ribbons at
the knee, and his hat mostly cocked. The two fresh-
men were proof against the moral contaminations of
the academic atmosphere. With the future bishop
disgust only sealed the resolution to become an
educational reformer. " With God's help I will lay a
foundation now to make the next generation better."
The remark was addressed by him to Weymouth at
Longleat. Meanwhile, since their Oxford days, the
Churchman had shown his independence of royal
patronage with consequences to himself that were
more creditable to Charles IL than Ken had expected.
The Court of the Restoration was passing the summer
at Winchester while Ken belonged to the capitular
body. A fragment of dialogue between Canon Ken
and Lord Weymouth, relating to this period, has
been preserved: " They are going, I hear, to billet
Madam Eleanor Gwyn upon your prebendal resi-
dence." " They will do no such thing," Ken replied.
And when Nell announced her impending arrival
beneath the canonical roof she received the polite but
firm reply that no accommodation could be offered.
"This fellow," remarked the King to Thynne, "may
197
Marston and Longleat
be a hypocrite, but is not a sycophant. Od's fish, I
must make a bishop of him." Very shortly after the
royal mistress had almost seen the prebendal door
closed in her face, the see of Bath and Wells fell
vacant. It was at once offered to and accepted by
Ken. The only time Charles appears to have seen
Ken was on his death-bed. " That prelate of mine,"
murmured the moribund sovereign, "has spoken to
me like a man inspired." Yet a little later, Bishop
Ken and Viscount Weymouth are once more at
Longleat together. The latter beseeches his friend
not to sacrifice his career by refusing to humour
James II. "Surely," observes the nobleman, "we
Catholics of all schools ought to rally round the Throne
against Presbyterians, Brownists, Muggletonians, Fifth
Monarchy men, Sixth Swingers, and Atheists." Bath
and Wells did not find this argument convincing. He
accordingly was one of the seven diocesans whose
acquittal formed the signal for the landing of Orange
William. But though the good Anglican prelate
distrusted Romanism, he retained his loyalty to the
Stuarts. He refused the oath of allegiance to the
usurper. He thus became the most illustrious among
the episcopal nonjurors whom William ejected from
their sees. "A noble and faithful friend, even like a
brother born for adversity." Such was Ken's descrip-
tion of the old college comrade who now made
Longleat the dispossessed prelate's home. Near the
old library stood the rooms assigned to the bishop.
Throughout the Thynne period the mansion had been
a hospitable centre for the fashionable and famous who
found their local metropolis at the neighbouring city ot
198
Uncle Izaac Walton
Bath. It now became the resort of a theology culture
and learning, whose influences radiated throughout
the country and even coloured the religion and the
philosophy of the time. Izaac Walton, a native of
Staffordshire, after thirty years of business as a
London linen draper, had married a great-grand-niece
of Archbishop Cranmer. Some twenty years later he
found a second wife in Bishop Ken's half-sister Ann.
The son of this marriage. Ken's nephew, the Reverend
Izaac Walton, was vicar of a neighbouring village,
Poulshot, and a frequent guest at Longleat. Another
clergyman, the family chaplain, Doctor Harbin, and a
Nonconformist divine, who lived at Frome, Singer,
with a widowed daughter, Elizabeth Rowe, who kept
house for him, completed this little company, whose
literary relics remain among the Longleat archives.
These contain hymns of Ken's as yet unpublished, the
most pathetic being an anodyne for pain, in which
occurs this verse : —
"One day of pain improves me more
Than years of ease could do before ;
It is by pain God me instructs.
And so to endless bliss conducts."
At Longleat the good bishop remained for twenty
years. When in tolerable health he was excellent
company. A habit of drowsiness seems to have
grown upon him, but so long as he could keep his
eyes open he held the table in a roar. Dying at
Longleat, Thomas Ken, according to his wish, rests
in the nearest parish church within his old diocese,
St. John's, Frome.
The secular associations of Longleat in the six-
199
Marston and Longleat
teenth century, like its ecclesiastical connections a
little later, are memorialised in the portraits that
adorn its walls. The most famous personage round
whom these political memories group themselves lives
still on Holbein's canvas, wearing a black jewelled
cap, the Order of the Garter, and the George. This
was Protector Edward Seymour, first Duke of
Somerset. Sir John Thynne, beginning as his confi-
dential agent and secretary, became his most intimately
trusted friend, as well as, at Longleat, his habitual
host. " After my services in the army and at Court,"
said Somerset on one of these occasions to his friend,
*' I became esquire to the King, much pleasing His
Majesty by my prowess in the Greenwich tilt-yard
when the Court kept Christmas there." From being
Viscount Beauchamp, Seymour became, in 1537, Earl
of Hertford. Wulfhall, the house of Seymour's father,
is in the same part of the county as Longleat. Both
places were visited by Henry VHI. about the time
that he made himself Seymour's brother-in-law. The
tradesmen's bills and other documents relating to
such occasions, preserved at Longleat, show the
magnificent scale of these hospitalities, as well as the
exact cost at which a barn at Wulfhall was fitted up
as a ballroom for Jane Seymour's wedding-dance.
Longleat, too, witnessed some of the interviews held
by Jane Seymour's royal husband with Somerset,
Paget, and Thynne about the succession and the
future Edward VI.'s training. Somerset's letters,
still extant at Longleat, abound in language prophetic
of the writer's fall. It was the " ego et rex mens " of
Wolsey over again. " Edward, Protector by the
200
Seymour of Sudeley
grace of God," grandiosely sends greeting to his
"well-beloved Mr. Thynne." In other places the
royal plural is employed : " It is our intention," &c.
In the January of 1552 the end came on Tower Hill.
It was met with the courage and piety to which the
Longleat papers contain a testimony. Having pre-
sented his sword to the Lieutenant of the Tower, he
handed his money and rings to the headsman. That
did not ensure the skilful performance of the work.
Having risen up once to remove his doublet, he laid
his head on the block a second time before receiving
the death-stroke.
Another historic ghost of the Seymour family and
name, also depicted by Holbein's brush, haunts Long-
leat. This was the fourth son of the Wulfhall house.
Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, had inherited all
the ambition of his line. His skill in seamanship had
fairly won him the place of Lord High Admiral. He
aspired to the hand of the Princess Elizabeth (the
future queen). Edward VI. would not hear of this,
but offered him a surviving stepmother, Anne of
Cleves, though preferring his uncle should take the
Princess Mary with a view to converting her to Pro-
testantism. Eventually Seymour of Sudeley married
Queen Katharine Parr, to whom he had been attached
while she was yet only Lord Latimer's widow. The
marriage was kept a secret. It only, indeed, became
known after Katharine's death. The disfavour of his
brother the Protector brought Sudeley, after a mock
trial, to the scaffold. The doomed man requited the
fraternal hatred, and occupied the last days of his life
with an attempt to incite his sovereign's two sisters to
201
Marston and Longleat
rebellion against the Protector. The portrait in the
Longleat library shows him as a remarkably handsome
and powerfully made man. Beneath the painting are
written the words : "A subject true to king and
friend to God's truth." That was not the universal
estimate. Admitting him to have died with a courage
worthy of a better cause, Bishop Latimer calls Sudeley
"a man furthest from the fear of God that ever I
heard of in Enofland. Whether he can be saved or
no, God in the twinkling of an eye can save a man
and turn his heart. When a man hath two strokes
with an axe, who can tell but between the two strokes
he doth repent ? "
Among Longleat's habituds during the last quarter
of the seventeenth century, the most interesting and
pathetic story belongs to the original of the finest
Vandyke possessed by the place. This was Thomas
Wriothesley, last of the Southampton earls. The
best Longleat portraits belonging to this period are
all of Royalists. Under circumstances recalling those
which inspired Tennyson's "In Memoriam," South-
ampton's father was returning from the Low Countries
to England. He had gone thither in the hope of
bringing back his eldest son for the recovery of his
health. The lad died during the journey. The
second son, Thomas Wriothesley, now his heir,
hastening to the English coast to welcome his two
relatives home, was so overcome by the shock of
finding his father in charge of a dead body, as to be
seized with an illness that for some time threatened to
prove fatal. He lived, however, to be Charles L's most
constant supporter as well as an active promoter of
202
More Longleat Visitors
Charles II.'s return. One of the four courtiers per-
mitted to pass some hours by his master's bier, he
suppHed his son with money. His loyalty to the
Stuarts never wavered ; it did not, however, ensure his
approval of all the Court measures. Even under
Charles I. he had dissented from the policy of
Strafford, but had been confirmed in his opposition to
the democratic faction by Pym's declaration against
plots and conspiracies, which all the members of both
Houses, except himself and Lord Robartes, had
signed. His second daughter by his first wife found
a husband among his political opponents. As Rachel,
Lady William Russel, she has her place in the catalogue
of England's heroic matrons. The third Lady South-
ampton was the kinswoman of her lord, the second
Duke of Somerset's daughter and Lord Molyneux's
widow.
Among the artists who, not less than the divines
and thinkers of the seventeenth century, found a
home at Longleat, was the Dutch Cornelius Janssen.
A Londoner by birth, he almost lived with the
Thynnes till his settlement at Amsterdam in 1643. In
the studio set up for him in the Wiltshire house he
executed his finest portrait, that of Henry Rich, first
Lord Holland, himself the founder of the suburban
mansion whose fame does not yield to Longleat.
The handsomest as well as the most polished
and agreeable man of his age, he is seen in the
Longleat portrait as he was when he accompanied
Buckingham on his Spanish mission for negotiating
the marriage of the then Prince of Wales with the
Infanta. After that errand had miscarried, Holland
203
Marston and Longleat
conducted the transaction which grave his future kinor
a French wife in the Princess Henrietta Maria.
From the first the lady showed herself more impressed
by the grace and good looks of the envoy than by her
destined lord. Holland himself found a wealthy wife
in a London heiress, Sir John Cope's daughter.
Taken prisoner by the Parliamentary army, he fell
a victim to Cromwell's dislike of Presbyterians ;
these, influenced by his brother, Lord Warwick, were
for sparing his life. Holland, however, suffered death
on the same scaffold and in the same year that two
months earlier had received a more august victim in
Charles himself. Before Lord Holland knelt down to
the block he had seen the head of his friend the Duke
of Hamilton severed at a single blow. To the last
he had retained his courtesy as well as his loyalty and
courage. When going through the form of trial he
scarcely answered his accusers, preferring, as he said,
to receive his life from their favour rather than from
the strength of his defence. Of his four sons, the
eldest, Robert Rich, succeeded not only to his father's
title, but also, on his uncle's death in 1672, to the
Warwick earldom as well.
Near the portraits of Ken and Holland in the
Longleat library is one of several counterfeit present-
ments of Lucius Carey, second Viscount Falkland,
executed by Vandyke during his five years' stay in
England very shortly after he had finished his most
famous painting of Charles L The unique interest
belonging to the Falkland likeness in the Longleat
library comes from the fact that it represents its
original, not in his brighter and more prosperous
204
A Death Suit to the King of Heaven
period, but during the time of his despair for his
country, when the colour had left his face and all care
for his appearance and dress had departed. In the
chapel corridor is the Vandyke of Falkland's brother
peer, also mortally wounded in Newbury fight. Bear-
ing a title best known to-day for its revival in the
Herbert family, the Earl of Carnarvon, contemporary
with Falkland, was a Dormer by birth, successively
created by Charles I. Viscount Ascot and Earl of
Carnarvon. His cosmopolitan interests presaged
those of some among^ his Herbert successors. From
diplomatic missions abroad, he brought home some
foreign vices, and liked high play as much as he
loathed hard drinkino-. In the field he charged with
the impetuosity of Rupert himself. Asked on his
death-bed whether he had a last wish for the king, he
replied, " I will not die with a suit in my mouth to
any king, save the King of Heaven." The handsome
wife, who in the Longleat picture holds Carnarvon's
hand, was a daughter of the Pembroke Herberts.
The most interesting among the Longleat family
portraits are not in the library, but in the dining-room.
Here is Lely's Henry Coventry, whose London house
was in the Haymarket, on the very spot where Joseph
Addison afterwards had a lodging, and whose name is
perpetuated by a well-known street close by. Coven-
try's property went first to his nephew, James Thynne,
afterwards to another descendant. The real founder
of Longleat was this " Tom of Ten Thousand." He,
having made his Wiltshire home the most famous
house of the countryside and taken a wife who posed
as a/emme incomprise, found a favoured rival and his
205
Marston and Longleat
own assassin in Count Konigsmark ; the actual death-
shot was fired by a Pole, hired for the business.
Konigsmark was acquitted ; the bravos in his pay
were hung. The chief of them on his way to the
gallows complained of dying for two men and a
woman, on none of whom he had ever set eyes. The
Duke of Monmouth, Thomas Thynne's great friend,
in whose arms the murdered man died, brought the
conspirators to justice. Some there were who thought
the fatal shot had been intended for Monmonth and
not its actual victim. The surviving physiognomy of
the Thynne family, the square, broad forehead, the
clear-cut features, especially the fine nose and the firm
chin, as well as a certain winning expression of face
and grace of manner, were brought into the family by
"Tom of Ten Thousand," or by his father. Sir Thomas
of Richmond, who had taken a wife with Stuart blood
in her veins. Not far from the unfortunate "Tom of
Ten Thousand," the Longleat table is looked down
upon from the walls by another Thomas Thynne. By
inheritance the third Viscount Weymouth, he so
delighted George III. by the delicate considerateness
as well as magnificence of his hospitality, that before
bidding adieu to his host and his 125 fellow-guests,
the royal visitor insisted upon bestowing a marquisate
upon the princely owner of a place whose reputation
for beauty was altogether surpassed by the reality.
Beside this nobleman is the first marchioness, who,
together with her dower, brought to the Thynne
family a connection with two historic houses. The
second Duke of Portland's daughter. Lady Elizabeth
Cavendish Bentinck, had for her mother the grand-
206
Longleat Politics, 1884
daughter of Queen Anne's minister, Harley, Earl of
Oxford. The alliances made by the daughters of this
marriage formed links connecting Longleat with the
Ashburnhams, Aylesfords, and Chesterfields.
Longleat's most interesting political associations are
connected with the latter half of Queen Victoria's
reign. " If in private business two men were to come
to a breach when standing so near to one another in
aim and profession, they would be shut up in Bedlam."
So at Longleat, in the late summer of 1884, observed
the eighth Duke of Argyll to a fellow-guest, his former
Cabinet chief, W. E. Gladstone. The occasion of the
remark was the difference between the two Houses
developed by the Liberal scheme for giving to country
householders the electoral rights conferred seventeen
years earlier by the Conservatives on householders in
towns. On the object of the measure, both parties to
the controversy were professedly as nearly of one
mind as the Duke had put it. In his dislike of
political change, the fourth Lord Bath showed himself
a true descendant of his Tory ancestors. He shared,
however, the Gladstonian view that it would be
impolitic and futile for the peers to use redistribution
as a death weapon against franchise. Agreeing with
the Liberal leader upon the impracticability of success-
fully dealing with the two subjects in a single Bill, he
did not condemn the fifty-nine senators, gradually
falling to fifty afterwards, who, in the Gladstonian
phrase, had " put an effectual stoppage on the
measure." Like many others of his order, he was
now chiefly concerned to prevent the agricultural
labourers' enfranchisement being turned into an
207
Marston and Longleat
agitation against the veto of the Upper House. The
essential details of this episode are given in the third
volume (pp. 125-130) of Mr. John Morley's monu-
mental biography. The fourth Lord Bath's eccle-
siastical sympathies were those of his titular leader,
Lord Salisbury, on the one hand, and of his personal
intimate, Mr. Gladstone, on the other. Resistance
without quarter to Gladstonianism was the cry that
had gone forth from Lord Abergavenny at Eridge.
The politics of the early eighteenth century seemed
reproducing themselves ; it was daily becoming more
and more a war of country houses.
From Balmoral to Goodwood, and thence to
Hatfield, the sovereign's conciliatory counsels had been
carried by the Duke of Richmond. It was Lord
Bath and one of his clerical guests, well known to
Mr. Gladstone, who laid the first plank of the golden
bridsfe across which there sounded from Hawarden
the note for a movement, if not of surrender, at least
towards compromise. The fourth Lord Bath was one
of the few Tory High Churchmen whose continuance
of personal relations with Mr. Gladstone qualified him
for a mediatorial part between that statesman and his
own leader. Lord Salisbury. Throughout the nego-
tiations occupying the next few weeks, he was well
served by one of his most frequent clerical visitors,
Canon MacColl, then the depositary of many com-
munications to and fro between Longleat, Hawarden,
and Hatfield. Nothing now remained but for the
principals in the transaction to select their representa-
tives in the discussion about the lines on which redis-
tribution should proceed. The Longleat nominees
208
A Country House War Ended
could be none other than Lord Salisbury's nephew,
Mr. Arthur Balfour, then a private M.P., and Lord
Hartingdon, then Liberal Secretary of State for War.
The Longleat county franchise treaty of 1884 was
fraught with consequences more far-reaching than
then seemed likely. It promoted between the master
of Chatsworth and the representative of Hatfield the
habit of political co-operation which was to grow into
an agency for the joint control of Unionism. It
educated a future premier in that re-allotment of
Parliamentary seats which in the next century he was
to take up on his own account. Nor in that century
was Longleat to find itself disconnected with the
public service of the country, though in a different
sphere of usefulness. The fifth Lord Bath is the
chairman of King Edward's Commission for ascertain-
ing the best treatment of painful diseases arising out of
existing conditions of industrial life. In the autumn
of 1904 he gathered at Longleat his colleagues in this
benevolent work and the medical specialists, com-
petent by their experience to advise and direct in
such a matter. The eighth Duke of Marlborough
used humorously to anticipate the time when Blenheim
Palace would be utilized as a school of hygienics.
That was before the Health Congress at Longleat.
209
CHAPTER VIII
FROM WILTS THROUGH DORSET
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury and Chancellor
— His childhood, &c. — His political intrigues — Wimborne St.
Giles — The seventh Earl, the philanthopist — His family anec-
dotes — Lord Palmerston at Wimborne St. Giles — Monuments
of the Earls of Shaftesbury — Canford Manor — John of Gaunt
and Geoffrey Chaucer — Sir John Guest — Mr. H. A. Layard —
Lord Randolph Churchill — Milton Abbey — The Tregonwells
— The Hambros — Crichel — George HL's journey from Chel-
tenham to Weymouth — The Sturts and their property — George
IIL at Weymouth — The King and the Prince Regent — James
L and Anne of Denmark at Weymouth — Lulworth Castle —
The Empress Eugenie — The party at Lulworth — La belle
Americaine and the English peerage — The Welds — Abraham
Hay ward at Westhill.
A MORE notable chej dceiivre by Sir Peter Lely
at Longleat even than the " Tom of Ten
Thousand," is his painting, in the Hbrary, of the most
famous among the founders of the Dorsetshire
country house first reached after leaving the adjoining
county. The tiny man, gorgeous in a Chancellor's
coloured robes, looking down upon Lord Bath's writ-
ing-table from above the storeys of bookshelves, is the
leading spirit of the Cabal ministry, the " Ahitophel "
of Dryden's satire, "for close designs and crooked
210
A Chancellor's Childhood
counsels fit," known to history as Anthony Ashley
Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury. His paternal
ancestors, the Coopers, lived at Rockbourne in
Hampshire. His father, Sir John Cooper, married
Anne, daughter and heiress of another baronet. Sir
Anthony Ashley, of Wimborne St. Giles. Here,
while his parents were his grandfather's guests, the
future Lord Chancellor was born in 162 1. The
child's physical dimensions were a maternal inheri-
tance ; for his father, Sir John Cooper, is described
by his son as lovely and graceful in mind and person ;
his mother's father. Sir Anthony Ashley, as having a
large intellect but his person of the lowest. That
relative had, in the year just named, himself married
a young wife. The fact did not diminish his delight
in his new grandson, who he insisted should find a
home beneath his own roof. Ashley Cooper, therefore,
was bred where he had been born. When only ten
years of age the boy lost, nearly at the same time, both
his parents and his grandfather. Under the latter's
will he became heir to large but encumbered estates
and to the persistent ill-will of litigious relatives. In
his autobiography he has described his life with Sir
Daniel Norton, one of his trustees, in London.
Afterwards he found a home with a relative named
Tooker, near Salisbury. Meanwhile little Ashley
Cooper had given precocious proof of a tactful pru-
dence which was to checkmate his domestic enemies.
His territorial rights were assailed by his relatives.
At the age of thirteen, being in London, he con-
trived to see Noy, the Solicitor-General, and appealed
so successfully for his assistance that, without any fee,
211
From Wilts through Dorset
a suit in the Court of Wards was at once decided in the
boy's favour. At the time of his birth there had been
among his grandfather's guests an astrologer, who
foretold for the infant a great career in troublous
times. The prediction, remembered throughout life by
its subject, explains the lawyer's partiality for plane-
tary lore. "Stars," in his own words, "told perhaps
more truth than may at the time have been thought."
The first part of the horoscope was fulfilled by
performances at Exeter College, which won him the
reputation of the most prodigious youth in the
University. There came a further correspondence of
prophecy to fact when, as an undergraduate of
eighteen, the young man married Lord Keeper
Coventry's daughter. The pair lived in London
but made frequent country visits. Once, falling ill at
Tewkesbury, Ashley Cooper displayed a patience and
courage, so much admired by the electors for the
borough, or their wives, as to secure him the Parlia-
mentary seat. His opponent was a wealthy and
unpopular Sir Henry Spiller. While absent from the
place, the rising light of the law was chosen and
unanimously returned as its member without a single
penny of expense. By a second marriage he became
the Earl of Exeter's son-in-law, thus connecting the
Ashley Coopers with the Cecils. Going with the
times, he aspired to a third wife in Cromwell's
daughter. He urged the Protector to take the title of
king. Popular feeling declared for the Restoration.
While serving Cromwell, Sir Anthony Ashley had
been intriguing with Charles ; he had received the
exiled prince secretly as his guest at Wimborne
212
The " Poor Man's Peer " at St. Giles'
St. Giles. He now led the Presbyterian faction that
promoted the renewal of the monarchy. He formed
one of the Parliamentary deputation of twelve sent to
Breda to bring back Charles. To Ashley Cooper it
was that, back in England, Charles said with a smile,
" Od's fish, man, they all seem so glad to see me,
'tis a pity I did not come before." The lady actually
taken by the first Lord Shaftesbury for his third wife
was a daughter of Lord Spencer, a niece of Lord
Southampton, who, Clarendon says, it was hoped
would restrain the slippery humour of his nephew-
in-law.
Wimborne St. Giles had belonged to the Ashleys
since the days of Edward IV. The different parts of
the long, rambling house group themselves round a
quadrangle. It was while strolling here with the
seventh Lord Shaftesbury as his host, that the
present writer heard the foregoing and many other
details about the ancestor to whom his descendant of
the Victorian age presented a contrast so dramatically
complete. The Lord Chancellor had a confidential
servant, in face and person curiously like himself.
Hence of course frequent mistakes and several of the
practical jokes to which this Keeper of the Royal
Conscience was much given. With much quiet
humour in the recital, would the good Lord Shaftes-
bury of our time recall his seventeenth-century
progenitor's doings, and especially a certain escape
from arrest abroad by pushing the valet, who was so
like him, into his place. In those days another
frequent and famous guest was the artist for whom
his host had obtained the promise of the baronetcy
213
From Wilts through Dorset
that came nine years after his own death. In the
last eighties Burne Jones was still busy with his
designs for the memorial window to Lady Shaftesbury.
Other visitors on the occasion now referred to were
the late Lady Strangford, Mr. Gladstone, Messrs.
Moody and Sankey, and, if I remember rightly.
General Booth and Dr. George MacDonald. Of all
the sights and associations connected with St. Giles'
House, the chief interest for the host and often for his
company lay in a paddock, where a prettily marked
donkey passed its time between dozing and grazing.
This was the animal which, a few years earlier, the
costermongers of the East-end had clubbed together
to give "the poor man's peer." Instances of this
animal's intelligence and virtue only for a short time
interrupted the flow of anecdotal tradition. One
memory in particular of the first Lord Shaftesbury,
recently disinterred from the St. Giles' archives, was
dwelt on with humorous gusto by his descendant ; it
was also enlivened by quietly droll comment and ges-
ture as accompaniments to the recital. The personal
contrast between the Shaftesburys of the present and
of the past gave the story, as it was conversationally
told, a flavour not to be reproduced in print.
Its substance was as follows. The Lord Chancellor
had received from Mordaunt, at his London house in
Aldersgate Street, warning of imminent peril. Taking
with him a young nephew, he started for Harwich en
route for Holland. The two were disguised respec-
tively in the dress of a Presbyterian schoolmaster and
his pupil. The severe garb, however, did not conceal
the comely countenance and the long, yellow, chevalier
214
A St. Giles' Romance
ringlets of the lad. "As for me," said the hostess of
the wayside inn, " I shall ask no questions and tell
no tales. But perhaps this fair young sir had better
occupy the time of waiting for your ship in making
love to the maid ; for the hounds are already on your
scent." At this moment there seems to have arrived
Shaftesbury's servant who so closely resembled his
master. He was actually seized. The capture
enabled the fugitives safely to take ship. The exile's
stay at Amsterdam, where he had taken a large house,
proved shorter than he had expected. Gout in the
stomach came on. In the January of 1683 his dead
body was conveyed to Poole. The whole county
attended the funeral at Wimborne. The nineteenth-
century Wimborne St. Giles is charged with associa-
tions of Palmerston as well as with memories of the
exemplary relative who was regarded as the jaunty
premier's bishop-maker. The French seizure of
Savoy in i860 added greatly to Palmerston's diplo-
matic worries, and caused him often during the week
to seek change of scene and air. Many of these
short holidays were taken at St. Giles' House.
Excusing himself for a late arrival, the minister on
one occasion said to his host, " The fact is Count De
Flahault (the French Ambassador) wanted some talk
with me before going to Paris. To kill two birds
with one stone' I took him down to the station in my
brougham." "What was he to say to the Emperor.'*"
"In answer I could only refer him to John Russell's
words in the Commons. That speech, he said, was
offensive to his master. ' It was not,' I said,
'intended to be so.' He went on to speak of his
215
From Wilts through Dorset
country as wishing to avoid but not fearing war.
That was too much for me, so I said my historical
reading taught me that a conflict between French and
English on anything like equal terms would not be
unsatisfactory to us. Flahault said he had been at
Waterloo, and that his country's soldiers were much
better now than they had been then. I rejoined by
reminding him of the dialogue between Marshal
Taillard and Marlborough after the former had been
made prisoner at Blenheim. ' You have just beaten,
my lord,' said Taillard, 'the best troops in Europe.'
'Always excepting,' the Duke added, 'the con-
querors of the best troops.' " A little later in the
evening the subject of Mr. Gladstone came up. Said
Palmerston, "He will soon have it all his own way.
Whenever he gets my place we shall have strange
things." Other subjects mingled with the political
talk at St. Giles in those days. The old statesman,
known in former days as Cupid, did not think he had
outgrown the name. Lady Shaftesbury remonstrated
with him on his too marked attentions to young
married women. " In the first place," she said, "it is
very wrong ; in the second, it is most ungentleman-
like ; in the third, it is very stupid, for it can never
succeed." Said the statesman in reply : "As to the
religious aspect, I admit the practice of the Churches
differs. As regards the taste, that is a matter of
opinion. I think it most gentlemanlike. With
reference to its results, your ladyship is totally
misinformed, for I have never known it fail." In the
place of any reminiscence like that just given, Lord
Shaftesbury showed his visitors family memorials
216
Canford Then and Now
other than those belonging to the first peer of his Hne.
Of these, if I remember rightly, the most remarkable
was literature, personified by a female figure in the
dress of the period, mourning for her most famous
son, the third Earl, who wrote " The Characteristics."
There was also a miniature reproduction of another
effigy in the adjoining church, the three Fates
unwinding the thread of the fifth Lord Shaftesbury's
life.
The marriage of Richard Nevill the king-maker
with a daughter of the then Lord Salisbury gave him,
on the south of the Trent, a territorial sovereignty not
less extensive than that which came to him from birth
in the north. His chief southern residence was in the
heart of that Cranbourne Chase district where we
have been lingering. The exact spot may be identi-
fied with the site of another of Dorsetshire's rural
homes to be visited before leaving the county. Part
indeed of the older house, including fire-places and
chimneys, seems to have been built into the existing
Canford Manor. Before the ground was covered
by any secular abode, it was occupied by a convent,
whose lady-superior came from Belgium. The
manor-house of to-day dates partly from the last
half of the eighteenth century, but mainly belongs to a
later period. Externally the great feature of the
place is the pine-woods, into which the elaborate
gardens open and the drives through which remind
one of Archachon or Biarritz. These woods stretch
in one direction nearly up to Poole, the Dorsetshire
seaport that once formed part of the manor. The
most ancient among the definitely ascertainable owners
217
From Wilts through Dorset
of the estate was John of Gaunt, whose name has
perpetuated itself in certain details of the building.
The feudal forerunner of the patrician borough-
mongers of a later day, Gaunt frequently received
beneath his roof here his nominees in the detested
" nether house," to confer with them during the recess
on the steps to be taken for crushing his particular
opponent who had baffled so many of his designs,
John de la Mare, the indomitable chairman and
Speaker of the Commons. Geoffrey Chaucer, for a
short time knight of the shire for Kent, had been
placed under personal obligations by Gaunt ; the poet
probably sympathised with his patron's aristocratic
ideas on Parliamentary polity. Local tradition still
points out the spot in the grounds on which the
haughty and ambitious Plantagenet used confidentially
to converse with the bard of " The Canterbury Tales."
Till 1765 Chaucer's room was the name given to one
of the Canford guest-chambers. The first five or six
decades of the nineteenth century possessed no better-
known specimen of the new type of commercial and
industrial M.P. than the then owner of Canford, Sir
John Guest. As member for Merthyr - Tydfil or
Glamorgan he had a seat at St. Stephen's for nearly
a quarter of a century. During part of the time his
discriminating hospitalities made Canford the most
influential of Dorsetshire socio-political centres. His
most frequent visitor during the Crimean epoch was
H. A. Layard. Those were the days in which
Palmerston (February 15, 1855), writing to his
brother, contrasted the improbability of a month
ago with the fact of his having become since Prime
218
Canford Antiquities and Politics
Minister. The Peelite coalition Government had
fallen like straws before the wind. Of the politicians
who had secretly laboured for that result, the honours
belonged to Mr. Layard. Sir John Guest, an inde-
pendent member of the Liberal party, distrusted the
Russell faction as much as Mr. Layard disliked and
plotted against that faction's chief At Canford had
been suggested or considered every move in the
game whose object was to keep the Radical Russellites
out and to get in the Palmerstonian Liberals, or,
failing that, the Tories. Hence Lord Derby's over-
tures to the Peelites generally as well as to Palmer-
ston in particular. If these would only take service
under him, Lord Derby pledged himself that Disraeli
would acquiesce in Palmerston's leadership of the
Commons. The Canford Manor influence had sig-
nally helped Layard in becoming a political personage.
At every stage of his progress the wealth of the
Dowlais ironmaster had helped him. Thus on going
to Ceylon in 1840, Layard had been able to take the
valley of the Tigris in his way. Five years later the
same support promoted the excavations, whose finds
made him the celebrity of the moment and the first
of acknowledged experts and authorities on every
branch of the Eastern question, in connection with
which specialism was at that time imperfectly de-
veloped. The Derby ministerial project failed.
Palmerston came in. Layard remained for the rest
of his time scarcely less acceptable to Conservatives
than Palmerston himself Most of this he owed
directly to his Dorsetshire patrons. The prominence
in the Canford gallery of some Assyrian sculp-
219
From Wilts through Dorset
tures, Layard's gift, remains the fitting and abiding
testimony to the fact.
The poHtical flavour acquired at this epoch by
Canford has clung to it since. During the five years
of his Under- Secretaryship at the Foreign Office,
afterwards as Chief Commissioner of Works, next
as a social and political leader of the Turcophilism
which was the vogue in 1868, till his dispatch as
Turkish Ambassador in the next year, Canford
supplied Mr. Layard's backers with their organisation.
Half a generation later the place performed a like
office for the brother of its mistress and his Parlia-
mentary friends. Lord Beaconsfield's Irish Viceroy,
the seventh Duke of Marlborough, was the first Lady
Wimborne's father. More certainly and uninter-
ruptedly than at Blenheim he found at Canford the
repose which was a periodical necessity in the few
intervals of rest allowed to his upright and industrious
career. Presently the chief political activities of the
family became centred in Lord Randolph Churchill.
His two principal henchmen as well as trusted and
able advisers were already well known to his father.
In this way Sir John Gorst and Sir Henry Drummond
Wolff found themselves frequently the guests of
their chieftain's brother-in-law. Throughout the late
summer of 1885 the relations of Lord Salisbury and
of Lord Randolph Churchill respectively with the
Conservative Associations of the central union sup-
plied episodes of chronic importance in the inner life
of the Tory party. What Whitehall, Pall Mall, or
Hatfield itself was to Conservative ministerial ortho-
doxy throughout the whole of that period, Canford
220
Wimborne Wire-pullers
remained to the Tory democrats of the Fourth Party.
To them, in fact, it was what it had been a generation
earlier to the Httle Palmerstonian group which, thanks
chiefly to Sir John Guest's good offices, gathered itself
round the fluent, florid, self-assured, and irrepressible
Layard. Canford was not one of Delane's country
houses. But later editors of the Times have been
among the most frequent of its guests. No news-
paper writer who dealt appreciatively with the second
brother of its mistress was long left without an
invitation to Canford. In 1895 the occasion for
these attentions ceased to exist. In their place
Lady Wimborne found in her Dorsetshire home
the opportunity first for strengthening the social
resources of Anglican Evangelicalism against the
increasingly fashionable organisations employed by
the Romanising agents of both sexes. In earlier
days the programme of the Primrose Club had been
considered and arranged under Randolph Churchill's
eye, amongst others, by the then Sir Algernon
Borthwick and Sir William Marriott in the Canford
drawing-room or library. The whirligig of time
works its revenges and Wisdom is justified of her
children. Deviating from the Randolphian lines
originally laid down for it, Primrosery, it was
thought in Dorsetshire, inclined too much to become
the instrument of fiscal reform. The Canford house-
parties were therefore so arranged as to provide the
adherence of orthodox Cobdenism with such a meed
of recognition in Dorsetshire as well as in Arlington
Street as would take away from it the reproach of
only finding a home to-day beneath shabby genteel
or at best middle-class roofs.
221
From Wilts through Dorset
The commercial territorialism which won its first
recognition in the peerages bestowed by the second
Pitt, has domiciled itself on ground even more ancient
than that appropriated by it at Canford. The pedigree
of Milton Abbey has its social roots in the earlier
part of the tenth century. After having been the
home successively of secular priests and Benedictine
monks, it was bought for ^i,ooo from Henry VIII.
Tregonwell himself had acted as the king's proctor in
the divorce from Katharine of Arragon. He was also
the progenitor of Tregonwell Frampton, popularly
known as " the father of the turf." In this part of
the county, indeed, horse-racing is still sometimes
spoken of as an institution due to Dorsetshire.
Tregonwell Frampton was certainly born near Dor-
chester, in the seventeenth century, and was employed
as trainer at Newmarket by two of the Stuart kings.
He was also employed by or associated with
Godolphin, owner of the famous Arabian horse
called after his name, of Tom Killigrew, and in their
early youth two of Charles II.'s natural sons, the
Dukes of Richmond and of Grafton ; his name is
also remembered in connection with an act of bar-
barity to a high-mettled horse, too horrible to be
mentioned. From the Tregonwells and the Framp-
tons the place passed first to Sir Jacob Bancks, a
member of the Swedish embassy to England, after-
wards to the Damers, who became Earls of Dorchester.
From the day that it found an owner in Baron
Hambro it has never ceased to be the smart place of
the district. Its best known earlier guests under this
dispensation came from Eton, Trinity, Cambridge, or
222
George III. as Squire
Merton, Oxford. Visitors from this last named
college soon made a discovery that the Dorsetshire
Abbey church and the Oxford College chapel are
built on the same lines. In each case the nave,
though begun, was never finished. The Hambro
restorations have been carried out at Milton with a
perfection afterwards reproduced in a like work at
Tewkesbury. Crichel, during the Victorian age, had,
as a Conservative country house, something of the
importance that in Kent belonged to Eridge. The
first Lord Alington was then Mr. Sturt. His shooting
parties in his Dorsetshire home, especially during the
"jingo" period of 1868-70, were often worth several
votes in a division to Disraeli. Nor, it was observed
by those who knew him best, and in the country saw
most of him, did the garb of an English squire seem
anywhere to sit so naturally upon the Asiatic statesman
as at Crichel.
During the summer of 1788, for the first time since
succeeding to his grandfather's throne, George III.
transformed himself from a sovereign into a country
gentleman. His whole progress in that year through
several southern counties, whether on the journey or
at some temporary halt, was that not of a monarch
but of a squire, to whom fresh air and exercise were
necessities of daily life. Never before had he gone
so far from Windsor as to Cheltenham, Here Bayshill
Lodge was fitted up for him as a country house. His
small suite consisted chiefly of the treasurer of his own
household. Lord Courtown, his queen's vice-cham-
berlain. Sir Stephen Digby, and General Manners.
Even these courtiers were left behind when the king
223
From Wilts through Dorset
took his long walks through fields and lanes. Nor
did he perfunctorily go through his cure at the
Gloucestershire spa. Indeed, he drank the Chelten-
ham waters too assiduously for his good. The copious
draughts were thought to have set up an irritation of
the nervous system, conducive to the later mental
maladies. Lord Bathurst, celebrated by Pope, was
visited at Oakley Grove. So too were Lord Faucon-
burg and one or two other hosts of that kind. The
king liked, he said, their society ; he disliked being
feted, and stipulated that there should be no State
entertainments. Crichel lay almost in his line of
march but was not visited. It had been burnt rather
less than half a century earlier. It was then being
rebuilt by its Napier owners, afterwards to be much
enlarged by the Sturts. It then received more than
one royal visitor, notably the Prince Regent, who
brought with him his daughter, the Princess Charlotte,
for her temporary establishment here with the
Dowager Countesses of Ilchester and Rosslyn.
George III. however, on his progress through
Dorsetshire, noticed an architectural work of the
Sturts in the then just built Observatory, 200 feet
high, surveying the entire interval of varied space
between Dorchester to the west and on the other
hand to the Needles. He was also much interested
in the personal associations of the entire Crichel
district. Here in the Woodlands district, belonging
to Lord Shaftesbury, the unhappy Duke of Mon-
mouth was taken by the soldiers of James, in a
field known to this day as Monmouth's Close. A
little more to the south every inch of the Sturt domain
224
Crichel's White Farm
is strewn with traditions about the wanderings and
escapes of the second Charles. Among that Prince's
local friends was a seventeenth-century lord of a great
Dorsetshire manor, Squire Hastings, son of Lord
Huntingdon, the most scientific sportsman of his day
and district, whose example and instruction did much
towards securing for the Crichel coverts their future
fame. " Was not," during this ride inquired
George HI., "Joseph Addison born in these parts?"
'' He was," came the answer, "at a village hard by
Crichel — Milston. Here the essayist's father, originally
a chaplain at Tangier, became rector." Had the king
been traversing the district a generation later he
would have found it enriched with fresh literary asso-
ciations. In the first half of the nineteenth century
no Dorsetshire country house was more of a literary
and generally intellectual centre than the rectory of
Alton Priors, held by a former fellow of New College
and public orator, W. Crowe, a poet considered in the
running for the laureateship. A little later than this,
at the neighbouring village of Nether Avon, the king
would have found Sydney Smith in his first curacy,
dependent for his food on the precarious weekly visits
of the butcher, who often could not spare him meat,
but left him to dine on potatoes flavoured with mush-
room ketchup. The twentieth-century characteristics
of Crichel date entirely from the first Lord Alington,
so long the popular "bunny" Sturt of the House
of Commons. Helped by his brother. Colonel
Napier Sturt, he made what he called his " blanche "
paradise a feature of his estate. It consists or con-
sisted of a farm on which the colour of all the animals,
225 p
From Wilts through Dorset
and so far as possible everything else, was white. ** I
hope the consciences of men and visitors," Lord
Alington would sometimes add, "are of the same
complexion." In Sussex, if I mistake not near East
Grinstead, another white farm at this moment exists.
Such are the wayside interests and associations of the
country traversed by George III. on his journey
through the Crichel country to the Dorsetshire
watering-place, Weymouth. During the ride thither
the king gave signal proof his kindliness and courage.
He had recently visited, amongst other Gloucestershire
spots of interest, Berkley Castle ; in conversation
with his companion on Edward II.'s murder in that
building the king seemed wholly preoccupied. A
minute or two later, with the remark that he would
ride on a little by himself, he spurred his horse and
met a labourer briskly riding by the side of a wagon.
Attempting to steer his horse between the equestrian
and the cart, the king was somehow hit on the leg
by the other rider and nearly precipitated into the
wagon. Manners, seeing the accident, quickly rode
up. Doubling the thong of his hunting crop, he lifted
it against the man, exclaiming, "You scoundrel!
don't you see it is the king ? " The countryman,
petrified with surprise, remained speechless and in
imminent peril of the courtier's lash. " Don't strike
him on any account," suddenly exclaimed the
sovereign ; " my knee is hurt a little, but it was
altogether an accident, and will do me no real harm."
On reaching the next stage, his majesty insisted on
himself applying the liniment, then known as arque-
busade, which had been procured. It proved to be a
226
Royalty at Weymouth
severe and painful contusion ; but the king would not
confess himself disabled, and continued the journey as
if nothing had occurred to interrupt it. Weymouth
might almost be spoken of as an annex to Milton
Abbey, already visited. The future home of the
Hambros was enlarged in the eleventh century by a
grant of the watering-place whither George III.
went on horseback in 1788. The exact point in the
esplanade to-day occupied by the royal statue marked
the limit of the walk taken every morning before
breakfast to and fro by the royal patron of the place.
Some among the king's happiest days were passed on
the Dorsetshire sea-coast. It was here that his second
and favourite son. Prince Frederick, paid monthly,
sometimes weekly, visits. On one of these the prince
ceased to be known as titular Bishop of Osnaburgh,
received the ducal titles of York and Albany, as well
as the colonelcy of the Coldstreams, vacant by the
third Earl of Waldegrave's death. In these days spies
from Carlton House were suspected of being always
secreted about the royal residence at Weymouth. The
monarch's eldest son, impatient for his succession, was
thought to have agents about his father's person, who
sent daily reports as to the sovereign's health. The
future George IV., before and after his instalment in
the Brighton Pavilion, paid duty visits to Weymouth.
Upon one of these, the prince somehow brought with
him one of his own circle. Somewhat to the king's
disgust, but infinitely to his son's amusement, the
stranger mimicked the Parliamentary manner of a
pretentious and often absurd M.P., one Fonblanque.
Tears of vinous laughter ran down the prince's face
227
From Wilts through Dorset
as he repeatedly almost roared himself into a fit.
This artificially heightened the effect of the wine.
" With all his faults," exclaimed the king, " my son is
not a drunkard. If he is tipsy now it is " (pointedly
addressing the unasked visitor) "your fault." In a
general way the chief object of the prince's dutiful
journeys to the Dorsetshire coast was to bring back to
his boon companions ludicrous accounts of his father's
state. It was not enough to recount these infirmities ;
the affectionate son insisted upon acting them too.
Thus he showed to his convives how the old king
had become so blind as to fall into a hole in Lord
Dorchester's ground, and to step into the Weymouth
waves, mistaking them for his pleasure boat. If,
however, the son had his spies at Weymouth, the
father certainly contrived through some subterranean
channel to hear a good deal of the Pavilion table-talk.
On the occasion now mentioned, the anecdotes with
their histrionic accompaniment caused little laughter.
One parasite, more cautious than the rest, said in a
very serious and audible tone, " Poor man, sir ! "
The prince took the hint, and the Weymouth stories
stopped.
An earlier king than George III. possessed,
though he seldom inhabited, a country house at
Weymouth. James I.'s visit to Bath in 1613
proved the occasion for a Court progress from Wilts
to Dorset. In the former county the clergy then
passed for the most musical in England. One of
their number, named Ferrabey, had entertained the
king and queen with a masque performed at his
vicarage. In the dress of an old bard, surrounded
228
Waiting for the Empress
by choristers in shepherds' weeds, he escorted his
royal visitors with a musical accompaniment, for
several miles of their journey to Weymouth. The
queen, Anne of Denmark, had an extreme dread
of the plague then threatening London, if not
actually present in it. Hence the southern counties
tour now referred to. The same building that
received James was prepared for his grandson, the
second Charles, during the pestilence that came five
years after the Restoration. More historic among
Dorsetshire country houses than any of the mon-
archial abodes at Weymouth, is a country house
some little way out of the town that has sheltered
princes of more countries than one and their suites.
This is Lulworth Castle. The last occasion on
which it sheltered an European sovereign was in
1830, when the second French revolution drove
Charles X. and his family from their capital. More
than a generation later, however, other royal visitors
from the opposite side of the Channel were ex-
pected but did not arrive. In the July of 1870 the
second empire fell with the fall of Sedan. The
Tuileries it was known would not long retain the
imperial occupants. On the English side the matter
of speculation was less whether the Empress
Eugenie would, flee, than what point on English soil
she would first strike. Even while she was about
to enter the Kentish watering-place that received
her, a letter from the Parisian Englishman, Sir
Charles Blount, to his Dorsetshire friends and fellow-
religionists, the Welds, held out some chance of her
actually landing at Lulworth. Thus it was that,
229
From Wilts through Dorset
during the month just mentioned, there had assem-
bled at the old castle a little party of English
sympathisers with the French imperialists. These
included the majestic presence of the sixth Duke of
Rutland, who had known the third Napoleon while
an exile in England, and lodging at 13, King
Street, St. James's. The Empress Eugenie he had
first seen during her girlhood at Clifton, Bristol. He
remained to the close of his life in 1888 a reveren-
tial worshipper at the shrine of that deity. Others
who waited in Lulworth Castle to welcome the
fugitives were the late Sir William Eraser, two or
three Howards, the late Frank Lawley, a former
London associate of Prince Napoleon at Crockford's
Club, then a chief writer for the Daily Telegraph.
Another newspaper man who had been even more
intimate with the Napoleonic entourage was there
also in the then stalwart, handsome Thomas
Hamber, editor of the Standard, and at that time
in the full maturity of vigorous and fearless man-
hood. Before there arrived the announcement of
the possible visitors having already disembarked at
Ramsgate, the expectant circle at Lulworth was
reinforced by the third Sir Robert Peel, son of the
minister, and by the Richard Monckton Milnes,
recently transformed by Palmerston into Lord
Houghton. Naturally enough, Napoleonic and Bona-
partist reminiscences largely covered the conversation
of the Lulworth party on this July afternoon. The
twentieth century had arrived before a grand-
nephew of the great emperor, as a naturalised
subject of the United States, in succession to Mr.
230
Lulworth Expects Eugenie
Morton, Secretary for the Navy, became one of
President Roosevelt's Cabinet ministers. Nor in
the last seventies had la belle Americaine risen to be
a princess of society in London. Even the Chicago
duchess had yet to exist. These developments
were, however, confidently predicted by Lord Hough-
ton, after he had recalled the establishment in the
States of Jerome Bonaparte and his marriage to
Elizabeth Patterson, a Baltimore merchant's daugh-
ter. " In the next century," prophesied Houghton,
"this marriage will be looked back upon as the
foundation of the American cult on this side of the
Atlantic." A greater than Houghton, Sir Walter
Scott, we were reminded on that afternoon at
Lulworth, had made the same sort of anticipation.
Mrs. Jerome Bonaparte's father had been known
equally to Monckton Milnes and to Sir Walter. He
had, indeed, always passed with the novelist's friends
for the original of " Old Mortality." His other
daughter, Mrs. Bonaparte's sister, Frank Lawley or
Sir William Eraser informed us, did actually marry
into the English peerage. In 1825 she became
the second wife of the Duke of Wellington's
brother, the Marquis Wellesley, during his Irish
lord-lieutenancy. Houghton, and no doubt others
present at Lulworth on this occasion, could recall
how, four years after the coup dUtat, while yet a
bachelor, through his ambassador Walewski, the
third Napoleon asked for the hand of Princess
Adelaide of Hohenlohe. To Sir William Eraser
the Emperor had confided his opinions on Benjamin
Disraeli. *' Not the head of a statesman ; like all
231
From Wilts through Dorset
literary men, from Chateaubriand to Guizot, ignorant
of the world, talking well, but nervous when the
moment of action arrives." A little later, when
settled at Chislehurst, Napoleon III. paid a flying
visit to Lulworth, attended by his secretary, the
ever faithful Bonapartist, Pietri. Apropos of that
estimate of Disraeli, his host ventured a mild
dissent. " My remark," came the rejoinder, " applied
to the literary character generally when transplanted
into affairs. The Jew is always an exception.
But substitute the brilliant writer whom I first
knew as Lord Robert Cecil, since three years
Marquis of Salisbury ; my opinion, I think, will be
verified by the event." "The truth is," I recollect
then remarked Mr. Weld, " Louis Napoleon can
have seen next to nothing of Disraeli since the two,
as young men about town, used to meet each other
in Lady Blessington's drawing-room at Gore House ;
he might just as well have called Disraeli, what in
those days he certainly was, a common looking
lawyer's clerk, converted by gorgeous waistcoats into
a bad specimen of a Jew swell." The career and
personality of the man who made that remark
were enough to confer distinction upon the modern
representatives of the ancient Lulworth family.
Few things have benefited the English colonies
more than the immigrants to them somewhat above
the average social position. Such are the cadets
of great houses, whom the changes in our social
constitution may not have permitted to find a suit-
able career at home. Competitive examinations
have barred the way to the public service. Brains
232
Aloysius Weld's Career
themselves cannot always command success in the
law courts. Pocket boroughs no longer give the
Heaven-born statesman his first Parliamentary start.
Such was the situation faced some two generations
since by a young Dorsetshire man who might have
considered himself qualified by position and birth
for advancement at home. Frederick Aloysius Weld,
of Lulworth, had been educated at Stonyhurst, a
college standing on land once owned by his family.
In his own county his people had bought castles
and lands from the Howards. Loyal to the old
faith in its darkest days, they married and inter-
married with Arundels, Cliffords, Petres, and
Sturtons. Many sons and daughters did they give
to the service of their Church. Of the latter several
took the veil. The former numbered a squire of
Lulworth, who made the vows and afterwards as
a cardinal became a powerful member of the Roman
conclave. Frederick Aloysius Weld, in 1843, had
gone direct from Stonyhurst to New Zealand. From
the first his new life proved a success because he
could turn himself to anything, and work equally
well with his head or hands. He became the
greatest explorer of those early days. The eager,
investigating spirit that had come to him from his
ancestors, prompted him to visit great portions of
the uninhabited interior in the southern or middle
island of New Zealand. His physical researches,
recorded in the Geological Society's journals, form
the earliest scientific account of the volcanic phe-
nomena of the Sandwich Islands. The establishment
of constitutional government brought him into politics.
233
From Wilts through Dorset
He was one of the small band of shrewd states-
men who at once saw the needs of the colonv,
and set to work to start fairly the coach of
representative rule. Having recruited his health by
a journey home, and by a long stay at Lul-
worth, in 1869 he went as governor to Western
Australia, the first, if not the only, colonial politician
who had achieved a viceregal position. What he
accomplished in Western Australia he did after-
wards in Tasmania. Throughout that part of the
world, this product of a Dorsetshire country house
will always be remembered as a man who suc-
ceeded beyond the seas because he omitted to
carry out with him none of those attributes, in
virtue of which for between two and three centu-
ries, Lulworth has never wanted a Weld to do his
duty at home. In an earlier chapter it has been
mentioned that Arundel in the twelfth century was
held for the Empress Maud against King Stephen.
Near the spot where we have now been lingering
there stood, many centuries ago, a fortress, attached,
like Arundel, to the same intrepid woman who so
long and bravely maintained her sovereign right
against her usurping kinsman. Another spot of the
Dorsetshire coast, devoid of historic interest like that
of Lulworth, abounds in country-house reminiscences
worth giving here. Even in the short memories of
polite society, Abraham Hay ward still lives as con-
versationalist and guest. In the latter capacity he
has been much misrepresented ; for throughout the
second half of his life he accepted comparatively
few dinner invitations, and made no experiments in
234
Hayward and KInglake
strange dishes. In his own words, " Cold beef if
you like, but good claret and plenty of it," had
become his theory and practice. What he was in
Belgravia or Mayfair, he was also in the smart
country houses of the day. In Dorsetshire at West-
hill, Lyme Regis, he had a sister whom he often
visited. Here he would bring with him his most
intimate friend and contemporary, A. W. Kinglake.
In general society, except now and then at a club
dinner, Hayward indulged the anecdotal vein. " A
story," he would say, "may sometimes be permitted
if it really illustrates, but then, as always, it must be
cut short." His narratives of literary reminiscence
of late were kept entirely for Westhill. Such was
his account of taking a Semitic savant from Bonn
to visit S. T. Coleridge at Highgate. Always absent-
minded, the "damaged archangel," as Wordsworth
used to call him, was, that day, in a dreamy and
almost half-unconscious state. The introduction of
the Hebrew stranger woke him up to a soliloquising
monologue on the misdeeds of Israel. "A stiff-
necked, evil people, accursed of the Lord," &c.
Meanwhile, with arms meekly folded and head
bowed, the Hebrew whom Hayward had brought
with him, took it all resignedly as part of his
racial chastisement. Miss Hayward, allowing for
difference of sex, his exact likeness in the flesh, had
much of her brother's memory and biting wit. From
her, and not from him, came the story of her uncle
who, having received a living from Lord North,
took for the text of his first sermon, " Promotion
Cometh not from the east, nor from the west, nor
235
From Wilts through Dorset
yet from the south." The Httle gatherings at
Westhill were most pleasantly assisted at by the
local clergyman, Dr. Parry Hodges, a courtly, highly
polished, but perfectly unaffected divine of the old
school, who had been everywhere, known every one,
and who, accompanied by his nephew. Sir Bruce
Seton, drew forth from Hayward his very best talk.
At Westhill it was that Hayward gave his often
quoted account of Garibaldi and the social pro-
motion designed for him by his English admirers :
he was to marry the old Duchess of Sutherland.
On its being hinted that the patriot already had a
wife, Hayward at Lyme Regis was responsible for
the rejoinder, " Gladstone must be put up to explain
her away." Always a serious politician, Hayward
had been consulted in his time by Cobden as well
as Palmerston. At his sister's house he told her
friend, the rector of Lyme Regis already mentioned,
*' In the end I think I shall succeed. But I look
for nothing within twenty years." On the same
occasion, too, speaking of Lord Justice Cockburn's
passion for music, " It is," said Hayward, "a pro-
fessional taste. Lord Tenterden once pointed out
to me a man we had heard in Canterbury Cathedral
with the remark, 'He is the only man I ever
envied ; we were both competitors for a chorister's
place. He got it, and is where you see him. I
consoled myself for failure by going to the bar,
and have become Lord Chief Justice.' "
236
CHAPTER IX
FROM TRESCO ABBEY TO POLWHELE
The Scilly Islands — Their place in legend and history — Tresco
Abbey — " King " Augustus Smith — John Douglas Cook on
the identity of the islands — Other Tresco guests — Douglas
Cook at Tintagel — Details of the history and "government" of
Tresco — Miss Rhoda Broughton — "Only just eighteen!" —
Charles Reade — H. S. Stokes — Pencarrow : Sir William and
Lady Molesworth — Literary and political visitors — David
Urquhart — Captain Gronow — J. A. Roebuck — Mr. Leonard
Courtney — Tom Hood, the younger — Theatrical guests —
Foreign royalties at Pencarrow — Stow — The genealogy of the
Granvilles and Baths — Stow formerly a Royalist centre — The
house as it used to be — Lord Lansdowne's advice to his
clerical nephew — The Moncks of Cornwall and Devon — Berry
Court — Werrington — The Rev. H. A. Simcoe at Penheale —
His encouragement of village industries — The Rev. R. S.
Hawker at Morwenstow — Tennyson — The sermon and sack of
potatoes — Lord Falmouth's Tregothnan — The Laureate's
recognition of a Homeric precedent in the park — Carnanton :
its Disraelian and other associations — Boconnoc : its story and
its cricket week — Polwhele a type of the smaller Cornish
country house — The descendants of Maria Theresa's favourite
noble.
THAT he may not outstay his welcome in the
country houses to which he has been introduced
on or near the south coast, the reader may now
237
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
proceed to the extreme point to be touched in his
westward journey. By a tolerable sailor the distance
is easily accomplished by sea without land being
touched from the time ship is taken in Poole harbour
till the foot is planted on the Scilly island, Tresco.
Such was the route taken for the first time by the
present writer late in the nineteenth century when on
a visit to Tresco Abbey. In no other way can so
characteristic a panorama be secured of the Dorset,
the Devonshire, the Cornish coasts, as well as of the
western archipelago itself. Here, as in Sussex, the
track of British royalty, victorious or fugitive, may be
traced ; for the guide-books should tell us not only
to identify the ten miles of sea separating Land's End
from the nearest Scilly with the Lyonesse, before its
submergence by the ocean, the scene of King Arthur's
last battle and death ; they should relate how the
islands themselves, having been first annexed to his
realm by the Anglo-Saxon Athelstan (938), and by
him peopled with monks, sheltered a Stuart prince
between seven and eight hundred years afterwards ;
how, in 1645, the Parliamentary ships, entering these
remote waters, drove the future Charles II. from his
insular asylum. Four years later the Scillies became
the headquarters of the Royalist revanche. Sir John
Grenville, as good a servant of the Crown on sea as
on shore, fortified so strongly every one of the
hundred or so Scilly rocks projecting above the water
as to render them the nearly impregnable home of
Royalist privateers. Nor could the Parliamentary
admirals, Ayscue and Blake, reduce the stronghold
till 1651.
238
Tresco and King Smith
Those who may have been the present writer's
fellow-guests at Tresco Abbey, first in the days of the
hospitable, benevolently despotic Augustus Smith, will
recollect their rooms to have borne the name of Samp-
son, Bryher, and of other Scilly islets habitable by
human beings as well as by sea-birds. They may also
remember dinner-table discussions about the etymology
of the modern name and the identification of the
islands themselves with their reputed names in Greek
and Latin. No less a person than John Douglas
Cook, the first editor of the Saturday Review, had
happened conversationally to speak of our host's sea-
girt realm as the Phoenician Cassiterides or the Roman
Sillinae Insulae. Among those who heard the remark
were the two most interesting and intellectual of
Cornishmen then living. One of these was R. S.
Hawker, of Morwenstow ; the other was a clergyman
also, Mr. Kinsman, of Tintagel, whose not infrequent
parishioner the Saturday s founder then happened to
be ; for in those years, when not from the Albany,
where his London chambers were, the Saturday
was edited from the site of the palace famed in
Arthurian legend. The straggling highway of which
Tintagel village consists contains the little Cornish
home of those whom it still seems natural to call Sir
Arthur and Lady Hayter. It was bequeathed to
them by the friend and literary servant of their
uncle, the Saturday s proprietor, Mr. Beresford-Hope.
Hither Douglas Cook came at each successive break,
however short, of the London season or session.
Here he entertained a grand acquaintance or two,
notably the Duke of Newcastle, with a few others of
239
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
the Pelham Clinton family. At Tintagel also he
maintained a crew of fishermen, whose sole business it
was to keep his London dinner-table supplied with
the delicacies of the deep. This, too, was the locality
that cradled a literary libel action which made some
noise in the period looked back upon. Walter
Thornbury, a genial and clever Bohemian of the
nineteenth century, had been making a holiday tour
on the western side of the Tamar. Accidentally
encountering the London editor on the Atlantic coast,
he resented, and afterwards in a novel called " Great-
heart," he caricatured. Cook's assumption of local
sovereignty. " A Napoleon of editors indeed, but,
mercy on us, what a temper ! " So of Cook,
whispered to me a contributress who once stayed at
Tintagel, Mrs. Lynn Linton, who wrote the " Girl of
the Period" article in the Saturday. " Has he not,"
she would almost tearfully go on to say, " stormed at
me, cursed me, on one occasion actually hit me, on
one of his bad days ! " At the Tresco Abbey dinner-
table where we have just met him, Douglas Cook, a
choleric Aberdonian with red hair, a bull neck, the
gourmet and epicure shown in all the lines about his
mouth and double chin, blandly took his friend
Kinsman's correction, and only so far asserted the
prerogative of editorial autocracy as to pooh-pooh a
suggestion that Scilly could possibly have anything to
do with the sun-god Sulleh. " Is it really necessary,"
put in Hawker, " to give the lie to local tradition .'* "
The Scilly waters are particularly fruitful of a despised
fish that, properly dressed, however, makes very
tolerable eating. The old Cornish fishermen, in their
240
Tresco Table Talk
aboriginal dialect, called the conger-eel "silya," and
would have spoken of our host's dominions as the
"conger isles."
The Tresco table-talk formed the conversational
condensation of antiquarian research or theories about
" King Smith's " ocean realm ; the Tresco gardens
were an epitome of flowers and fruits indigenous
to the different zones, but, whether their first homes
were the temperate or the torrid, perfectly domesti-
cated under the Italian blue of the Scilly sky and
in the perennial spring of the Scilly climate. The
house inside is a library and museum of local record.
Prehistoric Scilly has, or used to have, its monument
in some human bones excavated in i8i2. Near these
were found brass and copper plates of horse-shoe
shape, conjectured to have been the musical instru-
ments of primitive man. All were in good preserva-
tion, though their antiquity was fixed by the experts
at some thousands of years. The subterranean finds
of Scilly have, however, not been many. The ancient
deluge which annexed the land of Lyonesse to the
sea, destroyed everything reared by human hands
upon the islands. Of the genuine aborigines not a
family was left. The modern inhabitants all came
from the Cornish or Devonian mainland. There
are, or there were, Tregarthians, Grudges, and
Bampfields in Scilly. The first name is obviously
and purely Cornish. The Bampfields, or Bampfylds,
belonged to Devon as well as Cornwall. As for the
Grudges, they had, by frequent intermarriages, con-
nected themselves so closely with the Godolphins
as to become absorbed in that house. The pictures
241 Q
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
and relics most conspicuous in the Tresco collection
are so many different witnesses to the fact that the
beginnings of inhabited Scilly, as of other outlying
fragments of Britain, were ecclesiastical. Hence the
very name given to one of the group, St. Nicholas.
Not only this islet, but whatever had belonged to the
monkish rulers in the whole archipelago were, as the
contents of the Tresco muniment-room show, given
by Henry I. to the Abbot of Tavistock. A local
artist, discovered for or by Augustus Smith, endowed
Tresco with a portrait of the earliest clerical sovereign
recognised by the islands. This was Burgold, Bishop
of Cornwall. In the twelfth century the ecclesiastical
rulers had not been dispossessed ; by their side, how-
ever, a secular rule had grown up. The same brush
that limmed Burgold also added to the Tresco
collection the lineaments of the earliest governor of
Scilly, Robert de Wick. Of these island kinglets
nothing is known before the member of an ancient
line, Ralph de Blanchminster. That once famous
stock disappeared with the fourteenth century.
"King" Augustus Smith's predecessor in 1484 was
Sir John Coleshill. After an interval of occupation
by Katharine Parr's fourth husband. Lord Seymour
of Sudeley, the islands fell to the Crown. Thomas
Godolphin in the sixteenth century was the most
famous of the Scilly viceroys ; he was followed by the
Duke of Leeds. In 1800 the Scillies became in-
corporated into the duchy of Cornwall.
The insignia of local empire and the instruments
of authority and discipline, still preserved at Tresco,
show the administration to have been mainly
242
Scilly under King Smith
military. Augustus vSmith disliked tobacco more
even than he did dogs. Smoking, however, was
allowed in a summer-house occupying an obscure
angle of the grounds. Here were hung specimens
of the whips formerly used to chastise offences which,
on the mainland, would have been visited with
imprisonment or perhaps transportation. Near the
scourges was a pile of copper coins, representing
the fines levied under successive lord proprietors on
culprits of various degrees. Its actual exercise was
never, of course, in question ; but the power of life
and death almost invested itself in " King Augustus."
Throughout Mr. Smith's thirty-eight years of amiable
absolutism, ended only by his demise in 1872, none
of his subjects dreamed of questioning his sovereign
right or of demurring to any of his imperial edicts,
chiefly directed as these were against overcrowding
and violations, great or small, of his ideas of order
or propriety. Long before a questionable character
reached a criminal development, it disappeared from
the islands. Ludicrous stories were formerly current
concerning Augustus Smith's despotism as a host.
With the single reserve that he discouraged or forbade
the diffusion of cigar or pipe odours through his house,
his guests knew of no restrictions on their enjoyments
or their ease. He expected, indeed, his visitors to
feel and perhaps display an interest in the polity of
his island kingdom, in its fauna, flora, and history.
A bachelor, he also insisted on punctuality at breakfast
and dinner ; he never bored his friends into excursions
by water or land. There were well-manned boats,
belonging not to himself but to his people, to take
243
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
his guests to any point of interest they liked.
Numerous and miscellaneous this company used to
be. Whenever a yacht was seen in the offing, or the
steamer plying between Penzance and St. Mary's had
landed its passengers, Mr. Smith heard of all the
arrivals on his shores. Any person whose name
was at all known received an invitation to the Abbey.
Some of these visitors have been already mentioned.
Among others whom I can recall were the novelist,
Miss Rhoda Broughton, with her friends of the Tower
family. Miss Broughton had then recently achieved
her first great literary success with " Not Wisely but
too Well." She deprecated congratulations on it, and
was humorously satirical on the reports representing
the much talked about author as " being only just
eighteen, you know." On her journey down she had,
it seemed, overheard herself discussed by fellow-
passengers in the train, who, after compliments or
criticisms on the work, added, " And fancy, those who
know her well tell me she has refused three million-
aires." The charm of Tresco Abbey in " King "
Smith's day was the delightful uncertainty as to what
guests might be opposite or next one at any coming
meal. There were no carefully composed house-
parties ; but every fresh steamer which reached St.
Mary's seemed pretty sure to bring some one whom
the host thought worthy of a summons to his court.
Among these unexpected arrivals I recall that of
Charles Reade the novelist. It was the first occasion
on which the present writer, or indeed any of the com-
pany, met this remarkable man. He was then occupy-
ing always during the long vacation, his Oxford rooms
244
Rhoda Broughton and Charles Reade
at Magdalen, where he still retained his fellowship.
"An ox-eyed, benevolent countenance," was the
description he had recently given of himself. No
portraiture could have been more exact. Very fresh,
unconventional, often agreeable his conversation
proved — especially when, as generally happened, he
was in the critical vein. Admiring Miss Broughton,
till then a personal stranger to him, in the course
of the agitated strides up and down the room which
were the accompaniments of his talk, " Pity the little
minx should be so fond of going so near to cheeking
her Creator." There appeared to be one other con-
dition besides perambulation necessary to Reade's
colloquial flow. He declined alike wine and coffee ;
directly dinner was over he begged for a large
breakfast-cup of tea. That inspiration once provided,
kept his tongue active throughout the evening.
Other guests, less known to fame, used to be
equally interesting figures at Tresco. At the period
now looked back upon, the present writer abounded
in the interest of inexperience in literary personages
and subjects. Whatever concerned the inner history
of the craft he had adopted was very welcome. He
could scarcely have anticipated meeting at this remote
country house two remarkable links between the
journalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
One of these was a lady, the wife of a naval officer,
then Captain, shortly afterwards, I think. Admiral Sir
William Gore-Jones. The daughter, if I rightly
remember, of the first representative possessed by
Finsbury in the House of Commons, Serjeant
Spankie, she had seen as a child all the most famous
245
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
newspaper men who flourished in pre-penny press
days. Her father, eventually Attorney-General at
Bengal, had assisted Perry in the editorship of the
Morning Chronicle. Charles Reade, in his good-
natured, boisterous way, had been pleasantly grumbling
at the journalistic ascendancy of the Hebrews in
London. ** Unprecedented, wholly mischievous, and
entirely abominable," were the mildest words used
by him on the subject. " As a fact," gently observed
the lady, " I think you will find the power of the Jews
in the press to have diminished rather than increased
during the last hundred years. I can just remember,"
she continued, "being taken by my father to Mr. David
Ricardo's at Gatcombe Park, Gloucestershire. There
the exception was to see an influential publicist
without Semitic blood or not of Nonconformist
descent." Ricardo himself was the son of a Jew
stockbroker, whose adoption of Christianity cost him
his entire patrimony and made him look to his pen
only. Hence the articles on the principles of finance
in the Maiming Chronicle, then largely controlled by
Serjeant Spankie. There were many more of the
children of Israel, then highly influential in newspaper
London. One of these did the lady now mentioned
recall. This was a certain Lewis Goldsmith who,
first attracting notice by scurrilous attacks, impartially
upon the English and French Governments, having
founded two papers, the Anti-Gallican and the
British Monitor, eventually did good and respectable
work for the Chronicle. After this conversational
excursion into the coulisses of primitive publicism, it
seemed according to the fitness of things that Augustus
246
Before W. H. Russell, Finnerty
Smith should casually mention a new-comer expected
by him for at least a few hours during the week.
This was a young man named Finnerty, then one
of the sub-editors or chief reporters of the leading
Plymouth journal, the Western Morning Neivs. The
name was at once recognised by Serjeant Spankie's
representatives. An older Finnerty had been
employed as Parliamentary shorthand writer for the
Chronicle during Spankie's association with its
editorship. Accompanying Sir Home Popham on the
Walcheren expedition, the elder Finnerty was justly
described by his son, who reached Tresco in due
course, as the pioneer of W. H. Russell and other
special correspondents of a later day. He was,
however, not quite so successful ; for the authorities
on shipboard had no sooner discovered his real
errand than they landed him at the first shore they
touched. " In those days," said Finnerty junior,
" the greatest sailors did not always know their true
interests." This casual remark roused a violently
contradictory spirit in the great novelist, who was
then engaged in one of his many wars with specialists,
medical and other. " Ignorance," he burst in, "is the
badge of the tribe of experts. No persons are so
incompetent for affairs as the reputed men of business
known as lawyers. None think so little of healing
as doctors. Who can possibly show such ignorance
of the theory and practice of religion as clergymen } "
Some time before this there had appeared some
anonymous newpaper verses about the dramatic
version of Charles Reade's " It is Never too Late
to Mend " on the London stage. They were not too
247
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
complimentary to their subject, but they amused
Reade ; he insisted on repeating them to something
Hke the following effect : —
"Mr. Reade you've written stories
By the dozens, and your best
Goes to show ad bonos mores
Via sera nunquam est.
Well, there may be something in it,
But I always shall contend
That in life there comes a minute
When it is too late to mend," &c.
Some years later, by the bye, apropos of our
meeting in the Scillies, Charles Reade mentioned
he had ascertained the poet whom he had quoted
to be Henry S. Leigh.
Among the local celebrities met by the Tresco
guest was one who, before his death on the eve of
the twentieth century, had become not undeservedly
known as " Cornwall's grand old man." This was
Henry Sewell Stokes, liked and respected by the
whole countryside, eventually County Clerk of the
Peace, but, when I first knew him, holding high
Municipal office at Truro, where, as a lawyer of much
experience and wide connection, he had done not a
little to secure Augustus Smith's repeated returns for
that borough. A man of fine presence, with a most
striking lion-like head, at his Truro house in Lemon
Street or Strangways Terrace, he had been the friend
and host of Alfred Tennyson during the Laureate's
repeated visits to the West, for the purpose of
steeping his imagination in the local colour which
picturesquely tinges so much of the " Idylls of the
248
Cornwall's Grand Old Man
King." ** A highly cultivated and noble-minded
gentleman for whom I had special regard," as Mr.
Leveson-Gower, so long a Cornish M.P., describes
him, Mr. Stokes united the taste and temperament
of a poet with much poetical performance of his own.
At his Bodmin home, Hill Top, he kept open house
for visitors of all kinds, especially for men of letters
and lawyers going the western circuit. In this way
one frequently met at his table Herman Merivale
and Mr. Leonard Courtney. Appreciated by Lord
Granville as well as by his brother, Mr. F. L.
Gower, Mr. Stokes' verses were chiefly known to
readers attracted by the force of local or personal
connection. Mr. F. L. Gower has recorded his
question to the London bookseller whether he had
sold many copies, with the bookseller's reply, "A
fair number, but all to you."
As regards literary associations, a pre-eminence
among Cornish houses belongs to Pencarrow, the
cradle, as without exaggeration it may be called, of
colonial self-government and of philosophic radicalism.
Originally belonging to the Stapletons, the place in
the fifteenth century came by purchase to the ancestor
of the modern Molesworths. At Pencarrow House,
Sir William Molesworth, formerly a fellow-student
with Lord John Russell under Dugald Stewart, while
at home on vacation from Cambridge, became by
inheritance the eighth baronet of his line. Here he
entertained Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. Here,
too, were arranged the negotiations for his purchase of
the Westminster Review, the earlier numbers of which,
as his property, were planned and edited by him in
249
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
his Pencarrow library. At Pencarrow, too, it was that,
from Lord Aberdeen, in 1853, he obtained his earliest
start on the official ladder, the Commissionership of
Public Works, to be followed two years later by the
promotion to the Colonial Secretaryship. Six years
(1839-45) and sixteen volumes were occupied with his
edition of Hobbes. Much of the labour of compila-
tion, all the business of proof-correcting, were done at
Pencarrow. During those strenuous years his Cornish
home was more like a London publisher's office than
a country house, crowded with experts in political
philosophy, literally overflowing with matter just
arrived from, or about to be dispatched to, the printer.
The sum expended by him on this enterprise, from
beginning to end more than ^5,000, did not prevent
his making many improvements in his house and
grounds. It did, however, somewhat contract the
scale on which those works were carried out. The
hospitable traditions of her husband's family and home
were carried on by his widow. Lady Molesworth, so
well known and still so unforgotten a figure in London
and in country-house society in the Victorian age. It
was in 1869 that a peerage given to a great Cornish
squire, Mr. Robartes, produced a vacancy in the
representation of Bodmin and an interesting call at
Pencarrow House. The visitor was the new Liberal
candidate, Mr. F. Leveson-Gower. *' Not at home, sir,"
was the servant's prompt observation on opening the
door, and seeing, as he supposed, one of the county
callers whom he knew his mistress did not desire.
'* Her ladyship's ill in bed," the man continued, seeing
the stranger hesitated to depart. When he had
250
Pencarrow's Host and Guests
departed the servant was speedily sent after him.
The Liberal candidate and his companion and brother-
in-law, Lord William Compton, took their places at
the Pencarrow luncheon-table.
As the widowed hostess of Pencarrow Lady Moles-
worth displayed a constant, an unstudied, and, because
of its unaffected sincerity, a touching devotion to her
husband's memory. After lunch, which in later days
became more and more the first set meal of the day,
she went into the library with her guests. These
continued to number, so long as any of them remained,
Sir William Moles worth's principal friends and literary
or political associates. No break whatever did she
allow in the continuity of the intellectual traditions
of the house. She took an interest indeed in the
dogs, the horses, in the frequently renovated and
enlarged stables, and especially in the gardens, whose
perfect state and proportions at her husband's death
admitted of no improvements or additions. The
gardens, therefore, always remained much as he left
them. But the library was hallowed by exceptionally
endearing memories. When the hostess took her
friends into it a tender solemnity, as of one entering a
shrine, sometimes seemed to come over her manner.
In that corner of the room Sir William had held his
earliest conversation with Charles Duller, the real
author of the " Durham Dispatch," constituting, as it
did, the earliest charter of that colonial self-government
which was not to be fully established till 1856, the year
after Molesworth's death. This was the conversation
in whose course Duller first struck out the phrase often
used by him afterwards of " shovelling the paupers out
251
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
of the country and shovelling the convicts into the
colonies." In another part of the same room had Sir
William Molesworth and his visitor, Gibbon Wake-
field, drawn their chairs together that they might not
miss a syllable of each other's sanguine talk about
an autonomous, an industrial, a peaceful, a progressive
Greater Britain beyond seas. On these occasions
Lady Molesworth may not have been present herself.
She had, however, personally welcomed to Pencarrow
Joseph Hume, and had heard him almost rehearsing
those financial criticisms on State expenditure which,
as she recollected, generally wound up with, "The
tottle of these figures of wastefulness, Mr. Speaker,
is ."
At Pencarrow were also occasionally to be met three
more public men, each belonging to different eras,
representing views of his own, sharply challenged by
the others, but each in his different way full of interest
to his fellow-guests. David Urquhart, first returned
for Stafford in 1847, had identified himself so closely
with the Turk against the Russian, as with Asiatic
interests generally in the Near East, that many who
first met him beneath the Molesworth roof expected
to see a specimen of the Orientalised Briton, if not
turbaned as to his head, yet with the jet black eyes
and dusky complexion proper to a Turcophil. Instead
he proved to be of purely Saxon type, with lint-
white hair and face untanned by the sun. At least
once Urquhart stayed at Pencarrow at the same
time as one who had preceded him by fifteen years
as member for Stafford. This was the " dandy
guardsman," probably the last surviving specimen of
252
Gronow, Lever, and Pencarrow
the Regency " buck," the diverting diarist, Captain
Gronow, whose anecdotes of Peninsular experiences,
and especially of the " hundred days " in Paris, first
heard by a fellow- visitor at Pencarrow, Charles Lever,
supplied that novelist with some of the most dramatic
incidents in " Harry Lorrequer." Pencarrow also
occasionally received the best known of David
Urquhart's later disciples, Joseph Cowen, of New-
castle-on-Tyne, who, soon after taking his seat at St.
Stephen's in 1868, electrified the House by his fervid
and finished declamation against Gladstonian Russo-
philism, breathing the Urquhart inspiration in every
sentence. In private life this born orator was the
most reserved and shrinking of men, with a voice soft,
low, and at times a little lisping, rather suggestive of
a shy Oxford don. Touching Disraelian policy in
foreign affairs at one extremity, Joseph Cowen, at the
other, belonged to those intellectual Radicals who, till
the sect had quite died out, were seldom unrepresented
beneath this roof. Twice did the present writer
behold in the flesh John Stuart Mill, the logician and
son of the earlier Pencarrow guest already mentioned.
The first time was at Dean Goulburn's church in
Oxford Square, London, when he followed the service
and the sermon with a manifestly devout attention
that must have prepared all who noticed it for the
gravitation towards orthodox Christianity shown in
his posthumous essays on religion. The second occa-
sion — the only one of my finding myself at the same
table with him — was at Pencarrow. Nor was he then
the only guest of the same political and intellectual
communion. John Arthur Roebuck might have been
253
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
Lady Molesworth's visitor long after her widowhood
began, for he lived on till 1879. It was quite early in
the seventies that I saw him at Pencarrow, his table-
talk and presence generally leaving upon those who
met him the impression of a wasp in oil. Two of
Roebuck's contemporaries, one a Cornish member,
Disraeli's "superior person," the stately and dogmatic
Horsman ; the other, the Parliamentary wit of his
time, were often of the Molesworth parties. Bernal
Osborne's racy electioneering stories first told at
Pencarrow would fill a volume. Here, too, many
made their earliest acquaintance with Horsman's
successor as Liskeard M.P. — Leonard Courtney, a
Penzance man by birth, whom, I believe, one might
have met at "King Smith's" Scilly court. In the
Pencarrow days Mr. Courtney's second wranglership
seemed a comparatively recent honour, and London
had not overcome its early surprise at the capacity
for intellectual and physical exertion which had caused
J. T. Delane to say : " After Courtney has walked for
three hours, ridden for three more, and been leader-
writing for six, ordinary mortals can deal with him on
something like equal terms." Since another and
earlier of the Pencarrow guests, Henry Reeve, the
foreign policy mentor of the Times, no one, perhaps,
impressed Delane more powerfully than Mr. Leonard
Courtney. Roebuck, indeed, must have been, not long
before his death, at Pencarrow ; for at the Molesworth
breakfast-table he received the offer of the Privy
Councillorship, and, when he had divulged the official
letter's purport, the congratulations of his fellow- visitors
on being the first person not having held office to be
254
Bygone Beauties
the recipient of an honour vainly asked by the historian
as an alternative to the peerage he had refused. In
an earlier generation than mine the Molesworth hospi-
talities included, among women, Lady Canning and
Lady Waterford, the two beautiful sisters of their day,
but the daughters of two noticeably plain parents —
Lord and Lady Stewart de Rothesay. Lady Water-
ford had no rival among amateur artists. Such of her
pictures as came to Lady Molesworth may decorate
the walls of Pencarrow under its present owner to-day.
Among the men of whose visits the place must still
contain memorials were Abraham Hay ward, of course ;
A. W. Kinglake ; the two brothers Charles and Henry
Greville, both diarists and professional diners-out, but
both, in other respects, diametrically different the one
from the other — Henry Greville, the musical and
theatrical connoisseur, the Maecenas of every sort of
artist, always the hospitable master of a well-equipped
house in town and country — Charles Greville (the
Cruncher), who never gave a dinner to anybody, who
regarded the opera and the playhouse as social pests,
and who considered that society was going to the
dogs when, at Pencarrow, " Billy Something," as he
calls him, sat down at the piano and sang songs. The
performer happened to be the amiable, accomplished
Richard Corney Grain, one of Lady Molesworth's most
habitual and welcome guests ; for under that hostess
Pencarrow witnessed the confluence of two distinct
streams of hospitality. There were the celebrities,
mostly public men, of early Victorian days. The latest
and most acceptable of this group were the French
ambassador, M. Waddington, who had been a Rugby
255
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
boy, together with the fifteenth Lord Derby, and Lord
Kenmare, the most agreeable purely Irish peer of his
day. Queen Victoria's Lord Chamberlain. The other
current, whose waters sometimes, though not often,
mixed with this had something of the smart Bohemian
character. During his life Sir William, as well as
Lady Molesworth, missed no chance of doing a good
turn to men who wrote for their daily bread, though
they might have nothing in common with the philo-
sophic contributors to his own Westminster Review.
Like many other country hosts, lay or clerical,
Sir William Molesworth was attracted by the poetic
genius and the heroically patient personality of
Thomas Hood ; his influence secured from Sir Robert
Peel a pension for the humourist's family. Tom Hood,
the younger, had no sooner ceased to be a child than
the Molesworth connection concerned itself to secure
him an education at London University School, where
he had for his class-mate Joseph Chamberlain. After
he had gone through Oxford, Tom Hood owed to
the same friends a War Office clerkship. Pencarrow
itself continued to be his second home. There he some-
times met his father's two comrades, Thackeray and
Dickens. In the Pencarrow parties, however, of that
time, and more particularly after Sir William Moles-
worth's death throughout the sixties, or beyond them,
the theatrical element predominated — E. A. Sothern ;
Charles Mathews ; his brother, Frank Mathews, with
their respective wives ; the best Lady Teazle of
her time. Miss Herbert, and Alfred Wigan stayed at
Pencarrow only less frequently than at the two other
fashionably Bohemian, artistico - sporting country
256
sleeping Out in Cornwall
houses of the time — the Duke of Beaufort's Troy,
near Monmouth, presently to be visited, and the
present Duke of Fife's parents' Duff, Banffshire. The
kindly hostess of Pencarrow was sometimes carried
by her hospitable instincts beyond the limit of her
mansion's capacities. Among the foreign royalties
who occasionally visited her in Cornwall were the
Comte, the Comtesse de Paris, and the Due d'Aumale.
Company of this sort needed an amount of space
which now and then necessitated less exalted guests
being sent to sleep out in some of the cottages on the
estate. Here the accommodation occasionally proved
so imperfect that the sleepers out did not always turn
up at the breakfast table in the best of humours. It
was one of the guests, in Sir William's day, thus
bedded out, who, soon after 1837, went back
grumbling about the " mischievous crew,"Molesworth,
Roebuck, Macvey, Napier and Co., but rejoicing at
their becoming " quite blown upon by their brother
Radicals." When, however, Lady Moles worth's death
after some few years followed that of Lady Waldegrave,
a distinct department of the country-house system
suffered a second loss, not made good to this day.
The rural homes of western England, to which we
now pass on, possess much of their importance or
interest as a heritage from Stuart times. One of
them had be6n the cradle of two noble houses. A
few words of genealogical explanation will prevent
any confusion incidental to the names about to be
mentioned. That portion of Cornwall now reached
contains the site of the Battle of Stratton in the
Parliamentary wars, the manors of Stratton, of Kilk-
257 K
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
Hampton, as well as the great Royalist country house
of that period — Stow. From the seventeenth century
Marshal Stow are directly descended, through the
female line, the twentieth century Marquis of Bath
and Earl Granville ; the latter name was indifferently
spelt Granville or Grenville. Stow in 1685 had no
rival for political importance among the greatest
mansions in the West. The seventeenth -century
master of the place was John Granville (born 1661),
the son and heir of Sir Bevil Granville and his wife,
a daughter of the Heavitree Smythes. John Granville
inherited the monarchical enthusiasm of his father,
killed at the Battle of Lansdowne. The mightiest
and most magnificent of the king's Cornish friends
during the appeal to the constituencies preceding-
James the Second's second Parliament, John Granville
was known as "the grand elector"; he dominated
the surrounding municipalities by importing into them
officers of the guards who, sword in hand, saw that
the countrymen voted right. The great squire of
Stow attended Charles II. during his exile ; he played
an active part in the Restoration. He received his
reward in becoming first Warden of the Stannaries,
then Lord- Lieutenant of his county, after that Baron
Granville of Kilkhampton and Bideford, subsequently
Viscount Granville and Earl of Bath. Educated at
Gloucester Hall, where some of his name resided in
1638, this Lord Bath maintained his university friend-
ships throughout his life, and filled his Cornish home
with scholars and churchmen, as well as with captains
in war and politics. The only children he left behind
him were daughters, of whom the eldest married Sir
258
The Cornish Granvilles
WilHam Leveson-Gower. The second daughter, be-
coming" wife of Lord Carteret, was created Countess
Granville ; her son was the famous Lord Carteret, who
at his mother's death became first Earl Granville.
That nobleman left behind him only a daughter,
Lady Louisa Carteret ; she, marrying Thomas, second
Viscount Weymouth, became progenitress of the
present Lord Bath. The mansion in which " the
grand elector," the stately predecessor, as he may be
called, of the later borough-mongers, repeatedly re-
ceived his sovereign, and its outbuildings rise close by
a little village called Combe ; they formerly presented
an immense frontage, chiefly of brick. The interior
exceeded the anticipations likely to be raised by the
outside. The rooms had been constructed and deco-
rated by the best English and foreign workmen of the
day. Before that stately fabric came into being, a much
simpler dwelling had sheltered the Granvilles of Stow
during more than five hundred years. The splendid
building which replaced this soon after the Stuart
Restoration, flourished for more than half a century,
was then demolished, and has not since been rebuilt.
The last of the Granvilles who lived there, known as
Lord Lansdowne, raised to the memory of his ancestor,
the famous Sir Bevil, the pillar at the spot where he
fell in Lans4owne fight, on the high plateau that
overlooks the city of Bath. This was the Lord
Lansdowne whose monument still exists in Kilk-
hampton church. Among his papers his descendants
found a letter addressed by him to his nephew,
another Bevil, a newly ordained clergyman. The
writer begins by assuring the young divine that he
259
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
could not have chosen a better Master, provided he
had, after searching his heart, persuaded himself of
fitness for His service. With earnestness in his new-
vocation let the youthful pastor combine politeness and
sweetness as well as truth ; let him be humble with-
out doing violence to his self-respect — because to be
a cynic is as bad as to be a sycophant. Above all,
let him not, with his sword, lay aside the gentleman,
nor put on the gown to hide his birth and good
breeding • let him take as his model his uncle. Dr.
Denis Granville, Dean of Durham — for he, too, had
paid the Church of England the compliment of accept-
ing office in it. Let him revere that pious relative's
memory. So, too, may he in time become a dean him-
self ; finally, may the uncle's spirit descend upon the
nephew as Elijah's upon Elisha. Above all, may the
nephew, like the uncle, be cheerful, familiar, conde-
scending in manner, in temper, in piety, strict, regular
exemplary, as a clergyman apostolical, as a courtier
well-bred and accomplished. Thus should Heaven's
choicest blessings be poured down upon the dear
nephew of his affectionate uncle, Lansdowne. That
ends this kindly and characteristic epistle to his freshly
surpliced kinsman from the peer immortalised by Pope
as "Granville the polite."
Even where we are now in the far west, the
principle of the decline and fall of ancient families is
illustrated in the vicissitudes of their dwellings and the
juxtaposition of the older territorialists by right of
birth with the new by right of capital. John Granville
was not the most famous agent in bringing back
Charles H. produced by this neighbourhood. With
260
From Monck to Simcoe
the Granvilles of Stow were connected by marriage
the Moncks of Kilkhampton in Cornwall, and of
Potheridge in Devonshire. The general who declared
for a free Parliament under the exiled Stuart was
descended from Humphrey Monck of Potheridge,
who, marrying a Champernowne, became a Cornish
squire of hospitable tastes. General Monck's brother
was a Cornish clergyman, rector of Kilkhampton.
The West of England Moncks, and with them the one
or two manor-houses at which they entertained, quite
disappeared after the death of the great general's son.
The Cornish and Devonshire Moncks disappeared as
entirely as the houses which had been connected with
them . Not far from the ancient home of the Granvilles
are two houses equally representative, in their different
ways, of distinct epochs and dispensations in English
politics. The picturesque remains of Berry Court,
Jacobstowe, mark a sixteenth and seventeenth century
of hospitalities, always in the interests of Church and
Crown, arranged by the widely extended Berrys.
Close by spreads the trimly kept park of Werrington
with the modern and comfortable house in the back-
ground, which, occupied by successive members for
Launceston, Colonel Deakin first, his son afterwards,
did duty as a western stronghold, about a generation
ago, for the Conservatism, informed and guided by
the genius of Disraeli, but extended and supported by
the wealth of Lancashire.
For many years during the first half of the Victorian
age, one of the most picturesque among the human
features in this Cornish landscape was an old-world
clergyman, perhaps the last of the socio-theological
261
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
school to which he belonged. His costume was
noticeably archaic then. It is not to be seen at all,
out of Madame Tussaud's gallery of engravings of
eighteenth - century dress, now. He always wore
Hessian boots, with a tassel exceptionally long and
full suspended from them in front ; thus shod he stood
considerably over six feet, with a figure, naturally
powerful, developed by incessant pedestrianism to
herculean strenorth. Belon^inor to the evano-elical
o o o o
school (he had been a disciple, if not a personal
friend, of Charles Simeon), he liberally supported
by his purse and his voice, from West of England
platforms and pulpits, far and wide, the Church
Missionary Society, and kindred organisations. Much
of his life passed in travelling from one country par-
sonage to another on errands of preaching. When at
home the Rev. H. A. Simcoe kept the state of a
squarson of high degree. Uniting ample means with
hospitable instincts, he gave to Penheale Manor,
Egloskerry, a character unique among the country
houses of the time. The mansion itself formed an
emporium for the elementary commodities of daily
life. A youthful visitor, on arriving, found that he
had omitted to put his clothes in his trunk before
starting. The clerical lord of Penheale pulled the
bell. The servant who answered it presently reap-
peared with all the articles necessary for a boy's toilet,
not forgetting nightshirt, boots and shoes, neatly
arranged on a tray. The reason why it seemed at
Penheale as natural to ask for wearing apparel as for
a cup of tea was that the host, not content with starting
the villagers at some industry in cottages or work-
262
Penheale and Morwenstow
shops of their own, had established beneath his own
roof separate departments for tailoring, bootmaking,
and the manufacture of any other little utilities
likely to be periodically wanted in a region where
there were no shops. On the Simcoe property no
boy or girl grew up without being able to produce
almost anything absolutely required by decency or
health. The manor-house at Penheale still stands.
Its industrial accessories may have disappeared ; but
in all parts of the world may be found British settlers
who, or whose parents, leaving England in the nine-
teenth century's most distressful years, owe much of
their success in a new world to habits acquired and
handiwork learned at Penheale — in its day the
uniquely beneficent training-school for emigrants.
Another clerical Cornish country house attracting,
within the present writer's experience, many visitors,
is Morwenstow Rectory. Here one used to be received
by the writer of the spirited lines " And shall Trelawny
die ? " which were actually taken by Macaulay when
writing his history for ballad contemporary with the
episode inspiring them. The Rev. R. S. Hawker had
received beneath this roof Charles Kingsley when he
visited Cornwall to acquire the local information about
Stow, used by him afterwards in " Westward Ho!"
and many other guests less distinguished, often without
the claim of personal knowledge or letters of intro-
duction upon his hospitality. This loyal and eccentric
Churchman only showed his profession to his visitors
in the cassock that he always wore. For the rest his
daily life and appearance were that of a country gentle-
man, scrupulously avoiding in his conversation any
263
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
approach to controversial topics, clerical or lay.
Directly there seemed a danger of such being
broached, he would rise from his chair by the table at
which he habitually sat, and leading one to the
window looking out upon the Atlantic, would say,
" There you have my views ; as to my ideas, they are
that, if the human eye could reach so far, you might
see right away to Labrador." Acquainted with most
of the great writers of the Victorian age. Hawker
delighted to talk of the visits payed him by Tennyson,
whom, in other than literary matters, he took as his
model. Only a West-country man, he declared, could
read properly his poems ; ot these he considered the
verses about " the bells of Boscastle " to be his best.
Nothing pleased him more than to be asked to read
them. This he did always standing up in a rather
theatrical attitude, and in a deep-lunged, monotonous
chant exactly copying the Tennysonian method of
recitation. The congregation may have seldom
numbered more than the members of his own house-
hold. The daily service in the little church was never
or very seldom neglected ; it was frequently followed
by a fifteen minutes' sermon, characterised by a studied
avoidance of dogmatic theology, and a sufficiency of
moral admonitions purely practical in their tone,
sometimes dramatically personal in their application.
Having missed a sack of potatoes from his garden,
he took the Eighth Commandment for his text. " One
of our neighbours," he concluded, " has been robbed
of his vegetables ; the thief is now in the church ; can
it be that a piece of thistle-down has just alighted on
his head ? " Instantly the culprit brushed his hair with
264
Morwenstow to Carnanton
his hand. The potatoes were restored in the course
of the afternoon, and the offender dismissed with a
threat of excommunication next time. On the occasion
of going to Oxford for his D.C. L., the poet Longfellow
also looked in at Morwenstow. I recall his prophecy
of the rector's dying in the Roman communion.
" Not," said Longfellow, " that he will doctrinally
break away from the Church of his birth ; but he has
so steeped his spirit in the Cornish legends of pre-
Anglican Christianity that he is becoming uncon-
sciously Romanised."
Another of Tennyson's Cornish country houses lies
on the banks of the Fal, between Truro and Falmouth.
This is Lord Falmouth's Tregothnan with the most
quaintly diversified park, sloping down to the water's
edge — a strip of shining shingle on which the fisher-
men are often to be seen mending their boats. That
was the operation on which the poet, in company with
his guide, the already mentioned H. S. Stokes,
suddenly came. For a few minutes the poet gazed
intently at the men thus employed. Then, with the
air of one suddenly recollecting something, he pro-
duced a little Odyssey from his waistcoat pocket.
He found the passage in which Ulysses repairs his
storm-vexed craft. Alternately reading aloud extracts
from the Homeric description and pointing to the
work then being done under his eyes, he visibly
exalted in the exact truth to modern life displayed by
the Greek poet in his account of the process. Truro
itself has often returned to Parliament a Willyams of
Carnanton. Here is a house externally famous for
the rich beauty of the woods that embed it, for the
265
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
eighteenth-century artificialism of its gardens, and
internally for its progressive transformation from a
rendezvous of the king's friends in Stuart times into
the impartially representative resort of celebrities,
local and national, who have found both rest and
inspiration beneath this typical roof. Originally pos-
sessed by Noy, the Attorney-General of Charles I.,
Carnanton provided that monarch's son with a resting-
place in his western wanderings. Passing to the
family which still owns the manor, it attracted visitors
as various and as interesting as those whom we have
already met at Tresco Abbey ; indeed most of those
who reached Scilly had come on from Carnanton,
whose owner, Mr. Brydges Willyams, in 1859, shared
the representation of Truro with Augustus Smith.
The twentieth-century master of Carnanton is the
universally popular, because the uniformly courteous
and kindly, hero of countless Cornish Parliamentary
fights. With the already-mentioned H. S. Stokes
for his agent, he first fought and won Truro in 1857 ;
he repeated the victory in fifteen later contests. The
Willyamses in all their generations have sweetened
the Whig profession in politics with much social
courtesy to those outside its pale. The late owner of
Carnanton was a Liberal member at St. Stephen's in
the future Lord Beaconsfield's time. In those days
Disraeli frequently found himself a visitor in the West
of England. On one occasion he took Carnanton on
his way, going or returning. He might, indeed, never
have penetrated to these parts but for a connection of
the Carnanton clan. The aunt of Mr. E. Brydges
Willyams of 1906, herself a Mrs. Brydges Willyams,
266
Disraeli Financed
an exceedingly clever, intellectual woman, delighted by
Disraeli's literary genius, invited him to her house
at Mount Braddon, Torquay. He became almost
domesticated there, with such profit to himself as to
have received from his hostess in cash, jewels, pictures,
furniture, gifts amounting in value to about ;^6o,ooo.
Fresh from a Carnanton excursion, Disraeli called
upon the original of his own Mr. Bond Sharp, then
living in Grosvenor Square. The interview was to
the following effect : " What security do you offer for
the ^5,000 you asked me to lend you ? " inquired
Henry Padwick. " My brains," was the answer.
Padwick accepted it. The money was lent imme-
diately ; it repaid itself with interest some years later.
Throughout the Victorian age the smart country
house remained unknown between the Tamar and the
Land's End. The county had no more pleasant or
distinctive social characteristic than the rural home
justly proud of its combination of taste with comfort
and enjoyment. The union, of course, exhibits itself
in various degrees. Two instances, at opposite ends
of the scale, shall conclude our Cornish visits. The
great event in the rural hospitalities of Cornwall used
to be the Boconnoc cricket week. The place giving
its name to the function belongs to a group of
properties with which William the Conqueror en-
dowed the earldom of Cornwall. Owned successively
by the Carminowes, the Courtenays, the (Bedford)
Russells, the Mohuns, Boconnoc was bought, in 1718,
by Thomas Pitt, Governor of Madras, Chatham's
grandfather. The last of the Pitt name to live at
Boconnoc was the first Lord Camelford. After him
267
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
the place passed to the Pitt cousins, the Grenvilles.
Through these it came to its present possessors, the
Fortescues. Architecturally the noticeable feature in
the house is the skill with which the later additions
have been incorporated into the original structure.
So consistently at long intervals of time and by
various owners has the leading idea of the first builder
been adhered to, that even the expert can scarcely
decide where the work of the Carminowes ends,
where that of the Courtenays begins, at what point
the white frontage of the Pitts passes into the later
frontage of the Grenvilles. Boconnoc, too, possessed
a deer-park which, as Disraeli somewhere reminds
one, is a very different thing from a park with deer in
it. Inside, the creative genius of Lord Camelford still
has its monument in a gallery not less than lOO
feet long, opening at one end into a drawing-room,
at the other into a library. The walls of these,
as of the fine and fanciful staircase, a great feature of
the place, are hung with drapery in some parts, with
paintings in others. Some of these pictures are
interesting because of their artist, Gavin Hamilton,
discovered by the first Marquis of Lansdowne at Rome,
and by him introduced to the Grenvilles. In the
"Prodigal Son's Return " and "Abraham's dismissal
of Hagar," the freshness of the colouring and the
expressiveness of the faces have delighted many
generations of Boconnoc guests. The most interest-
ing works are those forming part of Boconnoc's family
history. Such are the first Lord Camelford, Governor
Pitt himself, of the " Pitt diamond," the Duchess of
Cleveland, presented by herself to her cousin, born
268
Boconnoc to Polwhele
Harriet Villiers, wife of Governor Pitt's eldest son,
the first Earl Stanhope, the general, and Grenvilles
innumerable. Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Joshua
Reynolds are the chief painters. Several of the
canvases attract connoisseurs because they are " kit-
kats " ; that is, they were originally commissioned, of a
certain size (twenty-eight or twenty-nine inches by
thirty-six), to suit the convenience of the Kit-Kat
Club ; this was the little society formed by Addison,
Garth, the Duke of Marlborough, Sir Robert Walpole,
and others in 1703, to promote the Protestant succes-
sion, deriving its name from the fact of its dinners
being held at the house of Christopher Kat, a West-
minster pastrycook. In its early days, Boconnoc
was much of what Chevening was to Kent ; it is
now best known in connection with Boconnoc cricket
week.
Other Cornish homes, having nothing else in common
with Boconnoc, were formerly, on, however, much more
modest a scale, associated with open-air games of all
kinds. In the Victorian age Polwhele, near Truro,
had for its occupants the English descendant of an
Austrian family ennobled by Maria Theresa. Than
Colonel Charles Liardet and his sons, there were
no finer specimens of pure Saxon manhood. Mrs.
Liardet, helped by her fair daughters, co-operated
with the men of the family to make Polwhele an
animating centre for other pastimes than cricket,
especially archery. It was also the one house in the
West which made itself the second home of Anglo-
Indians, civil or military. Chief among these was
Patrick Boyle Smollett, a lineal descendant of the
269
From Tresco Abbey to Polwhele
novelist, with much of his ancestor's robust humour
and full-flavoured fun, equally amusing in private life
and in the House of Commons, where he sat latterly
for Cambridge, and where he delighted to chaff the
Irish members. To some of these he applied the
expression " talking potatoes " — a phrase with which
the Cornish air of Polwhele had, he said, inspired him.
270
CHAPTER X
A ROUND OF DEVONSHIRE VISITS
Port Eliot, formerly a Republican centre, compared with Stow,
a Royalist centre — Portraits of the Eliots, John Hampden, &c.
— Other pictures — The Eliot family — Sir John Eliot and
Hampden — Pitt at Port Eliot — The Grenvilles — A contretemps
— Pitt at Plymouth — The St. Germans peers — Mount
Edgcumbe — The Rev. Barter of Cornworthy and his three sons
— Cothele, the ancient seat of the Edgcumbes — Its antiquities
— Royal visitors at Edgcumbe — Chatham in the West of
England — An anecdote of Chatham and the Duke of New-
castle — Heligan, the home of the Tremaynes — Mrs. Boscawen
— The Duchess of Portland — Mount Edgcumbe a resort of
beauty and learning — Hayes Barton, Raleigh's birthplace —
Bicton — The Rolles, first Whigs, afterwards Tories — John,
Lord Rolle,the mock hero of the "Rolliad " — Its writers. Colonel
Fitzpatrick, &c. — Modern Bicton — Peamore — The Kekewiches
— Archbishop Cornwallis — A legal precedent — Peamore guests
— Pynes — The Northcotes — Memorials of the first baronet.
Sir John Northcote — Lord Iddesleigh and his visitors.
DURING the seventeenth-century struggle be-
tween Parliament and king, the Royalists had
their social headquarters in the West at Stow, in
which we have already seen the cradle of the Bath
and Granville peerages. On the Republican side a
corresponding position and associations equally in-
271
A Round of Devonshire Visits
teresting, belong to Port Eliot, some twenty miles
further in the Devonshire direction. The house exist-
ing to-day is, of course, not that so dear to John Hamp-
den's friend and colleague. The irregular frontage,
formerly the characteristic that it shared with Pens-
hurst and many other houses already mentioned,
disappeared during several processes of restoration
which it underwent. The new house stands nearly
on the same ground as a priory that had existed from
Saxon times. Parts of the monastic structure were
embodied in the new building. Thus the dining-
room was the refectory. It also became the picture
gallery. Here, on canvas and in well compounded
colours, is told the personal story of the place. John
Eliot, the first master of the place, was painted in 1574.
The presentment of the earliest Eliot knight, the great
Sir John himself, is dated 1628. If that date be cor-
rect, the work must have been executed before Eliot's
committal to the Tower in 1629. Port Eliot tradition
mentions a portrait completed just before his death in
1632. It would therefore seem possible that there
may exist somewhere a later likeness than that in
Eliot's old home. The ennobled Eliots begin with
the lord of 1783, by Sir Joshua. The first of the St.
Germans Earls lives again in a portrait by the local
artist, Opie. Another Sir Joshua, the first group ever
painted by the artist, depicts Richard, the head of the
Eliots in 1746 with his family gathered round him.
Here, too, is the political philosopher John Locke,
the scientific expositor and champion of the political
settlement that, in 1688, embodied the chief principles
contended for by the greatest of the Eliots and his
272
The Port Eliot Hosts
friends. The collection suggests some dramatic con-
trasts. It contains the one authentic likeness of John
Eliot's most famous friend and trusted colleague,
John Hampden, with the open brow and fine features.
Next to him is a mediaeval master of Italian church-
craft, Cardinal Bentivoglio, with the bald head and
the clear-cut countenance expressive at once of
intellectual subtlety and personal charm. Near
Hampden, too, is the handsome Captain Hamilton,
whence have sprung the even handsomer Dukes
of Abercorn. Another picture, that of the Bel and
the Dragon imposture detected by Cyrus, was pro-
nounced by Reynolds to be the work of two very
eminent hands ; the head, he said, had been cut out of
a painting by Quintin Matsys ; the drapery and the
background were pronounced undoubted Rembrandts.
Later experts have detected in the drawing and the
colouring proof that Sir Joshua was not wrong.
In the sixteenth century the Eliots, originally a
very old Devonshire family, had been settled for some
time in Cornwall. Their house occupied the same
ground as an ancient priory, whose site, at the disso-
lution of the monasteries, had been granted to the
Champernownes. These (1565) exchanged it for
some of his Coteland property, with Richard Eliot,
the famous Sir John Eliot's grandfather. From that
day to this it has remained in the Eliot family.
Throughout the Tudor period, towards whose close
(1592) John Eliot was born, the hospitalities of Port
Eliot were famous. The atmosphere of jollity and
self-indulgence surrounding his boyhood developed
habits and passions that seriously interfered with
273 s
A Round of Devonshire Visits
young Eliot's career. Old Eliot would have agreed
with Sir Robert Walpole's father, that it did not
become a son to be the critical observer of a sire in
his cups. He therefore made the boy drink glass
for glass with him, till they both disappeared together
under the table. Before his Oxford days were over,
the lad had contrived to get into an ugly scrape.
Among those who visited at Port Eliot was a neigh-
bouring squire named Moyle ; between him and his
host's son no love was lost. Heated by wine and
argument, on one occasion, young Eliot thrust his
sword into the detested Moyle. The matter was
hushed up on the understanding that the young
swashbuckler should improve his manners by a
course of foreign travel. While on the grand
tour, he made the acquaintance of George Villiers,
the Duke of Buckingham, whom he afterwards
impeached. A morally reformed and a politically
educated character, he brought back to his Cornish
home a succession of guests, most of them English
or foreign diplomatists. Thus, by the time he
became owner of the place he had made Port
Eliot the most cosmopolitan country house in
the West of England. He did not live to co-
operate with his Buckinghamshire friend in organis-
ing the constituencies against the Court before
the Long Parliament met. John Hampden, how-
ever, was among the Port Eliot visitors. In the
Port Eliot library the host and guest laid down
the lines of the first Parliamentary campaign against
the king. The Port Eliot influence had already
given an international colour to English popular
274
Port Eliot Politics
politics. Unhappily for them Eliot's political friends
and heirs violated, at certain fatal points, the
Port Eliot principles. As the two friends paced to
and fro on that portion of the Port Eliot grounds
overlooking the Plymouth waters, " I would have
you," said Eliot to Hampden, "avoid revolution if
for no other reason than because of the reaction that
is sure to follow." The physiognomy of the Celt
showed itself strongly in him who thus spoke. Could
there have been a better specimen of the prophetic
power that has sometimes been a Celtic gift than
this caution ? Miorht it not be thougrht that Eliot
had foreseen the libertine excesses of the Restoration
after Puritanism, or in France the rise of Bonaparte
and Talleyrand after Robespierre ? This seventeenth-
century precursor of the St. Germans peers, as his
keen eye swept the horizon of affairs, saw that Cromwell
would close what Pym had opened and Milton had sung.
Unlike some of those houses that have been visited,
Port Eliot's reputation as a political country house
comes chiefly from its association with an isolated
owner who filled a large place in the public mind. In
1784 Samuel Johnson met at Sir Joshua Reynolds'
dinner-table Lord Eliot, whose father, then Mr. Eliot,
he had formerly visited at his country home. General
Paley, Dr. Beattie, andother well-known personages of
the periods were of the company. The Cornish host
referred to by Boswell was Richard Eliot. His son
became the first Lord Eliot ; he exchanged his family
surname for that of his mother ; she was a daughter
of Queen Anne's secretary, Craggs, a sister of Horace
Walpole's friend, Mrs. Nugent. By their mother,
275
A Round of Devonshire Visits
Miss Santlow, the actress, Port Eliot had, in a remote
degree, connected itself with the stage. And was it
not at Port Eliot, after surveying John Eliot's picture,
that Johnson conceived the sentiment banged out by
him some time afterwards, " Patriotism, sir, is the
last refuge of a scoundrel"? Mrs. Richard Eliot's
portrait also, like others of her family, by Sir Joshua,
is still in the Port Eliot collection. Hampden's
friend, Sir John Eliot, had in him, as has been seen,
something of the diplomatist not less than of the
Republican. The international strain perpetuated
itself more visibly among his descendants than did
the political. During the competition between the
son of Chatham and Charles Fox, the rival leaders at
Westminster were privately represented by their own
personal ambassadors at foreign Courts. John Eliot's
ennobled descendant was employed in distributing
"Pitt's gold" amongst the English allies against
Napoleon. In this way, when the struggle between
parties and factions was at its height, the Cornish
Port Eliot supplied Toryism with the same sort of
social stronghold as that which was possessed by the
Whiofs at Woolbedinor or Stanstead in Sussex. Pitt
himself, accompanied by the faithful Dundas, was
an occasional visitor. On one of their journeys
thither they had put up for the night at Exeter. A
customer at the New London Inn, recognising the
pair as they entered their carriage the next morning,
said, " I see, landlord, you have had great company
here, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer of the
Navy." " I don't rightly know, sir, who they be,
and bless me if I care," was the reply ; " it is enough
276
A Port Eliot Contretemps
for me that they cleared out my best bin of port
last night, each six bottles to his own cheek." It
was one of their fellow-guests at Port Eliot, a Parlia-
mentary opponent, Courtenay, who, being again at
Lord Eliot's Cornish house after Pitt's death, effect-
ively introduced Dundas into a conversational parallel
between the English statesman and the Athenian
Pericles. Both owed their command and posi-
tion to the same power of speech and loftiness
of character. Finally Pericles died heartbroken at
the disgrace which had overtaken his friend Phidias ;
so Pitt's life was embittered and shortened by the
impeachment of Dundas, when Lord Melville, for
gross malversation and breach of duty.
On their journeys to Boconnoc both the Grenvilles,
Thomas and William, Pitt's kinsmen, halted at Port
Eliot. The contrast between the two brothers —
the elder ponderous, pompous, saturnine, the younger
quick, bright, and genial — excited much comment
among the local guests. *' As much as you like of
Mr. William, but no more than the laws of hospi-
tality command of Mr. Thomas," was the verdict of
the Cornish squires on the two ; still more of the
Cornish ladies, who found the younger brother
delightfully quick and entertaining in the give-and-
take of tea-table talk, the elder surly as a bear till
the second bottle was finished, and then disposed
rather to slumber than to flirtation or compliments.
With these came the pioneer of the modern business-
like Conservatism. " Jenkinson," said Lord Eliot,
" is the only man I know who talks better than
any book, who can give Shelburne conversational
277
A Round of Devonshire Visits
odds and beat him." The future Lord Liverpool,
if he chanced to be there at the same time as Pitt,
was always singled out by the minister for com-
panion in the morning walk. In all Parliamentary
debates on commercial or industrial subjects, Pitt at
Port Eliot used Jenkinson as a sort of holiday coach.
If the rural colloquies between the two were unusually
numerous and earnest, people knew that Pitt had
cut out for himself some particularly hard work at St.
Stephen's. Its nearness to the Plymouth quays and
counters made Jenkinson specially in request at Port
Eliot. " To-day, if you please," the minister would
often remark overnight to this remarkably handy-
man, *' we will have a look at the Mill Bay docks
and Cattedown bonded-houses." One of Pitt's
Cabinet colleagues, the Duke of Richmond, had then
suggested plans for fortifying Plymouth and Ports-
mouth. At these signs of confidential intimacy between
the chief and his subordinate, a look of anything
but satisfaction seemed to come over another member
of the Pitt phalanx, the Marquis of Graham, alluded
to in words then often quoted from the " Rolliad," " the
dark brow of solemn Hamilton." Whether at St.
Stephen's or in the country house, the Pittites ranged
themselves in a certain ceremonial order. Graham
took his place at the head of the patrician wing. Next
to him came John Villiers, Lord Clarendon's second
son, called, from his good looks, his fine eyes, and his
golden hair, "the Nireus of his party." At Port
Eliot, as at other points of the country-house system,
Villiers rendered Pitt the sort of service at a later
date performed so tactfully in similar scenes for
278
Scientific Sailors at Port Eliot
Lord Beaconsfield by Montagu Corry (Lord Rowton),
AmonCT those called Pitt's business men after the
future Lord Liverpool became an habitual visitor of
Port Eliot, on his way to or from Sir Thomas Acland's
Holnicote in Devonshire, was William Wilberforce,
insignificant in person, with features concealing
rather than suQfSfestina- intellect, but a clear and
pointed talker, with whom Pitt paired in the after-
breakfast walks when not preoccupied with Jenkinson.
With these exceptions, Pitt at Port Eliot was seen
to prefer for his companions any who were not
professed Pittites. His consultative bodyguard in
Cornwall as elsewhere, further comprised Pepper
Arden, one of the law officers. Lord Mulgrave, and
the Duke of Richmond, curiously reproducing the
dark complexion and features of Charles II., but
without his royal ancestor's sense of humour, quick-
ness of repartee, and lavish recklessness. The Duke,
receiving a large salary as Master General of the
Ordnance, passed for the greatest screw of his time.
His fellow-guests at Port Eliot often whispered to
each other the lines in which the "Rolliad" had rallied
him on his kitchen fire being always unlit. Two Port
Eliot visitors with whom Richmond was often brought
into contact were James Luttrell, Lord Carhampton's
youngest son, and one who was the earliest specimen
of a Naval officer equally at home with his ship and
his pen. His brother sailor, though lacking Luttrell's
grace and polish. Captain Macbride, combined with
the nautical bluntness of the old school, clear, good,
sound sense and a locally exact knowledge of the
sea and shore whose projected fortifications so often
279
A Round of Devonshire Visits
brought distinguished State officials to Port Eliot.
Courtenay, one of Pitt's most brilliant and bitter-
tongued adversaries, in his capacity of West-country
magnate sometimes mingled with these Tory guests.
On one occasion a disagreeable contretemps occurred.
A few days before, Courtenay in the House had
made a personal attack upon the head of the Ord-
nance, the Duke of Richmond. With him he had
contrasted his Grace's predecessors in the office — all
men of tried bravery, military knowledge, and ex-
perience. When, on entering the Port Eliot hall,
the Duke cauo'ht sio"ht of his assailant in the com-
pany, he turned on his heel and disappeared ; his
Grace, it seemed, had gone to order his carriage for
immediate departure. With no repetition of an
incident of that sort, the Port Eliot house-parties
have continued to the present day. The third Earl
of St. Germans' daughter, Lady Louisa Eliot,
married (1850) into the Whig family of Ponsonby.
But though the twentieth-century Lord Bessborough
and other guests of his political connection frequently
visited Port Eliot, they escaped any experience like
the Richmond-Courtenay meeting.
" Mount Edgcumbe," said Lady Ossory after a visit
to the spot, " has the beauties of all other places
added to peculiar beauties of its own." The combin-
ation of varieties, picturesque or impressive, that
struck Horace Walpole's correspondent, distinguishes
Mount Edgcumbe from other palaces by the sea.
From the little peninsula formed by the Tamar and its
influents, the panorama visible combines gentle sylvan
landscape, broken by glimpses of rugged Dartmoor and
280
The Rev. Barter of Cornworthy
its craggy tors beyond. Where the park slopes down
toward the water, one becomes aware in the distance
of a sea swarming with the commerce of nations and
the floating bulwarks of an empire on which the sun
never sets. Before entering Mount Edgcumbe itself,
let us glance at the earlier home of its possessors.
This was Cothele ; it lay within the Cornish frontier,
but was chiefly Devonian in its characteristics, and in
a neighbourhood memorable for possessing one of
Sydney Smith's "squarsons," in his day not less of a
personage than the Simcoe already visited at Penheale.
This was Mr. Barter, rector of Cornworthy. Like
other devoted parish priests of those days, he kept a
private pack of hounds, showing sport equally good
with hare and fox. In the first quarter of the nine-
teenth century, no western country house formed a
more perfect microcosm than Cornworthy Rectory.
Its inmates were known by many strangers to them
in the flesh from some family verses, " The Corn-
worthiad," familiar to an earlier generation of Win-
chester and New College readers. The rector's sons,
in whose company we shall find ourselves hereafter,
were respectively Charles, William, and Robert. The
eldest lived into the last quarter of the nineteenth
century as Bishop Wilberforce's friend and unofficial
right-hand m.^n in the Oxford diocese. The second,
William, fellow and tutor of Oriel, figured importantly
in the Oxford Anglican movement. The youngest,
Robert, died Warden of Winchester, leaving behind
him a name still perpetuated in the cricket vocabulary
of the school. Cornworthy was the ancient site of a
monastery and an almshouse. On the front of the
281
A Round of Devonshire Visits
gallery in Cornworthy Church may still be visible the
inscription, " Sir Peter Edgcumbe, Bart., gave by will
to the parish of Cornworthy the ground on which the
poorhouses are built." That benefactor lived at
Cothele House. Cothele, therefore, contained the
germ of the stately fabric which now looks down
on Plymouth harbour. Of the parent dwelling few
records, probably, have been preserved. Cothele was
among the most famous houses of the West between
1485 and 1509; inside it was not more remarkable
for the quality of its guests than for the antiquity
of its furniture and fittings. These, as regards age
and aspect, were in keeping with the time-worn
exterior. All were at least as early as the two Tudor
queens, Mary and Elizabeth. The immemorial age
of the Cothele wardrobe passed into a local proverb.
Some of its clothes, according to Walpole, dated from
the time of Cain. " But Adam's breeches and Eve's
under-petticoat were eaten by a goat in the ark."
Relics of the Spanish Armada are familiar objects at
most of the more ancient houses in the two western
counties. The Spanish spoils that used to decorate
Cothele were at least genuine. The eleven suits of
complete armour, the arquebuses, the pikes, swords,
halberds, bows and arrows, as regards the details of
date and manufacture correspond to the description
contained in the Spanish archives of the deadly equip-
ments possessed by the "invincible" fleet which,
under Medina- Sidonia, proudly sailed from Lisbon in
the May of 1588.
The last half of the Tudor epoch added other
Spanish spoils than these to the Edgcumbe store.
282
Cothele and Mount Edgcumbe
Cothele itself had come to the family by inter-marriage
with the Cotheles in the fourteenth century. The old
Cothele manor-house was small, inconvenient, inter-
esting only from its prehistoric associations. Built of
stone from the Dartmoor quarries on the west bank
of the Tamar, the structure was conspicuous for
a little quadrangle with an embattled tower in its
midst, surrounded by buildings whose narrow, heavily
barred windows spread a sense of captivity and gloom
that suggested Giant Despair's Doubting Castle.
The most curious of the Armada monuments trans-
ported from Cothele to Mount Edgcumbe is a figure,
remarkable for the savage look imparted to the
features by the artist, armed, cap-a-pie, in Spanish
steel. This stands at the foot of the stone staircase
leading to the room occupied by Charles II. during
his wanderings. The drapery of this chamber is of
Oriental workmanship, noticeable for the deep fringe
made with knotted silk of many colours. The second
Charles was followed in the next century by other royal
guests at Mount Edgcumbe. On the 25th of August,
1789, the visitors' book records the king and queen of
Wtirtemberg, with several of their daughters, to have
passed a night or two at the place. Later visitors so
coveted the honour of occupying the chairs in which
these royalties had sat, that, to prevent them being
worn out before the rest of the set, it became
necessary to remove the labels recording the earlier
illustrious occupants. Among the Edgcumbe portraits
that may formerly have been at Cothele were an
ancestress of the family so ancient as never to have
been identified, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Sir Richard
283
A Round of Devonshire Visits
Edgcumbe. The last was the fifteenth-century head
of the family, who left Richard III. for Henry of
Richmond. Pursued in his own grounds by Richard's
men, Edgcumbe, sheltering himself in a thicket, was
in danger of being surrounded by his enemies. It was
the work of a moment to fill his cap with stones and
throw it into the water below. His pursuers, seeing
the head-gear floating on the waves, thought their
man had drowned himself, and at once took ship for
Brittany. The fugitive commemorated his escape by
building a chapel on the eventful spot. His lineal
descendant, the first Lord Edgcumbe, restored the
building in 1769. The original builder having been
knighted by Henry VII. on Bosworth field, became
first comptroller to the king's household, afterwards
his ambassador to France. To-day his effigy is seen,
devoutedly kneeling, in his own chapel. The paintings
and other treasures of the modern Mount Edgcumbe
are fully and exactly catalogued in all the guide-books.
Those contents of the place which it has, therefore,
only seemed worth while to mention here are such
as have not before found their way into print.
Mount Edgcumbe, apropos of Chatham who had
visited the place just before him, inspired Horace
Walpole with his best known epigram, " This world is a
comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who
feel." The younger Pitt has been met at Port Eliot.
His father seldom came as far west as Bath without
at least trying to secure a look in at Mount Edgcumbe.
It was here that he unbent himself by hunting and
by versification. The burden of his poetry was the
hollowness of ambition. His best known lines in this
284
Chatham and Newcastle in the West
vein addressed to the great actor are those beginning,
" Leave, Garrick, the rich landscape proudly gay," &c.
The Mount Edgcumbe atmosphere continued redolent
of Chatham during at least two generations. Here,
too, many of the most characteristic anecdotes about
him first became current. In his frequent attacks of
gouty fever, he could not tolerate a fire. Some of
his colleagues, summoned on State affairs to his
bedroom, were equally afraid of cold. Amongst
these was the Duke of Newcastle who, when his
fellow-peers were overcome by the tropical weather,
insisted upon the House of Lords having all its
windows closed. Calling upon Chatham in his
fireless bedroom, Newcastle gave way to a violent
but unheeded shiver. The great man was too much
absorbed by the subject in hand. Admiral Hawke's
movements against the French navy, to notice.
The interview was unusually important and prolonged.
At last the freezing minister espied an unoccupied
attendant's couch in the corner opposite Chatham's.
Thickly cloaked already, he escaped into it, pulling
the bedclothes over him. Upon the issue of the
interview hung the fortunes of two nations. The
close and anxious discussion continued until Sir
Charles Frederick came in and found the two States-
men conducting an animated argument from beneath
the coverings of their respective places of repose.
Some weeks later Frederick related the experience
at Mount Edgcumbe and made it public property.
Memories of the Pitt family intertwine themselves
with many more West of England country houses
than readers of this book can be asked to visit. The
285
A Round of Devonshire Visits
fortune brought home by Chatham's grandfather,
Thomas Pitt, the possessor of the famous diamond
bearing his name, originally weighing 410 carats, sold
in 17 17 for ^135,000 to the French Regents, still on
sight at the Louvre, was expended in buying seats in
Parliament and estates in the country. Some of these
properties had belonged previously or belonged after-
wards to the Cornish families of Tremayne and
Grylls, Heligan is still one of the most hospitable
houses in the West. Under John Hearte Tremayne,
the father of its present owner, it was, during the first
half of the nineteenth century, the rendezvous of
politicians steeped in the personal traditions of Pitt or
Fox, of their chief adherents or their most conspicuous
adversaries. If they had not themselves heard the
debate, they knew from those who had been present
how John James Hamilton, afterwards Pitt's Marquis
of Abercorn, when member for East Looe, opened
the discussion of the Coalition East India Bill in what
shared with Wilkes' attack the honour of being the
speech of the night. They had heard the lively and
facetious nonagenarian. Lord John Townshend's
father, predict the fall of the Coalition, because, being
at Court when Fox kissed hands, he had seen
George III. turn back his ears and eyes, just like the
horse at Astley's on being mounted by the tailor
whom he had determined to throw. They had been
at the same table as that at which Sir George Howard,
the interpreter to the Lower House of George III.'s
military ideas, had explained how it was that
Pitt's Solicitor-General, Pepper Arden, was a good
second to Dunning as the ugliest man of his time.
286
Nursery Etymology
Arden, when a child, had bought a tin trumpet at
Stockport fair. Racing home against his brother, he
fell down. The trumpet, running into his nose,
deformed the whole lower part of his countenance.
Howard, too, was with Lord Albany in his last illness
and had helped to raise up the dying man in bed that
he might write a few lines of gratitude to Pitt for a
much tried and never failing friendship. The bio-
graphy of Chatham, taken by Macaulay as the peg for
his famous study of the statesman, was written by the
Rev. Francis Thackeray, an uncle of the greater
author of " Vanity Fair." The biographer is said to
have been private tutor at the country homes of the
two families just mentioned. As regards Heligan and
the Tremaynes, I believe this to be a myth. Heligan,
too, rather than Mount Edgcumbe, was probably the
source of the freshest Court stories of the time. The
Princess of Wales, mother of George HI., in a state
of more than usual dejection, was watching her two
eldest boys, alternately at lessons and at play. " When
we are grown up," said the second to his elder
brother, the future king, " you may have a wife, I
shall keep a mistress." " Peace, brother ! " came the
answer, " there must be no mistresses at all." " Learn
your pronouns," interposed the widowed mother ; " or
stay, tell me what a pronoun is." "A pronoun,"
rejoined the Duke of York, "is to a noun what a
mistress is to a wife, a substitute and representative."
*' Each art of conversation knowing.
Highbred, elegant Boscawen."
This lady was the wife of Admiral Boscawen, the
287
A Round of Devonshire Visits
most universally coveted ornament of country-house
parties in the West. " All herself — that is, all elegance
and good breeding," was the general verdict on this
guest of the evening. Some, however, whispered
with an agreeing smile, Horace Walpole's nickname,
" Madam Muscovy." If not Mrs. Montagu's equal in
the management of a salon, Mrs. Boscawen proved
a far more useful aquisition to the fashionable house-
party of the period. What Mount Edgcumbe has
always been among the great show places of the West,
Langdon Court, the home of the Corys, has proved
to more than one generation of visitors from all parts.
A blend of fashion and intellect formed the speciality
of both places. Of late the social citadel of fashion-
able exclusiveness, Mount Edgcumbe, as the haunt
of the most modish blue-stockings, won fame not
more for its state and splendour than for its austerity.
No card-tables were brought out after dinner.
Every one posed as learned or accomplished. A
few succeeded in being really witty. Amongst that
number was the Dowager Duchess of Portland.
Mrs. Boscawen's chief rival, she was grand-daughter
of Lord Treasurer Harley, first Lord Oxford. Her
good looks were sung by Young, whose " Night
Thoughts " were dedicated to her ; the bright talk of
this original of Pope's " Narcissa " was worthy of her
good looks. Her girlish beauty had been idolised
and idealised by Jonathan Swift. Later her fame
had survived the doggerel panegyric of Matthew
Prior. Artistically this dazzling dowager may be
called the progenitress of the whole race of amateur
actresses, with Mrs. W. James at their head. In the
288
There may be Handsomer Women than I
piece then most in request for private theatricals, her
costume and performance as Cynthia at Arundel
Castle had filled the men with admiration and the
women with despair. It was under a West of England
roof that the Portland Duchess, anticipating a like
utterance by Lady Foley, remarked, "There may
be better looking women than myself. All I can
say is, I have never seen them." Imagine a meeting
in the same country house of a high-born British
beauty of this overweening type and a modern
American duchess, not less highly endowed ! What
would be the incidents of such a competition ?
Boswell's picture of Dr. Johnson, subdued to gentle-
ness whilst sitting between the Duke and Duchess of
Argyle at Inverary, often had its parallel in that
group of rural homes now spoken of. Johnson and
Garrick were both well known at Mount Edgcumbe
in the same period as Chatham. The Duchess of
Devonshire in the prime of her beauty hung on every
syllable that fell from the sage's lips. The moralist
became all smiles when her Grace had successfully
contended for the nearest place to his chair. Here,
too. Sir Joshua Reynolds, prevented by deafness from
mingling in the general talk, holding his trumpet to
his ear, invited to conversation those who stood or sat
outside the central group. As a foil to the famous
beauties, who regarded Johnson and the other men
of mind as they might have done highly intelligent
Newfoundland dogs, were Mrs. Vesey, a bright,
clever, but not handsome woman, the positively plain
Mrs. Chapone, and Mme. D'Arblay, with her father.
Dr. Burney.
289 T
A Round of Devonshire Visits
The country houses now to be visited lie entirely
in Devonshire. Conspicuous among them in the
sixteenth century was, doubtless, Sir Walter Raleigh's
birthplace, Hayes Barton. Here some have been
shown the very room in which, to the terror of his
household, who thought he had set fire to himself,
the adventurous Elizabethan smoked the first pipe of
tobacco that perfumed the Devonshire air ; not less well
known is the board at which his visitors made their
earliest acquaintance with the potato, brought with
him from his Irish estate of Youghal. To-day, like
so many other coeval mansions, Hayes Barton is a
farmhouse. The Rolle estate, to which Hayes now
belongs, is a typical instance of old acres benefited
by new wealth and enriched by political or literary
associations, investing it with the interest of a historical
landmark. The Rolles were honourably connected
with Devonshire long before the eighteenth century.
That, however, was the period in which the modern
Bicton was built. Two hundred years earlier the
founder of the Bicton family, George Rolle, after
a successful course of London commerce, became
a Devonshire landlord first by the purchase of
Stevenstone in the northern division. His descendant,
Robert, whose general sympathies were with Parlia-
ment against the king, married Lady Arabella
Clinton. The grand-daughter of this pair was the
Margaret Rolle about whom Horace Walpole and
Lady Mary Wortley Montague vied with each other
in saying unpleasant things. Inheriting the Clinton
barony, Margaret Rolle became the wife of the en-
nobled Sir Robert Walpole's eldest son, Lord
290
Bicton and the " Rolliad "
Walpole. This marriage of the Rolle heiress into
the family of the first great Whig minister ex-
plains the presence of Whig guests at Bicton. The
obligation of the Rolles for their earliest title to
George II. s Whig minister had not prevented them
from gravitating toward Toryism and supporting the
second Pitt in the days of George III. To the
leading spirits of the Whig connection, John, Lord
Rolle, as he became in 1796, seemed a party renegade
of the most thankless kind, and therefore fair game
for the satire of their cleverest writers. R. B. Sheridan
seems to have been Rolle's guest, not only in London
but in Devonshire. He always denied any complicity
in the burlesque whose central figure was the Bicton
host. Adair, Burgoyne, Ellis, and Fitzpatrick were the
chief writers of the " Rolliad," whose idea may or may
not have suggested itself during their stay at Bicton.
The host appears to have incurred the ridicule of his
former Whig friends by a fussy anxiety so to commend
himself to his new Tory allies under Pitt, as to revive
in his own person the peerage which was brought
into the family by his uncle Henry during Walpole's
premiership, but which had died with that relative.
After twelve years' work in Parliament as one of the
Devonshire members, his ambition was achieved. In
1796 he became Lord Rolle. His earlier friend. Fox,
had begun under North by passing for a Tory. Like
Fox, Rolle impersonated the political versatility of the
age. Rather, perhaps, should it be said that the first
of Bicton's ennobled owners loved society first, party
afterwards. His fine face and handsome presence
imparted a distinction to the homely manners of
291
A Round of Devonshire Visits
a plain Devonshire squire, imperfectly appreciated,
as he thought, by Walpole's successors in the Whig
management. Naturally, therefore, he turned to the
Tory camp. His warm reception there involved no
solution of continuity in his social and private
acquaintanceships. His favourite guests at Bicton
and elsewhere were still the bright spirits of fashion-
able Whiggism, the delights and the ornaments of the
fashionable country-house system. Rolle, however,
as a Whig renegade now found himself more than
their host — their butt. His brand-new coronet only
served to give fresh point to the satire of his most
entertaining guests. These had formerly laughed
with him ; they now began to laugh at him. It was,
they said, as if Fielding's Squire Weston had covered
his scarlet hunting-coat with a baron's robes. The
"Rolliad" put all this so tellingly that it was no sooner
out than it became the literary hit of the season.
Rolle seems to have taken the joke with dignity and
courage. The authors of the famous burlesque had
satirised his claim to antiquity of descent by con-
gratulating him on a lineage not only from the
Norman Rollo, but from Adam himself. Other
visitors at Bicton were Speaker Fletcher Norton,
himself, as " Sir Bulface Doublefee," a figure in the
pasquinades of the time; the jovial, unscrupulous Rigby,
Paymaster of the Forces ; and the great admiral. Lord
Rodney. It was at the Bicton dinner-table that
Rodney explained to an admiring company the use
of his manoeuvre for breaking the line, and sometimes
recounted his successes or failures in love and at play.
Rolle's motion in Parliament against Rodney's recall
292
Bicton Patriotism and Pitt
by Fox, more than any other matter of public policy
embittered Rolle against the Whigs.
Than Bicton Devonshire possessed no purer type
of a high Tory house. There it was treason not to
recognise revolution in Parliamentary interference
with the king's choice of his ministers. "Those,"
said Rolle, "who wish to force their nominees on
the Crown are foes of the monarchy as deter-
mined and dangerous as in an earlier century were
General Ludlow or Algernon Sidney." In the April
of 1780, the terror and indignation of these country
houses were brought to a head by Dunning's motion
against Dissolution or Prorogation till guarantees
had been taken against an increase of the royal
prerogative. " To Lord North, after His Majesty,
we owe our preservation from republicanism if not
from revolution." Rolle had often spoken to that
effect in Parliament. He seldom gathered some
neighbouring squires at Bicton without thundering
the same sentiment across the walnuts and the wine.
Next to North, the national salvation had come from
the son of Chatham. The sinking fund in 1786, it
was agreed at the Bicton dinner-table, by maintaining
credit, commerce, and finance, had drawn the country
back from the pit of ruin. " Whom, too, had we
to thank but Pitt for those conquests on the Ganges,
on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, which had
caused the sun of Britain to rise in the east as soon
as it sank in the west .'* " To such effect expressed
himself, both before and after his ennoblement, the
Tory convert of Bicton. Sometimes he thus held
forth standing at his mahogany and almost dinting
293
A Round of Devonshire Visits
it with the blows of his emphatic fists, causing the
glasses and plate to rattle in chorus ; sometimes
strolling through his beautiful park, where the oak
and chestnut-covered glades slope down to the lake,
whose iron fencing is to-day that erected by the hero
of the "Rolliad."
Lord Rolle posed as, and might have piqued himself
on actually being, the eclectic and cosmopolitan Mae-
cenas of his county. There were no men who then
shone so brightly in the world of fashion as the more
intellectual of the " macaronis " who then revolved
round Charles Fox. Most notable of that group
was the wit among dandies and the dandy among
wits. Colonel Fitzpatrick, of the noble presence and
the versatile pen that made him the life and soul
of the "Rolliad" writers, the special adviser and confi-
dant of Fox. A humbler but not less indispensable
member of the group was a literary hanger-on of the
Rolle family. A professional Grub Street hack. Dr.
Wolcot (Peter Pindar) kept judiciously in the back-
ground and, meekly sitting below the Bicton salt,
he corrected the mistakes of his noble contributors
in grammar, spelling, and metre ; he polished up into
drawing-room popularity some well-known lines, on
the strength of which Fitzpatrick has been called
the forerunner of W. M. Praed, beginning :
*' In seventeen-hundred-and-seventy-thiee
My beloved Isabella first smiled on me."
Some time later they supplied Fox himself with a
model for a composition of his own, with more real
294
Bicton's Later Guests
feeling, perhaps, if with less of the grace which
Wolcot's editing infused in Fitzpatrick's halting
lines :
"Of years, I have now half a century passed,
But none of the fifty so blessed as the last."
Meanwhile the Whig wits, who had found it a matter
of political conscience to take this way of repaying
their apostate host for his past hospitalities, had
enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing the book whose
idea Bicton had supplied obtain a vogue to be com-
pared only with that achieved twenty-eight years
later by another effort of the same description.
"Rejected Addresses" (Horace and James Smith),
were indeed confessedly inspired by the " Rolliad."
The Bicton host, who suggested its title for the
"Rolliad," lived till 1842. At Queen Victoria's coro-
nation, when between eighty and ninety, he fell down
in mounting the steps of the throne. On his returning
to complete his homage, with the words " May I not
get up and meet him ? " the young sovereign rose and,
by advancing one or two steps, saved the aged peer
the trouble of the full ascent and the risk of another
mishap. In the evening she sent to inquire after
Lord Rolle. The " Rolliad's" birthplace thus associated
itself with one of the most hopeful and touching
auguries for the Victorian era. Her widowhood
may have curtailed its hospitalities, but Bicton re-
mained one of the show palaces of South Devon
throughout Lady Rolle's life. The place had been
sufficiently beautified by the " Rolliad" peer. The most
impressive of Lady Rolle's Whig guests, Henry
295
A Round of Devonshire Visits
Reeve, editor of the Edinburgh, seems to have
anticipated a retributive blight on the Rolle arbo-
retum and gardens. He was constrained to admit
that the desertion of plain Whig principles, notwith-
standing the perfection of foliage and growth secured
by Lord Rolle for Tory Bicton, must have marked
an advance upon its outdoor beauties before it became
one of Pitt's social strongholds. Between the Bicton
of the eighteenth century and of 1906 a social con-
tinuity is preserved by its owner, the nephew and
heir of the last Lord Rolle. Inheriting the conser-
vatism of his predecessors, he divides his time chiefly
between his Stevenstone estate in North Devon and
Bicton in the south. The West of England has ever
abounded in country gentlemen who, shunning the
modern arts of advertisement, find they can perform
their local duties most effectively without being
weighted by a seat in Parliament. To that number
belongs Mr. Mark Rolle, a Devonshire magnate
because he is a Devonshire worthy. On a scale less
stately than Bicton, but of associations equally interest-
ing, are two other houses in this neighbourhood,
now to be visited — Peamore and Pynes. During
Keate's headmastership, two Eton boys, with features
not unlike each other, were doing their form work ;
suddenly one of them said to his fellow, " D
your eyes, Stanley ! '" To this at once came the
rejoinder, " Damno tuos oculos, arboris accipiter."
He who had spoken first became afterwards one of the
most imposing and picturesque figures on the Con-
servative side in the Victorian House of Commons.
The lad who had so glibly rolled off the pentameter
296
From Bicton to Peamore
reply, then known as " Stanley," was to develop
into the fourteenth Lord Derby. His Eton class-
mate had the keen dark eyes, the hawk-like counte-
nance belonging to the lord of Knowsley. Originally
coming from Essex, the Kekewiches have been settled
for four centuries in the West. The original connection
in the West of England of the Peamore hosts, as in
the case of some other now Devonian families,
was with Cornwall. The present Trehawke Kekewich,
son of Lord Derby's friend and supporter, is still a
Cornish landlord, in the parish of St. Tudy, as well
as the possessor of a slate quarry near Tintagel.
He is also descended from George Kekewich of
Catchfrench, near Liskeard, a sixteenth century
M.P. for Saltash. A later George Kekewich lived
hospitably at Peamore. His successors received
flying visits from several distinguished guests, who
for the most part seem to have taken Peamore
on their journey from Ralph Allen's Prior Park to
Boconnoc or some other house in the far west.
Amongst these were more than one formerly cele-
brated bishop. It was while visiting Peamore that
Archbishop Cornwallis received the royal intimation
that his wife's Sunday parties at Lambeth Palace
must cease. The good Lady Huntingdon had been
so shocked by these as to invoke the intervention
of George lit. and Queen Charlotte. Hence the
royal epistle which, reaching his Grace in Devonshire,
restored the dullness of sabbatical decorum to the
primate's palace. Both Shipley diocesan of St.
Asaph's, the author of a fifth-rate ode on Queen
Caroline's death, and his less obscure son. Dean
297
A Round of Devonshire Visits
Shipley, were among the birds of passage who
alighted at Peamore. The younger Shipley inci-
dentally connects Peamore with an important change
in the law of libel. A charge of libel against him
was being tried at the Exeter Assizes, before the
circuit judge, Buller, then being entertained at Pea-
more. A discussion between Buller and Shipley's
counsel, Erskine, led to the legal change which
established the future competence of juries to decide
on the law as well as on the fact. Other Peamore
guests were Hinchcliffe, who had risen from the livery-
stable yard of his father to the prelacy of Peter-
borough, and Hurd, a farmer's son, who owed the
see of Worcester to Warburton's patronage and his
own tutorship to the Duke of York. This was the
divine who incurred Samuel Johnson's suspicion that,
though a Tory in name, he was a Whig at heart.
In the nineteenth century there used to be no more
frequent or honoured guest at Peamore than Robert
Barter, Warden of Winchester. At Peamore, indeed,
as well as at Pynes, a clerical element among the
guests often blended itself with the political and the
agrarian.
Great was the disgust at Peamore when London
visitors brought word, in 1805, of Pitt having
destined his friend and future biographer, Pretyman,
for the succession to Moore at Canterbury. Pro-
portionately fervent was the " Thank God, we have
a king ! " when, a day or two later, Peamore knew
of George III. bursting out to his Prime Minister,
'* No, no ; must have a gentleman at Canterbury."
One of the most characteristic possessions of
298
The Northcotes of Pynes
country houses in southern and western England
is a dark-grey marble picquet-table, the cards and
counters inlaid in white. At such a board as this
was a certain South Devonshire manor won by
Justice Northcote, the Elizabethan founder of the
family indifferently called Norcot and Northcote,
settled at Pynes for about the same period as the
Kekewiches have occupied the neighbouring Peamore.
The Sir Stafford Northcote of our day, who, in 1877,
died first Earl of Iddesleigh, though fond of heraldry,
took comparatively little interest in family antiquities.
He carefully preserved, however, at Pynes, some
papers shown to visitors but never published of the
first baronet of his line who, as member for Ash-
burton, wrote the well-known diary of the Long
Parliament. Among those documents were notes
for the speech prepared by the first Northcote
baronet, and delivered in the January of 1641 to
diminish the king's jealousy of the house. The
memorandum added that the speaker was fain to
give over before he had intended by reason of bearish
interruptions. Some of his visitors to whom Lord
Iddesleigh showed this private record may have
fancied they saw in it a presage of the annoyance
to be inflicted in 1880 on John Northcotes descen-
dant by Conservative malcontents below the gangway.
Other family memorials suggested that the seventeenth-
century Northcote had conceived the idea of pro-
moting Charles IL, then a boy, to the throne in
his father's place. Sir John stands forth in these
memorials as among the most loyal-hearted of the
king's friends. He certainly, in Lord Iddesleigh's
299
A Round of Devonshire Visits
words, "levied and led a regiment" during the first
two years of the rebellion, at the defence of Plymouth.
Among the most frequent guests at Pynes were the
host's contemporaries at Balliol — Matthew Arnold,
F. Temple, of Rugby, who afterwards passed from
the see of Exeter to Canterbury. To Pynes also
came Sir Charles Trevelyan, subsequently Governor
of Madras, father of the present Sir George Otto
Trevelyan and the late Lady Knutsford. These
visitors were sometimes reinforced by another Devon-
shire man. Sir F. Rogers, permanent Under-Secretary
at the Colonial Office, by the fourth Lord Carnarvon,
and by a notable figure successively in the Oxford
and official life of his day, Thomas Phinn, who sat
for Bath 1852 to 1855. As a host in his Devonshire
home, Lord Iddesleigh is still remembered for his
amiability, his quiet fun, his chastened love of sport,
and for his perennially fresh supply of Devonshire
stories. In narrating these he seldom attempted the
reproduction of the Devonshire accent, with which
his only rival as a raconteur of ruralities. Archbishop
Temple, spiced his equally copious store of West-
country anecdotes.
300
CHAPTER XI
WHERE DEVON AND SOMERSET MEET
The West-country seats of the Acland family, Killerton Park and Hohii-
cote — Hohiicote the meeting-place of Wilberforce and his alHes —
The origin of GriUion's Club — Ashley Combe — Byron's daughter,
Ada, first Countess of Lovelace — Robert Southey at Ashley
Combe — The Lovelace progenitors — John Locke — The seventh
Lord King, father of the first Earl — The connection of Ashley
Combe with the Byron name — Castlehill, a political country
house — The Earls of Fortescue — "A School of Manners" —
Pixton — The second Lord Carnarvon— Eggesford — The fifth
Earl of Portsmouth — His relations with Sir Thomas Acland —
Doubts and conjectures about Acland's speech — The Church
Militant in the Exmoor district — Canon Cook — Bishops
Wordsworth and Browne — The Greek Archbishop Lycurgus —
Sir George Williams — Orchard Wyndham — Sir William
Wyndham and his guests — St. John, Viscount BoHngbroke, &c.
— Atterbury Trelawny and Dean Swift — Dunster Castle— The
Luttrells — Colonel Luttrell — Temple Luttrell— Henry Luttrell
the wit — Gladstone and the ancient Greeks — St. Audries —
The two Sir Samuel Hoods — The Mallets and the Balches —
Sir Peregrine Acland's Fairfield — Dr. Johnson on the origin
of the word " Quantock " — The Acland-Hoods — "Shake an
ass and go'" — St. Audries a centre of Unionism — A curious
memorial of the Palmers — Enmore Castle, the home of the
Egmont Percevals — Chapel Cleve — Thomas Poole — Words-
worth and Coleridge at Alfoxden — The last St. Albyn owner,
the omnibus driver — Quantock Lodge — Lord Westbury and
Lord Selborne — Country Houses round Quantock Lodge —
Sydney Smith at Combe Florey — Enmore Castle and Quantock
Lodge to-day.
301
where Devon and Somerset Meet
THE two places, Peamore and Pynes, visited in
the last chapter, have many associations in
common with the country houses on the North Devon
and West Somerset frontier. Killerton Park, the
Acland seat, close both to Peamore and Pynes, was
at one time without any rival residence belonging to
its owner in the West. The earliest of the Acland
country houses in the West was at Columb-John
(Devon). The first baronet (1644), Sir John Acland,
like many of the squires in these parts, served under
Charles I., and repeatedly entertained his king at
Columb-John. Holnicote, surrounded by a hamlet
of that name, in the extreme West Somersetshire
village of Selworthy, is the comparatively modern
home of the Aclands. Their vast possessions in
Devon and Somerset were acquired chiefly by
marriages with heiresses. Nor is there much exaggera-
tion in the West-country saying that an Acland
may ride from Killerton in South Devon to Holnicote
in West Somerset, without once finding himself off
his own property. Holnicote's distinction among the
country houses in this neighbourhood comes from
its having been the neutral ground on which public
men belonging to different parties, under at least two
generations of hosts, met each other. Before the
abolition of the Slave Trade, it was a favourite haunt
of William Wilberforce ; in its then owner he had
not only his most powerful supporters among the
great landlords and Parliament men of the West, but
a host beneath whose roof he met habitually the
chief allies in his philanthropic scheme — among others
Clarkson, the elder Macaulay, Dillwyn, and some-
302
The Genesis of Grillion's Club
times, not easily drawn out of her seclusion at Barley
Wood, near Bristol, Hannah More. Holnicote,
originally belonging to the great North Devon
Castlehill family, had for Sir Thomas Acland's
predecessor, in the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, Matthew Fortescue. The intellectual
interests of the Fortescues passed with the property
to the Aclands. Some five-and-twenty years after
its Emancipation gatherings, Holnicote witnessed the
conception and execution of an experiment for bringing
politicians of both parties into relations of social amity
and goodwill. The idea had first occurred to a young
Acland who had recently gone into Parliament. It
was warmly taken up by his long-vacation visitors.
As a result, soon after the friends had returned to
their duties in London, Grillion's Club came into
being. Its founders, in their talks about the matter
at Holnicote, being for the most part as young as they
were active, scarcely anticipated that the rival leaders
of parties would meet each other at the weekly dinners.
The institution was at once recognised and sought
after by the leading members of the Whig and Tory
rank and file. Before the middle of the nineteenth
century, the Sir Thomas Acland, whom many can still
remember, the grandson of one of its promoters, had
the satisfaction of seeing among the most regular
weekly diners the fourteenth Lord Derby, Lord
Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Benjamin Disraeli,
and W. E. Gladstone.
In this district, the headquarters of the Devon and
Somerset stag-hunting, another social centre, Ashley
Combe, stands immediately above the Ship Inn,
303
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
Porlock, where S. T. Coleridge, during a day and
a night, wrote, *'The Ancient Mariner." Almost
invisible in the deep wooded glen, sloping down to
the Severn Sea, Ashley Combe had for its former
mistress Byron's '* sole daughter of my house and
heart," the Ada who married the Earl of Lovelace.
In older days Ashley Combe was a settlement of
charcoal-burners. Of the eighteenth-century house
two rooms remain, incorporated into the first Lord
Lovelace's enlargement of the earlier building (1846).
That nobleman, as befitted the son-in-law of the most
widely and enduringly popular of English poets,
received many writers among his guests, especially
Robert Southey who, on one of his West-country
visits, had been at Ashley Combe before an expedition
into the Quantock country. This was the expedition
which first roused his enthusiasm for West Somerset,
and taught him to see in the muddy waters of the
Bristol Channel a tint more picturesquely harmonising
with the contiguous landscape's special hues than the
clearest azure.
Such literary pedigree as Ashley Combe possesses
comes to it in virtue of a family connection with the
Somersetshire worthy, who philosophically vindicated
the political settlement of 1688. The ancestor of the
Earls of Lovelace was the Lord King and Ockham ;
he had for his mother John Locke's sister. Born
at Wrington, near Bristol, practising in early manhood
as a doctor at Oxford, while also lecturing on physical
science at Christ Church, Locke revisited in later life
his native Mendips ; he may have extended his holiday
trips further west, to the picturesque home of his
304
Byron and Ashley Combe
collateral descendants. The seventh Lord King, an
eminent authority on the subject of exchanges and
currency, distinguished himself by his uncompromising
resistence to paper money ; enforcing the strict letter
of his leases, he insisted on his tenants paying their
rent in the lawful coin. His monetary views long
found a monument at Ashley Combe, in the shape
of a numismatological collection. His son, the eighth
baron, in 1838 the first Earl of Lovelace, was the peer
who, as already said, distinguished his Somersetshire
home by bringing to it as his bride Byron's daughter.
This Lady Lovelace was asked by a visitor, pointing
to the waves breaking on the coast below, how she
liked the sea. Her reply clearly presaged a nineteenth-
century aesthete's disappointment in the Atlantic :
" I simply detest it, because it reminds me of an old
governess of mine, who was my especial bete noirT
Of the poet himself there never were, nor could have
been, any associations at Ashley Combe ; for the first
Lady Lovelace's father had died at Missolonghi in
1824, eleven years before her marriage. The local
confusion once current on this subject may have risen
from the fact that Lady Lovelace's ancestor. Admiral
Byron (" Foul-weather Jack "), during one of his
circumnavigations of the British Isles, put in under
stress of weather at Porlock and may, possibly rather
than probably, have been entertained at the house
of which his descendant became the mistress. Nor
was it the admiral, but his brother, the peer, who,
having killed William Chaworth of Annesley, in a
duel at a Pall Mall tavern, "The Star and Garter,"
was found guilty of manslaughter, but discharged on
305 u
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
claiming the benefit of the Statute of Edward VI.
The one naval officer of distinction whose name the
eighteenth-century visitors' book records, was the
Somersetshire seaman already met with at Bicton,
Rodney.
The greatest of all the political country houses in
this district, Castlehill, looks down on the little village
of Filleigh. Castlehill, in the heart of the red-deer
region, has supplied the West-country staghounds with
more than one master, as well as the local sport itself
with its most authoritative historian. From the time
when the second Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer
to that when the office had for its occupant Sir Michael
Hicks- Beach, now Lord St. Aldwyn, Castlehill has
opened its doors to eminent statesmen and officials
without any distinction of party. Pitt himself and his
friends were followed, among the Castlehill guests in
the next generation, by George Canning, with his
disciples, including the brilliant John Hookham Frere,
who first made Aristophanes intelligible to Greekless
readers, and who, in " Whistlecraft," gave Byron the
notion both for " Beppo " and "Don Juan." The
third Earl Fortescue, who survived till the present
reign, added to his Castlehill and other properties the
whole of Exmoor, purchased from the Knights. Like
Sir Stafford Northcote, at Pynes, he had been a
trained official before becoming a model landlord.
The grandson of one of Pitt's friends and colleagues,
he had himself been Lord Melbourne's private
secretary for four years after Queen Victoria's acces-
sion. His father, the second earl, had been Lord
Holland's host at Castlehill and his colleague in
306
Castlehill, Picton, and Eggesford
managing the Whigs in the Upper House. He
himself shared with Sir Thomas Acland the leader-
ship of all county movements for educational and
municipal reform. It was at the Castlehill dinner-
table that, addressing his fellow-guest and kinsman,
the third Earl of Carnarvon, the master of Holnicote
uttered the oracle : " No one has a right to consider
himself solvent who does not pay all his expenses out
of the interest on his interest." " In that case," said
another of the company, Sir John Lyon Playfair, " we
must most of us be a disreputable set of bankrupts."
'* A good school of manners " was the description
given by a frequent guest, the sporting clergyman,
"Jack Russell," of the Castlehill interior. The words
were true enough. With his intimate friends the
third Earl Fortescue showed himself genial, vivacious,
and a remarkably good talker. In general company
at county gatherings and elsewhere he veiled his good
nature under a cold and repellent reserve. Among
the enemies of Whiggism, that was partly a studied
trick of manner. Fortescue's own West-country neigh-
bours, one, at least, of the Aclands and another of the
Carnarvon Herberts, had modelled in early days their
deportment after that of the cynosure for the better
sort of early nineteenth-century youth, the younger
Pitt. Nor at any other country house of the time
could the grand manner of a more ceremonious age
be illustrated more instructively than at Castlehill.
The two other socio-political centres influentially
connected in this neigrhbourhood with the events of
their age are Pixton, near Dulverton, and Eggesford,
near North Molton. The exclusion of the second
307
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
Lord Carnarvon from the Grey Reform Cabinet had
its natural result in making the master of Pixton the
most bitter and violent adversary of the measure. As
Lord Porchester he had figured prominently in the
Whig action against the Tory Walcheren expedition.
He had not, indeed, the oratorical power belonging to
some of his predecessors as well as of his descendants ;
but as a Whig territorialist he was a real power
throughout the whole countryside. In whichever
direction the squire, as long after his ennoblement he
was called, led the way, the smaller landlords and
farmers were sure to follow. At a Pixton tenantry
dinner he uttered the stirring sentiment: " To vote
for the Reform Bill means that a man has a fool's
head on his shoulders or a traitor's spirit in his heart."
His West of England home became the headquarters
of resistance to the Grey measure. Lord Melbourne
liked the Order of the Garter because, in his often-
quoted words, " there was no merit about it."
For that very reason, as unworthy to receive it, the
owner of Eggesford, who died in 1891, refused the
distinction when offered to him by Lord Palmerston.
He had, said Lord Portsmouth, done nothing to
deserve it. Genial, country-gentleman-like, always
clear-headed and shrewd, the fifth Earl of Portsmouth,
in his relations with dogs, horses, and men, showed
himself a keen, as well as a charitable, judge of each.
He never said an unwise or an unkind thing. With
the exception of an ancestral and altogether friendly
rivalry with his neighbour, Sir Thomas Acland, he
never had a difference with a human being. As the
glimpse already given of him may suggest, the host of
308
Aclands, Herberts, and Wallops
Holnlcote was a great squire of the superior and
scientific kind. As little of a sportsman at heart as
the guest and political master to whom his loyalty
never failed (Gladstone), Acland distinguished himself
among his neighbours for his farming politics. His
economic views, which might have included the putting
down of deer, were too much for the master of Eofo-es-
ford. " No, no," he exclaimed, "don't do that ; I find
nothing so pacific as venison." The fifth Lord Ports-
mouth had only to take the field with his hounds, to
show himself abroad, even to stroll through his own
park, to elicit some unsought, but absolutely unavoid-
able, demonstration of popularity. On taking his
place at any public dinner he was greeted with a
chorus of "view-halloas," whose echoes seemed to
float on the air long after the storm of noise had
subsided.
Never since the Pixton denunciations of ^lo
suffrage in 1832 had the country houses we are now
visiting been so fluttered as in 1877-8. That was the
period of the Bulgarian atrocities agitation of deadly
differences between Gladstone and Disraeli on the
" Unspeakable Turk," of many Liberal secessions from
the Gladstonian connection. The presentation of a
portrait to Sir Stafford Northcote had been impartially
promoted by West-country politicians on both sides.
But, though the surface seemed tranquil enough, no
one ever knew when or with what distressing results
the volcano of strife might not show itself in eruption.
What the masters of Holnicote or Eggesford might
suddenly be moved to say — what blows might be dealt
from the homes of the Aclands or the Wallops at
309
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
Castlehill for the Fortescue defection from Liberalism
— so were the speculations full of nervous apprehension
to the local mind, and rendering it at least a toss-up
whether a feast beneath any of these roofs might not
at any moment turn to a fray. Castlehill by this time
had become definitely a Conservative house. Its
social relations with Eggesford, with Holnicote, or
Killerton, continued generally as cordial as ever,
thanks in some degree to the conciliatory influence of
Pynes. It was at this time that Castlehill co-operated
with Eggesford, with Holnicote, or, more strictly, with
Killerton, to dine Sir Stafford Northcote. The Glad-
stonian Sir Thomas Acland joined. How he would
acquit himself on the occasion furnished matter for
amused conjecture at the country dinner-tables round
about. His political friends and kindred had nervously
urged the necessity of circumspectness and brevity.
'• I will bet you what you like," Lady Susan Fortescue
had said to Acland, "you cannot keep your speech
under ten minutes." That the speech in question
proved about the right length and avoided contro-
versial topics was attributed by the country-house
critics to the fact that before delivering his address Sir
Thomas Acland secured the advice and inspiration of
the then mistress of Eggesford, at this moment the
Dowager Lady Portsmouth, then and during some
years of the Gladstonian epoch eminent among the
town and country hostesses of the Liberal party.
As very young men, Gladstone and Acland had
founded something in the nature of a religious
brotherhood. Acland's interest in all things,
religious or ecclesiastical, like Gladstone's, lasted
310
On the Quantock Slopes
throughout his Hfe. Hohiicote and Killerton both
abounded in clerical guests of all Anglican varieties,
and indeed of all Christian communions. Among
these clerical visitors who passed to and fro between
the West-country homes now mentioned were Canon
Cook, of Exeter, who had trained his Eggesford and
Holnicote hosts into recognising Dean Church as
the best writer of the day, who had edited the
Speaker's "Commentary on the Bible," and who had
been active in promoting the Bonn conferences
between the English and Greek Church representa-
tives. With him there occasionally mingled in the
same company the two bishops who shared his
anxiety for reunion, Christopher Wordsworth and
Harold Browne. Dr. Dollinger, the " Old Catholic "
champion, might, it was hoped, have been induced
to travel to the hospitable land of the red-deer. In
his place there actually came the Greek Archbishop
of Syros, Lycurgus, accompanying Sir Thomas
Acland certainly to Eggesford, perhaps in the fourth
Lord Carnarvon's time to Pixton. Pixton, indeed,
under one of this owner's predecessors, had asso-
ciated itself with another movement, partly religious,
partly philanthropic, of a very different sort. Sir
George Williams, the founder of the Young Men's
Christian Associations, a native of Dulverton, had
visions of the institution that was to make his name
a household word, in very early life. The Lord
Carnarvon who then lived at Pixton often talked
the subject over with him, and offered many hints
for its organisation.
Where the Quantocks slope down to the Bristol
311
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
Channel still stands the most famous of all the eigh-
teenth-century country houses. Orchard Wyndham
has been, during many years, unoccupied. Its owner,
now living at Dinton House, near Salisbury, Mr.
William Wyndham, is descended from the earlier
master of the place, Sir William Wyndham, in
whose possession it formed the most hospitable
centre of the Stuart cause in the county. What
in the Victorian era the Kentish magnate, Lord
Abergavenny, has been shown to be to the Con-
servative cause, that some two hundred years earlier
was Sir William Wyndham to the Legitimacy and
Toryism of his day. Marked now by the Egre-
mont Inn is the exact spot in Williton at which,
periodically, the public conveyances used to stop.
Hither, from his mansion hard by, the Master
of Orchard Wyndham sent for those guests whom
he found it convenient to entertain, and who had
not posted the distance from London. The hand-
somest and wealthiest of West-country baronets.
Sir William Wyndham, from being a local manager,
became, under St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, a
national leader of the Tory high-flyers. Eridge
Castle was at one time spoken of as the Carlton in
Kent. During the eighteenth century's first quarter
Orchard Wyndham was literally the October Club
out of town. Let us watch for a moment the chief
guests as their equipages drive up to the door, or
as they take their places at the table. Clear the
way, if you please, for the patrician genius who poses
as the Alcibiades of his age, whom his disciples
call the greatest genius that has ever lived, who, to
312
Great Guests in West Somerset
his enemies, is the most unscrupulous scoundrel,
whom women of all degrees, from the orange-girls
hanging about the Court of Requests, to the great
ladies of St. James's, are said to have found the most
fascinating and irresistible of libertines, whom some
practical men of affairs regard as the acutest of
political philosophers, and whom friends and foes
alike may agree to consider the most wonderful man
of his age — St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. With
him are his equal in good looks, the Duke of
Ormond, the stately and austere Sir Thomas Han-
mer, some time Speaker, the representatives of
extinct peerages, such as Bingley and Harcourt —
the latter's features strikingly to be reproduced in
his descendant, the Sir William Vernon Harcourt
of a later day. Other and even more noticeable
guests are the two Jacobite divines in their episcopal
lawn sleeves, Atterbury Trelawny and an eccle-
siastic ; yet more notable Jonathan Swift, Dean of
St. Patrick's, who, alone among the visitors, has
accomplished the journey from the capital in a coast-
ing vessel bound from London, via Bristol, for the
neighbouring ports of Minehead and Watchet. Sir
Roger de Coverley himself, while yet in the prime
of life, did not realise a comelier picture of the country
host than Sif William Wyndham, as, in the flower
of his manhood, seated at the head of his table, he
looks round upon the guests beneath a roof dearer
to him than any other object except his wife and
children. Thus looking round, he notices that Boling-
broke drinks two wines, champagne and Florence,
and that Dean Swift never lifts his glass of port to
313
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
his lips save after liberally qualifying it with water.
" What a falling off is there," murmurs a local
guest, Mr. Llewellyn, the high Tory rector of
Wiveliscombe or Stogumber, " since Speaker Corn-
wall's fresh supplies of porter from Bellamy's, to
quote the ' Rolliad,' or Harley, my lord Oxford, and
his sixth bottle of port." With this fresh-coloured,
blue-eyed squire, libertinism is but an affectation, a
fashionable concession to the aristocratic weaknesses
of the time. Some measure of profligacy is the
high-bred veneer that so well became the ancestral
rouds who stood for the first Charles, and who
helped to bring back the second.
The conventional description of Dunster Castle
as the Alnwick of the West, fits the place better
than could be done by any less unoriginal refine-
ment of phrase. West Somerset possesses even
fewer Liberal country houses than North Devon.
In the nineteenth century, however, Dunster was
as loyal to Mr. Gladstone as, two hundred years
earlier, it had when, in the hands of the Luttrells,
been to the Parliament. Five hundred years earlier,
Dunster had been held by its founder, William
Mohun, against King Stephen. By marriage, or
by purchase, the Devonshire Courtenays and Tre-
gonwells acquired a proprietorial interest in Dunster
before it passed to its present owners of the Fownes
Luttrell stock and name.^ Amona its eig"hteenth-
and nineteenth-century visitors were Colonel Henry
^ This East Quantoxhead manor-house, to-day occupied by a
son of Mr. Luttrell of Dunster, is the oldest possession of the family
in the county. It came, by marriage, to a Luttrell in the reign of
314
The Quantoxhead Luttrells
Laws Luttrell, who replaced Wilkes as member for
Middlesex, and who amused the Dunster guests
with the latest House of Commons gossip. Lord
Nugent's house in Great George Street, West-
minster, had been broken into by thieves. Among
the articles carried off were certain portions of Court
costumes. Colonel Luttrell, who eventually became
the second Earl of Carhampton, asked whether
Nugent had recovered his missing property, shook
his head, adding, " I shrewdly suspect some of those
laced ruffles are on the hands of the gfentlemen
who now occupy the Treasury Bench." In 1820
swords and lace were still worn on State occasions ;
the fashionable Whigs of both sexes had not yet
completely given up the use of hair-powder. Luttrell
had been observed to be closely watching the new
ministers reluctantly accepted by the king, as, fresh
from Brooks' or their rather humble lodgings, they
took possession of the seats recently occupied by
Lord North and his friends. Another of the Luttrell
tribe, sometimes received by the head of the Somerset-
shire family at Dunster, was Temple Luttrell, a charac-
teristic personification of the literary accomplishments
then held in fashionable esteem, and of conversa-
tional diction, noticeable for its robustness even in
that age of full-flavoured talk. " The Heroic Epistle
to Sir William Chambers " produced on its appear-
ance the same kind of sensation as had been
Henry III. Never having been for public sale since the Conquest,
it probably stands alone as an instance of continuity of possession.
The purchase of Dunster from the Mohuns by Elizabeth Luttrell
took place at a much later date.
315
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
created by the " Rolliad." It was indifferently attri-
buted to Christopher Anstey of the Bath Guide,
to Temple Luttrell, and, among others, to Horace
Walpole. Walpole, though not its author, was an
admirer of the book, and even more so of its
reputed and perhaps most probable writer's gifts.
" Ten times more delicacy of irony, greater facility
than, and as much poetry as the Dunciad," was the
Strawberry Hill verdict on what the Strawberry
Hill critic believed to be Luttrell's jeu d esprit.
About the same time Temple Luttrell and Lord
George Germain were scolding each other in public
like two oyster-women. The conversational fracas
had been, it seems, begun by Luttrell, who used
language worthy of Newgate ; thus affronted, Ger-
main's hand instinctively grasped his sword.
Whatever apology may have been given or refused,
no blood seems to have been spilt. Henry Luttrell,
the wittiest society talker of his day (i 765-1 851), of
an irritable and sensitive temperament, quite different
from that belonging to most of his name, gave some
little trouble to his Dunster hosts. His complaint
that the cream had a flavour of turnips caused the
issue of particular orders for the feeding of cows
against his next visit. "Well, how is it?" anxiously
asked the hostess. " Excellent," came the reply,
" — with boiled mutton!" A strange servant once
did not recognise him on his arrival. '* I give you
my honour, sir," he said, " I am invited. If I am
not, you will have the pleasure of seeing me kicked
out of the door." Asked at Dunster why he lived
so much with Samuel Rogers, as great an expert
316
Rogers and Luttrell
as himself in saying sharp things, he repHed, " To
prevent, at least for the time, Rogers' ill-natured
words about me." Miss O'Neill, the actress, on a
professional tour in the West, was met by him at
Dunster. Not liking his looks, the lady markedly
avoided him. His revenge was a remark to one
of the Acland ladies, " I have seen fifty such girls
in a cart in Kilkenny."
Dunster, the scene of many Gladstone visits,
originated, on one occasion, a typically characteristic
display of the Gladstonian universality of intellectual
interest in things small, as well as great, of the
perennially fresh, the enthusiastic and omnivorous
thoroughness in whose vocabulary the word "trifles"
had no place. The Dunster clergyman, in his
Sunday sermon, had spoken of the Spartans as the
bravest of the old Greeks. At the dinner-table
some one contended that the palm for courage
should be given to the Thespians. The great man
said nothing at the time ; the next day he returned
to London to prepare the Budget which was then
shortly due. The Hellenic subject proved to have
a particular interest for a lady, one of the Clovelly
Fanes, who, like Gladstone, had heard the sermon
giving rise to the discussion. To Gladstone she
accordingly wrote for his opinion. A week or so
later, Dunster Castle was once more full of guests.
Among them came, if not in the flesh, by letter,
the then premier's private secretary (1880- 1882)
Mr. (now Sir Arthur) Godley, himself as a classical
scholar the equal of his chief. From him the lady
in question learned the effect produced by her
317
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
inquiry on the Downing Street staff. " When your
letter arrived," said Mr. Godley, " it was handed to
the three secretaries who happened to be in the
room ; we could not agree ; we therefore took it to
our master. Though then in the thick of his
Budget work, he at once became so excited in the
new subject that he threw up finance ; for three
mortal hours he walked up and down, talking about
nothing but Thermopylae and the Spartans."
The place once filled in this corner of West
Somerset by Orchard Wyndham, may to-day, socially
and architecturally, be given to St. Audries, Sir
Alexander Acland - Hood's. Among the country-
house visitors in the South and West of England in
the eighteenth century were two distinguished sailors.
One served under Rodney, the other under Nelson.
Both bore the same name. Each in his turn became
Sir Samuel Hood. One, the Dorsetshire Sir Samuel
Hood, Nelson's officer, died in 1815, a year before his
Somersetshire namesake who had been with Rodney.
Apart from his connection with the Bridport Hoods,
the present owner of St. Audries may or may not
derive his lineage from the Somersetshire clergyman
in the Petherton district, who had for his son Rodney's
Sir Samuel Hood. Or the St. Audries descent may
be from the Nelsonian officer, the Dorsetshire Sir
Samuel. All that is necessary to make plain here is
that what has been spoken of as the twentieth-century
equivalent of Orchard Wyndham, two hundred years
ago, belongs to its present master by maternal right.
While there were yet Wyndhams in the Williton
neighbourhood, and when Henry Luttrell with other
318
The Rise of St. Audries
fine London visitors was alternately amusing and
bullying his Dunster kinsfolk, West Quantoxhead
had yet to be overshadowed by a stately dwelling
of the twentieth-century St. Audries type. The
Mallets, indeed, or some earlier owners, had built a
small manor-house which, in the eighteenth century,
was the residence of a Bridgewater family named
Balch. In 1754 Robert Balch was one of the
Bridgewater M.P.'s, with one of the Egmont family
for his colleague. In 1797 the St. Audries manor-
house was in the possession of Miss Balch. At
that time the chief social centre of the district was
Sir Peregrine Acland's Fairfield, destined by the
marriage of his daughter and heiress to become
the parent of the new St. Audries of its Acland-
Hood owners. About the family origins of these,
something has been already said. The historic
Fairfield of the present writer's childhood might, for
genial and generous hospitality, have been called the
Liberty Hall of the Quantock side. Other houses of
the same character were Crowcombe Court and
Cothelstone. At the last of these an eighteenth-
century visitor, Dr. Samuel Johnson, took part in a
conversation about the name of the surrounding hills.
"If, sir," said the sage, " Julius Csesar, as he well may
have done, visited these parts, why should he not
have exclaimed ' Quantum hoc ! ' He knew indeed
the more majestic heights of Alp and Apennine ; he
had never seen among them such an undulating
expanse of golden furze or purple heath." Sir
Peregrine Acland's genial and generous reign at
Fairfield overlapped the establishment of the Acland-
319
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
Hood dynasty at St. Audries. The first mistress of
the present St. Audries reproduced the most amiable
qualities of her father. From her marriage, in 1849,
to her comparatively recent death, she showed herself
the Lady Bountiful of the district, as well as the
widely sympathetic hostess of house-parties most
variously composed. Conspicuous at these gatherings
were the patriarchal Sir Peregrine himself, still for
the most part living in kindly, unassuming state
at Fairfield, and a cousin of the Dunster Luttrells,
noted for his fine presence, his frank manner, and his
excellence in all kinds of sport — Colonel Henry
Luttrell, a son of the East Quantoxhead clergyman,
himself among the most popular and useful squires
in the Mendip country. Sir Peregrine Acland, at
St. Audries as beneath his own roof, abounded to
the last in anecdotes turning upon the West Somerset
vernacular. Slowly riding up to his son-in-law's
newly finished abode, he heard two countrymen
discussing the aspects of the place. Said one to the
other, as if clenching the conversation, " Well, I
suppose it's a case, as they say in France, of * Shake
an ass and go.'" A little inquiry identified the
supposed Gallicism as '' Ckaatn a son gouty The
hospitable fame of Fairfield had been for the most
part of only local fame. The nineteenth- and
twentieth-century St. Audries has been a social
centre for Unionism, and rendered especial service
to that Salisbury Administration in which Lord
Knutsford, himself with Lady Knutsford a St.
Audries visitor, preceded Mr. Chamberlain as
Colonial Secretary. To-day Fairfield is inhabited
320
Quantock Houses
by the agent of the St. Audries owner. The old
Acland house at Fairfield was built by two six-
teenth and seventeenth century Sir Thomas Palmers.
The memory of the early Palmer connection is
preserved at St. Audries not only by a portrait,
but by some baby clothes placed beneath the
picture. These garments belonged respectively to
John, Henry, and Thomas Palmer. These boys were
the children of Edward Palmer of Ightham, and
his wife, Alice, a daughter of John Clement,
Governor of Guisnes. According to the family
account, the three boys were all born with only a
fortnight's interval between the eldest and the
youngest. Amongst the visitors to the district as
well as to the house itself who brought away specially
pleasant memories of the late Lady Hood's kindness,
was one who had the same maiden-name as that
given by marriage to the former mistress of St.
Audries. The daughter of Thomas Hood, who
"sung the Song of a Shirt," married the clergyman
of Cossington in Somersetshire. Mrs. Broderip, as
she had now become, going for her health to the
Bristol Channel coast, reconnoitred West Ouantox-
head for a suitable lodging. The news of her being
in the place brought an invitation from the great
house. The then Lady Hood insisted on the visitor
regarding St. Audries as her home till the necessary
accommodation could be found.
On the spurs of the eastern Quantocks, Enmore
Castle, the home of the (Egmont) Perce vals may be
compared with Dunster further to the west. The
Percevals, in addition to other estates in southern
321 X
where Devon and Somerset Meet
England and in Ireland, had received from William I.
much land in the Quantock region as well as in the
outlying districts. Just, however, where the Quan-
tocks slope towards the Severn Sea, the Egmonts
were not among the great territorialists. A Captain
Perceval, who married Sir John Trevelyan's daughter,
rented indeed the house of Chapel Cleve, subsequently
for many years inhabited by the Hallidays. Its
former mistress, Mrs. Halliday, still entertains her old
friends in her home at Minehead, within manageable
distance of those of her name and family who still live
at Glenthorne, the hospitable and picturesque abode,
from a deep hollow in the woods, looking down upon
Lynton, well known to every Ilfracombe tourist. Any
lands or houses in the Chapel Cleve neighbourhood
now belong by purchase to the Dunster Luttrells.
Originally rooted in Ireland, the Perce vals were a
family of tragic vicissitudes. The seventeenth-century
head of the house, Robert, a noted duellist, while little
more than a youth, was found under the may-pole in
the Strand, dead, with a blood-stained sword at his
side. How he came to his end remained a mystery.
In 1812 Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister, was
assassinated by Bellingham in the Lobby. More
recently a descendant of the statesman, with his wife
and child, perished by a violent death in the wild west
of America. Towards the close of the eighteenth
century there lived on the Egmont estate in the shadow
of Enmore Castle the most remarkable man in the
neighbourhood, Thomas Poole, a born book-lover and
critic, the friend and adviser alike of rich and poor.
To him wrote the poet William Wordsworth, begging
322
Alfoxton, Wordsworth and " Nosey "
Poole's good offices with Cruickshank, Lord Egmont's
agent, to enable the poet to take a small house at
Adscombe, not far from the spot now occupied by
Quantock Lodge. Wordsworth had been attracted to
the neighbourhood by the fact of his friend S. T.
Coleridge being already settled at Nether Stowey.
Without some intermediary of unimpeachable respect-
ability, Wordsworth had already received practical
proof of the hopelessness of being suitably housed in
that high Tory district. An application for Alfoxton
had been, indeed, already made by him and refused, on
the ground of his seditious sympathies. Thomas
Poole brought forward evidence of his friend's real
innocence and harmlessness. Thus eventually the
poet secured the tenancy of Alfoxton for £40 a year,
deer-park and all. The place thus became as
important a landmark as Rydal itself in the evolution
of the lake poets. At Alfoxton itself, as Words-
worth's guest, Coleridge wrote both his " Fears in
Solitude " and his " Ode to Liberty." Wordsworth
desired to continue his tenancy. The St. Albyn
owners had been plied with renewed reports of the
poet's revolutionary associations. Before renewing
the lease, they sent down a detective to make inquiries.
This officer of the law happened to possess a very
long nose. Following Wordsworth and Coleridge in
one of their frequent walks, he heard them talk about
the philosopher Spinosa. To the keen ear of the Bow
Street official, the strange word implied some un-
complimentary comment on his nasal organ. Thus
wounded at a sensitive point, he reported so un-
favourably of the poets that the non-renewal of the
323
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
lease prevented Wordsworth from prolonging his
residence beyond the year. Since those days
Alfoxton, still in perfect preservation, has been
enlarged and improved into a capacious and capital
modern mansion. Alfoxton has now passed from
owners of the St. Albyn name. Its last St. Albyn
occupant, while an Oxford undergraduate, lost at
cards so much of his patrimony as abruptly to end
all relations with his father. A good whip, he first
became a coachman. The railways extinguished the
industry of the road. The disinherited of Alfoxton
obtained a position as driver of an omnibus between
Sunbury on the Thames and the City. " Hurry up,
St. Albyn, here's a old gent inside as says he's bound
to be at the Bank in less than no time." This
fragment of professional talk, overheard by the elder
St. Albyn, when on business in London, formed the
first intimation received by him for thirty years of the
existence or the whereabouts of his cast-off son. As
a child, the present writer first knew Alfoxton when
inhabited by the elder and Mrs. St. Albyn, the
stateliest couple that ever lived since the days of
Chesterfield. The next time, after a decade's or so
interval, I took my seat at the Alfoxton luncheon-
table, the ci-devant Jehu of the knife-board was my
host, a very kindly one, with no false shame about
the vocation he had lately quitted, abounding in
anecdotes about the Oxford and Cambridge boat-
race, which he had witnessed for thirty years con-
tinuously from Barnes Bridge on the top of the 'bus
he was driving across. From the Jenours, con-
nections of the St. Albyns, this beautiful place has
324
Chancellors and Peelites
gone for the present to the cultivated and generous
Archer family, — the greatest of the district's recent
social acquisitions.
In the earlier days of Gladstone's Liberalism, when
people still talked about Peelites, when Sir James
Graham and Sidney Herbert both lived or had but
recently died, Quantock Lodge, already mentioned,
lately finished by Mr. Labouchere (Lord Taunton),
received every summer a succession of guests repre-
senting the Liberal management. One rather
striking contrast among these visitors may be re-
called. It must have been in or about 1872 that,
by some odd chance, one past and one future Lord
Chancellor slept the same night beneath this roof.
The former keeper of the monarch's conscience was
Lord Westbury. Its future custodian was Roundell
Palmer, afterwards Lord Selborne. It was West-
bury who, at Quantock Lodge, described Selborne as
a character unredeemed by a single vice. In the
case of most of the houses now visited, the social
life was agreeably reproduced on a smaller scale by
adjacent dwellings that, to use the phraseology of
Swiss tourists, were in effect " dependances " of
the chief building. Grouped round Quantock Lodge
were Over Stowey Rectory, successively held by two
of the Somersetshire Bullers, father and son. Near at
hand were the charming houses of Mr. Robert Duller
and of Mr. Robertson, Lord Taunton's agent, both
fulfilling definite and delightful functions in the
country-house system of the neighbourhood. Simi-
larly Kilve Court, nearer to the Severn Sea, was for
years inhabited by Colonel Luttrell, a Waterloo
325
Where Devon and Somerset Meet
veteran, the father of Dunster's present owner, a
master of fox-hounds and a keen sportsman. The
intellectual life of the village had for its centre Kilve
Rectory, then occupied by the Oxford Greswell, who
had married, from the Muiravonside Stirlings, one of
the brightest and kindest women who ever lived.
Inland, on the other side of the Quantocks, Sydney
Smith, in his Combe Florey library, composed and
rehearsed his 1831 Reform speech with the Mrs.
Partington-Atlantic simile, and made his rectory-
house the intellectual adjunct to the lay social centres.
In Sydney Smith's Combe Florey days the country
houses with which he chiefly exchanged visits in the
neighbourhood were not of his politics. They were
for the most part Nettlecombe Court, where Sir John
Trevelyan then reigned, and Hartrow Manor, where
Sydney Smith lived to meet the Duke of Wellington,
Sir Robert Peel, and Richard Cobden. As a terri-
torial dynasty preponderating in West Somerset, the
Egmont Percevals are no longer known. Enmore
Castle belongs to the Broadmeads. Other parts of
the former Egmont property are incorporated in the
dominion of the present occupant of Quantock Lodge
— still famous for its china and its curiosities — Lord
Taunton's son-in-law, Mr. E. J. Stanley, member for
the Bridgwater division, the most successful bric-a-
brac hunter, the most expert of virtuosos and of
cognoscenti in his county.
326
CHAPTER XII
IN SQUIRE western's LAND
Halswell — The Tyntes — The Bridgwater elections : " the Man in
the Moon " — Baron Tripp, the introducer of the waltz, and his
colleagues — Bulwer Lytton's presence of mind — Brymore, the
home of John Pym — Its connection with Francis Bacon — Pym's
mother. Lady Rous, and wife, Anna Hooker— Lady Rous's funeral
sermon preached by Charles Fitz-Geoffrey — Wentworth (Straf-
ford) at Brymore — Pym and Hampden — Brymore's later owners
— Guests at Brymore during Pym's life : Sir John Popham,
Thomas Coryate — Cricket St. Thomas, the house of Sir Amias
Preston — Ralph, Lord Hopton — Ralph Cudworth — Dr. Joseph
Wolff at Ile-Brewers Rectory — Archdeacon Denison at East
Brent Rectory — Freeman at Sommerleaze — Sir William Pynsent
of Burton-Pynsent— His legacies to Chatham — William Pitt's
childhood at Burton-Pynsent — Ralph Allen's Prior Park, stand-
ing in the same reladon to Bath as Stanmer to Brighton —
Allen, the original of Squire Alworthy in " Tom Jones " — Prior
Park an open house — Its guests — Warburton — Literary visitors
— Dean Swift — Bowood — First Marquis of Lansdowne — His
descent from the Pettys and the Fitzmaurices — His grand-
parents, the Earl and Countess of Kerry — Bowood parties —
Bentham, Dumont, Priestly — Lansdowne's household accounts
— The third Marquis — Thomas Moore and other visitors —
Bowood in the present day — The poet Bowles at Bremhill —
Barley Wood, the home of Hannah Moore — Raikes, the founder
of the Sunday Schools, and his Cotswold guests — Blaise Castle,
the home of Wilberforce's friend, Harford.
327
In Squire Western's Land
STILL in the Bridgwater division of Somerset,
about a mile from the eighteenth - century
Enmore Castle, built by the second Earl of Egmont,
now owned by Mr. Broadmead, is the rather earlier
Halswell House of the Tyntes. This is a veritable
monument in the struggles of local politics and the
evolution of Society's fashions. Both the second
and third Sir Robert Peels, Count D'Orsay, and
the third Napoleon when a London exile, were among
its former guests. The palmers' shells that some of
the oldest families on Quantock-side are entitled to
quarter in their coats-of-arms, imply an ancestor who
took an ascertained part in the Crusades. The same
distinction is conveyed in the very etymology of the
name of the owners of Halswell. At the battle of
Ascalon a young knight, conspicuous for his white
armour and his white horse, bore himself so gallantly,
as, with an appropriate heraldic device, to receive from
Richard Coeur-de-Lion the motto : " Tinctus sanguine
infideliy With some verbal variation the legend was
engraved under the armorial bearings of the family by
that member of it who built Halswell, about the time
that the last Stuart king ceased to reign. The
Halswell politics were consistently Whig or Liberal.
In the pre- Reform period Halswell House carried in
its pocket the representation, not only of the neigh-
bouring Bridgwater, but of Somerset itself. Those
who remember "the old Colonel Tynte " can recall the
most chivalrous and kind of Somersetshire worthies.
He had himself been returned both for West Somerset
and for Bridgwater before the Victorian age began.
After the Queen's accession, as regards at least the
328
The Halswell "Man in the Moon"
neighbouring borough, his son became his Parlia-
mentary heir. Before Bridgwater forfeited the right
to a member of its own, Halswell remained the most
active and important centre in local politics. The
Parliamentary colleague of Colonel Tynte the younger
was his friend and fellow — though not quite contem-
porary — Etonian, A. W. Kinglake, author of " Eothen "
and historian of the Crimean War. The third Sir
Robert Peel was staying at Halswell about the time of
the French annexation of Savoy and Nice, of the
indignation at which Kinglake had made himself the
eloquent but, from his weak voice, the almost inaudible
mouthpiece. The third Sir Robert Peel was receiving
the congratulations of the Halswell visitors on the
speech in which, a night or two before, in his magnifi-
cently resonant tones, he had denounced the French
policy. Turning to his host and to Kinglake, he
smiled significantly. "It was," he explained, " the
exact oration, word for word, addressed in his delicate
voice by Kinglake to the House, but only heard by
Peel, who happened to be sitting next, and who had
made the fullest notes." There existed a local tradi-
tion that Bridgwater liked to show its appreciation of
aristocracy in returning a Tynte, and of literature in
returning Kinglake. The constituency proved itself
free and independent in giving its votes just as
Halswell made it worth its while to do. Whatever
other candidates may have been in the field, at the
psychological moment before the polling, a mysterious
personage, known throughout the constituency as "the
Man in the Moon," became confidentially accessible
to the freemen of the borough in a loft above the
329
In Squire Western's Land
Clarence Hotel. The exact details of the interview
were a Punchinello secret. But the admirers of the
principle of intellect in Kinglake and of birth and
breeding in his colleague seemed to find it more
convenient to pay their rent, or any other outstanding
little claim, after a nocturnal visit to "the Man in the
Moon," and invariably "went solid" for the Halswell
nominee. Thus did the Halswell influence alone, and
no other consideration, moral or material, from 1857
to 1865, continuously secure Bridgwater's representa-
tion by the accomplished literary stylist, whose book
of Eastern travel exercised an abiding influence on the
diction of English belles lettres, and as high-bred and
courtly a man of the world as ever staked his money
at Crockford's or set foot on the floor at Almack's.
In the last days of William IV. the most indefatigable
diner-out and country-house visitor of his time,
Thomas Creevey, the diarist, coming up from Cassio-
bury (Lord Essex's), is in despair about a letter he
had wanted to go by that evening's post. He has
gone to Brooks' — not a frank to be had there for love
or money. Disconsolately resigning himself to hard
fate, as his foot is on the last of the club steps, whom
should he meet coming in but one who at his West
Somerset house had given him many a good dinner
and many a good day's shooting. This was the
Kemeys Tynte who in 1837 was the West Somerset
M.P., the father of the Bridgwater member who sat
with Kinglake.
Among those in the first half of the nineteenth
century who had occupied Orchard Wyndham, already
described, had been the bearer of the well-known
330
Halswell for Waltz
Somersetshire patronymic, Tripp. To his generation
belonged an Anglicised Dutchman, Lord Anglesea's
particular friend, who had become one of Society's
pet oracles, Baron Tripp. The purely accidental
identity of the names may explain the welcome received
by the foreigner from many Somersetshire hosts.
Among these was the Tyntes. The polite world at
that time exercised itself severely about a recent
novelty in ball-room programmes — the waltz. The
new dance had for its introducer-in-chief this Baron
Tripp. With him were the young Duke of Devon-
shire (the great Apollo in the drawing-rooms of his
epoch), Tripp's compatriot and brother emigr^, Tuyll,
Newmann, Lady Castlereagh, and Lady Emma
Edgcumbe, afterwards Countess of Brownlow. As to
Tripp, Society often seems to have laughed rather at
than with him. Tuyll, however, commanded the same
respect in all the English country houses of his time
as he did in Holland, to one of whose best families he
belonged. Thus it was that, with the help of his
friends, rather than from his own influence, Tripp
succeeded in bringing the waltz into fashionable repute.
Country houses were divided in opinion about the
dance. Gradually, however, it took its place at
Almack's as well as in the best provincial ball-rooms.
An occasional visitor at Halswell, Tripp, enlisting the
Tynte influence in its favour, superintended the first
waltz ever witnessed in the Bridgwater or Taunton
rooms at a county ball. The younger Tynte, parlia-
mentarily connected with the neighbouring borough,
rather than the county, literally illuminated the old
house of his fathers with brilliant guests. Never
331
In Squire Western's Land
before had been seen so many well-known Hyde Park
or St. James's Street faces beneath a Somerset roof as
at Halswell. Colonel Charles Tynte belonged to the
dandies. Once at least Halswell received their queen,
Lady Blessington, who, meeting there Louis Napoleon,
then about to establish the second Empire, met his
question as to the length of her intended stay in Paris
with her famous mot: '' Et vous^ monseigneur ? ''
To Halswell also came the then Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton. It was while a Halswell guest that he filled
his host, his fellow-visitors, and the whole countryside
with admiration for a surprising exhibition of presence
of mind. By some mishap the fleecy wrapper cover-
ing his partner's shoulders at the public dance caught
fire. Without saying a word, changing colour, or
moving a muscle of his face, he took the ignited
garment, in a moment smothered the last smouldering
spark, and calmly returned it to its owner.
In its aspect as a historical monument, the
Somersetshire country house, within an easy walk
of Halswell, next to be visited, constitutes a con-
stitutional landmark of the same kind as Port
Eliot in Cornwall. The French Revolution of the
eighteenth century was, as its latest historian has
reminded us, the work of the professional middle
class, especially of the lawyers. The English Revolu-
tion of the seventeenth century originated in the
conferences at each other's rural homes of country
gentlemen. The doctrines of royal absolutism were
first framed by a Kentish squire, Sir Robert Filmer,
of East Sutton, as well as, indeed, by Francis Bacon
himself, when as a Hertfordshire squire entertaining
332
From Gorhambury to Brymore
James I. at Gorhambury. From the home and birth-
place of John Pym, Brymore, proceeded the first notes
of a counterblast to the pretensions of prerogative,
bluntly formulated by the Kentish baronet and
philosophised over by the constructor of " The New
Organon." "The sum of my counsel to your
Majesty," had in effect been the words of the future
Lord Verulam to his royal guest, "is to take advan-
tage of the Protestant depression prevailing abroad
and in every way to humour the Protestant zeal of
those who at home are ill-affected in the same degree
to the Pope of Rome and to your own Sovereign
prerogative." In other words, the king was to
employ the Protestantism of his Parliament as a
leverage for raising money on the plea of supporting
by arms the States hostile to Papal pretensions in
Europe, and with that money to strengthen the out-
works of the English throne. Brymore therefore
became the social headquarters of operations against
the tactics matured at Gorhambury. The stock of
which the young Somersetshire squire came was old
and opulent in the West. His mother, by a second
marriage. Lady Rous had seen much of Court society;
she had gratified her social ambition by making her
Somersetshire home the fashionable centre of the
county. Among her guests she had entertained a
great peer of popular sympathies, the Earl of Bed-
ford. The fond mother had the further gratification
of seeing that nobleman not only notice particularly
her clever boy on his visits, but secure him a post in
the Exchequer, as well as promise to bring him into
Parliament as member for the borough of Calne.
333
In Squire Western's Land
The latter prospect realised itself in 1614. A little
later Pym signalised the opening of his career at St.
Stephen's by presenting Brymore with a new mistress
in his wife, the daughter of a neighbouring squire,
Anna Hooker. In 1620, above the old entrance-
porch at Brymore, two hatchments were in quick
succession displayed. Within a few months the
master of the place had lost both his wife and his
mother, Lady Rous. The most fashionable and
eloquent Anglican preacher of the day, Charles Fitz-
Geoffry, had been at Brymore in the days of Lady
Rous. He now revisited the place in the room he
had often occupied before, composed his funeral
sermon, delivered afterwards in the parish church, of
the deceased lady, and containing complimentary
allusions to her promising son, referred to as *' Phoebi
Deliciae." Of this discourse notes formerly existed
among the Brymore papers. '* He will never marry
again " said the family mourners who had met at
Brymore. Thanking them for their condolences,
Pym himself, however, said nothing beyond the
quotation, "It is good for a man to bear the yoke in
his youth." Between "the Cock of the North,"
Wentworth (afterwards Strafford), and Pym, called in
contradistinction "the Cock of the West," there always
existed a rivalry, though at first of an amicable kind.
Wentworth certainly visited Brymore. There may
be good reason for the conjecture that in the large
porch with the pointed Gothic doorway and pinnacles
of Pym's Somersetshire home, the two men parted
for the last time as friends, and that it was here,
rather than at Greenwich, that Pym ominously
334
Pym's Table-talk
murmured, as the visitor disappeared, " You are
leaving us ; we shall not leave you while your head is
on your shoulders." The interest of Brymore to-day
lies in the conversations between Pym and his
visitors, of which it was the undoubted scene, rather
than in the Parliamentary preparations which, in
common with certain Northamptonshire seats,
presently to be visited, it witnessed. To Pym, as
to Hampden and to others of the Brymore parties,
the foremost object of thought and fear was the fact
that Henry VHI. was now shown by events to have
done nothing more than put himself in the Pope's
place. "We have," said the Brymore host, "to drill,
discipline, and strengthen nothing less than Protes-
tantism itself For look beyond the seas. In Spain,
the Inquisition and the Crown have combined to
crush the political and religious movement against
ancient authority. In France the past has triumphed
over the present through Richelieu. In Germany
and Austria Papal ascendancy has overwhelmed the
Protestant States and restored the birthplace of
Luther to the Infallible Church. At first Italy as
well as Spain was well disposed to the new liberty,
but now England and Holland alone are Protestant."
"Therefore," rejoined Hampden, to whom these
words were addressed, " now that so many friends of
Gustavus Adolphus are visiting this country, let us
draw closer the bonds of union between the Protes-
tantism of the Continent and of this island." The
religious and political settlement in the seventeenth
century owed its essentially Conservative character
to the moral influence radiating from houses like
-1 -» r
In Squire Western's Land
Brymore. Hence alone the gradual elimination of
revolutionary and destructive elements, Anabaptist,
Fifth Monarchy, and other like propagandism which
elsewhere than in England turned reform into riot.
The sobriety, the good sense, that kept the spiritual
zeal of the times from degenerating into mere
extravagance, above all the moral earnestness, identi-
fying the Parliamentary cause with the national
convictions, were focused and mirrored at Brymore
under the earliest of its famous owners. The appear-
ance presented by the house to-day differs little
from that it wore when John Pym's eyes opened
on it for the last time. His grand-daughter married
Sir Thomas Hales. Lady Hales was heiress to
her brother, Sir Charles Pym, who died unmarried.
By this line of descent, through the (Radnor)
Bouveries, the place came to its present possessor,
Mr. H. H. Pleydell-Bouverie.
Among the local visitors at Brymore during the
Pym period was a Somersetshire squire, who event-
ually became Lord Chief Justice. This was Sir
John Popham, of Huntworth, in the Ilminster district.
He is not known to have had any family connection
with the other Sir John Popham, a Hampshire
squire. Speaker in 1449. The comic guest was
as indispensable to the Brymore and to other
Somersetshire house parties in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries as in more recent times. The
stock local jester of the Pym period showed himself
in the person of Thomas Coryate. This gentle-
man, possessed of a small estate at Odcombe,
on which his family had long been settled, from
336
A Travelled Comedian
an early age had determined not to incur the
reproach of the homely wits attributed to home-
keeping youths. Between the intervals of his
eccentrically extensive travels, no one seems to
have been in greater request with the smaller hosts
of his neighbourhood. The appearance of the
"Odcombian legstretcher," to give him his local
appellation, can scarcely have been less peculiar than
his habits of life. With a head like a sugar-loaf,
he carried, as the rural critics unkindly said, folly
in his face. He always slept in his clothes to save,
as he put it, the "labour and expense of shifting."
He was supposed to have only one pair of shoes
in use ; these, however, must have been of excellent
quality, since he had walked in them nine hundred
miles through Europe. Among the treasures brought
back by him from this tramp, was the earliest
specimen of a table-fork seen in the West of
England, and used, according to one account, for
the first time at the Brymore dinner-table.
Not far from the modest rural home of the globe-
trotting Coryate was the house of Sir Amias Preston,
notable among the sailors of his time. The stock
of delicacies with which he had returned to Cricket-
St. Thomas, near Crewkerne, seemed so unfailing
that his guests spoke of them as "the widow's
cruse." His chief guest was Ralph, Lord Hopton
of Fosse, near Wells, born in Monmouth, but in
tastes and dialect as pure a son of Somerset as
ever drank sour cider. A devout warrior this, after
Cromwell's own heart, truly boasting that he could
pray as soon as he could speak, and read as soon
337 Y
In Squire Western's Land
as he could pray. His chaplain in the field was
Thomas Fuller of "The Worthies," but with such
an official Hopton could afford to dispense and, as
commander of the Parliamentary troops, proved
himself not less at home in the pulpit than in the
field. Appropriately enough Hopton's most frequent
fellow-guest at Preston's was the divine who had for
his benefice the reputed original of the Arthurian
Camelot. While rector of North Cadbury, near his
Somerset birthplace, Aller, Ralph Cudworth, the chief
of the Cambridge Platonists, planned the " True
Intellectual System of the Universe." The treatise
itself was written more than twenty-five years after-
wards. His sermon before the House of Commons
in 1647 was too latitudinarian for the Puritans
generally ; it won, however, the appreciation of
Cromwell and the admiration of Hopton. To the
latter, indeed, as the two paced in conversation, the
lawn of Cricket-St. Thomas, Cudworth explained
the central notion of his book, the reality of a
Supreme Divine Intelligence and the existence from
eternity of moral ideas. At Cricket-St. Thomas, too,
some of Cudworth's papers were stored till their
publication, long after his death.
Most of the low-lying level watered by the Bridg-
water Parret, derives such attraction as it possesses
from its country houses. Tolerably near the point
at which the confluence of the Ivel and the Isle
forms the Parret, was the hospitable home of the
Wadhams, the founders of Ilminster School and the
Oxford College which, bearing their name, stands to
the school in something like the relation of Christ
338
Ile-Brewers and East Brent
Church to Westminster. A rectory house in this
neighbourhood enjoys the distinction of having been
inhabited by the father of an accompHshed and
agreeable diplomatist, still happily, as these lines are
written, with us. The famous missionary. Dr. Joseph
Wolff, signalised his incumbency of Ile-Brewers by
rebuilding the church in 1861. Socially, however, he
did much more than this.- His hospitalities to all
nationalities and all creeds made his rectory house the
most cosmopolitan centre ever possessed by his
adopted country. The clerical homes of this neigh-
bourhood have been of at least as much importance as
the purely secular mansions. Archdeacon Denison's
East Brent rectory is itself no small part of modern
Church and State history. The most impetuous and
uncompromising of high Anglicans was the kindliest
and most universal of hosts. It was the present
writer's lot to witness his reception at lunch of a
State inspector, whose right to enter his schools he
had denied. Obtaining at last admittance, the official
was greeted by the children singing —
"Old Daddy Longlegs wouldn't say his prayers,
Take him by the left leg and fling him downstairs."
The little scholars had been recently taught the
verses, and, unconscious of their relevancy, chanted
them to show their power of song. Denison, a
squarson of the best type, an hour or two after
the incident, with the easy kindness of perfect
breeding, made the inspector perfectly at home
beneath his roof. In 1856 came the proceedings
339
In Squire Western's Land
against the Archdeacon of Taunton for his sermons
on the Real Presence, preached in Wells Cathedral
and condemned by the diocesan court. The ecclesi-
astical atmosphere of the whole neighbourhood was
long electrical and agitated. Denison himself pre-
served his bonhomie, met and received friends and
foes at the dinner-table as if no cause of clerical or
social division were provoking a crisis. His brother
who became Speaker in 1857, visiting him at East
Brent, was so amazed at his novel serenity, that he
remarked, " I shall have to reconsider my former
nomenclature for him, * St. George without the drag
on,' and look up a new simile suggested by the St.
Anthony whose peaceful preaching charmed the
fishes." Almost next door to East Brent is
Lympsham Manor, the ecclesiastical antipodes of
Denison's rectory, but, under its late owner, the Rev.
J. H. Stephenson, of more than diocesan fame for
its all-receptive and refined hospitalities. Under the
shadow of Ben Knoll Hill, on the very frontier of
the sixth century Wessex, was the country house,
Somerleaze, of the writer who provoked Thorold
Rogers' clever epigram — " Where from alternate tubs
Stubbs butters Freeman, Freeman butters Stubbs."
To the host of Somerleaze were as applicable as to
Swift himself the lines —
"True genuine dullness moved his pity
Unless it offered to be witty."
Freeman, at home, suggested to his visitors Samuel
Johnson in Bolt Court. He was, that is, liberal with
limited means, and with that touch of spontaneity and
340
Chatham at Burton Pynsent
unconsciousness that raises liberality into generosity.
In Charles Isaac Elton Freeman had a congenial
neighbour, of an erudition scarcely less than his own,
and with the same fondness for improving at the same
time the minds and bodies of his visitors, by taking
them long walks to the accompaniment of always
instructive and frequently interesting wayside lectures
on the objects or associations that lay in their path.
"Somebody," writes Horace Walpole in 1765, "is
dead somewhere in Somersetshire or Wiltshire." The
person thus referred to was said to have left ;^20o,ooo
to the first Pitt, Lord Chatham. As a fact the value
of the legacy did not exceed ;^40,ooo, and it was the
second that had fallen to its illustrious recipient, the
first having been the Dowager Duchess of Marl-
borough's bequest of ^10,000 ; her grandson entailed
upon him, after his own son, the Sunderland estate.
That son, however, afterwards Lord Spencer, cut off
the entailment directly he came of age. The deviser
to the statesman of Burton Pynsent was the head of an
old Somersetshire family. Sir William Pynsent. His
fame is compared by Walpole with an aloe, because
" it did not blow till near an hundred." The subject
of innumerable scandals in his own neighbourhood, he
had quarrelled with Lord North over the Cider Bill,
and with Lord Bute over the Peace of Paris (1763).
He marked his indignation at Bute's surrender of
Chatham's triumphs by the present legacy of his
Somersetshire property. From Hayes, therefore, in
Kent, to Burton Pynsent in mid-Somerset, the Pitt
family removed at the time when Chatham's famous
son was a child of some six years old. The most
341
In Squire Western's Land
noticeable trace of Burton Pynsent's occupation by
the Pitts is the well-known memorial pillar erected
near the house, now a ruin, in honour of the original
owner, the last Pynsent. There was, however, within
living memory, in the stable yard, a little stone
platform raised by Chatham to perform a double
service for his famous son. From it William Pitt
the second used to mount his pony and, as from a
rostrum, to declaim those oratorical masterpieces
which his father had set him to learn by heart.
Hence the Whig taunt that " Billy Pitt had been
taught speaking by his dad on a stool." ^
The hereditary owner of Burton Pynsent was not
Chatham's sole Somersetshire benefactor. Ralph
Allen, of Prior Park, had little for which to thank
the great minister. Chatham, indeed, had done much
to discourage in his enero^etic and beneficent career
the eighteenth-century worthy who, beginning life as
a post-office boy, raised himself to be not only the
earliest of postal reformers, but one of the creators
of Bath as a social and polite metropolis. He showed
his forgiveness of Chatham's affronts by leaving him
a legacy of ^1,000. " The greatest character in any
age of the world," is the hyperbole in which War-
^ For these details about the Somersetshire home of the Pitts, I
am indebted to my venerable friend A. W. Kinglake. As she
reminded him when he had with her the interview on the Lebanon,
described in " Eothen," Lady Hester Stanhope, a frequent visitor of
her grandparents at Burton Pynsent, knew Kinglake's family well ;
to them she imparted the substance of all now related by me
concerning Burton Pynsent. " But for the inspiration directly or
indirectly drawn by me from Burton Pynsent," Kinglake often said,
" ' Eothen ' would never have been written,"
342
Squire Alworthy's Home ?
burton expresses his admiration of the man whose
hospitalities made Prior Park the most famous of
East Somerset houses. The social obligations of
Brighton to the accident of its proximity to Stanmer
have been already noticed. The relations existing
between Prior Park and Bath were much of the
same kind. George III.'s daughter, the Princess
Amelia, had, indeed, first become acquainted with
the capital of Beau Nash in 1728. She did not,
however, really know the place until, with her brother,
the Duke of York, she revisited it as Allen's guest
in 1752. On that occasion Allen gave up, for the
time, his whole house to his guests, going himself to
Weymouth, where he doubtless received in person
George III.'s thanks for the attention to his children.
Prior Park at this epoch was not so much the most
miscellaneously receptive of country houses ; it
was the most catholic of residential hotels, to which
all persons of either sex who had made their mark, or
who gave promise of doing so, were welcome. They
came and went when and as they pleased. Horses
and carriages were always in waiting, at a moment's
notice, to take them on any excursions or convey them
to any destination they chose. It only differed from
a public institution in there being no bills to pay and
servants on the look-out for vails. The picture in
"Tom Jones" of Squire Alworthy watching from his
terrace the sun rise in the full blaze of his majesty,
himself thinking only how to prove himself acceptable
to his Creator by benefiting his fellow-creatures, thus
in point of nobility comparable with the sun itself,
may very likely have been suggested by the master of
343
In Squire Western's Land
Prior Park. Many touches in the good genius of
Fielding's novel are no doubt taken from Allen. The
great difference, however, between the Prior Park
landscape and the scenery in which Alworthy lives,
prevents an absolute identification of Allen and his
home with the stage on which the characters of the
novelist first appear.
If Allen had been born without a real genius for
business, he would not have become the greatest
capitalist of his county, or made his Somersetshire
home the kindliest and most inspiring among the
social forces of his century. Allen's sources of revenue
may be judged from the enterprises with which he is
associated. He revived the Bath stone trade from
the Claverton quarries, which formed a portion of his
vast estates. Having begun as a child-messenger,
he became not only the postmaster at Bath, but the
contractor for carrying the mails in that part of the
country. Till his time everything that went through
the post was conveyed by boys precariously mounted
on horseback, supplementing their scanty wages by
habitual theft. From the commencement of Allen's
administration the robberies ceased. He began by
instituting three posts a week instead of one. In
1 74 1 Bath had a post every day of the week except
Sunday. Meanwhile he established himself at Prior
Park. He had also founded the mineral water
hospital at Bath, and generally brought into existence
the place as it has since been known. Before his
settlement in the demesne which looks down on the
city, Bath was nothing — a centre, perhaps, of gambling,
intrigue, and vulgar gossip, but with no apparent
344
Prior Park House-parties
chance of succeeding to the fashionable vogue of
Tunbridge Wells, then on its decline. " Nature and
Providence may have intended the place for a
resource from distemper and disquiet. Man has
made it a seat of racket and dissipation, with the
slavery of a ceremonial more stiff and formal than
that of the German Elector." So, at Prior Park, said
to Allen one of his visitors, Tobias Smollett, then
meditating medical practice at Bath. Allen's friends
did not so much visit Prior Park as live there. War-
burton, of " The Divine Legation," regularly settled
there on his marriage. He saw all the wits there
more easily than he could have done in London itself,
and he had not house-rent. There, too, were
Gainsborough and Garrick. With these mingled
Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Charles Yorke,
second son of the Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor,
the most agreeable and amiable scamp of his time,
Thomas Potter, second son of the Primate, a well-
known figure at the Medemenham orgies, tall,
handsome, polished, a reputed favourite with War-
burton's pretty, merry wife. With Sarah Fielding,
writer of "David Simple" and other stories, came
her famous brother, then, as his literary friends were
good enough to record, " too visibly past his prime —
a poor, emaciated, worn-out rake, whose gout and
infirmities had got the better of his buffoonery."
Jonathan Swift, too, was as regular an habitiid at Prior
Park as we have already seen him at Orchard
Wyndham. It was in the great saloon at Allen's
house that Swift, after pacing restlessly up and down,
stopped before an entire stranger with the words,
345
In Squire Western's Land
** Pray, sir, have you ever known in your life any
tolerable weather? I have always found it too dry
or too wet, too windy or too calm, too hot or too
cold. And yet I dare protest at the end of the year
Providence brings it in pretty well right." At Prior
Park, too, Swift having kept his room, from a slight
sickness, for a few days, signalised his reappearance
by one of the bitterest of his sayings, that whose
point lay in the impossibility of there being such a
thing as a fine old man. The stock guest was,
however, always Warburton, never more pleased than
when Allen put him into the pulpit in his private
chapel, or weary of abusing the incorrigibly im-
portunate member for Middlesex. "The blackest
fiends," he said, "would disdain to keep company
with Jack Wilkes, and I humbly ask pardon of
Satan for comparing them together." After that
outburst, Quin, in the drawing-room, called the author
of "The Divine Legation" a "saucy priest." Asked
to amuse the company with something theatrical, the
actor, looking hard at Warburton, recites from
Otway's "Venice Preserved" the passage in which
are the lines describing honest men as "the soft,
easy cushions on which knaves repose and fatten."
The next house to be visited is near enough to the
Somerset and Wilts boundary to be claimed by both
counties. Among the family portraits at Bowood the
most interesting are those of William Fitzmaurice, who
afterwards became Earl of Shelburne, and whose life
presented a series of contrasts more dramatic than
were common to the careers of most of his descendants.
After his birth in Dublin, May, 1737, his childhood
346
The Rise of the Pettys
was passed in the remotest parts of Southern Ireland
under a tyrannical grandfather, Thomas Fitzmaurice,
Earl of Kerry. That relative married Anne, the
daughter of Sir William Petty, the most scientific
economist of his time. Anne Petty's mother had
become Baroness Shelburne. The brothers of the
lady, made by Earl Thomas Countess of Kerry, had
died childless. Through the Lady Kerry now spoken
of, therefore, the Fitzmaurices added the barony of
Shelburne to the Kerry earldom. The intellectual
heritage of Bowood's modern possessors has not come
to them entirely from the distaff side. If Anne Petty's
husband, Earl Thomas, a bully by nature and by
opportunity, lacked great mental endowments, he did
not want for strong; STood sense nor for the iron nerves
and dauntless perseverance without which genius
itself may fail. The moral fearlessness, also a family
characteristic, had conspicuously shown itself in Sir
William Petty when, as Ireton's former secretary, he
confessed after the Restoration his share in certain
transactions with a fearlessness that won him the
favour of Charles II. and his Chancellor, Clarendon.
Soon after his marriage Anne Petty's noble husband
retired from the Army, in which he had been trained,
to his country home. Confessing his paramount
obligations to his masterful wife, he laments making
her an excessive bad husband. The lady enabled her
husband to improve his fortune rather than his mind.
She allowed no book in the house except an almanack,
and no person to read it except her lord. This he did
every evening, using it as a peg on which to hang
anecdotes about famous friends, abuse of obscure
347
In Squire Western's Land
enemies or successful rivals. His eldest son and
heir, Francis Thomas, third Earl of Kerry, wasted
most of his money and invested the rest in French
assignats. The fourth Earl of Kerry, brother of his
predecessor in the title, also received the barony of
Dunkerron and the viscountcy of Fitzmaurice. In
1753 he became Earl of Shelburne in the Irish peerage
and, seven years later. Baron Wycombe in the English.
His son, brought up, as has been already seen, chiefly
by his grandfather, became Chatham's political heir,
George III.'s Prime Minister, and Bowood's creator.
The future (1784) first Marquis of Lansdowne, like
Sir Robert Peel afterwards, was trained from the first
to become Prime Minister. Entering Oxford when
only sixteen, he learned at Christ Church to appreciate
good acquaintances, to see in Chesterfield and Gran-
ville the contrast between polish and simplicity, and to
regard the Duke of Newcastle as " a hubble-bubble
man." His studies ranged widely beyond the con-
ventional curriculum. Under his tutor Holwell, or
with the explanatory comment of Dean Conybeare and
of Dean Gregory, both of whom gave him notions of
people and things afterwards very useful, he studied
not only the usual Greek and Latin classics, but
Machiavelli and other modern authors who could
instruct him on whatever pertained to the Law of
Nations. The intellectual influence of a very re-
markable Oxford teacher of his time. Dr. King, of St.
Mary Hall, public orator, a Tory and Jacobite gentle-
man, did not prevent his growing up to admire
Cromwell, but conveyed to him a dislike of William
III. or of that king's enormous grants to favourites like
348
Bowood's Beginnings
the Bentincks and the Keppels. After leaving Oxford,
as the guest of Lord Bessborough at his Roehampton
villa, he made the acquaintance not only of Colonel
Barre, his future political aide-de-camp and general
Parliamentary factotum, but of " Capability " Brown,
who, in consultation with Lady Louisa Manners,
proved so useful in the construction of the Wiltshire
palace. Through Bute he came to know the most
famous of his guests, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Rey-
nolds, to whom he sat for his portrait, perhaps more
than once, between 1764 and 1776. On his qualities
as a public man the verdict of his social intimates
differs. Horace Walpole called him a good debater.
Pratt, Lord Camden placed him as an orator only below
Chatham. Jeremy Bentham, who found at Bowood
a second home, described him as getting hold of an im-
perfect scrap of an idea, filling it up, rightly or wrongly,
then with his imposing manner, dignity, vague generali-
ties and emphasis, making the Lords think there was
something in it when there was really nothing at all*
*' Shelburne," said the third Lord Holland, "wanted
method, perspicuity, reasoning, judgment, and taste,
making up for them by imagination, wit, sarcasm, and
eloquence." At Bowood Bentham met the most sub-
missive and useful of his foreign disciples, Dumont,
the Swiss Protestant pastor at St. Petersburg, who
had been tutor to Lansdowne's sons ; Joseph Priestley,
Lansdowne's former companion in his foreign travels ;
and a very remarkable Dissenting minister, Jervis,
engaged by Lansdowne to superintend his boys'
holiday tasks.
The most universal country host of his time was
349
In Squire Western's Land
also the most orderly and economical of country hosts.
" What folly," he exclaimed, " can be greater than
employing a lawyer or business man to audit one's
accounts ? Dealers in money are like butchers, who,
dealing in blood, lose all feeling in their business."
"The host," was his maxim, "who looks into his own
affairs, can give his guests all they want for ;^5,ooo
a year." The first Wednesday in every month was
devoted by Bowood's earliest master to going through
his household bank-account. At 1 1 a.m. on every
Wednesday began the checking of the house and
kitchen expenses. Then came the examination into
details of estate management ; for nothing was held
in greater abomination at Bowood than "the hoggish
farmer who grudges bread to every one under him, or
the illiterate manufacturer to whom wealth is a means
of insolence, and who leaves his labourers to die
through want, filth, and famine." In this way Bowood
became not only a great social, but an exemplary
educational, centre for rural entertainers of all degrees.
The earliest hospitalities of Bowood, indeed, were not
only on a larger scale than England had yet seen,
they also marked an entirely new era in the country-
house system. Hitherto, when the country squire,
small or great, went up to his Parliamentary duties in
London, he shut up his rural home and boarded out his
wife and children with small farmers. At all times the
entertainments were on the most modest scale. Thus
when, in the neighbourhood of Devizes, the country
gentlefolk exchanged visits, the men went upstairs to
the masculine apartments, the ladies to their hostesses'
bedrooms. The lords of creation eventually finished
350
Hosts and Guests at Bowood
their potations, for the most part in Wiltshire drinking
nothing- but beer. The ladies were then admitted to
their presence. Passing to the Bowood of our own day,
we see the type of an accomplished gentleman, wearing
the old Whig dress, a blue coat with brass buttons
and a buff waistcoat. With him, sitting or strolling
through the grounds and rooms, is a visitor similarly
clad in the uniform brought into vogue by Charles
James Fox, and still perpetuated by the cover of
the Edinburgh Review. The first of these is the
Maecenas of the nineteenth century's first half, the
third Marquis of Lansdowne, who died in 1863. The
other is the Mr. Stanley of that time, then full of
the highest Whig promise, afterwards the Conser-
vative Prime Minister, Lord Derby. Many of the
visitors grouped round these are old enough to have
heard and involuntarily to murmur the refrain of the
old Whig ditty :
"True blue
And Mrs. Crewe"
— not omitting the lady's rejoinder :
"True blue
And all of you."
Between Lord Lansdowne and the distinguished
guest who was to become Lord Derby, is the
smallest gendeman then visible in polite society,
Thomas Moore, the poet and musician. He has of
late written several biographies ; Lord Lansdowne
has just advised him to publish a series of nine such
351
In Squire Western's Land
lives by the title of " The Cat." Presently Moore
will sit down to the piano to sing his verses to the
accompaniment of his own melodies, with the perfect
taste and spirit that make him the delight of country
houses. At Bowood it was that, only a few years
ago, when the Regency debates were going on, he
brought down to the breakfast-table as neat an
epigram as the language contains, summarising the
Whig view of the conditions imposed on the Prince of
Wales's viceroyalty :
"A straight waistcoat on him, and restrictions on me,
A more limited monarchy could not well be."
At Bowood, too, Moore had been congratulated by
Sir Walter Scott on the honourable feelings that had
prompted the burning of the Byron memoirs ; and
Scott himself, referring to the report of Lady Byron's
possible marriage with Cunningham, said, " She must
never let another man bear the name of husband to
her." Under the third Marquis now spoken of, and
first famous as Lord Henry Petty, Bowood contained
visible links with the past, such as could be seen no-
where else in the world. Only a few days before his
death he showed Hayward a copy of Boswell's
"Johnson," presented to him by the author. The
third Marquis could appreciate the well-known lines
in the " Rolliad," about the Prime Minister his father,
and had some good stories as to his relative's
traditional want of frankness. His complaint to
Gainsborough about a portrait just painted of him
drew from the artist the words, " I don't like it either ;
352
Hallam, Macaulay, and Hook
I will try again." After a second failure, the painter
flung down his pencil, saying " D it, I never
could see through the varnish, and there's an end."
Shelburne was nicknamed " Malagrida," after a
Portuguese Jesuit of that name. "Do you know," said
Oliver Goldsmith, " I never could make out why, for
Malagrida was a very good sort of man." Bowood
owed scarcely more to its master's and founder's
wealth and taste than to the help of his wife (Lady
Louisa Strangways), Lord Ilchester's daughter.
"When we first came to Bowood," she used to
say, " I had to borrow a rush chair from the lodge
to sit upon." Hayward could congratulate her
on possessing the best mounted house in Europe.
Among the art treasures of the place is Olivia, in
"The Vicar of Wakefield," brought back to her
home, with her face hidden in her father's bosom, by
Newton, an artist whom Lord Lansdowne discovered.
" It is not very difficult," sneered Theodore Hook
" to paint a figure without the face." " But it is
very difficult," rejoined Constable, " to paint a sob.
Lord Lansdowne saw, felt the sob, and bought it."
"A right-divine gentleman," was Serjeant Talfourd's
remark on his host, after a stay at Bowood. " He
looks," said Sydney Smith, " for talents and qualities
amongst all ranks of men, and adds them to his stock
of society as a botanist does plants."
To-day the fifth Marquis of Lansdowne's guests
may sit down to the same table at which Samuel
Rogers, placed between Hallam and Macaulay,
talked of their wrangling and fighting over him as
over a dead body. They may lose themselves in the
353 z
In Squire Western's Land
crowd of grim statues as those amid which Adolphe
Thiers once fell asleep, suddenly to be awakened by
the Shakespearian critic, Payne Knight, and, rubbing
his eyes, with a look at his marble companions, to
fancy he had unconsciously passed into another world.
Should they be fortunate enough to have for a fellow-
visitor Mr. E. F. Leveson-Gower, they may hear
how their twentieth-century host's grandfather, with
exquisite humour, used to describe the poet Bowles
when impatiently waiting till the ladies should make
themselves ready for an afternoon stroll, remarking
that the water from the lake had been for some time
set on for the waterfall, and that he feared it would
not last till they came (the point of this story was
the fact of Bowles himself, when Rector of Brem-
hill, near Bowood, expecting visitors, having been
overheard by Rogers to order his gardener to set
the fountain playing and to carry the hermit his
beer); how Lord Lansdowne himself described calling
at the artist Turner's Chelsea house on a foggy after-
noon, being mistaken by the woman in charge for
a cat's-meat man, and being told from the area,
" Don't trouble to come again, for some rascal, perhaps
yourself, has stolen my cat " ; finally, they may hear
from one who, in Mr. Leveson-Gower himself, heard
it first hand, how Macaulay, asked as to the mount
he would like for a morning's ride, said, " The only
thing for me is an elephant." At the same party,
and on the same day. Lord Palmerston, having said
that, according to Darwin, a starfish, passing through
the intermediate stage of a Bishop of Oxford, might
become Archbishop of Canterbury, was gravely
354
The Country House as a Moral Force
assured by the natural philosopher, Sir Roderick
Murchison, " No such transmutation could take
place."
The most famous among the Bowood company
already mentioned, the historian Macaulay had as a
child been patted on the head by the mistress of a
country house in the south-west of England, very
different from the Lansdowne palace. A great
Somersetshire squire. Sir John Trevelyan, had in
an earlier generation introduced Edmund Burke and
William Wilberforce to the family circle in the district
where Somerset and Gloucestershire almost meet,
near Bristol, at Barley Wood. This pretty litde place
had been inherited by Hannah More and her four
sisters from the Stapleton schoolmaster their father ;
when occupied by them it became a humanitarian
centre. At no great distance, though in a different
county, near the town of Gloucester, lay on the slopes
of the Cotswolds the villa of Robert Raikes, then the
influential owner of the Gloucester Journal, to-day
immortalised as the founder of the Sunday School.
The habitual guests at his Cotswold home comprised
Joseph Alleine, to be bracketed as an evangelical
doctor with Richard Baxter himself, Alleine's
colleague in good works and good writings, Thomas
Stock. David Blair of Brechin, Theophilus Lindsey
of Catterick, Yorkshire. The outcome of these
meetings at the Cotswold villa was the successful
adaptation to English eighteenth-century's needs of
the machinery, first devised in 1580, by Cardinal
Borromeo, at Milan, for providing children with suit-
able teaching on the first day of the week, and after-
355
In Squire Western's Land
wards acclimatised at Ephratah, in Pennsylvania, by
the descendants of those who had sailed to New
England in the Mayflower. A more imposing and
better known monument, formerly the actual scene of
the meeting of these good men and holy women, may
still be seen some four miles to the north of Bristol,
in Blaise Castle, once the home of Wilberforce's
chosen companion and biographer Harford, and still
belonging to his family. An additional interest
attaches to this place because the adjoining village
contains the Harford cottages. These began to be
built in 1810; they initiated the movement that
soon spread for surrounding the manor-house with
humbler homes worthy, in respect of cleanliness,
health, and comfort, of English landlords.
The porch, the oven, and the tank became articles
in the Young England scheme of peasantry reform,
1846. They had already been adopted and carried
into effect by the Evangelical disciple of Hannah
More and biographer of Wilberforce, at Blaise,
between ten and fifteen years earlier.
356
CHAPTER XIII
SOUTH-EAST BY EAST
Mr. Percy Wyndham at Clouds — The Clouds house-parties and
modern politics — East Knoyle House — The Seymours — Brea-
more — Fonthill — William Beckford — Samuel Rogers as his
guest — Beckford's eccentricities — His Lansdowne tower at Bath
— Beckford compared by Rogers with E. A. Poe — Ford Abbey
— Jeremy Bentham and the Mills — Life at Ford Abbey — Jean
Nicholas Grou, the French divine, at Lulworth — Bryanston
and the Portmans — Hambledon House and the Pitt ladies —
The Grange — Lord and Lady Ashburton and their guests —
Carlyle — His snub to John Forster — Mrs. Carlyle — Highclere
— The cedars — Highclere owners, the Pembroke and Carnar-
von Herberts — The fourth Earl of Carnarvon — Political parties
at Highclere — Boer guests — Hurstbourne — Count Munster —
Lord and Lady Granville— Memorials of Isaac Newton — J. C.
Jeaffreson — Tedworth — Thomas Assheton Smith, the celebrated
sportsman — At Eton — As a Parliamentary candidate — His fight
with the coal-heaver — Smith as a Hampshire squire — His opinion
of Canning — Hursley — Sir William Heathcote and Keble — F.
Rogers (Lord Blachford) — Hursley to-day — Strathfieldsaye —
Anecdotes of the great Duke of Wellington — The second Duke
—The Rev. G. R. Gleig— " Copenhagen's " grave— The Duke of
Malakhoffs shooting performance — Henry Irving and other
guests at Strathfieldsaye.
THE Wyndham name forms a connecting link
between many social centres of rural England.
And in this way. The Egremont earldom belonged
357
n
South-East by East
to Algernon, seventh Duke of Somerset, with
remainder to his nephew Charles, son of the Somer-
setshire Sir William Wyndham and of Lady Catharine
Seymour. Thus the son of the man to whom Boling-
broke dedicated his best-known writings became second
Earl of Egremont. George, the fourth and last Earl,
died in 1845, leaving a life interest in his estates to
his wife, who died at Orchard Wyndham^ in 1876.
After this, the possessor of the Orchard Wyndham
estates and the head of the family became Lord
Egremont's kinsman, Mr. William Wyndham, of
Dinton, Wiltshire. Meanwhile an Egremont
Wyndham had been created the first Lord Lecon-
field. He, as has been seen in the Sussex chapter,
made the hospitalities of Petworth famous. His son,
Mr. Percy Wyndham, an Eton schoolfellow of the
fifteenth Lord Derby, formerly the supporter of
Disraelian administrations in the House of Commons,
survives to be to-day at Clouds, near Salisbury, con-
spicuous among Conservative hosts in the eastern
corner of Wiltshire. The father of Mr. George
Wyndham, formerly Mr. A. J. Balfour's private
secretary first, Irish Secretary afterwards, he has
made his Wiltshire home a favourite resort of the
late Prime Minister and of the chief figures in the
Unionist connection. Mr. George Wyndham's
' For an earlier mention of this subject see page 312. The
house at Orchard Wyndham, though to-day unoccupied, is full of
beautiful furniture, especially the Chippendale chairs and tables.
And the secret chambers and mysterious passages which sheltered
so many eminent Jacobites in the eighteenth century, are still what
Atterbury and Swift saw them.
358
Clouds, Knoyle, and Breamore
marriage with the Countess Grosvenor, the young
Duke of Westminster's mother, naturally affects the
composition of the Clouds house-parties. At these
gatherings, in addition to Mr. Arthur Balfour himself,
the former premier's particular friends are conspicuous
figures. The Cambridge senior wrangler of 1865,
Lord Rayleigh, Lady Rayleigh, Mr. Balfour's sister.
Lord and Lady Elcho, the host's son-in-law and
daughter respectively, are among the ornaments of
the Conservative intellectualism whom Mr. Percy
Wyndham's accomplishments and abilities qualify him
specially to appreciate. The head of an Irish branch
of his house, the Wyndham-Quins, Lord Dunraven,
found Clouds an agreeably neutral ground for dis-
cussing new departures in Irish policy with his party
chief when Mr. Balfour reigned at the Treasury, and
was irresponsibly maintaining an open eye and mind
with regard to possibilities of compromise between
the existing subjection of Ireland and Home Rule.
Close to Clouds is the great mansion of the district,
Knoyle House, whose Seymour ownership connects
it with the earliest source of the Wyndham ennoble-
ment, the dukedom of Somerset. The historical
position of East Knoyle owes most of its interest to
the fact that long before the Stuart cause seemed in
serious peril, the Knoyle Seymours and their visitors
were privately discussing the signs of his disposition
and of his final purpose which they thought James II.
had given. That when the crisis actually arrived the
way had been cleared for the invitation to Orange
William, was due to the Knoyle house-parties of that
period. Lord James of Hereford has recently rein-
359
South-East by East
forced the Wiltshire hosts by the occupation of
Breamore. This place is within a short distance of
Salisbury. Its eighteenth-century owner, the first
baronet of his line, a great Court physician, sometimes
had for his guest, as well as for his patient, George II.
In the last days of the nineteenth century, Sir Edward
Hulse, the fifth baronet of his line, having many
relatives in the Army, made Breamore a military
country house. Before coming to the title, the sixth
of the Hulse baronets was among the pleasantest
young men about town ; he had no enemy but himself
Dying in South Africa, he left to his infant successor
the much-encumbered estate, whose house has since
found, as has been said, a tenant in the sixth Sir
Edward Hulse's old friend, a keen sportsman, not
less than a great lawyer, still best known to many
as Sir Henry James.
More entirely of the past than East Knoyle is
another Wiltshire country house, the dismantled
palace of William Beckford, Fonthill. The father of
the man who built Fonthill, and for sixteen years less
than a century (i 760-1 844) maintained it as the most
magnificent and mysterious of private residences, had
been twice Lord Mayor of London ; he had not only
feted officially Lord Chatham at the Mansion House,
he had privately entertained the great minister at a
country seat occupying much the same ground as that
on which his son's structure afterwards stood. The
younger Beckford inherited from his father a million
in ready money and ;^ 100, 000 a year in income.
The story of his having written " Vathek " at Fonthill
in three days and two nights, unbroken by any rest in
360
With Beckford at Fonthill
bed, is pure fiction. The book, so far from being
thrown off at a heat, was the slow product of laborious
years. Equally apocryphal are many other anecdotes
about Fonthill and its owner. The accidents of the
present writer's childhood familiarised him early with
the only true account of Beckford and Fonthill — that
given by Samuel Rogers. This may be epitomised
as follows. The death of Beckford's wife. Lady
Margaret Gordon, Lord Aboyne's daughter, in 1786,
left him a shrewd and intellectual victim of an
eccentric melancholy. From 1784 to 1790 he had
been member for Wells. As a widower he lost the
little interest he may ever have had in politics,
and immured himself in his Wiltshire museum.
The only guest he willingly received was Samuel
Rogers. On that visitor reaching the huge wall
separating Fonthill from the outer world, he was
told neither his servant nor his horse could be
admitted inside. Mr. Beckford's stables and people
would, it was added, supply all his wants. " Once
in the place," Rogers used to say, " I could scarcely
breathe freely for an overwhelming sense of surround-
ing splendour and virtual imprisonment." " Beckford
told me," were Rogers' words to Kinglake, "that
some little time earlier the Duchess of Gordon
had insisted on quartering herself on him. ' But,'
Beckford continued, ' the whole time she was here
she never saw my face nor I hers.'"
Rogers, however, found the recluse a sufficiently
courteous, and in his way, entertaining host. They
only met at a late dinner. The master of Fonthill
had the musical tastes of his family, and had himself
361
South-East by East
found a music master in the great Mozart, the prot^g^
of his cousin, Peter Beckford. During the short
interval between dinner and bed-time, Beckford
improvised melodies at the pianoforte, or read aloud
from his unpublished works ; these were astonish-
ingly numerous. He also showed his guest hitherto
unseen memorials of Wilkes, to whom his father
had been so good a friend. During his few years
of wedded life at Lausanne, he lived in the historian
Gibbon's house, which, with all the books, he had
bought. No son was born to him ; he had, how-
ever, two daughters ; these became respectively
Mrs. Orde and the Duchess of Hamilton. By
1822 his riches had begun to melt away. The
Fonthill establishment was broken up. " England's
wealthiest son," as Byron called him, took a house
at Bath, in Lansdowne Crescent, connecting it by a
subterranean way with a tall tower which he had
built on Lansdowne Hill, close to the scene of the
seventeenth-century battle between the Royal and
the Parliamentary armies. From that eminence,
when the sun's rays fell at a particular angle, look-
ing over the intervening valley, he could see beyond
the spot on which the turrets of Fonthill had
formerly risen. Beckford's Bath house is still in-
habited. The grounds amid which he reared his
Lansdowne tower are to-day a cemetery. Inside the
lofty structure may yet be seen the red and purple
decorations with which its builder fitted it, and,
high up, a lonely room, wherein he once paid a
man to undergo some weeks' or months' voluntary
imprisonment, on condition that the captive should
362
Rogers on Beckford and Poe
receive only just as much bread and water as
might support existence, should neither wash his
body nor cut his hair or nails. As for Fonthill
itself, its social existence is wholly in the past.
One anecdote, and one only, has been bequeathed
to posterity by Fonthill's strange creator. Beck-
ford's father, a sportsman and writer on sport, kept
hounds. The huntsman had added to the pack
a dog which the master heard him call " Lyman."
" What means that name ? " asked the employer.
"Lord, sir," replied the man, "what does anything
mean ? " His vivid recollections of Fonthill's magnifi-
cence inspired Samuel Rogers in his last days with an
apt illustration of the genius of an American poet,
Edgar Allan Poe. "The only parallel," he said,
"to the characteristics of Poe's imagination is that
of the man who wrote ' Vathek.'" Beckford had the
money that enabled him to translate his sumptuous
and gorgeous visions into realities at Fonthill. Poe
makes the human hero of his remarkable verses
repose on cushions with velvet violet lining, start
with terror at the rustling of purple curtains, and
hear imaginary footfalls tinkling on the tufted floor.
The poet's life was one long struggle with poverty.
The conceptions of beauty embodied by Beckford
in a palace, Poe tried to realise with alcohol or
opium. With Beckford's money he would have
satisfied his imagination by constructing the ex-
ternal reality of just such another palace as Beckford
called into being on the Wiltshire weald.
Ford Abbey invests the Somerset and Dorset
borderland with intellectual associations as interest-
363
South-East by East
ing, if not as ornamental, as those bequeathed
by Fonthill to Wiltshire. Ford Abbey, indeed,
though often claimed by Somersetshire, stands
rather in that Dorsetshire peninsula which juts out
into the contiguous county. ^ While Beckford was
concentrating his treasures and warning off inquisi-
tive tourists with his bloodhounds at Fonthill,
Ford Abbey witnessed the training for his life's
work of the great logician and economist of the
Utilitarian system. In the early years of the
nineteenth century, James Mill rented a house in
Queen's Square, Westminster, which had been
Milton's, and which belonged to Jeremy Bentham.
During the summer the tenant was invited to
bring his son, John Stuart, on visits to his landlord's
rural home. On this point let us recall what
J. S. Mill himself had afterwards to say on the
subject : " Nothing," were his words, " contributes
more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people
than the large and free character of their habitations."
And thus to young Mill the middle-age architecture,
the baronial hall, the spacious and lofty rooms of
Ford Abbey, so unlike the cramped and mean
exteriors of middle-class life, gave the sentiment of a
larger and freer existence. The literary associations
of the Westminster house, duly pointed out by
Bentham to his tenant's son, had already touched
the poetic feeling systematically ignored by James
Mill in the education of the sensitive boy. Residence
' As a fact Ford Abbey stands upon debatable ground, so near to
the converging point of Devon, Dorset, and Somerset as to be said,
with some plausibility, to belong to each of these counties.
364
i
Bentham and Mill at Ford Abbey
at the picturesque spot in the south-west of rural
England was to prove a further training in the
humanities. Ford Abbey, whose nearest town was
Chard, had belonged, in the seventeenth century, to
Sir Edmond Prideaux, Attorney-General to the
Commonwealth, This really magnificent place stood
in a large and beautiful park with many lakes
and groves ; through these a chestnut avenue, some
quarter of a mile in length, led up to the building.
It has been seen that in West Somerset, a century
ago, Wordsworth paid jCao a year for Alfoxton
Park. In 1814 the stately Ford Abbey was let to
Bentham for ^318, on condition of his quitting it,
if desired, at one month's notice, taking particular
care of the tapestry in the halls, of the gardens,
and not using the deer in the park for the table.
" The last provision," simply remarked the philoso-
pher, "was quite unnecessary, for I always felt
more disposed to caress the pretty creatures than
to kill them."
Six months in every year were passed by the
Mills with Bentham at Ford Abbey. During those
annual periods the Dorsetshire paradise became a
kind of Academie. The host rose about seven.
With the break of an hour for breakfast, Bentham
wrote till noop, for the most part in a spacious
chamber, containing an organ, with furniture and
decorations of the Commonwealth period. Here, after
the morning's writing, the host played the organ
for an hour, or sometimes battledore and shuttle-
cock with his guest. The great event, however, of
the day took the shape of long talks between the
365
South-East by East
two seniors, listened to in silent admiration by the
boy. It was during these conversations that
Bentham, then chiefly occupied at Ford with his
work on codification, told Mill that his early ad-
miration for Hevetius had almost caused him to
seek domestic service with the great encyclopaedist.
The only visitor, besides the Mills, was Francis
Place, the Charing Cross tailor, whose recent
biographer (Mr. Wallas) has claimed for him rather
than for Lord Grey the true authorship of the first
Reform Act. His guests were never allowed by
Bentham to break in upon the afternoon's work
with his amanuensis. The simple six o'clock dinner,
at which water alone was drunk, was always followed
by a brisk walk. There are stories of these
philosophic hospitalities having been marred by a
personal rupture between the master of Ford Abbey
and his principal visitor, J. S. Mill's father. There
was certainly long on view at Ford a letter to his
dear friend and master from his most affectionate
James Mill, in which the writer remarks that being
too much in one another's company makes people
stale to each other and is often fatal, without any
other cause, to happiness in the most indissoluble
of all connections. Nothing more dreadful, however,
seems to have happened than that about this time
Joseph Hume became a regular guest at Ford, and
that the Mills' visits ceased to be a yearly institution.
In the century preceding the plain living and high
thinking at Ford Abbey, another Dorsetshire house,
already visited in these pages, Lulworth on the coast,
the seat of the Welds, had been an asylum for famous
366
From Lulworth to Bryanston
exiles presenting a marked contrast to the society
just quitted at Ford. The great French upheaval
at the end of the eighteenth century had been
preceded by years of trouble, unrest, and danger
to many spiritual teachers in the country. Amongst
those who, both then and afterwards, bowing their
heads to the storm, found shelter in England was
Jean Nicolas Grou. Born at Calais in 1731, educated
by the Jesuit fathers, he had returned to Paris
for a few days, only to see the enemies of religion
burn in a moment a manuscript representing
fourteen years of labour, undertaken at the request
of the Paris archbishop. " If," meekly said Grou,
" the work could have been used of God, He would
have preserved it. Even yet, unprofitable servant
though I am, He may employ my pen." The ex-
pectation was fulfilled at Lulworth Castle. Here the
domestic chaplain. Father Clinton, had already, at
the family's desire, invited more than one religious
refugee from the Continent. Here now Grou became
domesticated. Here, too, he wrote the well-known
devotional book, "The Hidden Life of the Soul."
So long as Parliament has existed, Trelawnys, Edg-
cumbes, and Bullers have come to it from Cornwall
or Devon, Northampton has sent its Knightley, and
Taunton its Portman. To Dorsetshire belongs the
country home of the family last named. Bryanston,
originally possessed by the Rogers stock, with which
the Pyms intermarried, became the home of the
Portmans about the time that constitutional monarchy
was secured in England. Elizabethan in its design,
but actually less than twenty years old, Bryanston,
367
South-East by East
the periodical visiting place of royalties, is to its
neighbourhood what Castlehill is to Devonshire — a
house, that is, in its origins exclusively Whig, but
detached from Liberalism to-day, its works and
its personages, by the dissolving influences of Home
Rule.
In Hampshire the best known of eighteenth- or
early nineteenth-century houses lies in the district
where afterwards the first pack of foxhounds was
formed and the first cricket match played. On his
way to Fecamp via Shoreham, Hambledon House
received for the night Charles H. Subsequently
this house passed to a certain John Tekell, best
known as the husband of Lady Griselda Stanhope.
She was one of those three Stanhope sisters, the
eldest of whom was the Lebanon lady already
mentioned at some length. Lady Griselda, herself
scarcely less eccentric than her more famous sister,
and her husband made their Hambledon house a
rallying centre of the whole Stanhope clan and, of
course, an emporium of family talk. From the
Tekell country house it first went abroad that
Lady Hester Stanhope had been proclaimed queen
of Palmyra by the Arab tribes, and that, in 1839,
she had died. Her memoirs, appearing in 1843 ^^^
1846 respectively, were, at least in part, prepared
for the printer at Hambledon. The Hampshire
house richest in nineteenth century associations of
general interest is that of Lord and Lady Ashburton
in the Alresford district, the Grange. The period
selected for the present visit is the first half of the
Victorian age. Among the guests known to every
368
Carlyle at the Grange
one are Lord Lansdowne, Lord Clarendon, Lord
Canning, Lord Grey, Lord Granville, Lord Houghton,
Lord Elcho, Lord Aberdeen, Sir Henry Taylor,
Twisleton, Brookfield, the contemporary and intimate
friend of Thackeray and Tennyson, Sidney Herbert,
and a personage more remarkable than any of these,
wearing a long gaberdine, evidently a student and
an author. Striking, indeed, is the contrast between
the vaguely eloquent inspiration animating the talk
of this last guest and the cynical, prosaic sagacity
of another visitor, best known as " Bear " Ellice,
who never misses a chance of pitting himself against
Thomas Carlyle. It is the period of the Crimean
struggle. The author of " Hero Worship " has for-
gotten that among the company is the then Secretary
for War, At least Carlyle's face glows with approval
as he thunders forth his version of the elder Pitt's
reply to the Duke of Newcastle's objection that a
expedition cannot be ready at the required moment :
"If," quotes Carlyle, "the money and the men are
not ready on Thursday next at ten o'clock, your
Grace's head shall roll at your Grace's feet." " That,"
commented Carlyle, "is the way to speak to an
incapable minister." Here the censor remembered
who and what Herbert was, and apologised with
a gruff laugh. The two men said good-night the
best of friends. At the Grange, Carlyle constantly
made blunders of this sort. On another occasion,
pointing out to Prince Jerome Napoleon the per-
fection of English naval construction, he wound up,
" If one of our ships meets a Frenchman of her
own size, she blows her into atoms."
369 AA
South-East by East
The host and hostess of the Grange were for
many reasons the most remarkable couple of their
set or their time. In mordancy and readiness of
repartee Lady Ashburton was not surpassed even
by Mrs. Grote. She spared no one, least of all her
husband. " I trust that I," the poor Lord had once
said, "have no favourite ology." "Indeed, my
dear, if you only knew it you have, and its name is
tautology." This because the unfortunate nobleman
sometimes told the same story more than once.
Lady Ashburton's earliest notice of Carlyle seems
to have put some noses out of joint. Her criticism
of the revolutionary tendencies she had discovered
in a pamphlet by Monckton Milnes caused the writer
in his own defence to say, "The writings of your
friend Carlyle are much redder " (meaning, of course,
of a redder republican tinge). The lady was prepared
with her repartee : " You mean they are much more
read." At the Grange it was that Carlyle, hearing
that Mrs. Beecher Stowe had lately been there, set
himself to scandalise the second Lady Ashburton
by hotly defending slavery and abusing the aboli-
tionists : " Mrs. Stowe ! — a poor foolish woman who
wrote a book of wretched trash called 'Uncle Tom's
Cabin.' " That, of course, was Carlyle's way. Beneath
the same roof he passed his famous verdict on
Charles Dickens's friend the "^arbitrary gent," the
historian John Forster — " Eh, mon, but you are a
poor, weak, miserable crittur" — after Forster had to
his evident satisfaction decisively disposed, in his
most ex-cathedra manner, of several controversial
historical points. On these occasions the general
370
Ashburton and Highclere
recollection of Mrs. Carlyle at one of the Ashburton
country houses is that of a little woman busy with
her embroidery in a solitary corner, silent and
io-nored. The Granoce as a social institution flourished
before the present writer's time. Froude's view is
that Mrs. Carlyle was not happy there because, like
the ladies of bishops, the wives of men of genius
do not take the social rank of their husbands, and
because the fashionable women who frequent the
house understood how to make each other uncom-
fortable in little ways. Against that account may
be set the reminiscences of the Grange parties
given me by the late G. S. Venables, a regular
habitue of the house. " Lady Ashburton," were the
words to me of Mr. Venables, " had no little ways,
saw that, at least in her house, the wives of literary
men did take their husbands' rank, and did from
my own knowledge inspire Mrs. Carlyle with a
reciprocated attachment."
On the same social and intellectual plane as the
Grange two other Hampshire houses became a little
later social microcosms of their era. The Herberts
of Highclere are identical in their origin with the
Herberts of Wilton, for it was the third son of
the eighth Earl of Pembroke who became first Earl
of Carnarvon. This community of descent is pic-
turesquely symbolised in Highclere Park by the
stately Lebanon cedars, sprung for the most part from
the older trees on the Pembroke property. Two at
least, however, of the Highclere cedars have been
grown from a cone which a Highclere clergyman's
descendant brought from Palestine direct. The old
371
South-East by East
house was the rural palace of the Bishops of Win-
chester, and formed the home during some months in
every year of William of Wykeham. Under the Tudors
the Highclere and Burghclere manors passed to the
Fitzwilliams first, then to the Kingsmills, afterwards
to the Warwickshire Lucys. The next owner was the
Attorney-General to Charles II. and James II., Sir
Robert Sawyer. His daughter and heiress became
the wife of Thomas, Earl of Pembroke, Lord High
Admiral. Their son, Robert Sawyer Herbert, inherited
Highclere and Burghclere ; his nephew received
property and became the first Earl of Carnarvon.
The third earl, son of the peer who made Pixton the
centre of resistance to the Grey Reform Bill, con-
verted, with the help of Sir Charles Barry, the old
house into the existing Highclere Castle. The social
story of that dwelling begins with the fourth Lord
Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, who anticipated
Mr. Chamberlain in discovering the colonies, and who
made his Hampshire home a social centre for the
Empire. Late in the seventies of the last century the
Jingo fever was at its height. Incompatibility of
political temper with Disraeli, then Prime Minister,
brought about Lord Carnarvon's resignation, and
produced at Highclere a fusion of national, unaggres-
sive Conservatism and patriotic, anti-militant, but
not anti- Imperial, Liberalism. Sir Henry Norman,
to whom Gladstone afterwards offered the Indian
Viceroyship, and General Adye, both of them, as
soldiers, opposed to Lord Beaconsfield's and Lord
Lytton's scientific frontier, represented at the High-
clere parties the ideas with which their host had
372
The Boers on Beer
identified himself. The purely political or economic
aspects of this school of thought were displayed by
Sir Louis Mallet, then permanent Under-Secretary
at the India Office, formerly Cobden's right-hand
man, as kindly and polished a gentleman as ever
responded to a country-house welcome, tempering
his Liberal economics with not a little of the old-
world urbanity, learned by him in earlier years at
continental Courts and chancelleries. With him were
Thomas Bayley Potter, whose amplitude of snowy
shirt-front, and whose geniality of spirit and bearing,
gave a charm to Radicalism ; Lord Sherbrooke,
formerly R. Lowe, and Thomas Chenery, then
editor of the Times. Both, as companions and con-
versationalists, disclosed at Highclere a charm not
always discovered elsewhere. Once, if not twice,
the parties thus composed were varied by immediate
representatives from our over-seas empire. Such in
the seventies were the guests from the Transvaal.
The Boers had evidently resolved to repress every
sign of appreciation and to remain impassively critical
of all that they saw and heard. The Highclere
library contained a shelf filled exclusively by writers
of the Herbert name. " Pity," remarked a Boer
gentleman on being shown the books, " that your
relations had not something better to do." "One
English institution," they considerately remarked,
after having seen the Highclere cellars, " we can
admire. The beer your butler gave us down there
is undeniable."
The twentieth-century Highclere maintains all its
old hospitable traditions. But the interests chiefly
373
South-East by East
represented in these are now connected rather with
fashion and sport. Of the great houses close to
Highclere, Hurstbourne approached most nearly to
Highclere's character. Whenever the mayfly season
came round the then German ambassador, Count
Munster, was pretty sure in the early morning to be
seen whipping the trout stream which traverses the
park. Lord Granville, when Foreign Secretary, was
also a regular guest. It happened that after a tiring
day in the open air he had gone earlier to bed than
usual. Amongst the guests was a lady famous for
her wealth of beautiful hair. Ignorant that her lord
had already established himself between the sheets.
Lady Granville entered the room with one or two more
of her sister guests. These, sitting down, compared
notes about their tresses. The lady already mentioned
let her locks down for the benefit of her friends. The
Foreign Secretary's slumber was broken, but as he
said at the breakfast table next day, '* It was a very
little peep I gave from under the counterpane ; I felt
like Clodius, and I had the presence of mind to slip
down deeper into the bed than ever." Hurstbourne
was among the few country houses visited together by
George Henry Lewes and George Eliot. Here the
novelist acquired the local colour and personal details
for the country-house scenes in " Middlemarch."
With these visitors were Meredith Townsend, of the
Spectator, and Adams the astronomer, in whose hands
Lord Portsmouth placed all his Sir Isaac Newton
papers. These contained entries made before
receiving the Communion on Whit Sunday, 1662,
entreating the Almighty's pardon " for eating an
374
Tedworth and Young Tom Smith
apple in Thy house and for makino- a mousetrap on
Thy day." This litde fragment concerning the great
man, related by their Fellowes connection with the
Wallop family, was, with other memorials of the same
kind, first brought to light by a frequent nineteenth-
century Hurstbourne guest, John Cordy Jeaffreson,
for years Hepworth Dixon's right-hand man on the
Athen(2um, also of invaluable service in innumerable
country houses to the manuscript commission. To
Hurstbourne, early in the nineteenth century, came
Lord Byron, bringing, as he said, an olive branch
to its owner, who, when both of them were children
in 1799, had put the future poet into a passion by
roughly seizing his head. " I will teach," said the
boy Byron, suiting the action to the word, "a fool
of an earl to pinch a brother noble's ear."
Hurstbourne stands as nearly as possible midway
between Highclere and a country house rich in
associations, very different from those grouped round
the two other Hampshire houses just visited. The
one feature in common between Hurstbourne and
Tedworth, where we are now stopping, is the fact
of the trout stream, the Wallop, in which Count
Munster in the last century used to fish, watering also
the country about the present home of Sir John Kelk,
formerly the abode of the mighty Nimrod, Thomas
Assheton Smith. The beginnings, however, of this
branch of the Smith family were at Ashley Hall,
Bowdon, Cheshire. The great hunter's grandfather,
Thomas Assheton, adopted the patronymic of his
uncle, whose property he inherited. This John
Smith, in the eafly eighteenth century, had been
375
South-East by East
both Speaker and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Born August 2, 1776, in Queen Anne Street,
Cavendish Square, the man who made Tedworth a
synonym for the national sport used, across the walnuts
and the wine, to tell how, in 1783, the youngest boy in
the school, he had at once been put in the Eton eleven,
and how, in his first half, hearing a schoolfellow boast
membership of a family which could ride, fence, play
tennis, or fight against all England, he immediately
challenged the boy to a duel of fisticuffs. The other
combatant was also a coming Nimrod, the John
Musters, who married Byron's Mary Chaworth.
His early pugilistic laurels were still fresh when the
future possessor of Tedworth heard his father, at a
Leicestershire dinner-table, back himself and young
Tom Smith, his son, against Sir John Peyton and his
son, whom he had heard described as the first horse-
men of their day, over from six to a dozen miles of fair
hunting country. At Tedworth the riding-matches
which followed were planned.
Very soon Assheton Smith was to have his own
unique Leicestershire experiences, of the ring and of
the platform as well as of the chase. " To relieve the
enmd of a close week or two caused by a sharp frost
in the shires, I thought," the young man said, " I
might as well contest the then vacant seat for Notting-
hamshire. 'No hunting M.P.s' was the welcome I
saw on the placards that stared me in the face on
approaching the scene of action. The next thing was
to burn me in effigy in a red coat and fox's brush."
The sporting candidate was unceremoniously shouted
down. He managed, however, at last to edge in the
376
Blows like a Horse's Kick
challenge, " I will fight any man, big or small,
directly I leave the hustings, having a preliminary
round with him for love." After this a hearing was
secured. The crowd indeed had reason to know that
the unpopular candidate would show himself as good
as his word. A few days before, Assheton Smith,
going into a bank at Leicester, hitched his bridle over
the iron rails outside. A coal-heaver, coming by with
his cart, gave Smith's steed a cut with the whip that
nearly caused the animal to jump into the window.
" Defend yourself," said the reappearing equestrian,
at the same time turning up his cuffs. The man from
the cart at once began to strip, and the fight com-
menced. " I found," said Assheton Smith, " more
than I bargained for. There was no flinching, how-
ever, on either side. At it we went, following each
other up and down the street like a couple in a
country dance. At last the constables came up. I
left the brave fellow with, I think, the words, ' You
will hear of me again.' I recollect, too, I went out to
dinner that night with a beefsteak over my eye. The
next morning I found out my opponent's abode — that
is, I was told in answer to my question, ' He does live
here, if he is still alive.' I sent the servant in with a /^^
note and a message. This answer was brought back :
'The best man that ever stood before me! God bless
his Honour ! I duly earned the money, for his blows
are like the kick of a horse. But to show my grati-
tude I'll fight him again, any day he likes, for love.' "
The combined strain of hard riding and harder fighting
necessitated a day or two's repose at Melton. He
recollected that at Eton he had learned to clean a room
377
South-East by East
and to cook a chop, but not to do figures. He now,
therefore, engaged the local post-mistress to teach him
arithmetic. From a Midland hunting-field it was, too,
that, hearing his father lay dangerously ill at Ted-
worth, he at once started on the ride to Hampshire,
only stopping once or twice on the road to change
horses. Smith's life as a Hampshire Master of Fox-
hounds followed his training in the shires, from 1824
to 1858. In both districts, long after his own hunting-
days were over, he was remembered in the hunting-
field as a disciplinarian, who was not, however, a
bully, and as a horseman who, with a hand like
Chifney's, then the first of English jockeys, mounted
on his favourite horses " Radical " and " Big Grey,"
did all his riding from his legs. As may be inferred
from these names. Smith affected democratic sym-
pathies. He had, however, all the conventional
patrician dislike of Canning. When, in the Ted-
worth dining-room, he heard of Canning's coming
into power, but unaccompanied by any of his disciples,
" Bad enough," he exclaimed, " to have that fellow
brought in, though his infernal set are left out.
Canning will still prove, to quote Falstaff, ' rotten
as a stewed prune.'"
To the south-east of Tedworth, nearer to Win-
chester, still stands the house which, as Queen Victoria
entered on the second half of her reign, was in Church
and State what Assheton Smith's home was in sport.
The Squire of Hursley, Sir William Heathcote, so
long member for Oxford, was, as Disraeli said, one of
those formed by nature to lead the country party.
With his friend Keble, of " The Christian Year," at
378
Too Much for Sir W. Heathcote
the neighbouring rectory, as spiritual chief of his staff,
Heathcote made Hursley the social citadel of the
ecclesiastical Toryism that had for its chief champion
his friend and frequent guest, W. E. Gladstone, his
some time colleague in the representation of Oxford.
It was when a guest at Hursley that an earlier
University member. Sir R. H. Inglis, uttered a senti-
ment often attributed to Sir Robert Peel : " I respect
the aristocracy of birth and of mind, but not the
aristocracy of money." Not only a good Churchman,
but a believer in the Oxford Movement's view of
Apostolicity, Heathcote, entertaining at Hursley, in
1836, J. H. Newman's special friend, F. Rogers (Lord
Blachford), impatiently exclaimed : " I cannot stomach
his principle of economy, licensing, as to me it seems
to do, any amount of suggestio falsi or suppressio
veriy Since the Heathcote days the personnel o( the
hospitalities at Hursley has changed. Its present
occupants have made it a pleasant, as well as a
fashionable, rendezvous for the county balls at
Winchester. The revival of these functions, like the
revival of so many suspended race meetings, is largely
due to the country-house influence of our time.
" Imagine the impossibility of living up to such a
father." These words occurred like a refrain in the
second Duke , of Wellington's conversation as he
pointed out to his Strathfieldsaye guests the
memorials of the Waterloo hero, in which the place
abounds. Every spot recalled its appropriate anec-
dote. Standing under this tree, " His Grace," as the
second Duke always indicated his predecessor, dictated
his reply to the tradesman who had applied to him for
379
South-East by East
some debt of his son : " Field-Marshal the Duke of
Wellington presents his compliments to Messrs. Smith
and Jones, and begs to inform them he is neither Lord
Charles Wellesley nor Messrs. Smith and Jones' debt-
collector." A few yards off, some one stooping to pick
up the great Duke's stick, accidentally fallen, received
the stereotyped reprimand always elicited by any
amiable little interventions of the kind, " Can't you
be good enough to mind your own business ? " On
the other hand, just outside the grounds is the lane
in which His Grace saw a little boy crying bitterly
over a hedgehog, which he had to leave to go to
school at a distance. The Duke not only took upon
himself the charge of the animal during its owner's
absence, but wrote to him once a week to say how it
was getting on. On that garden seat the great
captain, always precise about religious observances,
received one of his guest's — a lady's — apology for not
forming one of the party to church the next Sunday.
She was a Catholic, and there was no Catholic church
within a distance of twenty or thirty miles. " That,"
said the host, " need be no difficulty. My carriage
and horses are at your disposal ; breakfast shall be
ready a little after daybreak, and the thing can easily
be done." " And," said the second Duke, " she had to
go." The Strathfieldsaye host, who only died in
1884, reproduced many of his famous sire's features
without, however, the impression of strength which
these conveyed. It was the same kind of likeness
which kinship often impresses on a smaller man to a
greater — for instance, in Sir John Gladstone to W. E.,
or in Ralph Disraeli to his brother, Lord Beaconsfield.
380
Alfieri and Lady Ligonier
Shrewdness, however, as well as a dry, hard, sardonic
humour, the second Duke of Wellington had inherited
from the first. He had reason to believe two of
his guests particularly wished their rooms to be close
together. He placed them at opposite ends of the
longest and most public passage in the rambling old
house. Chuckling with delight at this arrangement,
he simply remarked to a visitor to whom he confided
it, " Diddled 'em, I think!" The recipient of this
confidence was the nearly life-long friend, who,
depressed by some domestic vexations, was thus
rallied : " My dear Billy, I should have thought you
would have been more a man of the world. Look at
me ! I am old, I am deaf, I am blind ! All my farms
are unlet. The young man in whom I am most
interested has just married the wrong woman. I owe
thousands at my bankers. And yet I am happy ! "
Another spot of interest pointed out by the second
Duke of Wellington to his visitors was the site in his
park of the building in which Lady Ligonier carried
on her intrigue with Alfieri, with the bough of the
tree outside to which her visitor hung his horse's
bridle.
The oldest of his friends, who lived nearly through
the Victorian age, the Rev. G. R. Gleig, his father's
biographer, afterwards Chaplain-General, lived at
Winchfield, not far from Strathfieldsaye, and was
expected to be in attendance when the second Duke
entertained. The pair did not specially delight in
talk of past days ; they simply found that their play
at whist suited each other. Notwithstanding- the
irritability of age and gout, or of something more
381
South-East by East
serious, the Strathfieldsaye visitors only saw the
second duke completely lose his temper once. Some-
one, who said he had just come on from Hatfield,
talked of having seen, in Lord Salisbury's stable-
yard, the grave of "Copenhagen," the charger ridden
by the Duke at Waterloo. " Copenhagen," of course,
really rests in a Strathfieldsaye paddock, guarded
by two quadrupeds of the zebra species, who have,
or had, an unpleasant trick, on any stranger entering
the enclosure, of seizing his arm. This inscription,
by his rider, is on the gravestone : —
" God's humbler instrument, if meaner clay,
Must share the honours of that glorious day."
The great Duke's son, who then reigned at Strath-
fieldsaye, impatiently grumbled out, '* You humbug !
That story was not brought from Hatfield. You
got it from a lying guide-book ! " Then from the
bookshelf he took down a topographical volume,
and pointed out the identical blunder which might
have misled his visitor. The best of the second
duke's stories was one about the Duke of Malakhoffs
shooting performance at Strathfieldsaye. During the
battue Malakhoff had missed everything. To flatter
his vanity and smooth his ruffled temper, the Duke
of Wellington caused a pheasant to be tied by its
leg to the top of a post, and put up Malakhoff with
his double-barrelled gun some thirty yards off. In-
stead, however, of firing in that position, the foreign
sportsman walked close up to the bird, almost touching
it with the muzzle, discharged both barrels into it
with the words, " Ne, cogmn!" "This," said the
382
Dizzy Risen from the Dead
Duke to his keeper the next day, "is the foreign
ofeneral who smoked to death in a cave five hundred
Arabs!" "Like enough, your Grace," was the
man's reply, "he'd be capable of anything!" The
second Duke of Wellington took the pride of a woman
or a child in securing at Strathfieldsaye an occasional
celebrity not belonging to his own world. Thus it
was that visitors to the place were surprised once at
the apparition in the drawing-room of Henry Irving,
at the height of his Lyceum triumphs. " Surely,"
murmured another guest into the host's ear, " it is
Dizzy come to life again ! " And indeed the actor
looked the part exactly. Those were the days in
which the second Duke recruited his house parties
from the company he met at Lady Dorothy
Nevill's Charles Street luncheons. In addition to
that hostess herself and her belongings, there came
the late Duchess of Wellington's kinsfolk of the
Taylour family, one at least of whom, a Crimean hero,
had served under the great Duke himself With
these were one of the most agreeable London
bachelors of his day, Mr. Newton, the police
magistrate ; Lord Randolph Churchill, then in the
prime of his social brightness and political enterprise ;
Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, a guest altogether after
his host's heart, the best raconteuVy and the lightest in
hand among conversationalists of his day.
383
CHAPTER XIV
FROM THE HAMPSHIRE AVON TO THE THAMES
Heron Court — The second and third Earls Malmesbury — Heron
Court anecdotes — The duel between O'Connell and Alvanley
— The American lady in Italy — Heron Court guests — Sir
Henry Drummond Wolff at Boscombe Tower — Henry Reeve's
Foxholes — The Longmans at Farnborough Hill — Sclater-Booth
(Lord Basing) and Disraeli — Farnborough Hill as the home
of the Empress Eugenie — Her household — Hazeley, the home
of Mrs. Singleton (Lady Currie) — Lady Strangford, her only
rival in conversational qualities — Matthew Arnold as the guest
of Lord and Lady Greville — John Evelyn's house at Wotton —
Mr. F. Leveson-Gower's Epsom parties at Holmbury — " Mr.
Simpson" at the Rookery — Mrs. George Grote and her
eccentricities — Henry Reeve and Mrs. Grote — Mrs. Craven —
Her admiration for General Gordon — Her imitations of public
men — Her comment on Palmerston — " Conversation " Sharpe
at Fridley Farm — The Fridley portraits — Sir James Mackintosh
— Marden Park — William Wilberforce and the French emigre —
"The Gallic temperament" — Marden's associations of Pitt —
Robert Lowe — Nelson's farewell at Merton — Henry Hope's
home, the Deepdene — Hope's influence on Disraeli's novels —
" Young Englandism " — The Duke of York's guests at Oatlands
Park — Francis Jeffrey — Lord Yarmouth — The Duchess of York
and Lady Culling — Thomas Raikes and the Duchess's pets
— Madame de Stael — Chiswick House — The Boyles — Sir
Humphry Davy — Cliveden — The meeting of Prince George
and Lord Bute — Cliveden's various owners — Other riverside
houses — Edmund Yates's parties at Marlow — Lichfield House —
Mr. and Mrs. John Maxwell (Miss Braddon) and their literary
guests.
384
k
Business-like Sport at Heron Court
THE social beginnings of fashionable Brighton
have been circumstantially traced back, in an
earlier chapter, to the Sussex home of the Pelhams,
Stanmer, half-way between George IV.'s Pavilion
and the scene of the first great victory won by
the Barons against Henry HI. The origin of
the best known among Hampshire watering-places
presents some analogy to the genesis of London-
super-mare. In other words, the same parental
relation filled by Stanmer to Brighton exists between
Heron Court, the home of the Malmesbury Earls,
and Bournemouth. On the eve of the Victorian
age, what is now Bournemouth was an expanse of
barren heath, broken by several cottages and half a
dozen houses. The earliest associations of Heron
Court, like those of Highclere Castle, were ecclesi-
astical. Highclere, as we have seen, belonged to the
Bishops of Winchester long before it passed to the
Herberts. The home of the Fitz- Harrises had
supplied the Priors of the neighbouring Christchurch
with a rural residence before the Earls of Malmesbury
made it a rendezvous of politicians, dandies, and
beauties. For ten months out of the twelve the
second possessor of the Malmesbury earldom never
moved from his Hampshire home, gathering beneath
his roof relays of representative men and women for
guests. The host was the keenest and, in a marked
degree, the most methodical sportsman of his time.
Dying in 1841, he left behind him a record of his
prowess with the gun during nearly half a century.
How many heads of game fell before every shot or
were missed, were all entered day by day. Visiting
385 BB
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
at Heron Court his former colleague in the Derby
Cabinet, the third Lord Malmesbury, Lord Beacons-
field was duly shown this book as a curiosity of
the place. He carefully went through it, remarking,
when he finally closed the volume, " The most extra-
ordinary monument of patience and sturdy character
I have ever seen." A sporting magnate of the old
school, this second Lord Malmesbury was conspicuous
among the most cultivated and broad-minded peers of
his period. The staunchest of Tories, when he spoke
of the English aristocracy as " the bulwark of the
nation," he used the word in its strictly etymological
sense, assuming the identity of an hereditary ruling
class with whatever was best and strongest in the
nation's life. " Who," at his dinner- table as well as
in the House of Lords, he asked, " but an aristocracy
trained from infancy in the hunting-field to fearlessness,
would not have been discouraged when Napoleon's
repeated success cowed Europe ? " "I feel," said at
Heron Court the third Lord Malmesbury, nineteenth-
century Foreign Secretary, " something of a filial
traitor, when, recalling my father's resistance to the
;/^io suffrage of 1832, I remember that, as a member
of the Cabinet, I took my part in framing the really
democratic measure of 1867, Lord Derby's leap in the
dark."
" Here," said the third Lord Malmesbury to a
Heron Court visitor, in the last years of his life,
indicating a spot near the house, " I had a strange
proof of the tricks that nerves may play upon the
bravest man. A keeper was loading Lord Jocelyn's
gun when the bursting of the barrel blew off two of
386
A Deal Extraordinary
the man's fingers. A doctor, who happened to be
in the house, at once came out ; we stood round to
see the operation and encouraged the patient, who
never flinched. The only one of us who gave in at the
sight was the hero of a hundred battles. Lord Raglan ;
he was so overcome that he rushed into the house
almost fainting." Of all the Heron Court hosts none
can have excelled as a raconteur the one now spoken
of. Whist being part of diplomatist's education, he
had played the game with or against the best per-
formers of his time, Lords Granville, Sefton, and Sir
Watkin Wynn. Several hundreds depended on the
rubber ; the decisive deal had just been made.
Turning to take up his hand. Lord Granville found
he had no cards. " I rather think," said Sir Watkin,
" I have too many cards " ; he certainly had, twenty-
six instead of thirteen, having inadvertently dealt
himself two hands. On this occasion one of the
players was Lord Alvanley, then connected with two
incidents in everybody's mouth ; he had been publicly
called by Daniel O'Connell "a bloated buffoon."
Hence, of course, a duel, in which Morgan O'Connell
represented his father. The Liberator's representative
fired before the giving of the signal. Alvanley
accepted the assurance of its being a mistake. Two
shots were then exchanged. Having been withdrawn
by his second, Colonel Damer, Alvanley, as he gave
a guinea to the hackney-coachman, said, " This not
for taking me, but for bringing me back." There had
been several differences in the hunting-field between
Alvanley and Lord Cardigan. On the opening day
of the Ouorn at Melton, Alvanley, with hat cere-
387
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
moniously doffed, rode up to Cardigan and said, *' I
hereby beg to apologise to you, not only for any past
offences, but for any I may commit in the ensuing
season." At the Heron Court dinner-table of this
epoch, the verdict in the Melbourne- Norton cause
cdlebre and the Whig rejoicings at Lord Melbourne's
acquittal were among the topics of talk. " I really
cannot see," drily observed a Tory guest, "why Lord
Melbourne should be so cock-a-hoop at a verdict
which only proves him to have had more opportunities
than any other man and to have made no use of
them."
Socially, at his Heron Court parties as well as in
London, Lord Malmesbury led the Tory peers in
recognising la belle Americaine as a princess in the
polite world. He had first become acquainted with the
representatives of this new social force in Rome.
Here a smart American Mrs. Malaprop, living in
the Via Babuino, near the Jesuit propaganda college,
asked him to come to her reception " in Baboon
Street, near the Pope propagating houses." Between
two and three generations ago Heron Court was not
more famous for its amusing table-talk than for the
good looks of some among its guests. These included
the Lady Pembroke of that period with her three
beautiful daughters, afterwards respectively Lady
Ailesbury, Lady Dunmore, and Lady Shelburne, also
a future bride. This last was the daughter of Sir
Lucius O'Brien, eventually Lord Inchiquin. She
became the wife of the second Lord Malmesbury 's
youngest son Charles, who, having taken the bit
between his teeth and decided on becoming a clergy-
388
A Popular Politician and Host
man, died Bishop of Gibraltar in 1874. In the
Heron Court company of the last century was one
of Lord Malmesbury 's former private secretaries, who,
in a degree scarcely second to his chief, contributed
to the fortunes of Bournemouth as a watering-place.
This was the happily still surviving Sir Henry
Drummond-Wolff, formerly Government Secretary
in the Ionian islands, and as such concerned in the
1862 negotiations for ofivinof the crown of Greece to
Queen Victoria's second son. Meeting him at Heron
Court, Disraeli at once recognised the serviceableness
to the Conservatives of his pen and himself. A little
later Sir Henry Wolff, at Boscombe Tower, possessed
a Hampshire home of his own, where he entertained,
among others, Dickens, who had long since recruited
him as an occasional writer for Household Words.
" So bright and clever a man, so neat a writer," said
Dickens on leaving, " ought not to have wandered
into Conservatism." At Boscombe Tower, Sir Henry
Wolff, by his courteous hospitalities to political foes
as well as friends, first secured the enjoyable popularity
on both sides which made him an ever-welcome figure
in public life. Thus his keen criticisims on Lord
Granville's foreign policy in the Commons did not
prevent his being a host with whom the Foreign
Secretary's brother became especially intimate, if not
at Boscombe, at Constantinople. " I looked upon
these attacks," said Mr. Leveson-Gower, "as only
in the way of business." At Boscombe, in the
Fourth Party days, when Protestantism was fluttered
by the so-called Errington mission to the Vatican, Sir
Henry Wolff arranged the mise en scene for his
389
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
appearances at Westminster as the champion of
England against Rome ; the un-masquer of a Cyrenaic
latitudinarian Hke Lord Granville, of a concealed
papist like Gladstone, and of a professed Romanist
like Lord Ripon.
Conspicuous also among literary hosts on the
Hampshire sea-board was Sir Henry Wolff's
neighbour, the registrar of the Privy Council, as
well as the editor of the Edinburgh Review, Henry
Reeve. In 1874, Reeve sold some thirty acres of
land possessed by him at Winkfield for ^6,000. With
that sum he built his Bournemouth house, Foxholes.
Completed in 1875, his Hampshire home continued
to attract cosmopolitan guests, literary and political,
till the close of its owner's active life. Here he
received his most frequent visitors, Charles Greville,
the diarist, whose journals he was afterwards to bring
out ; Abraham Hay ward, when a bird of passage
between his St. James's Street lodging and his
sister's, as already mentioned, at Lyme Regis in the
next county ; and J. T. Delane, during the years in
which Reeve's articles on foreign affairs, written for
the most part at Foxholes, remained a feature in
the Times of every Tuesday. At Foxholes, too,
took place the animated discussion between Reeve
and one of his innumerable foreign visitors on the
then projected Suez Canal, regarded by the Edinburgh
editor, among many others, as likely to be more than
prejudicial, in fact, absolutely destructive, to English
interests. At Foxholes he planned and partly
executed the initial opposition to the project, and
in 1875, chiefly with his own pen, denounced Disraeli's
390
The Camp on the Hill
purchase of the Khedive's shares. The master of
Foxholes had first improved any previous knowledge
of Hampshire when a guest at the house of his
proprietor, Thomas Longman. If Byron could call
John Murray "the Napoleon of publishers," the
nineteenth-century Thomas and William Longman
were the social princes of their guild. Two more
finished gentlemen were never seen at the covert side ;
two more courteous and discriminating judges of
writing never walked from Paternoster Row into the
Athenaeum Club. The Hertfordshire house of the
latter will be visited in due course. The elder
brother, outliving William by two years, continued
his hospitalities at Farnborough till 1879. With the
figure and seat of a neat horseman, he combined a
taste for sport of every kind and kept for years, as
well as himself hunted, a small pack of harriers.
Henry Reeve, who owed to Thomas Longman and
to the social opportunities that the Longmans provided
not less than he did to his connection with the Times
or to his position at the Privy Council office, was only
one among literary guests representing the best
thought and knowledge of the time. The local
visitors were quite as agreeable as, and sometimes
more interesting, than the metropolitan guests.
Farnborough . in the Longman days was the one
place to which invitations were coveted by the
contiguous Aldershot. The parties, made up from
the camp to the frequent dinners and the occasional
balls given at the Hill, were events in the military
year. Among the civilian hosts in the neighbourhood,
the most entertaining recalled by the present writer
391
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
was the first Lord Basing, better remembered, perhaps,
even now, as Sclater- Booth, one of DisraeH's House
of Commons lieutenants. During the early seventies
he happened to be among the dinner guests at Farn-
borough Hill. It was the period in which Dr.
Kenealy, having got into the House of Commons
as " Member for Orton," had at last found a day
for bringing forward his motion of censure on Lord
Chief Justice Coleridge. Disraeli's reply, a supremely
happy performance of its kind, contained some com-
pliments on his social demeanour to Coleridge.
These, as reported by the newspapers, described
the Lord Chief as not carrying into drawing-rooms
an air of " adamantine gravity." " I was sitting,"
said Sclater-Booth, "only a place or two off Disraeli
in the House ; the epithet I am sure which he used
was ' Rhadamanthine ' — a much better word."
Another M.P,, much Sclater-Booth's junior, with
something like contempt, expressed his dissent from
the emended version. " Pardon me," at this juncture,
from a few chairs' distance, said a voice whose
theatrical solemnity struck one's ear with an
impressively familiar ring, " my right honourable
friend is absolutely correct ; of course, I did say
Rhadamantine." The speaker was Disraeli himself.
Entering the room late, he had quietly taken an
inconspicuous seat at the dining-table. Some of
those who then heard his unexpected contribution to
the table-talk and some of his subsequent remarks,
must have mentally anticipated Mr. Arthur Balfour's
description of Lord Beaconsfield's conversation —
'• a bronze mask talking his own novels."
392
An Empress in Exile
Farnborough Hill, in the last century the most
refined and hospitable of genuinely English homes,
to-day has long since been transformed into a French
chateau. On the 9th of January, 1873, Napoleon III.
died at Camden House, Chislehurst. Six years later,
from Zululand, the same roof received the lifeless
body of his son. The Kentish village contained for a
time the remains of both. To-day these ashes rest in
the mausoleum raised by the widowed mother at
Farnborough Hill in 1888. Having purchased the
estate from the present Mr. T. Norton Longman, the
ex-Empress Eugenie had already made Farnborough
Hill her home. At the present time the palace built
by an English publisher is therefore the monument of
French Imperialism. The household presided over
by the bereaved lady has always been suffused by an
atmosphere of melancholy resignation. Its leading
spirit till lately was the most brilliant among the
former Napoleonic courtiers, the due de Bassano, not
less loyal in exile than he was superb in prosperity,
Active and vigorous even in advanced age, he
personally represented the Empress at any point in
Europe at which evidence seemed desirable of her
continued existence. He had the satisfaction of
seeing his son, the husband of an English-Canadian,
trained and ready to take his place in the councils of
Farnborough Hill. With the elder Bassano were
Madame Le Breton, the inseparable companion of her
mistress on every journey, at Farnborough ever
knitting by her side, and in harmony so exact that the
click of the different needles fused itself into a single
sound. The two ladies had known the same sorrows,
393
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
for Madame Le Breton's brother, General Bourbaky,
took her son Lucien, then under twenty, to the
Franco- Prussian war, promising to protect him and
bring him back safe ; in one of the first battles the lad
fell. Threatened with blindness, Madame Le Breton
recovered sight sufficiently to resume her daily
reading to the Empress. The due de Mouchy (Prince
Victor Napoleon), his wife one of the Murat
princesses, the former Bonapartist statesman, Rouher,
the Bonapartist lawyers, Grandperret and Busson
Billant, have been among the French visitors at
Farnborough Hill. The English have included the
present Queen of Spain, with her mother and her
aunt. Princess Christian. The extremity of the
Farnborough Park with its lake has been called by
the ex-Empress her Compaigne. Inside the house
are other mementoes of vanished splendour, bronzes
from Fontainebleau, miniatures from St. Cloud, an
inlaid writing-table from the villa at Biarritz. There,
too, at the end of the central hall, an enclosure,
consecrated to the Prince Imperial, contains a model
of the room prepared at Chislehurst for her son's
return from South Africa, to-day holding the young
man's books, knick-knacks, his portrait, life-size, by
a Viennese artist, and two paintings by Protais. In
one the Prince awaits the onset of the assegais ; in
the other he lies dead among the tall grasses.
Reversing the track of the august apparition at the
Farnborough dinner-table in the Longmans' days, let
us now visit the point which Disraeli had left for
the Longmans' dinner-party. This place, Hazeley,
near Farnborough, was then the rural home of the
394
Violet Fane and Lady Strangford
highly endowed lady who first won literary repute
under the pen-name of Violet Fane. Amid the
simple surroundings of her Hampshire house, her
natural grace and unstudied piquancy of talk delighted
a succession of visitors representing every kind of
intellectual distinction. At Hazeley she wrote
" Sophy : or, the Adventures of a Savage," the
remarkable novel which to-day conveys, by the
dialogues of its dramatis personce, a better idea of its
author's daily conversation than any formal memoirs
or letters which may ever see the light are likely to
do. Among her literary guests at Hazeley were
A. W. Kinglake and Laurence Oliphant. Much
converse with both these had influenced her style.
" In the best talk," said a French visitor to Hazeley,
Edmond Scherer, " there should be a certain delicacy
of bitter-sweet flavour, leaving the same kind of after-
taste in the mind that an olive with one's wine
conveys to the palate. For observations pitched in
the gentle key that gives that sweetened cynicism and
softened satire, Mrs. Singleton is unrivalled among the
well-bred intellectuelles of her time." The late Lady
Currie herself recognised at least her conversational
equal in one whom she met at political houses in
London, who once at least visited her at Hazeley, but
who as a talker will be best remembered in connection
with Stonor, the Oxfordshire house of her most
frequent host, Lord Camoys. This was the daughter
of Admiral Beaufort, Emily, who as Viscountess
Strangford lived till late in the last century at her
house, Chapel Street, Mayfair ; her casual utterances
on men and things blended epigram and insight. The
395
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
talk had turned on Sir Henry Layard, then
ambassador at Constantinople, and his earlier excava-
tions in the Euphrates valley. Apropos of his
discoveries on the site of the ancient Babylon, Lady
Strangford, with the naive demureness and in the
subdued tone that gave an emphasis of their own to
her remarks, said, " After all, when a man has a
firman from the Porte and several pick-axes, it would
be hard if he did not find something." The future
Lady Currie was not less effectively inimitable in her
way. Showing a visitor round her grounds at
Hazeley, she stopped for a moment opposite a little
wooden structure, inhabited by her favourite guinea-
pigs. "A sad instance," she murmured, "of male
selfishness. The fathers of the establishment, having
devoured their wives, have resolved themselves into a
sort of bachelors' club. I never saw them so happy
before."
During the last half of the nineteenth century the
Surrey and Berkshire district about Sunningdale i
abounded in social centres, forming the most agree- 1
able and characteristic feature of the time. The
present Lord and Lady Greville entertained political
or literary friends at most week-ends. That was the
period in which Matthew Arnold rurally recreated
himself, after the labours of school inspection, at the
summer home in the region which he loved with a
life-long affection. Lady Violet Greville was the
hostess beneath whose roof Arnold found social
inspiration exactly needed to show him in his full
charm. On one of these occasions he was sometimes
tempted to indulge in the anecdotal vein that, as a |
396
Matthew Arnold's Little Dinner
rule, he despised and eschewed. Soon after the
Balliol function connected with the completion of the
new hall in 1877, he met, at Lady Violet Greville's,
one who, like himself, had assisted at the opening
ceremony, but who, with a courage which he dared not
imitate, had found a sitting place on the altar steps
in the crowded building, during Archbishop Tait's
sermon. " I wished," said Arnold, " I could have
done it myself, but as a clergyman's son I felt it would
not be the right thing." Arnold's other personal
experience had reference to his official tour for report-
ing on the French educational system. His travelling
expenses had not been calculated upon too liberal a
scale. As the old saying has it, " II faut etre anglais
pour diner a cafe Riche ; il faut etre riche pour diner a
cafe anglais." At one of these places Arnold deter-
mined to have a little banquet before he left Paris,
" I had scarcely sat down to the good things," he said,
" before I saw enter some one whom I at first took
for Lord Granville " (then, as President of the Council,
Arnold's official chief). "It turned out to be his
brother, F. Leveson-Gower. When he came up to
my table I showed him my little menu, with the
remark that he would be able now to convince Lord
Granville as to the insufficiency of the Government's
allowance for my expenses."
In Surrey the historical place of honour among
country houses belongs to Wotton, the home of John
Evelyn, the diarist. Here his Tory dislike of the
1688 settlement caused him to retire six years later.
It was his own birthplace, sweetly environed with
delicious streams and woods. Here, with the leave of
397
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
the actual owner, his brother, he created a fish-pond,
an island, and other solitudes. Here he received
socially congenial guests well affected to the Stuart
cause. The house was partly destroyed by fire in
1856, but its most interesting contents, among them
the prayer-book, given on the scaffold to Arch-
bishop Juxon, by him presented to the diarist's
father-in-law, are still to be seen. The brother of
Lord Granville already mentioned, Mr. F. Leveson-
Gower, in the second half of the nineteenth century
added to the prettiest part of the Surrey hills one of the
many charming and hospitable abodes which now dot
this picturesque district. The view from Holmbury
includes not only the entire range of the Surrey hills,
but much of Sussex and Hampshire, with the outline
of the South Downs plainly visible in the near distance.
The Holmbury hospitalities formerly included a Derby
party. No saving of distance was effected by making
Holmbury instead of Pall Mall the starting point for
Epsom Downs. The drive, however, took the visitors
through a succession of delightful woodland scenes
and along a road neither so crowded nor so dusty as
the familiar cockney route. Not even from the
Durdans, Lord Rosebery 's villa, almost within sight
of the grand stand, did there issue forth race-goers
more distinguished than from Holmbury. The host
himself, indeed, seldom assisted in person at what
Palmerston called our national Isthmian games.
Accompanying on horseback his guests some part of
the way, Mr. Leveson-Gower generally found a quiet
ride home through the cool lanes and the grass-
bordered by-roads. Sometimes, when he met his
398
" No Place Like Home — bury "
returned visitors again at the dinner-table, he had
some quaint experiences to relate. Once, he has
recounted in his recent reminiscences, having turned
his horse's head round from the carriage conveying
Lord and Lady Spencer, the Duke and Duchess of
Westminster, and others, he stopped to make a call at
the Rookery, near Dorking, formerly the residence of
the economist, Malthus, more recently the possession
of Mr. Fuller. The men had all gone to Epsom.
The ladies were at luncheon, and promptly found the
visitor a place at their table. They mistook him, how-
ever, for a land surveyor named Simpson, who had
been expected to call, and as such saluted him. Would
Mr. Simpson take a cutlet or some chicken, and so
throughout the meal. The guest, occupied in making
himself agreeable, did not notice the mistake.
Presently the hostess, whom he had never seen before,
thought of looking at his card, discovered and declared
his identity. " I am sure," said one lady, " he was so
nice as Mr. Simpson that I scarcely like to know he
is some one else."
" There is no place like Home — bury," said one of
the many ladies (Lady Marian Alford or Miss Mary
Boyle), who, at the time now recalled, were Mr.
Leveson-Gower's guests. The opinion was shared by
countless men as well as women. Among the former
were, specially during the tenancy of Holmbury by
Mr. James Kowles, Benjamin Jowett, W. E. Glad-
stone, Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, and
Alfred Lord Tennyson, poet laureate. " I like and
love Gladstone," said Tennyson, "but I hate his
politics and his dealings with the Irish, all of whom I
399
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
wish were at the bottom of the sea." Among the
famous talkers whom Holmbury knew well was
Mrs. George Grote, the wife of the Greek historian,
sometimes with, sometimes without, her famous
husband. This remarkable lady affected a masculine
manner, to some extent a masculine dress ; she set it
all off by a more than masculine asperity of tongue.
On one occasion she arrived at Holmbury driving a
high dog-cart, with a coachman's cloak of many capes.
" Good heavens ! " she had been a few minutes before
overheard saying to a timid gentleman to whom she
had given a lift, " don't speak so loud or you'll frighten
the horse, and then Heaven only knows if he will ever
stop ! " When in the house and talking, it was her
habit to sit with one leg crossed over the other and
both as high upas possible. In that posture she would
lecture Dean Stanley on ecclesiastical history, Max
Mliller on Sanscrit epics, Count Saffi on Italian litera-
ture, any local expert in agriculture who might chance
to look in on the growing of turnips or the breeding of
Southdowns. The master of Holmbury, like others,
noticed that years sensibly softened the Radicalism of
both the Grotes, and quite destroyed Mrs. Grote's
democratic preferences. The lady's favourite sport was
the baiting of Mr. Henry Reeve. Your road," said
the Edinburgh editor, after entering her house rather
behind his time, "is so steep that the fly could hardly
climb it." "That," she rejoined, "is because you had
in your pocket the last number of the Edinburgh.''
A discussion between the two on some international
question elicited from the gentleman the exclamation,
" Another Grotius ! " The lady's response was imme-
400
Mrs. Craven on Everybody
diately, " Another Puffendorf ! " — a name happily
suggestive of Mr. Reeve's majestic portliness of
person and frilled exuberance of shirt-front. " Grota,
whence the word ' grotesque,' " had been Sydney
Smith's observation on this lady, who deserves to be
remembered for some kind actions as well as many
biting words. She never deserted any old friend of
her own sex who had fallen on evil days ; she left
Abraham Hayward ;!^i,ooo in her will.
Of conversational quality very different from Mrs.
Grote, was another lady much in request under the
intellectual roofs of the Surrey hills or the Thames
valley in the last century. Mrs. Craven's chief host
was Sir Mountstuart Grant- Duff, at whose hospitalities
at York House, Twickenham, we have yet to assist.
The daughter of the Marquis de la Feronnays, a
famous French diplomatist, she had first cousins in
all the great families of the Continent, and intimate
friends at every social or intellectual centre of dis-
tinction in the world. Wherever congrreo-ated the
Granvilles, the Cowpers, the Palmerstons, there was
her home. The breeding of England, combined
with the artistic temperament of Italy, found con-
versational or epistolary expression in the wit and
epigram that are French. Some specimens of her
talk and the personal estimates which were its most
animated feature may be recalled. Palmerston she
knew well, but failed, as many thought, happily or
even correctly to appraise. Gladstone, his intellectual
effervescence, his earnest rhetoric, and his Irish policy
she hit off to the life. " Heaven," she exclaimed,
•'defend Ireland from her mortal foe and preserve to
401 cc
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
me my mortal friend." Gladstone's most confidential
and sympathetic colleague, the inheritor of his political
principles and his moral resolution, Mr. John Morley,
personifies (she remarked) those traits of the English
character, good sense, firmness, and honesty which
Gladstone has done so much to obliterate. The
enthusiasm which four-score-years-and-two had not
extinguished expended itself in something verging on
idolatry for General Gordon. Yet Mrs. Craven could
understand the difficulty felt by English statesmen
like Lord Granville in according entire confidence
to one who seeks political and military guidance
in the Book of Isaiah. It was the chivalrous
simplicity of the man which fascinated her. As an
instance of this quality, she never wearied of Gordon's
excuse for refusing a late dinner invitation to Marl-
borough House : " I always go to bed at half-past
seven." " La femme la plus spirituelle que j'ai jamais
vu." The slight acquaintance with this remarkable
lady possessed by the present writer deprives his own
estimate of much importance. What, however, struck
me most about her, as I know it struck some others
too, was the evidence of an inner and deeper life,
entirely different from the surface of her existence,
which now and then in her talk seemed to well up from
the depths of her soul. Her social life was a continual
whirl. At the dinner-table people listened to one
to whom the production of conversational effects had
become second nature. If the company were theatrical,
later on in the evening one witnessed an amateur
actress of remarkable finish in some drawing-room
selections from the repertory of the Comedie Fran^aise;
402
Bagehot and " Conversation " Sharpe
or perhaps, amid her most intimate friends, a well-
bred imitation of the manners of different public men
she knew. Such were her reproductions of Lord
Granville apologising for his consanguinity with half
the noble houses of England. Such, too, were her
reminiscences of the great French Churchmen she
admired heart and soul — some sermon of Dupanloup,
some consultation between Lacordaire and Ravignan,
over the spiritual remedies to be applied to her
beloved but infidel France. Then would come her
rendering of the thin, hard, professorial secularism of
Paul Bert. In the hunting-field the most expert and
fearless horsewomen are sometimes not above asking
for a friendly lead over an exceptionally difficult fence.
In the drawing-room Mrs. Craven occasionally did
not disdain the same kind of initiative. On one
occasion, apropos of Palmerston, Walter Bagehot
had dwelt on that statesman's capacity for pro-
fiting by experience but inability to argue correctly
outside his daily occupations. " Exactly," was Mrs.
Craven's comment, " I have nothing but praise for his
belief in England, but he should remember that else-
where English methods have their risks as well as
advantages, and that English institutions are more
readily burlesqued than imitated."
Something might be said for discovering the earliest
home of country-house talk as a fine art beneath one
of Surrey's rural roofs. In the Dorking district lived,
during the first half of the nineteenth century, at
Fridley Farm, Richard (better known as " Conversa-
tion ") Sharpe. He might also have been called
•' Single-speech " Sharpe ; for having made a fortune
403
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
in business with Samuel Boddington as his partner,
he went into Parliament, caught the Speaker's eye,
delivered his soul, and was never heard of at St.
Stephen's afterwards. The most instructive friend ever
possessed by the present writer, Abraham Hayward,
had been of the company at Fridley Farm. Here the
portraits in the dining-room were limited to the famous
men with whom Sharpe had lived. Johnson, Burke,
and Reynolds were all from the brush of Sir Joshua
himself. To Sharpe, Reynolds had confided having
taken from the print of a halfpenny ballad in the
street an effect in one of his pictures which pleased
him more than any he had produced. The Henderson
at Fridley Farm was by Gainsborough, and by Opie
the Sir James Mackintosh. Mackintosh, though in
society as in political life too obviously didactic,
too artificial in his manners and conversation, im-
pressed all the Fridley guests as the most brilliant
and instructive talker they had ever been acquainted
with. " He had," said Hayward to me, "read every-
thing, and could on occasion repeat most of what
he had read." Pursuing our Surrey progress in a
north-easterly direction, we make a short stop at a
house, rich in diverse memories, standing in the
prettiest grounds between Caterham and Godstone.
Marden Park, more recently the property of the
Clayton baronets, depends chiefly for its latter day
notoriety on its yearlings sales. It was on one of
these occasions that Lord Randolph Churchill, soon
after he had fixed Parliamentary attention, first found
himself pointed out as a personage by the crowd.
Nearly a hundred years earlier the place had con-
404
" Fanchon, Dansez "
stantly received two Parliamentarians, some of whose
opinions the Fourth Party leader inherited. The
Harden host of the eighteenth century was William
Wilberforce. His ** Practical View of Christianity"
had not long been out. It had at once become an
extraordinary success. Its author, finding his home
at Kensington Gore too close to Westminster for
rest after his labours, bought a new country place,
partly at least out of the profits of his book. Knowing
from Chatham's contemporaries the authentic tradition
of the elder Pitt, Wilberforce, at the house-warming
dinner given to his anti-slavery colleagues at Harden,
remarked, " I have no doubt whatever that as an
orator Chatham's son is superior to Chatham." Bishop
Samuel Wilberforce's mimetic and histrionic power is
not yet forgotten. It was an inheritance from his
father, the effect of whose anecdotes about the younger
Pitt was heightened by the accompaniment of felicitous
gesture and artistic intonation. During the first
French Revolution, soon after Harie Antoinette's
execution, an e7nigrd called on Pitt in Downing Street.
The talk was naturally on the horrors recently
witnessed in Paris. The visitor, overcome by his
thoughts and melted into tears, sobbed out, "Ah,
Honsieur Pitt, la pauvre Reine, la pauvre Reine ! "
The Frenchman was still weeping, when a new idea
seemed to possess him. " Nevertheless, Honsieur
Pitt, you must see my little dog dance. Fanchon,"
he called out, "dansez, dansez." The man himself
set the example, and further encouraged the animal
with a little fiddle. The hilarity involved so much
noise that a Treasury messenger, half expecting to
405
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
find the stranger had assaulted the statesman, rushed
into the room. What he saw was the minister
struggh'ng with convulsions of merriment. "It was
all," observed Wilberforce, " the Gallic temperament."
Thus the grave and holy Bourdaloue, appointed to
preach before Louis XIV. and the Court at Versailles,
had not appeared when the hour came. Messengers,
sent to summon him, and finding the door locked and
their knocking unnoticed, looked through a chink in the
panel. What they saw was the good bishop skipping
about his room to the sound of a musical instrument.
Having effected an entry, they exclaimed, " Mon-
seigneur, Monseigneur, the king waits for you." " Is
it possible ? " replied the pious prelate, continuing his
dance. " The truth is, I was so exhausted by fasting
as to be unequal to preaching without some little
refreshment of this kind first."
Marden has more associations of Pitt than this
anecdote. The host and his political visitors had
talked long and seriously overnight. In the morning,
while awaiting breakfast, Wilberforce took Ryder,
afterwards Lord Harrowby, round the garden. The
early-rising Pitt had been before them. In a flower-
bed they detected something which was not a flower.
" It proved," said Wilberforce, " to be a portion of
Ryder's very old opera-hat which Pitt had planted
in the soil near the geraniums." A little later on
the same day, walking with his host near the since
celebrated Marden paddock, Pitt confided to Wil-
berforce his vain passion for Eleanor Eden, finishing
the recital with the words *' Perhaps in love, as in
war, discretion is the better part of valour." At
406
Celebrities in Surrey Houses
Marden, too, Burke, on one occasion asked to meet
Pitt, expressed to Wilberforce deathless gratitude for
the instruction and comfort derived by him from the
" Practical View," passing as the book had done to
five editions in six months, and later through twenty-
five editions in the United States. With the
exception of the already mentioned Lord Randolph
Churchill, the one nineteenth-century statesman
occasionally to be met with in Marden Park was
Robert Lowe, not yet Lord Sherbrooke, then occupy-
ing a little house in the adjacent village of Warlingham,
and on Saturday afternoons often riding his celebrated
white horse through the park. Another Surrey home,
the scene of memorable meetings and tragic partings,
lay at Merton, Here, on September 13, 1805 —
inauspiciously a Friday — his adieux were made by
Nelson to Lady Hamilton, and among other friends
to his brother William. A few days earlier, dining
with Pitt in Downinor Street, the ereat admiral, with
the wetted end of a dinner napkin, had indicated
the exact point in the Mediterranean at which he
counted on coming up with the French and Spanish
fleets. It was at Merton that he offered up his
farewell prayer, committing to " the great God,
whom I adore, the issues of Trafalgar and the
protection of, those so dear to me whom I leave
behind. His will be done. Amen."
Among the subjects discussed at the most literary
of the Surrey houses yet visited, " Conversation "
Sharpe's Fridley, was Schlegel's " Critique on
Flaxman's Designs for Dante." The sculptor,
himself among the guests, showed a modest pride
407
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
at his preference for Dante over Milton being
commended by the leader of intellectual Germany.
** If," said Flaxman, " I were to do my work over
again it would be done far better. But in one thing
I know I am right ; my model for the drapery was
the common cloak of the lower classes in Italy. Mr.
Hope, for whom I executed these designs, the best
possible judge on such a matter, confirmed my view
of this garment as undoubtedly the same as that
generally used in the days, not only of Dante, but
of Virgil." Before descending upon the Surrey
houses in the Thames valley, we pause for a moment
at the famous and beautiful home of the accomplished
and erudite patron who gave Flaxman the commission
just mentioned. In the boudoir of that patron's Surrey
house the Flaxman designs were placed. The Deep-
dene belonged to Thomas Hope, the author of " Anas-
tasius," the father of three sons, Henry, Adrian, and
Alexander Beresford, all of whom afterwards became
well known in society or politics. It then descended
to the eldest of these sons, Henry ; remaining the
residence of his widow for life, it passed afterwards
to her grandson, Lord Francis Clinton, whose
mother, the Duchess of Newcastle, was Henry
Hope's daughter. The place is now (September,
1906), let to Lily, Duchess of Marlborough, and was
inhabited by that lady and her former husband,
Lord William Beresford, the well-known sportsman,
till the latter's death in 1900. Meanwhile some of
the Deepdene's literary treasures had gone to Lady
Hayter, since Lady Haversham. Amongst these
papers was the manuscript of the well-known lines
408
Young England's Birthplace
on the letter H, often attributed to Lord Byron,
sometimes to Maria Edgeworth, but really, it would
seem, beyond doubt, the composition of Miss
Fanshawe.
The foundation of Benjamin Disraeli's pecuniary
fortunes has been seen in an earlier chapter to suggest
associations with Carnanton, the Cornish home of
the Willyamses. The literary and political movement
resulting in the formation of the Young England party
first shaped itself in the Surrey mansion of Henry
Hope. Here met together the originals of the
leading characters in the first novel of the Disraelian
trilogy opening with " Coningsby " and ending with
" Tancred." The poetical language conveying the
dedication of the best known of these works only
embodies an historical fact. The grlades and ofalleries
of the Deepdene did witness not only the conception
but in greater part the execution of " Coningsby."
It was Henry Hope, son of him who had written
" Anastasius," and raised the lordly pleasure house
of art in the Dorking district, that urged Disraeli's
treatment in literary form of those ideas and themes
frequently discussed by himself and his guests. The
natural rulers of England were the aristocracy sup-
ported by the people. The territorial class formed
the one stable element in the constitution. Capitalists
were mushrooms, springing up in the early morn,
disappearing as soon as the dew was off the grass.
The owners of the land should and might be the
objects of an unforced loyalty from farmers and
peasants alike. A return to the old ways by the
governing class would transform that traditional
409
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
feeling into a principle of active life. Much of what
could be done in this direction had been shown by
the tractarian successes of Anorlican Oxford. Such
were the ideas whose systematic development began
in the spring of 1844 at the Deepdene dinner-table
and in the Deepdene library. At the time of his
first becoming known to Henry Hope, D'Israeli the
younger, as he was then styled, had achieved only
an unenviable notoriety. His acquaintance with
Lord John Manners, the Henry Sidney of " Con-
ingsby," had not yet ripened into the friendship which
led to and was cemented by the visits at Belvoir
Castle. None of the great people who there first
noticed the Jew lad had been met. But for the
Surrey Maecenas who first saw Benjamin Disraeli's
great qualities and who made his beautiful house
his guest's second home, the future Lord Beaconsfield
might never have secured so much as a fair social
start. The combination of Young England and Old
Judsea, of visionaries in the State, and of dandies
from the Alfred Club, was gradually dissolved. Its
fruits remained. The popular Conservatism that
throughout the last portion of the nineteenth century
proved the greatest of political forces, had been
cradled between fifty and sixty years earlier at the
Deepdene, was indeed but Young Englandism trans-
figured to suit practical electioneering needs, just as
the Deepdene politicians themselves were descended
from Bolingbroke, who had sketched the outline of
his " Patriot King," lying between the hay-cocks of
his favourite suburban Tusculum.
The historical parent of the twentieth-century
410
Setting the Thames on Fire
smart country house has already been seen in the
Brighton Pavilion. Other royal progenitors of the
modern institution may be found in the Thames
valley of the same period. Oatlands Park, near
Weybridge, to-day the well-known hotel, when
occupied by the Duke of York till his death in 1827
became the stately pattern for fashionable hospitalities
on the banks of the Thames. The Chinese fishing
temple of George IV. at Virginia Water saw no
guests outside the little coterie with which his volup-
tuous retirement was passed. The visitors at Oatlands
completely mirrored the modes and mode-makers of
the day. The most imposing of the guests, the diarist,
Charles Greville, managed the Duke's stables. In his
account of the place he dwells rather too much on its
peculiarities and inconveniences ; he is almost silent
about those persons in the company who did not
belong to his own set. The Oatlands Park "week-
ends " brought together, as Raikes said, every one
who was anybody. A little before five o'clock p.m.
there started from White's Club, in St. James's, a
string of chaises so long as to monopolise the road.
Among those who thus journeyed down were two
distinct companies. The older group comprised
Lords Erskine and Lauderdale, the Duke of Dorset,
Warwick Lake, the richest commoner of his time,
Torrens and Raikes Currie, the father of the late
Lord Currie. Others, of junior standing, were Lords
Berkeley, Foley, Craven, Hertford, Worcester,
Charles Greville himself, his contemporary and rival,
alike in politics and society, Thomas Raikes, Sir
Henry Cooke, General Anson, afterwards Indian
411
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
Commander-in-chief, Alvanley, the witty viveur, and,
towards the close of the host's Hfe, Beau Brummell.
When these fine gentlemen reached their destination
they were sometimes surprised by the attention forth-
coming from the royal hosts to a visitor who many
of them had never seen before. This was a short,
stout little gentleman, some five feet six inches high,
with a very red face, very black hair, even blacker
eyes, a countenance so animated and gay, a step so
light and fantastic, that they might have been those of
the most volatile and careless of mature striplings about
town. This guest, however, was Francis Jeffrey,
editor of the Edinburgh Review, which he had already
succeeded in making a true reflection of the Whig
character itself. Some time later he was to be the
first British litterateur to contract a famous American
marriage by finding a wife in the grand-niece of John
Wilkes, Miss Charlotte Wilkes, of New York. The
most magnificent of those invited had not yet come.
The future Marquis of Hertford, then Lord Yarmouth,
it was whispered, could not have started to time from
Piccadilly, as he had previously accompanied Jackson,
the pugilist, to see Harry Harmer, the coppersmith,
at a prize-fight, then in every one's mouth, pound into
a jelly the great " fancy " champion, Jack Ford. The
belated peer was none other than the original of
Monmouth in " Coningsby," of Steyne in " Vanity
Fair," the husband of the danseuse, Maria Fagniani,
the honour of whose paternity rested between George
Selwynand "Old Q."
Had the great gentlemen brought any of their
womenkind to Oatlands ? Among her own sex
412
A Kangaroo as a Pet
the Duchess of York seldom invited more than Lady
Anne Culling and her three daughters. Of these, the
eldest, having become Lady Worcester, died in the
flower of her youth and beauty. Domestic effects of
the pure womanly kind were not much in the Oat-
lands line during the York dispensation. No element
of pathos, however, was wanting when, for the first
time after her daughter's death, the bereaved mother
found herself in the Oatlands drawing-room, pouring
out her grief to the royal Duchess, in whom she had
years ago learned to recognise not only the queen
of a glittering set, but the most sympathetic and
genuine of women. On the day selected for our
present visit, no lady of any degree has yet made
her bow to her Grace of York. There is still some
time before dinner will be served. The Duchess
takes Thomas Raikes, the silkiest of the Oatlands
" tame cats," round her flower beds, paddock, and
kennels. In the garden is a menagerie crowded with
eagles and, the Duchess's special favourites, macaws.
A herd of kangaroos and ostriches appear from
another quarter ; on the lawn before the windows of
the royal boudoir these animals are soon joined by a
troop of monkeys. To-morrow morning, soon after
daybreak, a kangaroo and an ostrich will stroll
together into " Pandy " Raikes' bedroom, awake him
from his beauty-sleep and leave him in terror till " old
Dawe," the footman, providentially appears. Raikes
is far too finished a courtier to hint a complaint. At
the breakfast- table he says, " If I like one creature
more than another it is a kangaroo, and I prefer
an ostrich even to a kangaroo ; while there is
413
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
nothing as a bedroom sentinel to equal a strong-
lunged macaw." The good Duchess smiles pleasantly.
When she dies she puts down Raikes for two macaws
in her will. The explanation of Greville's slightly
disparaging, if perfectly respectful, estimate of the
Duchess of York is that this lady did not appreciate
mere social smartness, however exalted and profligate,
as highly as was done by some of those about her.
She was even once, it is said, detected by John Wilson
Croker and other of his lordship's parasites, laughing
at the nickname of " Red-herrings," which his ruby
whiskers and Byron's "Waltz" had fastened upon
Lord Yarmouth, afterwards the Marquis of Hertford,
the most magnificent of libertines who ever threw
off a mistress or bowed before a king.
One lady, and she of world-wide fame, in addition
to the already mentioned Lady Anne Culling, did
occasionally visit Oatlands. The first Napoleon had
recently instructed Fouche not to allow " that jade "
Madame de Stael to inhabit Paris, or even come
within forty leagues of it. That bitterness of hatred,
entirely passing the power of words to describe,
between England's arch-foe and the first French-
woman of her time sufficed, of course, to open to the
lady any English house she chose to enter. The
Epicene, as the anti-Jacobin had styled her, herself the
personification of aristocratic partialities, has to-day
gathered round her a little circle of her Oatlands
admirers, and is amusing them with a murmured
caricature of Lord Yarmouth as the sensual personi-
fication of patrician pomposity and pride. Presently,
by some glowing tributes to the great qualities of the
414
From Villa to Asylum
Whig nobles, she draws John Wilson Croker, Yar-
mouth's dme damnde, who walks up to Sir John
Bowring and says : " Shall I tell you where I last
and for the first time saw that woman? She had
received me early in the morning, sitting most
decorously in her bed, writing, and with her night-cap
on ; her two bright black eyes smiled as benignantly
as they could, but her face had not been made up for
the day, and really looked as ghasdy as the grave and
as ugly as sin." Some years later, not at Oadands,
Croker, who had been in Paris while Madame de Stael
lay a-dying, amused the country house visited by him
on his return to England, with relating how the ruling
passion proved strong in death. ^ The lady, having
begged that her last moments might be undisturbed,
ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought her.
Among these was the due de Richelieu's. " And,"
she indignantly said to the servant, " you sent away
the due } Hurry, fly after him, bring him back.
Though I die to the world, I live for him."
" Too small to inhabit and too large to hang to
one's watch," was Hervey's well-known description of
another among royalty's riverain homes, not less
interesting in its way than Oatlands Park. This was
the little building raised by Lord Burlington (the
builder of Burlington House, Piccadilly), subsequendy
sold by the Duke of Devonshire to Dr. Tuke, the
alienist, as a private asylum for the insane. The villa
of Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, exacdy copied
from a Palladian building at Vicenza, by the addition
of two wings in the middle of the eighteenth century,
expanding itself into Chiswick House, became a social
415
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
centre as famous as Oatlands and of associations
more intellectual. Alexander Pope, from the neigh-
bouring Twickenham, was its frequent guest. Another
poet. Gay, was its laureate. The singer of " The
Seasons," Thomson, celebrated the place and its
company. Horace Walpole constantly inspected the
Vandykes and curios with which the rooms over-
flowed. In 1767 one of the great artist's master-
pieces, the portrait of Charles I., so impressed a
foreign lounger through the gallery, that after musing
for a few moments before the picture, he said, " II a
I'air du malheur." This foreigner was Jean Jacques
Rousseau ; his exile in England was then coming to
a close. Living in the village of Chiswick at the time,
he had been shown over the great house by the
Bishop of Peterborough. Among the portraits which
were once at Chiswick House, and which are now
divided between Burlington House and Chatsworth,
is one bearing the legend, " Lady Dorothy Boyle,
once the comfort, the joy, the pride of her parents,
the admiration of all who saw her, the delight of all
who knew her." The story of her life was a, happily
short, tragedy. The picture was made from a sketch,
drawn seven weeks after Lady Dorothy's death, by
her mother. This daughter of the Boyles had, by an
unhappy marriage to the Duke of Grafton's son,
become Lady Euston. Her sister. Lady Charlotte,
also, of course, represented in the family portraits, by
a more auspicious union married Lord Hartington,
became the mother of the fifth Duke of Devonshire,
of Lords Richard and George Cavendish, of a
daughter (afterwards Duchess of Portland), and
416
A Waterway of Fashion
brought to the Cavendishes not only their Piccadilly
mansion but vast properties in Ireland. At Chiswick
House, though not in the same room, died Charles Fox,
in 1806, and George Canning, twenty-one years after.
The catafalque-like bed in which Fox expired stood
in a room opening upon the entrance-yard. Canning
breathed his last in the upper storey of the left wing,
full in view of the cedars on the lawn. Among nine-
teenth century celebrities often seen at Chiswick
House was Sir Humphry Davy, the inventor
(1816) of the safety-lamp, the pioneer of electrical
science, the freshness of whose appearance suggested
that he had solved the mystery of perpetual youth, a
rapid and animated talker, the husband of a rich
widow (Jane Apreec), ubiquitous in the smart country
houses of her time, so dark a brunette as to be called
by Sydney Smith " brown as a dry toast." Made a
baronet in 18 18, Davy owed not a little of his
country-house popularity to his lectures on agricul-
tural chemistry, opening as these did a fresh era in
farming.
The social cult of the River Thames, as the instances
already mentioned suggest, originated with a royal
source and has been stimulated by Court exemplars.
The stream itself has proved a distinctly democratic and
levelling agency. in the polite system. Its associations
remain predominantly aristocratic till the middle of the
Victorian age. The possession of the Duke of West-
minster's Cliveden by an American millionaire symbo-
lises the other social changes effected at several points
on the Thames shore. After its erection by George
Villiers, Charles II.'s Duke of Buckingham, the
417 DD
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
most notable incident in its story was the well-
known meeting for the first time, caused by a shower
of rain, of the prince who was to become George III.
and his future minister. Lord Bute, at the card-table
within its walls. Before its occupation by Frederick,
Prince of Wales, George III.'s father, it had
been improved by the Earl of Orkney, to whom the
place had come as part of his wife's dowry. The
terrace in front of the house, higher than that of
Windsor Castle, was begun by Orkney and extended
by George III.'s father. On the 22nd of May,
i795> between ten and eleven o'clock, through a
servant's carelessness, burst out the fire which Lord
Inchiquin, one of the house-party at the time, described
in a letter still extant. The flames began just as he
was going to bed. By the time they were extinguished
the building was completely gutted, and Lady Orkney
left "without a ring, a trinket, or a shift." The
rebuilder of Cliveden in 1830 was Sir George War-
render, one of the founders of the Garrick Club, best
remembered to-day by Theodore Hook's punning
allusion to his epicurean tastes and hospitalities,
" Sir Gorge Provender." That bon vivant made his
dinners the despair of contemporary hosts and the
envy of the professional diner-out. After the term of
its Warrender ownership, Cliveden became the
possession of the Duke of Sutherland, whose
hospitalities, refined by the grace, skill, and accomplish-
ments of the Duchess, gave the Thames-side palace
its modern fame and did something more than merely
perpetuate the reputation for good cheer which first
made it so desirable a resort under Sir George
418
Cliveden, Glenisland, and Fieldhead
Warrender, In 1845 the building once more fell by
fire. It was raised up again by its ducal owner, himself
to be succeeded by another duke, his Grace of West-
minster, who in 1890 sold it to the inevitable money-
king from the States. In Mr. Astor's hands Cliveden
has become the riverside social centre for the fashion
and intelligence of the Anglo-Saxon world. It may
continue to be so now that it is the home of Mr. and
Mrs. Astor junior.
Chief among the riparian hosts in this neighbour-
hood to carry on the Cliveden tradition have been
General Owen Williams at the Temple, and the
Oxford oarsman and athlete, Mr. W. H. Grenfell, at
Taplow Court. These are but two names belonging
to an innumerable and a well-known list. Sir Roeer
Palmer, one of those who charged at Balaclava,
entertaining at Glenisland, Maidenhead, Sir George
Wombwell, Harrington Trevelyan, and other old
comrades in arms, popularised the stream with the
Army, and so promoted the military clubs which
are now among the features of its shores. The
open house held by the kindly Hammersleys rather
higher up the river, and the literary-aquatic gather-
ings of the accomplished Mr. R. C. Lehmann, at
Fieldhead, have been institutions almost as historical
as the Oxford and Cambridge training period or
Henley week itself, to both of which, indeed, they
had become indispensable as social accessories. As
Kinor Edward VI I. 's Court has been moved to
Windsor, so, between the beginning of spring and
the end of autumn, in fine weather King Edward
VI I. 's society has collected beneath some of these
419
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
smart and hospitable roofs. Throughout a portion of
that period the Upper Thames at Marlow flowed
past another house, the property of an owner not
belonging to the Court set, but not on that account
the less accessible to countless friends and, at his
zenith, less sought after. During most of the years
between 1876 and 1894, Edmund Yates, with his
highly endowed wife, received, close by Marlow
Lock, a succession of guests at least as interesting as,
and not less representative than, any of the riparian
companies already mentioned. Poerio and his fellow-
captives in Neapolitan dungeons, still feeble from
confinement and cruelty ; Mrs. Beecher Stowe, of
*' Uncle Tom's Cabin "; Garibaldi, in his crimson
blouse ; David Livingstone ; or, among those sum-
moned to delight visitors with their art, Malibran,
Lablache, Rossini, Donizetti ; among philanthropists
Lord Shaftesbury, the emancipator of the white
slaves ; Garrison, the emancipator of the black, have
all ennobled with their presence the Thames-side
house as well as the London palace of the Leveson-
Gowers. The Boucicaults, the Bancrofts, Henry
Irving, J. L. Toole, Francis C. Burnand, Arthur W.
A'Beckett, Arthur Griffiths, Harold Power, the former
colleague of the host at the Egyptian Hall entertain-
ment in the middle of the last century, Edward Dicey,
Louis Jennings, a Quarterly Reviewer, formerly a
writer for Printing-house Square, afterwards editor of
the New York Times, Bruce Seton, and Charles
Wentworth Dilke, were only some among the intellec-
tual workers for the public amusement or instruction
who have brought away pleasant memories of good
420
Uncle Sam in Clover
cheer and miscellaneously animated talk from the
riverside home of the man whose novels are as worthy
a monument of his abilities as the weekly newspaper
which survives its founder and literary creator. Many
of those novels contain specimens of Edmund Yates's
conversational smartness at its best, e.g., " To pay a
tradesman to whom a long account is owing a ^5
note is like giving a wet brush to a very old hat. It
creates a temporary gleam of comfort, but no more."
With the money made by his American tour that
helped to found the World, Edmund Yates brought
back a large acquaintance with American cousins of
every class. These included such typical persons as
Samuel Ward, the chief of bon vivants at Delmonico's,
the king of the Lobby at Washington, and the earliest
of the Yankee "tame cats" in great English houses,
from Dalmeny in Midlothian to the Rothschild palaces
in Buckinghamshire. American smartness was then
only beginning to be a social force in fashionable
England. No Thames-side house was more useful
to the Yankee visitors of that day than that of
Edmund Yates and his highly endowed wife. Lower
down the river than Wargrave, Goring, and Marlow,
during the same period as the cosmopolitan hospi-
talities just recalled, was Lichfield House, Richmond.
Here, after strenuous years of publishing work in
Fleet Street, John Maxwell, at one time the literary
adviser of James Johnstone, the owner of the
Standard, settled down to the pleasant life of a
Surrey squire. In 1874 he had married the lady
whose novels crowned the edifice of his publishing
fame, Miss Braddon ; as Mrs. Maxwell, she did the
421
From Hampshire Avon to the Thames
honours of his pleasant home on the borders of
Richmond Park. Like her master in the art of
literary romance, Bulwer Lytton, she enlarged her
earlier reputation by a successful experiment in a new
department of fiction (designed and executed at Lich-
field). " Ishmael," a study of character under the
Second Empire in France, was to the ** Lady Audley's
Secret" series what "The Parisians" had been to
earlier works by the author of " Pelham," " Zanoni,"
and " Eugene Aram." Bulwer Lytton's son, the first
Earl Lytton before he became Indian Viceroy (1876),
Shirley Brooks, James Hannay, afterwards Consul
at Barcelona, Mortimer Collins, the most musical
Thames-side versifier of his time, George Augustus
Sala, the most thoroughly trained of workmen in
the Dickens school, and Charles Lever were among
those who bequeathed literary associations to Mr. and
Mrs. Maxwell's Surrey dwelling.
422
CHAPTER XV
FROM OSTERLEY TO ASCOT
Lord Petersham — Osterley Park — Lady Jersey's parties — Lady
Melbourne — Lord Byron — The future Emperor Napoleon IIL,
aged twenty-one — Lady Jersey's troubles — Modern Osterley —
Sion House — Edward Irving — Henry Drummond — The con-
ferences at Albury — " Honeymoon Hall " — Lord North and
Colonel Barre at Bushey Park — Charles James Fox at St.
Anne's Hill — Fox and Rogers in Paris — Mrs. Fox in the
cupboard — Fox at Holland House — Gibbon's and Lavater's
impressions of Fox — Earl (Lord John) Russell at Pembroke
Lodge, Richmond — Owen, Dickens, and Forster — Reminis-
cences of Napoleon HL and Carlyle — John Bright as the
guest of Sir Coutts Lindsay at Shepperton — Strawberry Hill —
Lady Carlingford and her husbands — Mr. Henry Labouchere's
parties at Pope's Villa — Sir M. E. Grant-Duff at York House —
Lord Reay — The Oxford movement — E. B. Pusey — Pusey
House — Nuneham — Mrs. Montagu's Sandilands — The Country
House era of Oxford — The academic parties of Jowett, Pattison,
and Wynter — Jowett anecdotes — Lord Granville's account of
Bishop Wilberforce's death — Mr. Ralli's parties at Cranleigh —
Lord Kitchener — Lord Rendel's Hatchlands — Sarsden Rectory
— Anecdotes of Bishop Wilberforce — Lord Rosebery's guests at
the Durdans— Frank Lawley — Mr. Angerstein — The Marquis of
Hastings.
AMONG country houses bordering upon the
metropolitan area, Osterley is neither less
famous nor interesting than Oatlands or Chiswick.
While the fashionable procession of chariots and
423
From Osterley to Ascot
curricles, already described, was making its way from
Pall Mall or Piccadilly to Oatlands Park, there drove
up to some park gates not far from Oatlands a noble
dandy, who habitually lived and moved in a state
surpassed by none and approached by few even of
the Regency bucks. He never left his quarters near
St. James's Street before 6 p.m. When at that hour
he moved abroad, he entered a brown carriage, drawn
by brown horses, with servants in brown liveries.
This was Lord Petersham, the inventor of a great-
coat which, named after him, had lately cut out
a garment of the sort brought into vogue by
Beau Brummell. If, on reaching Osterley Park, he
apologises to his hostess for being late, his excuse is
that he has been occupied from an early hour in
devising a particular sort of blacking which, he
assures Lady Jersey, must eventually supersede every
other. His very particular snuff mixture has long
since made the fortune of tobacconists ; he is also the
original author of the china mania that endured to our
own day. No metal contrivances, however bejewelled
and precious, for holding this splendid patrician's snuff ;
nothing will do but a light blue Sevres box. Another
guest catching sight of it, expressed his admiration.
" Yes," languidly drawls its owner, " nice enough for
summer, but would never do for winter wear." He
is, in fact, the reputed possessor of a snuff-box for
every day in the 365. A motley company, indeed, of
lords, ladies, wits, ambassadors, statesmen, buffoons,
and butts had availed themselves of the Osterley
invitations when George IV. called the dance and
his parasites paid the piper. Every one laughs at a
424
Byron's Riverside Courtship
certain lawyer, poor old " Vice " Leach, attempting to
play the fine gentleman. The hostess can scarcely
control her amusement when she sees him on horse-
back, posing as a squire of dames, while suffering
from an attack of lumbago which is, as the great lady
pleasantly remarks, " a grievous enemy to gallantry
and address." Here, too, are Erskine (a professional
talker like Macintosh, but with a fatal habit of repeating
his stories, his epigrams, his " wise saws," his " modern
instances "), and a famous fox-hunting squire, known
as "Cheek Chester," who gratifies Lord Byron at the
close of the evening by admitting that, though a poet,
he drinks like a man. Among the ladies the most
noticeable, after the hostess, is Lady Melbourne, called
by Byron "as fresh as if only sixteen summers had
tiown over her, instead of four times that number,"
and with her her daughter, Emily Mary Lamb (who,
having first married in 1805 the fifth Earl Cowper,
in 1839 found a second husband in the famous Lord
Palmerston). It was Lady Melbourne, described by
her second son William, afterwards Prime Minister,
as not merely clever and engaging but sagacious
beyond all other women, that struck Byron as a
sort of modern Aspasia, uniting the energy of a man's
mind with the tenderness and delicacy of a woman's.
As seen this afternoon at Osterley, adjusting her
feathers in the looking-glass above the mantelpiece,
she wears on her still beautiful face the exact
expression caught by Reynolds in the picture,
" Maternal Affection," of herself and her eldest son.
At one of Lady Jersey's Osterley parties, too. Lady
Melbourne presents to Lord Byron the Miss Milbanke,
425
From Osterley to Ascot
her niece, who, after having refused him, as well as
some half a dozen others once, eventually became the
poet's wife. Other foreign notabilities of the time
at Osterley were Count Sebastiani, the great
Napoleon's ambassador at Naples and London,
afterwards, " the Cupid of the Empire," and
Napoleon's aide-de-camp, the graceful and accom-
plished Flahault, who eventually married an English-
woman whom he first met at Osterley, Margaret
Mercer Elphinstone, at one time looked upon by
Society as likely to become Lady Byron, and always
fondly remembered or regretted by the poet himself.
The Osterley of those days was the most cosmo-
politan of all the polite world's suburban haunts.
The same year, 1814, witnessed among Lady Jersey's
guests Hardenberg, Nesselrode, Metternich, the King
of Prussia, and the Emperor of Russia. The last of
these remained the lion of the whole season. Having
been called to a University function at Oxford, he
returns in time to go through two country-dances with
Mrs. Arbuthnot at Lady Jersey's ball, and to waltz
with the hostess herself, much to the disgust of the
Regent, who happens to be at feud with Osterley.
Byron appreciated Osterley almost as much as he did
Lord Oxford's Herefordshire house. The authentic
Byron tradition rooted itself nowhere more deeply than
at the Isleworth mansion. The foreigners and English
residents abroad during the poet's later years and
after his death, recalled at the Osterley dinner-table
how, throughout continental Europe, the poet came
to be regarded as a personification of Satan in sin
and beauty. Some of these visitors had been shown
426
Goose, Poet and Emperor
by Madame GuiccioH at Ravenna a large box full of
letters from ladies of all ranks and nationalities, offer-
ing themselves to him on his own terms. Others
had seen the play-bills or other odd scraps of paper
on which Byron, with glasses of gin-punch always by
his side, wrote the rough draft of the later cantos of
*' Don Juan," or had beheld him rush out of the
room to revise what he had so put down, and perhaps
to read it aloud to Madame GuiccioH herself. His
theatrical abuse of his native land and its customs
did not prevent his religious observance of English
customs abroad : whether at Rome, Ravenna, or
Athens, he always insisted upon plum-pudding on the
25th of December, hot-cross buns on Good Friday,
and roast goose on Michaelmas Day. This last
fancy had enabled one at least of the Osterley guests
to witness a droll consequence. Buying a live goose
at Pisa, that it might be fat enough for September 29th,
he fed it himself daily for more than a fortnight. As
the fateful day arrived, he found himself so fond of
the creature, that he determined to spare its life and
buy another in its place. The respited fowl now
began to travel with him, being swung in a cage
under his carriage. At Osterley, too, some perhaps
even yet living saw with Queen Hortense her son,
then just come, of age, the future Napoleon III. No
remarkable talent, only a fixed idea that some day he
would rule over France ; a figure short but very
active and muscular, a perfect horseman, good at all
athletic games, a grave and dark face, lit by a bright
smile. Such was the future Emperor as seen by the
Osterley guests in 1829.
427
From Osterley to Ascot
The last half of the nineteenth century still saw
Osterley a fashionable institution, but brought to it
some troubles. In 1845 Lady Adela Villiers' elope-
ment with Captain Ibbotson was the scandal of the
season. Eleven years later Lady Jersey received
a second blow in the death of her other daughter,
Lady Clementina. She was no longer the lady
paramount of her party, as she had been when she
suggested to Disraeli her portrait as the Zenobia
of " Endymion." Among the Osterley guests in
the spring of 1856 were Disraeli with his wife and
Lord Malmesbury. The peer upset the social
arrangements by flatly refusing to take Mrs. Disraeli
in to dinner. Only the other day, he said, the
Dizzies had cut him dead. Lady Jersey's social pre-
rogative had begun to decline when the patronesses
of Almack's ceased to be despots. Her place was
gradually filled by Queen Victoria's deserved favourite,
the Duchess of Sutherland. " That woman," said
poor Lady Jersey to one of her Osterley guests, " is
cutting me out in everything." The great country
houses of England in whatever part have, however,
as has been seen in so many instances, the gift of
social permanence. With the inevitable changes,
Osterley to-day holds its historic position as a parade
and rendezvous of Anglo-Saxon fashion and dis-
tinction. In the early Victorian age the three most
accomplished men of the world then living were
Charles Greville, Henry Greville (both of them
diarists, but in all other matters of taste, habit, and
deportment complete contrasts), and George Payne.
Payne, with the social manner of the old world
428
Hosts and Guests at Osterley
combined the contemptuous dislike of mere aimless
frivolity that, if sometimes concealed, has always been
the well-bred Englishman's hall-mark. These were all
habituds of Osterley. So, too, in more recent years,
have been their most accomplished successors as
experts in mundane wisdom, the three Frasers and
Henry Calcraft. To-day, as befits a place owned by
a former representative, under the Southern Cross, of
the English Crown, Osterley is known throughout
the Empire as a social centre free to all duly
accredited citizens of Greater Britain. No member
of the English governing class to-day realises more
keenly than the present possessor of Osterley the
differences between the component parts of the
British Empire. Among his visitors in 1898 was
the one survivor amono; the signatories of the address
to Lord Palmerston at the time of the Don Pacifico
affair. This was the third Earl Fortescue, who had
been one of Lord Melbourne's private secretaries, and
who only died quite recently. " I have been just
reading once more," said Lord Jersey, as he pointed
to the book on the table, " Ruskin's ' Seven Lamps of
Architecture.' My own official experiences at the
antipodes bring home to me, as it was never brought
home before, his sagacity and truth when he contrasts
a country with an immemorial past behind it, like
India, through much of which I once travelled, with
a land like that in which my own lot was cast, and in
which everything is brand new."
Of other mansions in the Isleworth district for size,
solidity, and the eventful associations of more than
three centuries, none surpasses the southern seat of
429
From Osterley to Ascot
the Dukes of Northumberland. This historic home
of the Percies, as it is conventionally called, was built
by Protector Somerset, then came to the Dudleys,
who supplied one Duke of Northumberland. After
an interval, during which it was a religious house, it
passed to the Percy Dukes of Northumberland.
The chief creator, however, of the present Sion
House was the famous Sir Hugh Smithson. He,
having married the daughter of Algernon, Duke of
Somerset, and assumed the Percy name, became the
first of the modern Dukes of Northumberland. Like
most ducal dwellings, Sion and Albury have never
condescended so far as to be popular, smart, or
even fashionable. The sixth Duke of Northumber-
land, when Lord Lovaine, marrying the daughter
of Henry Drummond, Edward Irving's enthusiastic
and important disciple, acquired a connection with
Albury Park. This ancient and picturesque spot,
not Sion House, is the link uniting a great religious
movement in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury with the ducal family which, having inherited
Sion House by immemorial right, was indebted
for its Surrey home to Henry Drummond's pur-
chase from the Finches, to whom the place had
come after its earlier Howard owners. Sion House
was probably never visited by Edward Irving.
As the scene of the 1826 conferences, Albury
became the birthplace of the Catholic and Apostolic
Church. So, twenty years later, the Deepdene in
the Dorking district was to take rank among the
creative forces of modern Conservatism. The genius
for religion, once a Jewish possession, united itself in
430
The Drummond of Fiction and Fact
Edward Irving with perfectly astounding eloquence
and a power of personal fascination which increasingly
showed itself not more irresistible by others of the
class to which Drummond belonged than to
Drummond himself In establishing and developing
the new spiritual movement, the organisation of
Albury was the indispensable accessory to the pulpit
in Hatton Gardens. The shrewd, enthusiastic host
of Albury at the date now referred to, remained a
conspicuous personage in imperial, as well as local,
politics, long after the conferences at his country
house had receded into history. The well-known
portrait of Henry Drummond in the Greville journals
is too serious and at points life-like to be called
altogether a caricature. Not till some twenty years
after the Albury conferences did his blue coat, white
waistcoat, and plaid cravat become objects almost as
familiar at St. Stephen's as the Speaker's wig and
mace. Seeing everything through Whig spectacles,
Greville deliberately caricatures Drummond's spiritual
enthusiasm, and, as he thought, fanatical devotion to
Irving. He is silent on the Parliamentary shrewdness
and political wisdom of the sagacious and broad-
minded Conservative squire ; Drummond, while mem-
ber for West Surrey, was habitually consulted on vital
points of policy by Disraeli, when Chancellor of the
Exchequer in the Derby Administration that replaced
(1852) Lord John Russell's Government, defeated
by Palmerston's influence on the Militia Bill. On
March 5, 1852, Drummond had written to Disraeli a
characteristic letter of humorous advice. Patrick Boyle
Smollett's robust outspokenness, Bernal Osborne's
431
From Osterley to Ascot
satiric humour, and W. E. Henley's Nestorian, sar-
castic wisdom, were united in this Surrey host.
Having received Disraeli as his guest at Albury,
Drummond recapitulated his counsel to his visitor in
a letter, first, I think, published in the Quarterly
Review (October, 1895),'' enclosing a sketch of a
Conservative Reform Bill, to be held in petto, and to
be brought forward only in case of dire necessity,
Drummond advises the "buying of Bright, Gibson,
and a host of other revolutionary blackguards." As
for the Albury conferences, held during the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, these, if he had not
known them before, introduced Irving to Perceval,
son of the former Premier, shot in the Lobby of the
House of Commons, and to Dr. Joseph Wolff, who
also assisted at one at least of the meetings. All these
were outlived by a member of the group, an aged
lawyer, who, when he passed away some years since,
must have been quite the oldest of the Albury fathers ;
though to a period only ten years later than the
conferences belongs a still living member of the
Catholic Apostolic Church, Sir J. H. A. Macdonald,
formerly a Scotch University M.P. The communion
perpetuating Edward Irving's name is now equipped
with stately churches in many places. The Surrey
home of the ducal owners of Sion House remains,
however, the spiritual headquarters of the faithful.
At other centres of social interest that abound in
the region watered by the Thames we must be
satisfied now with flying calls rather than settled
' It will be found on page 363, incorporated in the article
" Rival Leaders and Party Legacies."
432
Lord North at Bushey
visits. In 1780, George III.'s favourite minister,
Lord North, who then seemed almost a fixture in
Downing Street, possessed a house of his own at
the south-east corner of Grosvenor Square. Never
disguising from himself his precarious tenure of
Downing Street, he would not let his private abode
for more than a year ; generally occupied by newly
married couples, it was known by the name of
" Honeymoon Hall." To see the minister really at
home, his friends went to him at Bushey Park, the
rangership of which, held by his wife, gave him a
country house rich in social charm. Surrounded by
his daughters, with the high spirits of a boy, he lived
simply, diffusing gaiety and good humour round his
family and visitors. So, at least, thought his old
opponent Barre. This former champion of the Whig
opposition to North, paying a business call at the
suburban villa, to his surprise found himself seated
at the luncheon table. Both host and guest had been
overtaken by nearly complete blindness. After some
allusion to past passages of arms. North smilingly
said, " But now, Colonel, there are not two men in
England who could be more happy to see each
other." The eighteenth-century Bushey, therefore,
presented in its happiest aspect that type of
animated geniality which set an enduring fashion
of social deportment for English statesmen.
Within an easy drive of Bushey was the beloved
rural retirement of the man who was alternately
North's most truculent opponent and most important
ally. From 1797 Charles Fox, having sulked out
of the House of Commons, took to horticulture,
433 EE
From Osterley to Ascot
scholarship, letters, and domesticity at St. Anne's
Hill, Chertsey. Here, as he walked in the garden
before breakfast, he wished aloud " good morning "
to the mist-covered hills in the distance. They were
not forgotten when, in July, 1802, he went with
Rogers to Paris, in quest of materials for his work on
James H. On a tropically hot day his companion,
as they walked through the Louvre gallery, now
talked to him about the surrounding objects of art,
now amused him with some story as to the way in
which the Paris exquisites were making it the fashion
"to ape Mr. Fox." For the afternoon an interview
with the great Napoleon had been arranged. In the
hurry of his different movements, Fox hopelessly
mislaid all the notes for his book, for whose making
he had journeyed from the Surrey hills to the Seine.
That did not trouble him. When coming out of the
Louvre into the full glare of the summer day, his
only fear was, " This hot sun will burn up my
turnips at St. Anne's Hill." At St. Anne's Hill,
when Secretary of State in 1782, he received Sir
George, then Mr., Jackson for final instructions on
an important foreign mission. On the visitor being
announced, Mrs. Fox, en d^shabilU, had slipped into
a cupboard or closet opening out of the room. The
interview was prolonged ; the lady, becoming im-
patient, was heard to exclaim, " Mr. Fox, my dear,
surely the young man's gone. Can't I come out,
dear, I am so very cold ? " Some five-and-twenty
years later the scene had changed to Chiswick
House ; Fox lay sick unto death. The same lady,
bending over him, received the dying man's last
434
Lavater on Fox
words, " I die happy, Liz." The news of all being
over was too terrible to be formally announced at
the not distant Holland House. There the only
intimation of the end having come showed itself in
Lady Holland, speechless and weeping, walking
about with her apron over her head. For years
Fox used to accomplish the journey between St.
Anne's Hill and Holland House on foot. On one
of these walks, having no money, he left his watch
as security at a wayside tavern for a mug of porter.
On reaching St. Anne's Hill, whither he was bound,
he found the publican had already left the chrono-
meter with the servant. At his Chertsey house in the
evening of his life, Fox had received the call of
Grey with an offer of a peerage from the King.
" No, not yet," was the answer, " I have an oath in
heaven against it ; nor will I end like others in that
foolish way." From St. Anne's Hill, too, a visitor,
Edward Gibbon, brought away the impression of his
host's first-rate powers blended with the softness and
simplicity of a child, without a taint of malevolence,
vanity, or falsehood. Here another guest, Lavater,
the phrenologist, made the scientific observations
which caused him to record as the most marked
features in Fox's physiognomy the "development of
the imaginative and ideal organs, the imperial eye-
brows, the sensual cheeks, and the magical genius
of the eyes."
Between 1865 and 1878, not far from the entrance
into Richmond Park, there might be seen, sitting
under the verandah of the first house one reaches,
a little, shrunken, old man, sometimes reading or
435
From Osterley to Ascot
talking, but more often, as it seemed, intently
studying a scientific instrument that, standing at his
side, indicated not only the quarter, but the exact
force of any breeze which happened to be blowing.
The student of this wind-gauge, then living at
Pembroke Lodge, was the Earl Russell of that
day, the famous Lord John of an earlier epoch.
There he received many guests or callers ; the only
ones personally recalled by the present writer were
the then Mr. M. E. Grant-Duff and Mr. Henry
Calcraft, of the Board of Trade. Sometimes there
came to Pembroke Lodge Professor Owen from his
neighbouring cottage, Charles Dickens the novelist,
and his future biographer, John Forster. In the
talk on these occasions Forster and Russell took
the leading part, recalling more than once
Napoleon II L in his early London days. The
only sign of intellectual promise they both agreed
in having ever recognised in him, was a clever
description of his being had up before the magistrate
at Bow Street. The venerable Whig sage slightly
shook his head in gentle dissent, saying, " One of
your brother novelists, Mr. Dickens, showed himself
more far-seeing. Bulwer Lytton, who often met
Louis Napoleon at Gore Lodge, received from him
the present of a book, in whose fly-leaf, after the
donor's signature, he pencilled the prediction that
Louis Napoleon would one day be great in France.
Lytton based the prophecy on Napoleon's devotion to
one idea and the skill with which that devotion was
masked." Other notable utterances by famous men
were first heard at Pembroke Lodge. Brought there
436
shaving at Shepperton
by G. S. Venables, Carlyle, remarking that he had
many objections to the Church of England, said he
nevertheless thought it the best thing of the kind in
the world, and that he was therefore sorry to see
it falling to pieces and going the way of all the
earth. As for Napoleon III., Carlyle only lamented
there was not a strong angel of the Lord with a
great sword reaching from one end of France to the
other, to sweep it across and to say to the endless
talking "Peace!" Carlyle also expressed to Russell
a high opinion of the then Bishop of Oxford,
Wilberforce. " I met him," recalled the sage one
day; "we were both of us on horseback. He was
going, he said, to the dog show ; I turned round and
went with him. He stayed there two hours. I found
him a delightful companion, a most active, ardent
creature, bound to succeed better than every one else
in anything he was set to do."
Another great social meeting ground of celebrities
in the suburban district now visited was Sir Coutts
Lindsay's roof at Shepperton. Here John Bright
passed the Sunday before delivering his famous
speech on the desolations wrought by the Crimean
War. This oration he partly rehearsed to the
Shepperton company upon the lawn on Sunday
afternoon, but not the famous Angel of Death
simile which immortalised it. "You did not," said
Lindsay to Bright, after the speech had been
reported, "give us that bit." "No," was the reply,
"it came into my head while I was shaving at
your house on Monday morning." The nineteenth-
century table-talk of this suburban district would
437
From Osterley to Ascot
constitute the contemporary story of Parliament and
policy, foreign or domestic, from behind the scenes.
Bright would be heard disclaiming, as too much
trouble, the reputation of writing out his speeches
before delivery. " I make pretty full notes," he
said, " but often do not use them. Cobden, like
Disraeli, and like myself" (he added with a smile),
" when I get the chance, used no writing preparation,
but talked his speech over beforehand." Few
dwellings in any part of England are more
suggestive of the social continuity characteristic
of England's rural homes than Strawberry Hill,
Twickenham. The ideas and interests represented
at this spot have differed in successive epochs.
Under all dispensations the influence, social or
intellectual, exercised has been equally far-reaching.
What Holland House was not only up to, as
Macaulay's well-known description of it might seem
to imply, but through, a great portion of the
Victorian age. Strawberry Hill remained without
a break till the death of the most famous among
its modern hostesses. Lady Carlingford, as she
eventually became, was married first to Mr.
Waldegrave. She took for her second husband
his brother, Lord Waldegrave. She next married a
cousin of the late Lord Granville, Mr. George
Harcourt. Her last marriage was with Chichester
Fortescue, Gladstone's Irish Secretary ; he thought
out the details of the Gladstone Irish Land Bill
at Strawberry Hill ; this most distinguished of her
various lords was so fondly attached to her that
his friends at first scarcely dared to hope he
438
" Labby " at Home
would survive her loss. Her power of attaching
all sorts and conditions of people and of never
losing a friend remained with her throughout life ;
it was curiously illustrated by the composition of her
house-parties. Whoever her husband for the time
might be, the relations of his predecessors were
always copiously represented beneath her roof. The
Fortescues of the last dispensation mingled on the
most happy and intimate of terms with the Walde-
graves and Harcourts of earlier regimes. An im-
partial and irresistible bonhomie always accompanied
the tact with which she issued her invitations and
the kindly cleverness with which she received her
guests, of all political or indeed religious creeds and
of almost all classes.
Near Strawberry Hill, during the Waldegrave
period, flourished other hosts who conspired to
justify for the river near which they lived the
cosmopolitan character to-day so eminently belong-
ing to the Thames. At Pope's Villa, Mr. Henry
Labouchere gathered together smart diplomatists
like the then Lord St. Asaph or Mr. Percy French ;
Parliamentary experts in foreign affairs, such as the
surviving Sir Arthur Otway and the late Lord
Henry Lennox — a born orator if ever ducal house
produced one ; operatic prima-donnas like Patti ;
theatrical artists such as John Hare and Henry
Irving. About the same time, too, the intelligent
foreigner who had his nocturnal heaven at the
Cosmopolitan Club in Charles Street, found his
daylight paradise at York House, Twickenham,
then occupied by Sir Mountstuart E. Grant- Duff.
439
From Osterley to Ascot
There, week by week, constantly changing, but
always interesting, assembled a company more
representatively international than at any other
point on the Thames littoral. Ernest Renan, when
visiting England, was generally beneath the roof of
his British proxenus. Here a future Prime Minister
of Republican France, Monsieur Ribot, more
Anglicised in the grave formality of his aspect
than the French Ambassador Waddington himself,
first became acquainted with English political
notabilities — with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, then
giving his earliest promise of future greatness ; with
William Rathbone, who as member for Liverpool
filled at St. Stephen's the same kind of place as
before him had been held by Mr. Whitbread. To
make Macaulay's omniscient "every schoolboy" a
familiar phenomenon in actual life was the tendency
of the York House hospitalities, ornamented as
these were by the miscellaneously learned — in
Parliamentry lore almost infallible — Thomas Erskine
May, who became Lord Farnborough only a few days
before his death ; by Lord Arthur Russell, quietly
overflowing with the intellectual quality that his fellow-
guest, Renan, happily styled '''■ la grande curiosity'' ]
by Sir John Lubbock, the Lord Avebury of to-day,
whose temperament and manner, ever freshened by
an inbred courtesy and alertness of varied interest,
suggested then as it suggests still, an adaptation of
Bulwer's words about the fourteenth Lord Derby in
" The New Timon" — " time still leaves all Eton
in the boy." At Lord Avebury 's High Elms, already
visited, W. E. Gladstone and John Morley had met
440
what Happened at York House
some years before. The first set conference of
the statesman with his future Cabinet colleague and
biographer took place May i8, 1879, in an apart-
ment that might have been transplanted from the
Granada Alhambra to the banks of the Thames,
the drawing-room of Sir M. E. Grant-Duffs York
House. In other parts of the house or in the
grounds bordering the river might, in that period
if not on that particular day, have been seen, if
not Benjamin Jowett, yet the most intellectually
gifted of Jowett's Balliol contemporaries, Henry
Smith, the pride and pillar of mathematical and
scientific Oxford, but scarcely less great in classical
scholarship also. There, too, was Lord Reay, who
since then has passed from the Government of
Bombay to the chairmanship of the London School
Board. Wherever he may have been, in the country
house as in the London club or drawing-room, by
the breadth of his sympathies and the quick penetra-
tion of his insight, he still shows himself a true
disciple of the York House school. One day he
may be in office, the next in opposition. Neither the
burden of the former lot nor the freedom of the
other interferes with his wider and more delicate
usefulness in brig;hteninor and sweetening- as well
as in instructing the refined cosmopolitanism whose
most representative centre was found in the last
century beneath the roof of Sir Mountstuart and
Lady Grant-Duff. The creation of a better under-
standing between the leaders, political or literary,
of English and foreign thought was the beneficent
object of all their hospitalities. The death of this
441
From Osterley to Ascot
host was, therefore, an international loss. Nor could
anything be more characteristic of his social function
and aim than a letter from him shortly before his
death, addressed to the present writer and containing
these words : " The Governments and Chanceries
of Europe would get on in perfect peace with each
other but for a press always trying to excite jealousies
and stir up bad feeling. It is a disgusting spectacle,
and I thank God I am more than seventy years of
age."
'* I and my friends," one of Grant-Duffs most
frequent guests, Matthew Arnold, used to say,
" lived at the Oxford of our day as in a great
country house." That gives no bad idea of the
little, old, unreformed Oxford, occupied by the sons
of the aristocracy, of untitled landowners, of well-to-
do clergymen, and of the pick of the professional
or commercial class. No interval of roads lined
with villa residences, mutilated by tramcars, noisy
and malodorous with automobiles, then separated
the gates of the colleges from the green country
lanes. It was not only the Oxford of the cloister
but of the middle ages. Amid such surroundings
as these grew, in the nineteenth century's first half,
the scheme for rehabilitating the national Church,
promoted by Newman, Pusey, and others. Whatever
the view taken, the movement was an imposing one,
full of humbling awe to some and of exultation to
others. The idea animating the Oxford Anglicans
of the thirties was the presence and operation of
the Holy Spirit, not like the wind " blowing where
it listeth," but communicating itself by ceremonial
442
Puseys of Pusey
channels. A vast spiritual edifice consisted of a
multitude of individuals ; all, however, could be
identified as parts of the one structure. This unity-
involved the assumption of every bishop being
directly descended from the Apostles, from whom
they had in unbroken succession, at the moment
of their consecration, received the special gift of
the Spirit. The ecclesiastical policy of Whiggism
had filled the Oriel divines with a disgust and dread
of the Reform spirit, civil or ecclesiastical, then in
the air. The Oriel common-room was the home of
good breeding, of the grand manner, as well as of
faith, learning, and virtue. The primitive High
Churchism of the nineteenth century began by being
intensely aristocratic and above all things anti- Liberal.
Social privilege was an article of religious faith.
The Hursley curates wept because Corn Law
Abolition obliged their squire to put down one of
his carriage horses. The early Anglicanism, there-
fore, found its natural home in the Tory country
houses, within easy distance of the uniformly Tory
colleges, and its chief leader in him whose connection
with the territorial class caused J. H. Newman to
speak of him emphatically as "the Great." This was
E. B. Pusey, the descendant of an ancient stock of
substantial Berkshire squires. His father, the first
Lord Folkestone's son, and so born a Bouverie, had
assumed the Pusey name on inheriting the Pusey
estates. These had been in the family from the tenth
century. Pusey House, near Farringdon, Berks, has
always been a Tory centre, and when Philip Pusey,
a Protectionist, sat for Berkshire, was Lord George
443
From Osterley to Ascot
Bentinck's recruiting ground. The value of such
a social centre as this to the Oxford Anglicans was
appreciated by no one more than by the future head
of the Birmingham Oratory. It was his ancestral
connection with this place rather than any other
qualifications for the office which gave E. B.
Pusey the leadership of the Oxford movement.
Another country house nearer to Oxford than Pusey
often opened its doors to the Anglican reformers,
not as Church partisans but as guests. This was
Nuneham, through whose park the friends often rode.
Newman and Pusey were both fair horsemen and
kept their own hacks. Archbishop Harcourt, to
whom Nuneham then belonged, may not have had
much in common with the Anglican ideal ; the sacer-
dotal and sacramental notions of the set did but
very gradually, it must be remembered, declare and
develop themselves. To their Nuneham host the
visitors from Christ Church and Oriel would have
seemed intellectual Tories of the most orthodox kind,
exactly after his own heart ; with delight he would
have heard R. Hurrell Froude satirising the strange
creatures who had got into the new Parliament.
" Fancy a gentleman, as one supposes an M.P. to be,
not knowing Greek ! " That would have pleasantly
recalled to Nuneham's archiepiscopal host a sentence
in the University sermon of another guest, Dean
Gaisford, often approvingly quoted at the Nuneham
dinner-table : " The chief advantages of a classical
education are that it opens up posts of emolument
both in this world and that which is to come, and
that it enables us to look down on our inferiors."
444
'' Less than your Mother's Pin-money "
Newman, moreover, during his early days as fellow
and tutor of Oriel, was not only not a Romaniser,
but as low a Churchman as had been John Wesley
himself when Methodism began to take shape within
the walls of Lincoln College.
Another Berkshire country house in the Pusey
neighbourhood at the close of the eighteenth century
had connected itself with a movement, more or less
intellectual, of a kind very different from that asso-
ciated with Pusey or Nuneham. If one is in
London one must play to be in the fashion ; if
one is out of it, without cards one would die of
ennui. Mrs. Montagu and her friends attempted to
mend matters by parties at which no cards should dull
the edge of intellect, and all the mental powers be
perfectly fresh for conversation. The London dwell-
ing that witnessed the beginnings of this experiment
was in Hill Street, Berkeley Square. The rural
home which saw its further elaboration was the
Berkshire Sandilands. Mrs. Montagu, the most
frugal of social and fashionable leaders, at the last
house-party ever given at Sandilands, boasted to her
guests of having built and furnished both her Mayfair
and her Berkshire abode from the savings of an
income of ;^6,ooo a year. " You will soon," she
whispered to her nephew and heir, Matthew
Montagu, " find the advantage of having had an
aunt who could organise and entertain the blue-
stockings in country as well as town at a less cost
than your own mother's pin-money." Certain visits
of Mrs. Montagu to Nuneham were discovered by a
great expert in her epoch. Sir William Harcourt,
445
From Osterley to Ascot
during the short time of his possessing and inhabit-
ing his family home. At Nuneham was he staying
when he lost, in 1880, his seat for Oxford, conferring,
before he drove back from the town, the final bene-
diction on his erstwhile constituents. "And now,
good people, go home quietly, and God bless you
every one." The sentiment recalled to a ribald critic
the captain in Marryat's novel who, cautioned by the
Admiralty against inordinate swearing, from the point
of command exclaimed to a seaman, " You've tied a
granny's-knot instead of a slip-knot, God bless you !
You know what I mean ! "
To the country-house era of Oxford, as Matthew
Arnold called it, as indeed the place remained for
many a long day afterwards, the pleasant districts
wherein lie the mansions now mentioned seemed but
the outskirts of a wide-stretching college park. That
description would have held at least periodically true
throughout much of the nineteenth century. Charles
Reade, the novelist, was then established during part
of the Long Vacation at his rooms in Magdalen, and
entertained Saturday- to- Monday guests from the
Athenaeum and the Garrick Clubs. At the adjacent
Queen's were Robert Steward Falcon, of the fine
presence and magnificent golden beard, the best
scholar of his day, a former " Ireland," and his
brother-fellow Dykes, the model of an old world
country squire, the one shooting over and the other
managing the College estates. The best part of the
Victorian age had therefore gone by before at least
one Oxford college parted with some among the
most characteristic and robust features of a genially
446
Rusticating on the Isis
intellectual country house. Falcon's latest provost
was a fine old English gentleman of the best squarson
type, Dr. Jackson. His successor, Dr. Magrath, lacks
no qualification for practically perpetuating the best
social traditions of the old regime in the college that
under his rule has produced its first " Ireland " scholar
since Falcon, half a century ago. Long before Queen's
second " Ireland " the typical Oxford college had
resumed, if indeed it had ever entirely lost, those
social aspects which bring it as much within the
country - house category as any private mansion
known to Society's Arcadia. Benjamin Jowett
abounded in kindly and hospitable instincts. His
roof and table were perpetually available for young
and old to whom he thought it might be an object to
avoid hotel bills. He was, however, by no means the
original inventor and patentee of Society's modern
Saturday-to- Monday sojourn on the Isis. H. G.
Liddell's bi-terminal gatherings at the Deanery,
Christ Church, had attracted Whig or Liberal states-
men and other celebrities, before as well as after the
conversion to Free Trade of another Christ Church
man, at one time Liddell's particular friend, Sir
Robert Peel. On the other side, the college of
Archbishop Laud and of Dean Mansel had, under
President Wynter, been at the head of Oxford's
Tory houses. Jowett's parties, both in the rooms
occupied by him as a tutor, looking out upon the
Martyrs' Memorial, and at the Master's Lodge, were
the adaptation to new social conditions of the some-
what earlier hospitalities of Pattison at Lincoln and
Wynter at St. John's. None of these reunions were
447
From Osterley to Ascot
less essentially country-house rites because they were
presided over by the head of an Oxford house instead
of by the lord of some rural manor. With Disraeli,
Gathorne Hardy, and other party managers among
the guests, the new academic Conservatism socially
organised itself beneath the roof of the President of
St. John's, while at Balliol or Lincoln was being
evolved the comprehensively national Oxford which
now exists. Loyalty to Tory leaders was the virtue
that the St. John's hospitalities tended to evoke and
strengthen. A representative diversity of personnel
had been studied by Pattison at Lincoln, and was
still more piquantly cultivated at Ballio).
All these academic entertainers said many good
things. Their form, and the circumstances under
which they were first uttered, have conspired to
bestow the widest currency upon Jowett's. Such
was his reply to the young lady's "Won't you
marry me, Master?" "Certainly not; it would not
be to my happiness or yours." Of course the girl
had alluded to the priestly performance of the nuptial
ceremony. Again, to some of his guests, who had
shown a disposition to risky stories over the coffee,
" Don't you think we had better finish that anecdote
with the ladies upstairs ? " Dean Stanley, Archbishop
Tait, R. W. Dale, the Birmingham Congregationalist
preacher, mingled with the chief High Churchmen,
Talbot, head of Keble, and H. P. Liddon, in Jowett's
academic country-house company. So, too, at one
time did Lord Selborne's brother, William Palmer,
the dream of whose life was a union between the
Greek and the Anglican Churches. A lady of his
448
"As Thou Killedst the Egyptian"
acquaintance had been so misguided as to exchange
subjection to the Pope for allegiance to the Patriarch.
" I will," said Palmer, in a fever of righteous indigna-
tion, " devote all my energies, resources, and oppor-
tunities to making her regret what she has done."
"Rather," chirruped Jowett, "a poor ambition for
an entire lifetime." Talbot, a good scholar but a
bad coachman, had upset into a ditch, from a carriage
in which he was driving him, the then Khedive's son,
Prince Hassan. Proposing, at Jowett's table, to drive
Liddon home, he received the reply, "What, intendest
thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian yester-
day ? " It was at the Balliol Lodge that, soon after
the event had happened in July, 1873, some people
from Lord Granville, then a guest, heard for the
first time the account of Bishop Wilberforce's
fatal fall from his horse on Evershed Roug^hs.
The Bishop and the Foreign Secretary, asked to
meet the Gladstones at Mr. Leveson-Gower's Holm-
bury, were to do the last part of the journey
thither on horseback, riding from Leatherhead
fifteen miles over the Surrey downs. " The first
I knew of the accident," said Lord Granville, "was
the dull, dead sound of a falling body on the grass.
Hoping against hope that life might not be extinct, I
sent away the groom to get some conveyance, and
was meanwhile left with the Bishop alone. It was
an agonising ordeal. Before a carriage came, all
was over." The nearest house was Lord Farrer's
Abinger Hall. Thither the body was taken ; there
it remained till the funeral in Lavington churchyard,
already described in the Sussex section of this book.
449 FF
From Osterley to Ascot
The temporary resting place of the dead prelate
was one of a group of pleasant habitations in the
district, the best known, perhaps, belonging to Sir
Algernon West, Mr. Pandeli Ralli, the late Mr.
Simpson, the Chancery lawyer, and the late Charles
W. Earle. At Cranleigh, near Guildford, Mr. Ralli,
then in the House, and his sister first introduced to
Society here the greatest of modern Greek statesmen,
then the Hellenic Premier, Tricoupis, and other Greek
representatives at St. James's, Gennadius first, and
afterwards M. Metaxas. Fellow-guests at the same
time with these were Gladstone, Lord Fitzmaurice,
and the present Lord Kitchener, who in those days
had a delightful way of politely fencing off the personal
questions as to the military school in which he had
been trained for the greatness that seemed, with so
little of preliminary advertisement, to have come to
him. " 'Specs," would blandly say the future Indian
Commander-in-chief, "like Topsy, I growed." Other
houses hereabout belonged generally to men moving
in the same set as Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff.
Their most habitual gruests were those who mig^ht
also have been met at York House, Twickenham,
in the Grant- Duff epoch. Such pre-eminently was
Hatchlands, the home of Lord Rendel, one of the
loyal Gladstunians whose amenities of person and of
entertainment rendered Liberalism the same kind of
social service which in an earlier generation it had
received from Mrs. Milner Gibson's receptions at her
house in Brook Street or beneath one of her rural
roofs. At the Hatchlands dinner-table the host made
one of those particularly neat remarks in which he
450
" Alas, Poor Orphans ! "
excelled and which ought not to be forgotten. It was
the supremely triumphant moment of the Jingo cult,
of Lord Beaconsfield's and Lord Salisbury's bringing
back of peace with honour from the Berlin Conference.
" The truth is," quietly observed Lord Rendel, " Dizzy
has taken John Bull to Cremorne and the old fellow
rather likes it." Samuel Wilberforce, as Bishop of
Oxford or of Winchester, pervaded most of the South
of England houses now being visited. The agreeable
prelate himself made Cuddesdon palace the model
of a clerical country house. Two of his young friends
from their colleges in the adjoining University, who
had given the authorities some trouble, winning the
nicknames of Hophni and Phinehas, were lounging
about the hall singing the Lutheran refrain, " The
Devil is dead." The Bishop walked very gently up
to them, and in his most caressing manner, placing
one hand on each head, said, in a consolatory tone,
" Alas, poor orphans ! " The place where Bishop
Wilberforce seemed at his best was Sarsden Rectory,
then occupied by his old friend, Charles Barter. The
other pfuest on the occasion now referred to was the
then Earl of Shrewsbury, a famous critic of rare
vintages. In his honour had been produced over
night a super-excellent bottle of red wine. The peer,
judiciously sipping a few drops, slowly gave his verdict.
" This is the best second-class claret I ever tasted."
The Sarsden Rectory garden was bounded by a little
fence leading into what steeplechasers call a fair
hunting country. The Bishop was late for a diocesan
visitation for which he had made Sarsden his head-
quarters. " By taking that cut," said our host, pointing
451
From Osterley to Ascot
to the railing, "we shall be in good time after all."
At it accordingly they all went — first the rector giving
a friendly lead, then the bishop with a chaplain or
two, and the village curate bringing up the rear.
** Bishop," said a little girl, nestling up to him after
the day's labours in the drawing-room, " why do they
call you Soapy Sam ? " " Because, my dear, I am
always getting into hot water and coming out with my
hands clean." At the dinner- table of Wilberforce,
whose curate he had once been, Archbishop Trench
thought himself overtaken by his life-long terror,
paralysis. " At last," he murmured, " it has come.
Total insensibility of the right side." " It may
console you," said the lady next to whom he was
sitting, "to know it was my leg you were pinching."
About this time it was that Wilberforce, charged
by his most frequent lay-guest. Lord Houghton,
with having imputed to him an offensive expression,
indicating an emphatic dissent, explained, "What I
did say was, that had such and such an expression
been, as I was informed, actually used by the noble
lord, those who knew him less well than I did might
have thought it verging on the unsavoury."
To pass on to one or two more secularly sporting
hosts within easy distance of the country hunted by
the Bicester hounds. At the Durdans, just out of
Epsom, Lord Rosebery occasionally received guests
quite as noticeable and interesting as those who came
to him for Epsom week. When at Oxford he had
read the " Ethics" with the cleverest if least conven-
tional Aristotelian scholar and teacher of his day. This
gifted man, Robert Williams, eventually exchanged
452
Uncle Sam Purrs
Oxford for the bar and for journalism. In these
latter capacities he fell upon evil days ; he was not
forgotten by Lord Rosebery as he had been by so
many others. With him at the Durdans might some-
times be seen both the then Sir Edward Lawson, now
Lord Burnham, chief proprietor of the Z^^z/y Telegj'apk,
and one of his most accomplished writers, the late
Frank Lawley, who, in his younger days, had been
everywhere, known every one, done everything, and
run through a considerable fortune. *' My dear
Lawley," said one of the company in reference to his
recent Daily Telegraph " Reminiscences of Limmer's,"
"how did you get such an inexhaustible knowledge
of rapid life in every conceivable aspect?" "By,"
was the answer, " an expenditure on the learning of
exactly ^333,000." During Lord Rosebery's most
hospitable years at the Durdans, the most frequent
intellectual guest outside the fashionable sporting set
was Mr. G. W. Smalley, then representing in London
the New York Tribune. Occasional companions on
his Epsom visits were Mr. F. Marion Crawford, Mr.
Henry James, the novelist, and the late Samuel
Ward, better known as " Uncle Sam," a well-groomed,
sleek, silky little old gentleman who, as a compliment
to a clerical fellow-guest, the Rev. " Hang-Theology "
Rogers, of St. Botolph's, used to make a show of
occasionally quoting Horace, and if petted enough by
any ladies who might be present used audibly to purr.
The Ascot houses would be a more prolific theme
even than the Epsom roofs. The forerunner of the
latter-day Ascot host who rents or own a villa near
the heath and fills it with guests of all sorts and con-
453
From Osterley to Ascot
ditions, was, I think, a Mr. Angerstein, whose drolly
hospitable mMage is probably to-day remembered
by Mr. John Delaval and the present writer. At a
neighbouring small villa the luckless Marquis of
Hastings spent the last summer he was ever destined
to see on earth. It was the race week, and he wished
to make a bet with a professional bookmaker whom
he saw a few paces off. The fellow, huge, hulking,
and insolent, lounged up to the pony-carriage in which
the taker of odds was being driven by his beautiful
wife. " Mind, my lord," said the man, with something
between a scowl and a sneer on his face, " I shall
expect this bet to be paid."
454
CHAPTER XVI
THE NEW HOSTS OF THE HOME COUNTIES
Mr. A. Brassey's Heythrop — " History Hut " — Mrs. Duncan Stewart's
stories — Kingston Lisle and Beckett — Squire Aitkins — Old
Lady Stanley — Broughton Castle — Fawsley — John Pym — Canon
Jelf and the King of Hanover — Lord Saye-and-Sele and
Augustus Hare — Lady Granville's story apropos of the Battle
of the Nile — Daylesford, Warren Hastings' home — Hastings
and the Countess Inhoff — Lady Ducie's reminiscences — Hat-
field : tragedy and pastime — Under the third Marquis and
Marchioness — Famous guests — Count Herbert Bismarck — King
Edward VH. as Prince of Wales — Lady Salisbury and her
journalistic guest — Wrest — Its various owners — Henry Greville
and croquet — Alfred Montgomery on " A moral Cremorne "
— The dandies — Lady Cowper's stories of Mr. and Mrs.
" Poodle " Byng — Brocket — The Lamb family — Lord and
Lady Melbourne (Lady Caroline Ponsonby) — Brocket, Byron,
and Lady Melbourne — Lord Palmerston — Knebworth — Anec-
dotes of Bulwer Lytton — Houghton and Woburn — Samuel
Whitbread at South Hill — Baron Ferdinand Rothschild's
Waddesdon — Its trees and visitors — Other Rothschild palaces
— Mentmore and Halton — Disraeli as a Buckinghamshire
squire — His Hughenden guests, Sir William Harcourt, Lord
Glenesk, and Thomas Hamber — Primroses and peacocks —
Disraeli's reminiscences of the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe,
1848 — Disraeli's obligations to the Midland Dukeries — Rayners
— Belvoir Castle — The Earl of Shrewsbury's Alton Towers —
" You call them savages ! "
455
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
IT was the Berkshire and Oxfordshire country
houses generally which, visited by Alexis
Tocqueville and other nineteenth-century guests,
received from them the name of the finishing schools
for English conversationalists. Here, they said,
dwelt the charming art of touching and setting in
motion a thousand thoughts, without dwelling tire-
somely on any one. Except that the long-imperfect
avenue leading to the house has been completed, Mr.
Albert Brassey's Heythrop is unchanged since the days
when the irrepressible Mrs. Duncan Stewart exhausted
the possibilities of small-talk in " History Hut." One
story she never forgot, the interview of her daughter,
a lady-in-waiting at the Court of Hanover, with
George Sand, and the novelist's reply to some
criticism on her writings, " Je ne suis pas moraliste ;
je suis romanciere." About the same time, at Kingston
Lisle or at the home of the Barringtons, a large,
luxurious Tudor house, Beckett, near Shrivenham,
used to be the Berkshire worthy. Squire Aitkins, who
figures as the hero's father in Hughes' " Tom Brown "
(both the Rugby and the Oxford books). With him
were old Lady Stanley of Alderley, from her beautiful
Holmwood, Henley-on-Thames, furious in the
thoroughness and tenacity of her opinions, but the
brightest and easiest of guests, as well as, at her own
pretty place with its wealth of flowerbeds and grand-
children, the most popular of hostesses. Oxfordshire,
like the neighbouring county of Northampton, contains
one of the comparatively few houses which, from being
social strongholds of the seventeenth-century demo-
cratic movement, have ever since formed the neutral
ground for Whig and Tory alike.
456
David Copperfield at Broughton
Broughton Castle, Lord Saye-and-Sele's, and the
equally ancient home of the Knightleys, Fawsley,
both lay on the great north road from London.
Each possessed a private printing-press belonging to
the Parliamentarians. A key of each was in John
Pym's pocket during his political campaigns in the
vacation before the Long Parliament. Thus he
could, and sometimes did, enter the bedroom set
apart for him, without his arrival being heard of till
the next morning. Our grandparents knew Broughton
Castle as the place to which George V. of Hanover,
introduced by his private tutor. Canon J elf, of Oxford,
first became a personage in English society. Dr. Jelf,
a stately ornament of the old world Oxford, married
one of the Hanover Court ladies, the Countess
Schlippenbach. In this way it may be that Broughton
was so often in the mouths of fashionable and patrician
Germans of the time. At Broughton possibly was
first heard the story of the blindness which overtook
Jelfs royal pupil in 1833, having been caused by the
collision with the eye of a long silk purse whisked
round too vigorously and too closely. Owned by the
cricketing family of Fiennes, Broughton has more
recently been known for its private theatricals. Here,
in the days of Mr. Fiennes and Lady Augusta, the
most ubiquitous country-house figure of his time, Mr.
Augustus Hare, in a dramatic adaptation of some
parts of the novel, played David Copperfield to Lord
Saye-and-Sele's Steerforth. Only a few years earlier,
in the same drawing-room where these theatricals took
place, Lady Granville related the secret history of the
Battle of the Nile as she had heard it from her first
457
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
husband. Born a Dalberg, she had married into
another international family as famous as her own,
that of the Actons. Her husband's father, Sir John
Acton, was the famous admiral, the English
generalissimo on sea and land of the Neapolitan
King, Ferdinand IV. During the year 1798, in
which he had driven the French from the South
of Italy, the enemy's fleet had seemed to escape
into invisible space. Lady Acton's French maid had
a brother a seaman on a French man-o'-war. Unable
herself to read a letter received from him, she asked
her mistress's help in deciphering it. Its address
gave the clue to the whereabouts of Napoleon's
warships. The information, passed on to Nelson
enabled him to come up with and defeat the hostile
squadrons in Aboukir Bay.
The Daylesford of Warren Hastings stands so near
the point at which four counties converge, that it may
almost rank as the common possession of Oxford,
Gloucester, and Worcester. Not from Broughton but
from Sarsden, whose squire was then J. H. Langston,
M.P. for Oxford City, reputed in his time the best
timber-jumper in the shires, frequent excursions to
Daylesford were enlivened by the personal recollections
of the place possessed both by Lady Granville and
Lady Ducie. Daylesford itself, then owned and
occupied by Mr. Grisewood, a City magnate, was
hospitably open for the inspection of visitors. Having
been repurchased by Warren Hastings in 1788, it
remained for the rest of his life the home where
he sometimes entertained Anglo-Indian or political
acquaintances, but more frequently some of the few
458
Hatfield Archery
survivors among his contemporaries at Westminster
School. Lady Ducie's memory did not go back to
this, the greatest of the Daylesford squires. She
had, however, been acquainted with Hastings' step-
son. On his voyage to India, the great proconsul fell
in love with the married lady who before land was
reached had in all but name become his wife. This
was the Countess Inhoff. To the son by her former
marriage Hastings left Daylesford. The Countess
herself, dressed in white satin and swansdown, like
one of Romney's pictures, used to pay state visits
to Lady Ducie at Tortworth in Gloucestershire.
The one change in connection with Daylesford, as
the present writer saw it in the sixties, since its
great owner's time, was the modern building with
which Mr. Grisewood had replaced the Saxon
church, restored in the tenth century of its existence
by Hastings, with the text, "A thousand years in
Thy sight are but as yesterday."
Among the gifts accepted by Queen Victoria from
the last of her Prime Ministers was a miniature
reproduction in silver of certain objects at Hatfield,
especially associated with Queen Elizabeth's stay
beneath that Hertfordshire roof, itself too famous
in its history and too universally familiar in its chief
features to call for any specification of them now.
Always a social citadel of Toryism, Hatfield politically
stood apart from most of the other great houses in the
county. The first Marchioness, Lord Downshire's
daughter, was a skilful and enthusiastic archer. Her
garden parties, from 1789 onwards, first associated
Hatfield and the surrounding district with the revival
459
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
of the bow and arrow as a pastime both fashionable
and popular. This lady lived to November, 1835,
when, at the age of eighty-four, she perished in the fire
which destroyed the west wing of her home. Long
after political differences had separated the two men,
common sympathies on some matters of State and on
many more of Church, brought Mr. Gladstone for an
occasional week-end to the Hertfordshire home of the
Cecils. What, however, will be chiefly recalled by
those of Hatfield's nineteenth century still-surviving
visitors is the imposing figure of the host himself,
courteous and kindly, even when visibly preoccupied
by public anxieties, or worn and haggard by concern
he could not conceal for Lady Salisbury's health,
always at work with his secretaries to the last moment
before every meal, and then stalking slowly into the
room, invariably accompanied by his great boarhound,
Pharaoh, "so called because he will not let the people
go." Among their fellow-guests they will remember
Lady Lytton, still beautiful with all the charm of
high-bred refinement, the Prince of Wales, now King
Edward VH., the Grand-Duke of Baden, and the two
most characteristically different talkers of their time,
Maria, Marchioness of Ailesbury, and Count Herbert
Bismarck, the latter flinging each of his sentences from
him with an air of defiant self-assertion. A big man
this, as well as a big eater and drinker, filling, upon
principle, two glasses of wine at once, so as always to
have one in reserve, in a chronic state of surprise at
the hard-worked Salisbury ladies, ever going, as he
complains, to found or open charities, patriotically
denying that Anne of Cleves came after Anne Boleyn,
460
King Edward's French
seldom missing a chance, in season or out of season,
of girding at the faculty. " In medicine," he growls
out, "you will never be sure of effect following cause
till the doctor's brougham precedes his patient's body
to the grave." To Lord Selborne, his next-door
neighbour, he confides a very ancient " chestnut "
from Munchausen, who talks of keeping the College
of Physicians up in a balloon a month, sending them
down to find all the sick restored, but all the under-
takers ruined.
On the occasion of the last visit paid by King
Edward VII., when Prince of Wales, to Hatfield,
some readers of these lines will, like their writer,
recollect a patriotic vindication of the English climate
as the best in the world made by the royal guest in
particularly happy, epigrammatic French when talking
to the then Ambassador from the Republic, at one of
the garden-parties that, under the third Marchioness's
dispensation, were the tolerably frequent incidents of
the Hatfield summer. Lady Salisbury, as a hostess,
was distinguished by her unaffected kindliness of
manner towards, and air of personal interest in, the
family belongings of those innumerable visitors, com-
paratively few of whom she might have been expected
personally to remember. It was about the middle of
her Hatfield reign that she met in the park a stranger,
who, ignorant of whom he was addressing, said he
had come down to see the Hatfield labourers' cottages,
which he understood were none of the best. " Let
me show them to you," said the lady, " and you shall
judge for yourself." The visitor, it afterwards trans-
pired, had been commissioned by a Radical newspaper,
461
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
then very bitter against the Cecils, to investigate the
unhealthy housing of the Hatfield dependants. In
the way now described he ascertained the contrast
between the facts as they were and as they had been
reported to his editor. Returning to the office of his
journal that night, he answered the editorial inquiry
with the two words, " No case."
It was rather earlier than the date of the Hatfield
incident just mentioned that Mr. Gladstone was
announced to be paying a Saturday-to-Monday visit
at another home-county house, near to, and not less
famous than, Hatfield itself. " I suppose," said Lord
Beaconsfield, then Prime Minister, of his rusticating
rival, "he can say that he is where the wicked, — I, —
cease from troubling, and the weary are at Wrest."
Before the Disraelian pun had been made, late in the
autumn of 1873, ^^ was at Wrest that Mr. Gladstone
decided on the stroke of policy which had the effect of
keeping him out of power for six years. Confined to
his bed by a severe cold, he discovered, when the
expenses of the Ashantee War were paid, he would
have a surplus of ^5,000,000. This would render
possible a new scheme of local taxation, coupled with
the repeal of the Income Tax. Lord Granville and
the chief Liberal Whip, Mr. Glyn, afterward the first
Lord Wolverton, summoned to their chief's Wrest
bedroom, strongly approved the idea. In the early
January of 1874, the country was surprised by the
announcement of an immediate Dissolution. Disraeli,
then at Hughenden, received Lord Cairns with the
words, " My adversary has delivered himself into my
hands." A week or two later every Conservative
462
Croquet at Wrest
country house in the kingdom had illuminated itself in
joy for the first working majority the party had gained
since the days of Peel. The scene of preparation for
these events, Lady Cowper's country house, afterwards
passing to her son, Earl Cowper, is to-day, like so
many other ancient homes of Whig or Tory peers, the
possession of a Transatlantic Croesus, Lord Mount
Stephen. Amid all social and political changes, there
has been no break in the social history of Wrest.
Among several symbols of this unity inside the house
is that picture of a former hostess of the place which,
in 1736, causing Horace Walpole's question whether
it were a good likeness, constrained Mrs. House-
keeper to answer, " Oh dear no, sir, it's much too
handsome for my-lady duchess. Her Grace's chin
is far longer than that." The Wrest hostess flattered
by this portrait was the Earl of Portland's daughter,
the second wife of Henry de Grey, Duke of Kent,
who then owned Wrest, and died there in 1740.
Hatfield, we have seen, i? connected with the toxo-
philite renaissance of an earlier century. The Wrest
of the Victorian age did much to promote the once
consuming popularity of croquet. That was chiefly
due to Henry Greville, whom his brother Charles
described as differing from himself in that Henry lived
in "ceiled houses," whereas Charles dwelt only in
tents. Having brought to Wrest his chief operatic
intimates, Mario and Grisi, he surprised them by show-
ing himself on that occasion more keen about croquet
even than about music. Before the game was over
it became dark. Henry Greville insisted upon lamps
of all sorts being- broug-ht into the garden that the
463
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
balls and hoops might be visible. These illuminants
were artistically arranged by him after the French
fashion of Mabille. " It was," said my kind old
friend who had been present, Mr. Alfred Mont-
gomery, " a sort of moral Cremorne." Montgomery,
who survived till late in the nineteenth century, was
the last of the professional dandies of the Regency
to be seen at Wrest. At Wrest he used to relate
how, not, I think, he himself, but one of his relatives,
never went to Devonshire House without seeing the
Duchess at her knitting in one corner of the room
and Charles Fox snoring in another. Among his
predecessors there had been George Brummell
and " Poodle " Byng, so called from his curly hair,
and so well known beneath all these Hertfordshire
roofs as to be called "the tame cat of the Home
Counties." Lady Hester Stanhope's appreciation
of Brummell's concealed but genuine abilities had
been first expressed to Mr. Montgomery. " Poodle "
Byng married his mother's maid. Devoted to a little
girl she had borne him, he could not, he said, do less
than make the child's mother an honest woman. Not
received in Society, Mrs. Byng had some friends who,
in the district where we now are, sometimes included
her in invitations to her husband. Lady Cowper
belonged to the grandes dames of a former generation,
who condescended in her conversation to entertain, as
well as to impress, her guests. Apropos of a visit paid
by Mrs. Byng to some country friends, she had heard
about that lady's delight at her hospitable reception.
"Only fancy!" exclaimed the Poodle's better half,
"they had all our linen washed for nothing. So
464
The Tragi-Comedy of Brocket
lucky, as Frederick's trunk was half- full of soiled
shirts."
The next of the Hertfordshire political houses has
an interest entirely its own and quite different from
any of its neighbours. Brocket Hall, the home of
Melbourne and Palmerston, is the monument of the
social and political rise of a family now first incor-
porated into the governing class. In the eighteenth
century Matthew Lamb, a solicitor of Southwell, had
for his clients some of the most considerable Notting-
hamshire families. Amongst these were the Cokes of
Melbourne Hall. A daughter of this house, marry-
ing his son, brought the Melbourne property into the
Lamb family. She also became the mother of Sir
Peniston Lamb, afterwards the first Lord Melbourne,
the father of the Prime Minister. In 1746 the future
Prime Minister's grandfather, then member for Stock-
bridge, acquired a territorial status in the South of
England by the purchase of the Hertfordshire estates
and residence of the Winnington family. Thereafter
Brocket formed the headquarters of at least two
famous Whig families. Brocket stands among the
sheltering woods and soft pastures in the district
through which the River Lea flows sleepily towards
the Thames. To its most famous possessor. Queen
Victoria's earliest Premier, the place was pathetically
endeared by its having witnessed the illness and death
of his only son, Augustus, nursed by the fond father
with maternal tenderness on his Brocket sick-bed, and
long mourned with maternal grief. These experiences
in his Hertfordshire home no doubt helped to train
Melbourne himself for the almost paternal part which,
465 GG
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
as her minister, he was afterwards to perform towards
his young Sovereign, Queen Victoria. To Brocket
he had, in the June of 1805, brought for the honey-
moon his bride, the volatile Lady Caroline Ponsonby,
whose eccentric story half grotesquely, half tragically,
interlaced itself with the life of her womanhood's idol.
Lord Byron. At Brocket, when her connection with
him had come to a close, in a fit of mortification she
burned Byron in effigy on the lawn before the house.
At Brocket she remained for some time after the
separation from her own husband, who had settled
himself at Melbourne House, London. At Brocket
died, in 1828, Lady Caroline, and, twenty years later,
Lord Melbourne himself The place figures almost
as prominently in its connection with Palmerston as
with Melbourne himself. Here, in the autumn of
1865, his future biographer, Mr. Evelyn Ashley, had
seen his old chief coming out of the house bareheaded,
walking straight up to some high railings immediately
opposite the front door. Then, looking round to see
that no spectator was near, the old man climbed
deliberately over the top rail on to the ground on the
other side ; next, turning round, he climbed back once
more. It was his way of testing his strength, and
discovering whether ground had been lost or gained.
In this same park, during his last summer there, he
had, in conversation with his doctor, said, " When a
man's time is up, he must be content to go." His
brother-in-law, Melbourne, had closed his eyes at
Brocket some seventeen years before : at the same
house, which his wife had made his own, on
October 18, 1865, Palmerston passed away.
466
Meeting Richard Cromwell
After Hatfield, the most ancient of Conservative
houses in this home-county is also the most inter-
esting, less, however, for its political than its literary
and diversely various social connections. To-day
Knebworth owes a new kind of interest to the agrarian
experiments of which the second Earl Lytton has
made it the scene. His famous grandfather — still,
perhaps, best known as Edward Bulwer Lytton — has
given glimpses of the house and its surroundings
in the best descriptive passages of his novels. It
was in the lanes near Knebworth that one of his
own ancestors had met a remarkable looking old
gentleman who, entering into casual conversation
with him, dwelt upon the vanity of mundane honours.
He turned out to be Richard Cromwell, the Protector's
son, passing his last years in complete retirement
at a Hertfordshire cottage. The entire incident
finds its record in " Devereux," one of the best, if
also one of the less known, of the historical novels.
During his Colonial Secretaryship (1858-9) Bulwer
Lytton was seldom without visitors at his Hertford-
shire home. It was there that he conceived the
idea and worked out the plot of "The Caxtons."
" I intended it," he used to say, " for a colonial
parable. As for its hero, Pisistratus Caxton, who
repairs the shattered family fortunes in the Australian
bush, who and what is he but a type of the England
which, having lost her empire beyond the Atlantic,
more than compensated herself by a Greater Britain
beneath the Southern Cross?" It was some years
later than this that, as a very young man, the present
writer occasionally found himself, with only one or
467
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
two more, a guest at Knebworth. On these visits
the host remained invisible in his private rooms till
a seven or eight o'clock dinner. If any glimpses of
him were caught before then, they were merely those
of a figure wrapped in a dressing-gown, walking with
a book under his arm through one of the corridors.
At the dinner-hour, glossily radiant with all the arts
and appliances of the toilet, he welcomed his visitors
in the saloon and led the way to the evening meal.
Throughout the evening he seldom changed his posi-
tion from a circular divan in the drawing-room, where
he sat smoking, rather languidly, a Turkish pipe. It
was in this posture that, asked by the Lord Carnarvon
who had been his Colonial Under-Secretary, which
he considered the best of his novels, he, after
some deliberation, replied " I think, upon the whole,
* Zanoni.' " He never lost his interest in Colonial
matters or touch of Colonial acquaintances. These
latter were once, I recollect, represented by a young
Australian visitor to whom particular attention was
paid. Looking at some China ornaments especially
prized by their owner, the young man nervously let
one of them slip through his fingers — not, however, to
the ground, because, with the presence of mind of
which an instance at the Taunton ball has already
been given. Lord Lytton, at once putting out his
hand, arrested the fall of the ornament with the
words, " Fielded, by Jove ! and saved my crockery."
The story, already told, of Brocket and its Lamb
possessors may serve for a specimen of that fusion
between the newer and older elements in the social
system, suggested by the Home Counties or East
468
Woburn and Whitbread
Anglian houses. The eadiest of the famous Whig
homes in this district was Houghton ; its master, both
as Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Orford, used his
hospitalities for the organisation of politics as well
as sport. During the interval between the destruction
of the old monastic building and the very gradual
raising of the present structure, the lords of Woburn
lived much at Stratton, now Lord Northbrook's,
in Hampshire. The fame of Woburn as a socio-
political institution began with the sixth Duke of
Bedford in 1802, and ended with the seventh Duke
in 1 86 1. Other mansions in the same county, on
not so stately a scale, are associated with transactions
not less important to the country than the negotiations
between noble hosts and guests, of which for more
than half a century Woburn remained the scene.
The movement of prison reform, conducted by John
Howard, originated at Cardington. Samuel Whit-
bread (1758-18 1 5), married in 1789 Elizabeth,
sister of the second Earl Grey, of Reform Bill fame.
Inheriting a fortune from his father, the famous
brewer, he became M.P. for Bedford in 1790; no
keener Foxite ever adorned a Whig drawing-room.
His house at South Hill soon became a more useful
recruiting ground than the neighbouring Woburn
itself for the new Liberalism. So did the country
home of one of Whitbread's Parliamentary friends,
Michael Angelo Taylor. These South Hill hospitali-
ties were not only worth many votes in a division to
the Whigs ; they formed the starting point in a family
career which has shown the Whitbreads of several
generations to be equal powers in society and politics.
469
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
We pass to another Parliamentary connection.
Without poHtical co-operation and personal cordiality
between Mr. Winston Churchill's father and the
present Duke of Devonshire, Unionism could never
have existed. Such an understanding was first shown
to be practicable beneath the roof of Mr. and Mrs.
Oppenheim in Bruton Street. The alliance cemented
itself in the Rothschild palaces of Beds, and Bucks.
The special scene of the personal negotiations between
the future Duke of Devonshire and Lord Randolph
Churchhill was Baron Ferdinand Rothschild's Wad-
desdon, near Aylesbury. More conspicuously than
any of the Rothschild homes in this region, Wad-
desdon forms a monument of the creative power
of wealth. What is now a wooded park or lawn
was naturally a bare expanse of rather ungenial
soil. Struck by the possibilities of the situation,
Baron Ferdinand had no sooner acquired the spot
than he began to secure for what was to be his
park the woodland charms with which nature had
not invested it. All the large chestnuts and
limes to be found in the neighbourhood were
bought. From the spots on which they grew they
were bodily transported on tree-lifting machines
specially built for the purpose. To those convey-
ances ten and twelve cart-horses were sometimes
harnessed, bringing their load often a distance of
sixteen miles. " The giant cedars brought from
Lebanon " exist only in the pages of some local
oruide-books. As a fact the larg-e beeches and oaks
were failures ; the trees of any size that have
thriven best are the chestnuts and limes. Under
470
" Lord Ribblesdale on Toast "
the shade of these it was that, in 1886, not only
the political conferences already mentioned, went
forward, but the late Sir William Gregory, one of
the best classical scholars among the officials of his
time, convinced the Lord James of Hereford of
to-day and the late Sir William Harcourt of the
accuracy in every detail shown by Virgil's descrip-
tion of agricultural processes, or demonstrated to
Baron Ferdinand himself and to Sir John Willoughby
that the same Roman poet could have had nothing
to learn about the breed and paces of a horse
from the collective wisdom of nineteenth-century
Newmarket. Meanwhile, some ladies had joined
the group ; Sir William Gregory turned to give
Lady Elizabeth Biddulph an account from a new
point of view of the National Gallery, or to recall
his reminiscences of the French stage for the benefit
of Lady Charles Beresford. In another corner of the
garden, that distinguished admiral was, in his own
breezy phrase, over a trial of skill at picquet
"serving up Lord Ribblesdale on toast." On
such a visit as that now described there would pro-
bably have been none of the then royalties who
delighted in Waddesdon, but very likely Mr.
Gladstone or his great rival, whichever happened
to be in ppwer. Both appreciated the place
equally. Here the Liberal leader successfully tried
to interest in Homeric word-painting the most
beautiful and intellectual American lady of the time,
Mrs. Mahlon Sands. Here Disraeli, looking up at
a fashionable siren of quality, gazing upon him
from an upper window, turned round to his host
471
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
with a languid inquiry, ** Who is that grinning little
ape ? "
Many of these guests, especially Lord and Lady
Feversham, with their two daughters, each a study
in a different style of perfectly superb beauty, the
two comeliest of beaux sabreurs — Keith Fraser and
his brother Charles — the Sir E. W. Hamilton of
to-day, most musical, most cheery, most rdpandu of
men, and Sir Charles Dilke, might have been seen
passing the next week-end beneath some other
roof belonging to the same family in this district.
Even Lord Roseberry's Mentmore, the traditional
guest-house of monarchs, ministers, diplomatists,
millionaires, and sportsmen, was brought to its
present owner by his Rothschild marriage. The
rural dominion of the Rothschilds begins with
suburban Gunnersbury ; it stretches to the Chilterns.
Their country houses within this area have brought
fertilising capital into impoverished neighbourhoods,
have studded them with model farms and with
improved dwellings for a long neglected peasantry.
In the nineteenth-century Bedfordshire, the most
fashionable hostess of her time, Madame de Falbe,
made the smartest of country houses a beneficent
centre of good influences for her humbler neighbours
within a wide circumference. The Rothschilds and
their kinsfolk have done the same on a larger
scale. Smart, indeed, or rather magnificent, all their
dwellings are, but to-day, whether it be from Lord
Rothschild's Tring, Mr. Alfred Rothschild's Halton,
his brother's Ascott, or his cousin's Waddesdon, the
Israelitish annexation of Buckinghamshire and its
472
The Buckinghamshire Kishon
modish hospitalities have given the toiling masses
of the county no reason to regret the replacement of
old landlords by new.
The spirit of the political genius, who, in his own
phrase " educated " the Conservative party into house-
hold franchise, incarnated itself in the statesman, the
greatest of whose personal delights was to be and to
feel himself a Buckinghamshire squire. Where, John
Bright had pessimistically asked, were John Hampden's
three hundred Buckinghamshire yeomen .'^ "Where,"
rejoined Disraeli, "should they be but in Buckingham-
shire itself.-* And they still return a constitutional
member to Parliament in the humble individual who
now addresses you." One of Disraeli's most frequent
Hughenden guests was a political opponent, the late
Sir William Harcourt. Of two other visitors, both
newspaper men, one happily survives to-day in Lord
Glenesk, the Algernon Borthwick of the Hughenden
visits. The other was Thomas Hamber, formerly
editor of the Standard and its parent print, the
Morning Herald. Each of these visited Hugh-
enden without any fellow-guests ; each had heard the
host speak of the gurgling stream that waters the park
as "that ancient river, the River Kishon." Each, too,
from the lips of his distinguished friend, might have
offered an authentic comment on the twentieth-century
association between the squire of Hughenden and the
floral cult that visibly perpetuates his memory. " My
wife," he said to Hamber, "was a child of nature,
unversed in books, and ignorant whether the Greeks
or Romans came first. She loved primroses, therefore
I do so too." Pointing to peafowl nibbling on the
473
The New Hosts of the Home Counties
lawn, Lord Glenesk had made some remark about the
destructiveness of the birds of Juno. " It may be so,"
replied the lord of the manor, " but I prefer the
peacocks to the flowers." Disraeli's pleasantest talk
at Hughenden related to the vicissitudes of the great
families in the county : he could recall that particular
wearer of the Buckingham strawberry-leaf described
as being " Duke of very duke." In his youth he
had been present at a dinner of the Stowe tenantry,
felicitously addressed afterwards by the magnificent
nobleman himself. " How well," the young Disraeli
had said to a farmer, " the Duke suits his words to his
audience." "Yes," replied the other, "a very good
speech by a very bad man." This was the duke who,
shortly before the crash, consulting a business-like
peer as to possible retrenchments, was told that he
might perhaps put down one or two Italian pastry-
cooks. "What!" pitifully exclaimed the splendid
spendthrift, " mayn't a man have a biscuit with his
glass of sherry ? "
"In an earlier generation, the Midland dukeries,"
said Lord Beaconsfield, "were real centres of gravity.
There, perhaps, under the old patrician regime, a Prime
Minister might have picked up such an ideal private
secretary as the late Lord Rowton afterwards became."
Mr. Montagu Corry's predecessor, his chief, had been
Ralph Earle, already mentioned in these pages. Him,
indeed, Disraeli had first seen at the British Embassy
in Paris. The final details of the arrangement were
made at Rayners, the Buckinghamshire home of the
Mr. Putney Giles of " Lothair," whose son, the present
master of Rayners, is the second Sir Philip Rose, and
474
"You Call Them Savages!"
at Rayners the most illustrious of its owner's clients
generally found time to pay a yearly visit. Disraeli,
indeed, owed much of his earlier success to country-
house patronage. A Jew dandy, not of the best type,
was what he seemed to Society even long after he
had given it a taste of his intellectual quality. " My
dear John " (the Lord John Manners who, as Duke
of Rutland, was the last survivor of the Young
England group) had indeed been warned by his father,
the Duke of Rutland, against " unbecoming intimacy
with one who, notwithstanding all his cleverness, is
still a mere soldier of fortune." By this time, however,
the doors of Belvoir Castle had been opened to the
adventurer. They could not henceforth be closed.
Belvoir thus became the stepping-stone to recognition
by a scion of Nottinghamshire dukeries first, Lord
George Bentinck, and by the fourteenth Lord Derby
afterwards. Of all the stately homes of rural England
— many of them visited in these pages — between 1870
and the final failure of his health, Disraeli's special
delight seemed to be the palace of the Shrewsbury
earls, Alton Towers. The 'physical climate of the
place suited him as well as the magnificent perfection
of its arrangements within and without. " I find," he
said at Alton on one occasion, " this air to be quite
clinical." Every one was impressed and delighted, but
could only guess what he meant. Here, too, a few
years later, apropos of the Colenso heterodoxy and
the Zulu military troubles, he uttered his " They
convert our bishops, they outwit our generals, they
defeat our troops, and you call them savages ! "
475
CHAPTER XVII
FROM THE CHILTERNS TO THE CHEVIOTS
Westwood Park — Sir John Pakington, afterwards Lord Hampton —
C. N. Newdegate — Sir Stafford Northcote — Expressions that
originated at Westwood — The Anglican Deputation to Disraeli
Kinsham Court — Byron and his guests — The Countess
Guiccioli's visit to England — The Duke of Beaufort's Troy
House — Sir Richard Hill at Hawkstone — Lord Dartmouth,
" the psalm-singer " — Rowland Hill, the evangelist — Edmund
Burke's Butler's Hall — An asylum for religious refugees —
Famous visitors — Sir Joshua Reynolds and the " infant
Hercules" — Lord Nugent ("Squire Gawkey ") at Gosfield —
Lord (Squire) Western of Rivenhall — His hatred of Canning —
Twentieth-century Essex hosts and guests — Mr. Chamberlain's
Highbury — Alnwick and Raby as social patterns for Gunners-
bury, Tring, Highbury, and West Dean.
SETTING our faces north-westward we enter
Worcestershire between Evesham and Stratford-
on-Avon. A journey of something less than twenty
miles into the county brings one within sight of a
landmark in the story of Conservative Parliamentary
Reform. In 1831, the headquarters of the Whig
reformers had been the Northumbrian country houses,
notably Chillingham. Here took place the con-
ferences between Lord Durham and " Bear " EUice,
intended to secure the cooking of the schedules
476
Name-Coining at Westwood
and of the new franchise, in such a way as to dispose
of local Tory interests. The lodges and other
buildings of Westwood Park still display the
monogram " J. P." These initials belonged to the
Sir John Pakington who, dying in 1880, transmitted
the title of Lord Hampton to his descendants. His
compact, erect figure, hastening from St. Stephen's
at the end of the week to catch the train for his
country home, will be fresh in the memory of many
who may read these lines. No invitation from premier
or primate ever caused him to miss a Sunday at the
immemorial home of his family. " There are not,
there can nowhere be," he fondly says to any friend
who accompanies him, " any avenues like those of
Westwood Park." The Warwickshire neighbour,
C. N. Newdegate, who was often his visitor, would
truly add that the United Kingdom possessed nothing
equal to the Westwood rose-gardens and lavender
beds. " I do not know," another guest, Pakington's
chief. Sir Stafford Northcote, might rejoin, " whether
this reminds me most of Proserpine's flower-beds on
the plains of Enna, of the Cids' Granada gardens, of
Versailles in the old r^gwie, or of the Crystal Palace
in its happiest holiday dress." In the period from
which these conversational scraps are recalled. Sir
John Pakington, revisiting his constituents and
Westwood, struck out two phrases now historical.
Till he spoke of the " ten minutes Bill " no name had
been given to the last of the Derby-Disraeli franchise
schemes that made way for household franchise pure
and simple. The host of Westwood was also the
first to fasten the nickname of "the tea-room party"
477
From the Chilterns to the Cheviots
on the Liberal malcontents who refused in 1867 to
follow the Gladstonian lead against the Conservative
reformers. Nothing, indeed, in the Derby-Disraelian
epoch did more than Westwood's social agencies to
convert tepid Liberals into fervent Conservatives.
The staunchness of Westwood's ecclesiastical ortho-
doxy did not prevent its owner, with his keen sense
of humour and rare gift of mimicry, appreciating his
leader's bantering way with clerically-minded laymen,
even when he himself happened to be of their
number. He had been one of the deputation to
Disraeli, including every shade of Anglican opinion
from Beresford Hope to Newdegate. The visitors,
received at Downing Street with something like
paternal tenderness, stated their case to the great
man listening in respectful silence. The business
concluded, Disraeli, in his impassively solemn tones,
said, " And now, having, I think, heard their case, I
will say farewell to the children of the Church." The
voice in which the master of Westwood repeated the
words might have been Disraeli's own.
On or near the Welsh and English border, within
easy reach of Westwood, the houses of most interest-
ing associations are those connected with Byron ; the
poet, at the height of his fame, lived much in this
neighbourhood. In 181 2 a direct descendant of Queen
Anne's Prime Minister, Bishop Harley, had not long
since died at Kinsham Court. This was a dower-
house belonging to the Harley family, whose Hereford
headquarters were at Eywood. Kinsham was more
than once rented by the poet. Here among his other
guests were Vassal, Lord Holland, Samuel Whitbread,
478
Organising Evangelicalism
and George Combe, both brewers, and both like
Holland, associated with their host in arranging
details for the opening of the new Drury Lane
Theatre. At Kinsham were read the competitive
poems, which, sent in to celebrate the opening of the
new playhouse, formed a text for Horace and James
Smith's famous parodies, " Rejected Addresses." The
Countess Guiccioli, of Byronic memory, first visited
England in 1832 ; her British pilgrimage in her idol's
honour included not only his grave at Hucknall
Torkard, his school at Harrow, the house of his
sister, Mrs. Leigh, but several Herefordshire houses,
especially Kinsham. The Countess's first companion
was her brother, Pietro Gamba. She seems to have
been in Herefordshire a second time, several years
later, with that second husband, the Marquis de
Boissy, who saw so little to be ashamed of in the
Byron liaison that he introduced his wife to strangers
as " La Marquise de Boissy, ma femme, ancienne
maitresse de Lord Byron." The only other roof in
this part of England beneath which there ever met
so strange a social medley as at Kinsham, is the Duke
of Beaufort's Troy House, near Monmouth, where
at one time or another stayed most of the lights of
both sexes of the nineteenth-century stage.
Other than political movements have issued from
the country houses in this part of England. Oxford
Anglicanism owed, we have seen, much of its socially
diffusive power to the Berkshire home of the Pusey
family and to other considerable houses in that region.
The Evangelicalism that preceded the Oxford Move-
ment was socially organised at Hawkstone Park, the
479
From the Chilterns to the Cheviots
seat of the Shropshire baronet, Sir Richard Hill.
Appropriately enough he was descended from an
Elizabethan ancestor who had been the first Protestant
Lord Mayor of London. Resistance to Romanism in
every form, and devotion to the Scriptures as the rule
of life and faith, were the legacies bequeathed by this
ancestor to his posterity. The eighteenth-century
head of the Hills of Hawkstone was Sir Richard,
described in the " Rolliad " as " friend to King
George, but to King Jesus more." A personal
intimate, as well as adherent, of Pitt, he amused his
guests at the Hawkstone dinner-table by comparing
Charles Fox's conduct towards the East India
Company with the perfidy of Joab to Amasa, stabbed
to the heart at the moment of a pretended embrace
by his treacherous friend. Among Sir Richard Hill's
most frequent visitors at his Shropshire place was
Lord Dartmouth, his colleague in all good works,
irreverently named, by the Whig Opposition to North,
" the psalm-singer." Reminding all who knew him
of Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Richard Hill,
by his letters to his younger brother, when an Eton
boy, had first caused the future evangelist, Rowland,
the youngest of six, to think seriously on religious
subjects. A few years later, it was in the baronet's
Hawkstone Park that Rowland Hill made his first
attempts at open-air preaching. Hawkstone continued
to be Rowland Hill's chief home in all those spiritual
tours, involving not less locomotion than those of
John Wesley. Wherever, indeed, they dwelt, most
of the religious leaders of the period regularly met
at Hawkstone to consult about the lines on which
480
Hercules at Hall Barn
to make the advance against the powers of darkness
and sin.
The Hawkstone propaganda had no more practical
well-wisher than Edmund Burke. With him in his
beautiful house and pretty grounds at Beaconsfield,
the Hawkstone company often exchanged visits.
After 1793, Burke's Buckinghamshire home had
become the asylum, not only for refugees from
France, but for homeless religionists from all parts
of the world. Amongst those who were housed,
now at Hawkstone, now at Beaconsfield, were two
Brahmins ; they were accommodated with lodges in
the park at both places for performing the rites of
their religion. Burke's country house received many
other guests than these needy foreigners. Beneath
the roof of Lord Burnham's Hall Barn, he completed
the arrangements for buying the Gregories. On that
estate stood the dwelling improved by the buyer into
Butler's Court, so magnificent within and without as
to provoke Samuel Johnson's well-known '' nort
equidein invideo : rtziror magis " ; then came the
words, " I wish you all the success which can be
wished by an honest man." Fox, Sheridan, Garrick,
Grattan, Mirabeau, and Sir Joshua Reynolds were
frequent guests at Butler's Court. On one of these
visits Reynolds, struck by "a monstrous fine child"
he saw sprawling on the floor, painted it as the infant
Hercules strangling the serpents. The muscular babe
was the son of Burke's local man of business, Rolfe ;
he lived to become the father of the Rolfe brothers
who act in a similar capacity to-day for the master
of Hall Barn. Another visitor, less distinguished at
481 HH
From the Chilterns to the Cheviots
the time, but afterwards famous, the poet Crabbe,
owed his first fair start to the Butler's Court hospi-
talities.
The international events that brought aliens of all
kinds to Burke's rural home, also formed a connecting
link between the county in which it lay and Lord
Nugent's Gosfield, in Essex. Tall and powerfully
built, Nugent was compelled by some infirmity to
use a sort of crutch in walking ; this and the stoop
of his back caused him to be locally known as
" Squire Gawkey." Reluctantly, and with clear signs
of personal aversion, George III. invested Nugent
with the Garter. Returning home with the blue
ribbon, he received a local ovation from others than
his own tenantry. Such were the French exiles
who, overflowing from Beaconsfield, were permanently
domiciled beneath the Essex roof. The years between
Canning's first rise to fame and Roman Catholic
Emancipation in 1829 were anxious and eventful in
the social centres of rural Essex, then the most Con-
servative district of England. The leader of the
East Anglian Tories was a man who died in 1844,
Lord Western of Rivenhall, but locally famous always
as "Squire" Western. It was he who, apropos of
his special aversion, George Canning, devoutly
expressed gratitude at having always voted against
"that d d intellect." "The way in which that
fellow talks," growled Western, when Canning
happened to be amongst the dinner guests, " is
enough to make one sick. As for the scoundrel's
duel with Castlereagh, I know nothing of the facts,
but I can take my oath Canning was the aggressor.
482
Worst Vices of the Country Gentleman
Can't you see the fellow is stark, staring mad ? "
Except for its great vegetable-growing industry,
Essex, with its small, highly-cultivated farms, good
farmhouses, and the old-world mansions, remains
to-day less affected by the nearness of London than
any other part of the kingdom. Only the hosts and the
guests have changed. In the Georgian epoch, the
typical entertainer was the Charles Callis Western just
described. In the reign of Edward VII., Western's
successors are Colonel Lockwood, of Bishop's Hall,
near Romford, or Lord Howard de Walden at
Audley End. Chief among those asked to meet their
sovereign at Bishop's Hall are Sir William Walrond,
Sir Schomberg McDonnell, Lord Lansdowne, Mr.
and Mrs. Graham Stewart, Mr. and Mrs. Petre, Mr.
Henry Chaplin, and Mr. Howard Morley. At Audley
End, the house party on like occasions has generally
included the Duke and Duchess of Somerset, Lord
and Lady Ludlow, Sir Bache Cunard, Mr. and Mrs.
Van Raalte.
" Upon my word. Chamberlain, you are perpetu-
ating in this pretty place the worst vices of the
country gentleman." So, on the lawn of Highbury,
near Birmingham, said Sir William Harcourt to the
master of the place, in those days when both host
and guest, as Liberals together, were co-operating
against Lord Salisbury. Mr. John Morley is to-day
the most famous survivor of the Highbury guests,
always a pleasant company, in the era preceding the
Home Rule split.
The houses still to be visited in the extreme North
all resemble each other in the continuity of their life
483
From the Chilterns to the Cheviots
preserved unbroken since the thirteenth century. As
these Hnes are being written (July, 1906), King
Edward VII. is on the eve of becoming the Duke
of Northumberland's guest at Alnwick. A year ago
he visited Raby, with its immense hall and front door
of dimensions enabling a coach-and-four, were the
experiment made, to be driven across the threshold.
The social life of Raby, under its nineteenth century
owners, and as ordered by the Duchess of Cleveland,
was the same as that which we have already seen at
Battle Abbey ; those who figured in the northern
hospitalities were often identical with those whose
acquaintance the reader has already made in Sussex.
Alnwick, a monument of past baronial greatness,
as seen by King Edward to-day is the greatest
social stronghold of national ecclesiasticism ct la mode.
From one point of view both these places owe their
interest rather to their august past than to their
stately present. The authority exercised by the self-
propagating force of their example upon the social
system is still felt. Montalembert, visiting England
in 1855, saw the best omen for the social and political
future of the country in the marchand enrichi. A
generation or two earlier, the owners of Alnwick,
Raby, Hatfield, or any other of patrician splendour's
ancient haunts, towered high and unapproachable
above those who preceded the typical hosts of the
twentieth century, such as we have recently visited
at South Hill, in Bedfordshire, at Gunnersbury, at
Mentmore, at Waddesdon, or at Tring. The modern
passion for founding houses has received, in these
pages, illustrations at Mr. Chamberlain's Highbury,
484
The New Men and the Old Life
at the home-county palaces which are the rural
annexes of New Court, as at the West Dean of
Mr. and Mrs. William James. The correlative, as it
is also most frequently the cause, of the country house
in the aspect specially distinctive of our time, is the
office in the city. The system also implied a deeply
rooted, historic idea of country-house life. The model
for that was first given by and is still impressively
embodied in the structures, themselves a part of
our social and political annals, under whose shadow
the goal proposed in the rounds of visits now paid
is appropriately reached. There has been a change
of scene, but not of spirit or method. Nowhere are
the old traditions preserved more faithfully than
beneath the new roofs.
485
INDEX
A
Abercorn, Duke of, 273 ; John
James Hamilton, Marquis of,
286
Aberdeen, Lord, 79, 250, 369
Abergavenny, Earl of (" Lord
Burgeny") (Lord Nevill), 55,
no. III, 112, 113, 208, 312
Abinger Hall, 449
Aboyne, Lord, 361
Acland, Sir John, 302
Acland, Sir Peregrine, 319, 320
Acland, Sir Thomas, 188, 279, 303,
307-311
Aclands, the, 302, 307, 317
Acton, Lady, 458 ; Sir John, 458
Actons, the, 458
Adair, 291
Adams, 374
Addison, Joseph, 61, 76, 205, 225,
269
Adelaide of Hohenlohe, 231
Adye, General, 372
Aide, Mrs., 106
Ailesbury, Lady, 388 ; Maria,
Marchioness of, 460
Ainsworth, Harrison, 87
Airlie, Lady, 107
Aitkens, Squire, 456
Akers,the, 148
Akers-Douglas, Aretas, 148
Albany, Lord, 287
Albemarle, Lady, 180
Albini, William, Lord of Bucken-
ham, 33, 34, 40
Albizi, Cardinal, 172
Albury, 430-432
Alfieri, 381
Alford, Lady Marian, 399
Alfoxton, 323, 324, 365
Alfred, King, 33
Alington, first Lord (Mr. Sturt),
223-226
AUeine, Joseph, 355
Allen, Ralph, 297, 342-346
Allworthy, 66
Almack's, 182, 330, 331, 428
Alnwick, 179, 484
Althorp, 72, 171
Alton Priors, 225
Alton Towers, 475
Alvanley, Lord, 57, 91, 387, 412
Amelia, Princess, 86, 343
Ancaster, Duke of, 130
Angerstein, Mr., 454
Anglesea, Lord, 331
Anne, Queen, 171, 207, 275, 478
Anne of Cleves, 44
Anne of Denmark, 229
Anson, General, 411
487
Index
Anstey, Christopher, 316
Apreece, Jane, 417
d'Arblay, Madame, 289
Arbuthnot, Mrs., 426
Archer, 138
Arden, Pepper, 279, 286, 287
Argyle, Duke of, 207, 289 ; Duchess
of, 289
Armagh, Archbishop of, 191
Armstead, Mrs., 82
Arnold, Dr., 73
Arnold, Matthew, 300, 396, 397,
442, 446
Arundel Castle, 32, 39, 52, 234, 289
Arundel, Earl of, 34
Arundels, the, 233
Ashburnhams, the, 207
Ashburton, Lady, 107, 368, 370,
371 ; second Lady, 370 ; Lord,
368, 370
Ashley, Anne, 211
Ashley Combe, 303
Ashley, Evelyn, 466
Ashley, Sir Anthony, 211, 212
Ashleys, the, 213
Assheton, Thomas, 375
Astor, Mr., 419
Astor, jun., Mr. and Mrs., 419
Atterbury, 358
Audley End, 483
d'Aumale, Due, 257
Austin, Alfred, 140, 141, 142
Austin, Charles, 100
Aylesbury, Marchioness of, 459
Aylesfords, the, 20
Ayresworth, Allan, 138
Ayscue, Admiral, 238
Azzolini, Cardinal, 172
Bacon, Lord Francis, 122, 160, 333
Baden, Grand Duke of, 460
Bagehot, Walter, 403
Baker, John and W. de Chair, 137
Balch, Robert, 319 ; Miss, 319 I
Balfour, Arthur J., 49, 148, 209,
358, 359. 392
Balliol, William de, 141
Balmoral, 187, 208
Bampfields, the, 241
Bancks, Sir Jacob, 222
Bancrofts, the, 420
Banks-Stanhopes, the, 49
Barberini, Cardinal, 172
Baring, Lord, 392
Barley Wood, 303, 355
Barnard, Captain, 179
Barras, 67
Barre, 57, 116, 433 ; Colonel, 348
Barringtons, the, 456
Barry, Sir Charles, 372
Barrymores, the, 92
Barter, Charles, 281, 451
Barter, Mr., 281
Barter, Robert (Warden of Win-
chester), 196, 281, 298
Barter, William, 281
Bartlett, Sir Ellis Ashmead, 54
Barttelot, Sir Walter, 81
Bassano, Due de, 393
Bath, Lord, 210, 258 ; fourth Lord,
207, 208 ; fifth Lord, 209
Bathurst, Lord, 117, 193, 224
Baths, the, 194, 271
Battle Abbey, 43-47, 52, 94, 97, 484
Baxter, Richard, 355
Bayham Abbey, 94
Bayshill Lodge, Cheltenham, 223
Beaconsfield, Lord (Benjamin
Disraeli), 38, 42, 49, 54, 66, 77,
81, 101-104, 106, no, 112-115,
118, 124-126, 144, 150, 219, 220,
223, 231, 232, 254, 261, 266-268,
279> 303, 309, 372, 378, 380, 383,
389, 392, 394» 409* 4io> 428, 431,
432, 438, 448, 45i» 462, 471, 473-
475. 477, 478
Beattie, Dr., 275
Beauchamp, Richard (Earl of
Worcester), 115
488
Index
Beauclerk, Elizabeth (Countess of
Pembroke), 182
Beauclerk, Topham, 75, 182
Beauclerks, the, 194
Beaufort, Admiral, 398 ; Duke of,
257. 479
Beausey, Cheshire, 29
Beckenham, 421
A'Beckett, Arthur W., 420
Beckett, 456
Beckford, William, 360, 362 ; the
younger, 360-364 ; Peter, 362
Bedford, Duke of, 92, no, 116, 152,
179. 333; 469
Bedgebury Park, 145, 146, 147
Bellingham, 322
Belvoir Castle, 410, 475
Bemerton, 186
Bennet, R. H., 130
Bentinck, Lord George, 42, 444
475 ; Lady Elizabeth, 206
Bentincks, the, 138, 348
Bentham, Jeremy, 249, 349, 364,
365, 366
Bentivoglio, Cardinal, 273
Bentley, 192
Beresford-Hope, A. J., 144-147,
478
Beresf ord, Adrian, 408 ; Alexander,
408 ; Henry, 408 ; Lord William,
408
Beresf ord, Lady Charles, 471
Berghem, Baron de, 102
Berkeley Castle, 226; Lord, 411
Bernard, Viscountcy of, 46
Berry Court, 261
Berrys, the, 261
Bert, Paul, 403
Besant, Mrs., 81
" Bess of Hardwick," 178
Bicton, 290-296, 306
Biddulph, Lady Elizabeth, 471
Bidstone, 29
Bingley, 313
Birling, the manor of, 116
Bishop's Hall, 483
Bishopstone Manor, 85
Bismarck, Count Herbert, 460
Bisshopps, the, 74
Blachford, Lord (F. Rogers), 379
Blair of Brechin, David, 355
Blaise Castle, 356
Blake, Admiral, 238
Blanchminster, Ralph de, 242
Blenheim Palace, 56, 209, 220
Blesinton, Viscount, 191
Blessington, Lady, 232, 332
Bloomsbury Gang, the, 109, no,
116
Blount, Sir Charles, 229
Blowitz, Chevalier de, 54
Boconnoc, 267-269, 277, 297
Boddington, Samuel, 404
Bohuns, the (Dukes of Bucking-
ham), 15
Boissy, Marquise de, 479
Boleyn, Anne, 127, 460
Boleyn, Sir Thomas (Earl of Wilt-
shire), 127
Bolingbroke, St. John, Viscount,
154, 312, 313, 345, 358, 410;
Lady, 181, 182
Bolton, Duke of, 193 ; Lavinia,
Duchess of, 193
Bonaparte, Jerome, 231, 369
Bononi, 65
Booth, General, 214
Borromeo, Cardinal, 172, 355
Boscawen, Admiral, 287 ; Mrs
287, 288
Boscombe Tower, 389
Boswell, 136, 194, 275, 289, 352
Botle, Sir John, 29
Boucicaults, the, 420
Boundes, Sir Robert Smythc, 165,
166
Bourbaky, General, 304
Bourdaloue, 406
Bouveries, the, 336, 443
Bower, Frederick, 96
489
Index
Bowles Rector of Bremhill, 354
Bowood, 346, 349-355
Bowring, Sir John, 415
Boyle, Lady Charlotte, 416 ; Lady
Dorothy, 416 ; Miss Mary, 399
Boyle, Viscount, 191
Boyles, the, 190-192
Braddon, Mount, 267
Bradlaugh, Mr., 81
Bradshaw, 92
Brandon, Anne, 154
Braoses, the, 83, 85
Brassey, Albert, 456 ; Lord, 97, 98,
99 ; Thomas, 97, 98
Brassey, Lady, 99
Breamore, 360
Brien, Nell}^, 181
Bright, John, 78, 432, 437, 438, 473
Brighton Pavilion, 89-96, 227, 228,
411
Broadmead, Mr., 328
Broadmeads, the, 326
Brocket Hall, 465, 466, 468
Broderip, Mrs., 321
BrogHe, Due de, 67
Bromley-Davenport, 139
Brookfield, 369
Brooks, Shirley, 422
Brougham, Lord, 49
Broughton Castle, 457, 458
Brown, " Capability," 349
Brown, Lady Frances, 182
Brown, Bishop Harold, 311
Browne, Sir Anthony (Lord
Montacute), 44-46
Brownes, the, 44, 45, 94
Brownlow, Countess of, 331
Bruges, Lord Mayor, 122
Brummell, Beau, 412, 424 ; George,
464
Bryanston, 367
Brymore, 333-337
Buccleuch, the, family, 1 10
Buckingham, Duke of, 28, 60, 203 ;
Edward, Duke of, 152 ; George
Villiers, 274, 417, 474 ; Hum-
phrey, first Duke of, 174
Buller, 298 ; Charles, 251 ; Robert,
325
Bullers, the, 325, 367
Bunsen, 73
Burghclere, 372
Burgold, Bishop of Cornwall, 242
Burgoyne, 29
Burke, Edmund, 76, 116, 355, 404,
407, 481, 482
Burleigh, Lord, no, in
Burlington, Earl of (Richard
Boyle), 415, 416
Burnaby, Fred, 148
Burnand, F. C, 127, 138, 420
Burne, Mr. John, 77
Burnet, 192
Burney, Dr., 289
Burnham, Lord, 481
Burrell, Peter (Lord Gwydir), 130
Burrells, the, 129, 130
Burt, Mr. Thomas, 77
Burton Pynsent, 342 ; Robert, of
Christchurch, 160, 166
Busson, Billant, 394
Bute, Lord, 341, 349, 418
Butler, 138
Butler-Johnstone, H. A. Monro,
loi, 102
Butler's Court, 481, 482
Buttera, Prince, 183
Byng, Mrs., 463 ; " Poodle," 464,
465
Byron, Admiral, 305
Byron, Lady, 140, 352
Byron, Lord, 76, 89, 124, 140, 141,
154, 304. 306, 352, 362, 375. 376,
409, 414, 425-427, 464, 466, 478,
479
Cade, Jack, 141
Cairns, Lord, 125, 462
Calcraft, Henry, 429, 436
490
Index
Cambridge, Duke of, 187 ; House,
186
Camden House, Chislehurst, 393
Camdcns, the, 95
Camden, Pratt, Lord, 116, 349
Camelford, Lord, 267, 268
Camoys, Lord, 57, 395
Canford Manor, 217, 218, 219, 220,
221, 222
Canning, George, 42, 306, 417, 482
Canning, Lady, 255; Lord, 369,
378, 481
Cantelupe, Lord, 125
Cardigan, Lord, 387
Carhampton, Lord, 279
Carlingford, Lady, 438, 439
Carlisle, Earl of, 58, 64, 76
Carlton Club, the, 114, 115
Carlton House, Brighton, 91, 227
Carlyle, 74, 107, 369, 370, 371, 437 ;
Mrs., 107, 371
Carmichael, Sir James, 105
Carminowes, the, 267, 268
Carnanton, 266, 267, 409
Carnarvon, Earl of, 55, 165, 307,
311, 467; Viscount Ascot, 205;
fourth Earl of, 300, 311 ; second
Earl of, 308, 371, 372
Carnot, 67
Caroline, Queen, 36, 297
Carroll, Lewis, 176
Carteret, Lord, 259 ; Lady Louisa,
259
Cassiobury, 330
Castlehill, 306, 307, 310,368; the
Family, 303
Castlereagh, Lord, 482 ; Lady, 331
Catharine, Czarina of Russia, 60
Cavendish, Lord Richard, 416 ;
Lord George, 416 ; Sir William
of Chatsworth, 178
Cavendishes, the, 52, 53, 55, 192,
417
Cecils, the, 212, 460, 462
Cellini, Benvenuto, 56
49
Chamberlain, J., 136, 144, 256, 320,
372, 440, 484
Chambers, Sir William, 315
Champernowne, 261, 273
Chapel Cleve, 322
Chaplin, Henry, 483
Chapone, Mrs,, 289
Charles L, 145, 159, 191, 202, 203,
204, 205, 302, 314, 416
Charles IL, 66, 87, 94, 128, 159,
163, 171, 172, 178, 197, 198, 203,
212, 213, 222, 225, 229, 238, 258,
260, 283, 299, 347, 368, 372, 417
Charles X., 229
Charlotte, Queen, 297 ; Princess,
224
Chatsworth, 209, 416
Chaucer, 17, 19, 22, 24, 119, 121,
129, 218
Chaworth, Mary, 376 ; William,
305
Chenery, Thomas, 373
Chesterfield, Lord, 348
Chesterfields, the, 207
Chesworth, 83
Chevening Park, 118, 119, 120, 131,
269
Chichester, Earl of (Albini), 34 ;
Lady, 86
Chifrey, 378
Chillingham, 476
Chilston Park, 148
Chiswick House, 415, 416, 417, 423,
434
Christchurch, 84
Christian, Princess, 394
Church, Dean, 311
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 55, 56,
84, 115, 148, 220, 221, 383,404,
407, 470
Churchill, Winston, 470
Churchills, the, 55
Clanricarde, House of, 190
Clarendon, Lord, 145, 213, 278,
347. 369
Index
Clark, Holman, 138
Clarkson, 302
Clayton, baronets, 404
Clement, Alice, 34; John, Governor
of Guisnes, 321
Cleveland, Duke of, 44, 46, 47, 48,
49' 50' 51 ; Duchess of, 47, 48, 52,
268, 484
Cleves, Anne of, 201, 460
Cliffords of Cumberland, the, 192,
233
Clifton Terrace, Brighton, 91
Clinton, Lady Arabella, 290 ;
Father, 367 ; Lord Francis, 408
Cliveden, 417, 418, 419
Clouds, 358, 359
Cobden, Richard, 78, 79, 80, 236,
326, 373, 438
Cochrane, Baillie (Lord Laming-
ton), 125
Cockburn, Lord Justice, 236
Cocoa Tree Club, 92
Cokes, the, 465
Colenso, Bishop, 474
Colepepper, Lord, 128, 145
Coleridge, Lord, 183, 392
Coleridge, S. T., 73, 235, 304,
323
Collins, Churton, 170
Collins, Mortimer, 422
Columb, John, 302
Combe, George, 479
Combe Florey, 326
Compton, Lord William, 251
Compton Place, 53, 55, 56
Conservative Club, The, 1 14
Constable, 353
Conybeare, Dean, 348
Cook, Canon, 311
Cook, John Douglas, 100, 146, 147,
239, 240
Cooke, Sir Henry, 411
Cooper, Sir John, 211
Coopers, the, 211
Cope, Sir John, 204
Cork, first Earl of, 190, 191 ; second
Earl of, 191, 192 ; fourth Earl
of, 192, 193 ; ninth Earl of,
190 ; seventh Countess of, 194 ;
ninth Lady, 194
Cork, Bishop of, 191
Corks, the, 194
Cornwall, Earldom of, 267
Cornwall, Speaker, 314
Cornwallis, Archbishop, 297
Corn worthy Rectory, 281, 282,
Coryate, Thomas, 336, 337
Corys, the, 288
Cothele, 281, 282, 283
Cothelstone, 319
Courtenay, 277, 280
Courtney, Mr. Leonard, 249, 254
Courtown, Lord, 223
Coutts Bank, 184
Coventry, Henry, 205 ; Lord
Keeper, 212
Cowdray Park, 56, 74
Cowen, Joseph, 253
Cowper, Earl, 63, 463 ; Lady, 63
463, 464 ; fifth Lord, 425
Cowpers, the, 401
Crabbe, 481
Craggs, 275
Cranbourne Chase, 217
Cranbrook, Lord (Gathorne
Hardy), 147, 148, 448
Cranleigh, near Guildford, 450
Cranmer, Archbishop, 199
Cranworth, Lord, 118
Craven, Mrs., 401, 402, 403
Craven, Lord, 411
Crawford, Mr. F. Marion, 453
Creevey, Thomas, 36, 40, 41, 44, 56,
83, 330
Crewe, Mrs., 124, 351
Crichel, 223, 224, 225
Cricket-St. John, near Crewkerne,
337. 338
Croker, John Wilson, 414, 415
Cromwell, OUver, 32, 130, 152,
492
Index
159, 163, 172, 204, 212, 275, 337,
348, 467 ; Richard, 467
Crossley, Miss, 51
Crowcombe Court, 319
Crowe, W., 225
Crudges, the, 241
Cruickshank, 323
Crutchley, Mrs. Charles, 138
Cuckfield, 87
Cuddesdon Palace, 451
Cudworth, Ralph, 338
Culling, Lady Anne, 413, 414
Cumberland, Duke of, 88, 89 ;
Duchess of, 88
Cunard, Sir Bache, 483
Cunningham, 352
Currie, Lord, 411 ; Lady, 395, 396
Currie, Raikes, 41 1
Currie, Torrens, 411
Curtis, Sir William, 92
Cyrus, Mr., 273
Czar, the, 106, 182 ; Paul L, 124
D
Dalbergs, the, 458
Dale, R. W., 448
Dalmeny, 421 ; Lord, 47
Darner, Colonel, 387
Damiens, 75
Dangstein, 78
Darlington, Earldom of, 46
Dartmouth, Lord, 480
Darwin, Charles, 131, 132, 354
Davy, Sir Humphry, 417
Dawkins, Sir Clinton, 143, 144
Daylesford, 458, 459
Deakin, Colonel, 261-
Deepdene, 144, 408-410
Delane, 139, 221, 254, 390
Delaval, Mr. John, 454
Delawarr, Earl of (Baron Buck-
hurst), 124, 126 ; George John,
fifth Lord, 124
Delawarr, seventh Lady, 125
De la Zouche, Lord, 74
Denison, Archdeacon, 339, 340
Denne Park, 83
Denny, Sir Anthony, 177
Derby, Lord, 114, 118, 175, 219,
303> 35i> 386, 477, 478 ; twelfth
Earl of, 194 ; fourteenth Lord,
113, 186, 296, 297, 440, 475;
fifteenth Lord, 49, 256, 358
Derby, Elizabeth, twelfth Countess
of, 194
Dering, Sir Edward, 139
Desmond, Earl of, 191
Despencer, Hugh, 115
Devonshire, Duke of, 29, 37, 54,
164, 191, 192, 470 ; fifth Duke of,
416 ; Duchess of, 464
De Warrens, the, 115
Dice, Temple, 102
Dicey, Edward, 420
Dickens, Charles, 17, 127, 256, 370,
389. 436
Digby, Lady Anne, 166
Digby, Sir Stephen, 223
Dilkc, Sir Charles Wentworth, 472
Dillwyn, 302
Dinton House, Salisbury, 312, 358
Disraeli, Mrs., 428
Disraeli, Ralph, 380
Dixon, Charles, 68
Dixon, Hepworth, 375
DolHnger, Dr., 311
Donizetti, 420
Donoughmore, Lord, 51, 106
Dorchester, the Darners, Earls of,
222, 228
Dorset, Duke of, 123, 124, 411
Downe, Farnborough, 131, 132
Downshire, Lord, 459
Drew, Julius, 95
Drummond, Henry, 430-432
Drummond- Wolff, Sir Henry, 389
Ducie, Lady, 458, 459
Dudley, Lady Mary, 156
Dudleys, the, 162, 430
Duff, Banffshire, 257
493
Index
Dulverton, 311
Du Maurier, 107
Dumont, 349
Dundas (Lord Melville), 148, 276,
277
Dunford House, 78
Dunkerron, Barony of, 348
Dunmore, Lady, 388
Dunning (Lord North), 116, 286,
293. 315
Dunraven, Lord, 359
Dunster, 314-325
Dupanloup, 403
Durdans, the, 398, 452, 453
Durham, Lord, 476
Dyke, Sir W. Hart, 114
Dykes, 446
E
Earle, Charles W., 450
Earle, Ralph, 102-104, 474
Easton Neston, 194
Edgecumbe, Lady Emma, 331
Edgecumbe, Mount, 280-289
Edgecumbe, the first Lord, 284 ;
Sir Peter, 282 ; Sir Richard, 283,
284
Edgecumbes, the, 367
Edgworth, Maria, 409
Edward H., 152, 226
Edward IIL, 20, 115, 129
Edward IV., 213
Edward VI., 152, 155, 200, 201
Edward VII., 54, 98, 141, 209, 419,
460, 461, 483, 484
Eggesford, North Molton, 307-311
Egmont, Earl of, 56 ; second Earl
of, 328 ; Lord, 323
Egmonts, the, 319, 321, 322, 326
Egremont, second Earl, 358 ;
George, fourth and last Earl,
358 ; Lord, 40, 91, 357
Egremonts, the, 153
Elcho, Lady, 359 ; Lord, 359, 369
" Eliot, George," 133, 374
Eliot, John, 272-275 ; first Lord,
275. 276, 277 ; Sir John, 276
Eliot, Sir Joshua, 272
Eliot, Lady Louisa, 280
EHot, Port, 272-280, 284, 332
Ehot, Richard, 272, 273, 275 ; Mrs.
Richard, 276
Eliots, the, 273
Elizabeth, Czarina of Russia, 59, 60
Elizabeth, Princess, 162, 195
Elizabeth, Queen, 68, 74, no, in,
122, 128, 136, 145, 150, 175, 190,
201, 282, 459
EUice, " Bear," 369, 476
ElUs, 291
Elphinstone, Margaret Mercer, 426
Elton, Charles Isaac, 341
Embley, Squire of, 187
Enmore Castle, 321, 322, 326, 328
Ephratah, Penn., 356
Eridge Castle, 110-116, 142, 145,
149, 208, 223, 312
Erskine, 298, 425 ; Lord, 411
Essex, Lord, 330
Eugenie, Empress, 229, 230
Euston, Lady, 416
Evelyn, John, 87, 128, 397
Exeter, Earl of, 212 ; Marquis of,
130
Eywood, 478
Fagniani, Maria, 412
Fairfaxes, the, 128
Fairfield, 319-321
Fairlight, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108
Falbe, Madame de, 472
Falcon, Robert Steward, 446, 447
Falkland, 145, 165 ; Viscount
(Lucius Carey), 204, 205
Falmouth, Lord, 265
Fane, Sir Ralph, 152
Fane, Violet (Lady Currie), 395
Fanes of Clovelly, the, 317
Fanshawe, Miss, 409
494
Index
Farnborough Hill, 391-393
Farnborough, Lord (Thomas Ers-
kine May), 440
Farren, Miss (Countess of Derby),
194
Farrer, Lord, 449
Fauconberg, Lord, 224
Fawsley, 457
Fellowes, the, 375
Fenton, Lavinia, 193
Ferdinand IV. of Naples, 458
Fermor, Miss Arabella, 58
Ferrabey, 228
Ferronnays, Marquis de la, 401
Feversham, Lord and Lady, 472
Field Place, 81-83
Fieldhead, 419
Fielding, 292, 344, 345 ; Sarah, 345
Fiennes, Mr., 457 ; Lady Augusta,
457
Fife, Duke of, 257 ; Dowager Coun-
tess of, 182
Filmer, Sir Robert, 332
Finches, the, 430
Finnerty, Mr., 247
Fitzalan, Mary, 34
Fitzallen, the Primate, 174
Fitz-Geoffrey, Charles, 334
Fitzgerald, Seymour, 126
Fitz- Harrises, the, 385
Fitzherbert, Mrs., 93
Fitzherberts, the, 177
Fitzmaurice, Viscount, 348, 450
Fitzpatrick, 291 ; Colonel, 294, 295 ;
General, 82
Fitzroy, Mrs., 182
Fitzwalters, the, 153
Fitzvvilliams, the, 153, 372
Flahault, Count de, 215, 216,426
Flaxman, 407, 408
Fletcher, Giles, 160
Foley, 187
Foley, Lady, 289
Folkestone, Lord, 443
Fonblanque, 227, 228
Fonthill, 360-364
Ford, Jack, 412
Ford, Abbey, 363-367
Forester, Captain Francis, 51
Forster, John, 370, 436
Fortescue, 24 ; Chichester, 438 ;
the third Earl, 306, 307, 429
Fortescue, Lady Susan, 310
Fortcscues, the, 268, 303,310,439
Fouche, 414
Fox, Charles James, 35, 57, 58, 64,
82, 116, 276, 286, 291, 293, 294,
351, 417. 433> 434. 435> 4^H; 480,
481 ; Mrs., 480
Foxholes, 390, 391
Fraser, Charles, 472 ; Keith, 472 ;
Sir William, 230, 231
Erasers, the, 429
Frederick, Prince, 227
Frederick, Sir Charles, 285
Freeman, Prof. E. A., 44, 97, 139,
340, 341
French, Percy, 439
Frere, John Hookham, 306
Fridley Farm, 403, 404, 407
Froissart, 129
Froude, J. A., 134, 371
Froude, R. Hurrell, 444
Fuller, Thomas, 338
Gainsborough, 345, 352, 353, 404
Gaisford, Dean, 444
Galway, Viscount, 194
Gam, Miss, 177
Gamba, Pietro, 479
Garibaldi, 236, 420
Garrick, 285, 289, 345, 481
Garrison, 420
Garth, 269
Gaston, John, Grand Duke, 63
Gatcombe Park, Glos., 246
Gaunt, John of, 218
Gay, 192, 193, 416
Geere, Sir R., 87
495
Index
Gennadius, 450
Genoa, 6r
George II., 163, 291, 360
George III., 94, 109, 154, 179, 180,
206, 223-228, 286, 287, 291, 297,
298, 343> 34«» 352, 418, 433, 482
George IV., 88, 96, 224, 227, 228,
385,411,424,426,456
George V. (of Hanover), 457
Germain, Lord George, 316
Gibbon, Edward, 76, 77, 362, 435
Gibbons, Grinling, 67
Gibraltar, Bishop of, 389
Gibson, Mrs. Milner, 450
Gilbey, Sir Walter, 55
Giles, Putney, 474
Giustinian, 28
Gizi, Cardinal, 172
Gladstone, Sir John, 380
Gladstone, W. E., 38, 55, 81, 99,
102, 105, 112, 118, 126, 185, 190,
207, 208, 214, 216, 236, 303, 309,
310, 314, 317, 324, 372, 378, 380,
390> 399< 401. 402, 438, 440, 449,
450, 460, 462, 471, 478
Gleig, Rev. G. R., 381
Glenesk, Lord (Sir Algernon Borth-
wick), 54, 84, 221, 473, 474
Glenthorn, 322
Gloucester, Duke of, 28, 152, 162,
163
Glyn, Mr. (Lord Wolverton), 462
Godley, Sir Arthur, 317, 318
Godolphin, Tom Killigrew, 222,
242
Godolphins, the, 241
Godwin, Earl, 115
Goldsmid, Sir Julian, 102, 105
Goldsmith, Lewis, 246 ; Oliver,
349» 353
Goodwood, 39, 41, 43, 52, 96, 142,
144, 208
Gordon, Duchess of, 361 ; Lady
Margaret, 361 ; General, 402
Gore House, 232
Gore-Jones, Admiral Sir William,
245
Gorhambury, 333
Gorst, Sir J. E., 114, 220
Goschen, Lord, 105, 134, 135, 136,
142, 144
Gosfield, 482
Gotch, Professor, 135
Goudy, Professor, 135
Gough, Lord, 124
Goulburn, Doctor E. M. (Dean of
Norwich), 105, 253
Gower, Mr. F. L., 249
Grace, M. P., 51, 97
Grafton, Duke of, 116, 222, 416 ;
Duchess of, 180, 182
Graham, 192 ; Marquis of, 278 ;
Sir James, 325
Grain, R. Corney, 138, 255
Grandperret, Lawyer, 394
Grange, the, Alresford, 368-
371
Grant-Duff, Sir Mountstuart E.,
401, 436, 439, 441, 442, 450 ;
Lady, 441
Granville, Lord, 35, 55, 193, 249,
258* 348, 369^ 374; 387, 389, 390»
391, 402, 403, 438, 449, 461 ; Sir
Bevil, 258, 259, 260 ; Denis, Dean
of Durham, 260 ; first Earl, 259 ;
John, 238, 258
Granville, Lady, 259, 374, 458
Granvilles, the, 259, 261, 268, 269,
271, 277, 401
Grattan, 481
Greene, 169
Gregories, the, 480
Gregory, Sir William, 471 ; Dean,
248
Grenfell, W. H., 419
Greswell, 325
Greville, Charles, 41, 83, 176, 177,
185, 186, 255, 390, 411, 414, 428,
431, 463
Greville, Henry, 255, 428, 463
496
Index
Greville, Lord and Lady, 396 ;
Lady Violet, 396, 397
Grey, Earl, 47, 366, 369, 435, 469 ;
Lady Jane, 155
Griffiths, Arthur, 420
Grimstone, 138
Grisewood, 458, 459
Grisi, 463
Gronow, Captain, 253
Groombridge Place, 164
Grosse-teste, Bishop of Lincoln, 135
Grosvenor, Countess, 359
Grote, George, 120 ; Mrs., 120,370,
400
Grove House, Brighton, 88
Grylls, 286
Guerra, Count, 106
Guest, Sir John, 194, 197
Guiccioli, Madame, 141, 427, 479
Guildford, Lord, 155
Guizot, 67
Gunnersbury, 483
Gustavus Adolphus, 335
Gwyn, Nell, 194, 197, 198
H
Halden, 471
Hales, Sir Thomas and Lady, 336
Halifax, Lord, 65, 173
Hallam, 353
Halland, 85
Hall Barn, 481
Halliday, Mrs., 322
Halswell House, 328-332
Hamber, Thomas, 230, 473
Hambledon House, 368
Hambro, Lord, 222, 223
Hambros, the, 227
Hamilton, Duchess of, 262 ; Duke
of, 84, 204 ; sixth Duke of, 194 ;
eighth Duke of, 130
Hamilton, Lady, 606, 607 ; Lord
Archibald, 60
Hamilton, Sir E. W., 472
Hamilton, Captain, 273 ; Gavin, 268
Hammersleys, the, 419
Hampden, John, 272-276, 335, 473
Hanger, Colonel, 91
Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 313
Hannay, James, 133, 422
Hansom, Joseph Aloysius, 38
Harbin, Doctor, 199
Harbledown Rectory, 137, 138
Harcourt, Sir William Vernon, 146,
i47> 313. 445- 446, 471. 473. 483
Harcourt, Archbishop, 444; George,
438
Harcourts, The Vernon, 96, 439
Hardenberg, 426
Hardwicke, Earl of, 345
Hare, Archdeacon, 73 ; Augustus,
73. 99. 457 ; Francis, 70 ; Mrs.
Francis, 71 ; John, 439, 456 ;
Julius, 73 ; Naylor Francis, 71 ;
Rev. Robert, 70
Harford, 356
Harley, Bishop, 478
Harleys, the, 478
Harmer, Harry, 412
Harrisons, the, 117
Harrowby, Lord (Ryder), 406
Hart-Dyke, Sir William, 148
Hartington, Lord, 55, 99, 209 ;
Lady, 416
Hartopp, 138
Hartrow Manor, 326
Harvey, William, 160
Hassan, Prince, 449
Hastings, Lady Flora, 185 ; Mar-
quis of, 454
Hastings, Squire, 224
Hastings, Warren, 78, 458, 459
Hatchlands, 450
Hatfield, 208, 209, 220, 382, 459-
463, 467, 484
Hawarden, 208
Hawke, Admiral, 285
Hawker, Rev. R. S., 239, 240, 263,
264
Hawkstone Park, 479, 480, 481
497 II
Index
Hayes Barton, 290, 342
Hayes Place, Bromley, 1 16, 1 17, 1 18,
Hayes, Sir James, 146
Hayter, Sir Arthur, 239 ; Lady
(Lady Haversham), 239, 408
Hayward, Abraham, 120, 146, 234,
235» 236, 255, 352, 353, 390, 401,
404
Hayward, Miss, 235
Hazeley, near Farnborough, 394,
396
Headfort, Lord, 92
Heathcote, Sir William, 378, 379
Heenan, 139
Heligan, 286, 287
Hempsted Park, 147, 148
Henckel, Henrietta, 70, 71
Henderson, Mercer, 49
Henderson, 404
Henley, W. E., 432
Henrietta Maria, Princess, 204
Henry L, 242 ; second wife of, 33,
40
Henry IL, 34, 154
Henry HL, 315, 385
Henry IV., 128
Henry VIL, 284
Henry VOL, 44, 122, 127, 152, 154,
158, 177, 195, 200, 201, 222, 234
Herbert, George, 186 ; Henry (Earl
of Pembroke), 153
Herbert, J. R., 100, loi ; Sidney,
185-187, 325, 369
Herbert, Miss, 256
Herbert, Robert Sawyer, 372
Herbert, William, 177
Herbert of Cher bury, Lord, 187
Herbert of Lea, Lord, 187
Herberts, the, 177, 188, 205, 307,
37ij 373. 385
Heron Court, 385, 386-388
Hertford, Lord, 75, 411 ; Marquis
of (Lord Yarmouth), 412
Hervey, Admiral, 92
Hervey, 415
Hever Castle, 127, 128
Heythrop, 455
Higgins, Matthew ("Jacob Om-
nium"), 100
High Elms, 131, 132, 133, 134, 440
Highbury, 483, 484
Highclere Park, 371, 372, 373, 374
385
Hill, Dr. Birkbeck, 136
Hill, Sir Richard, 480
Hill, Rowland, 480
Hill Top, near Bodmin, 249
Hinchcliffe, Bishop of Peter-
borough, 298
Hodges, Dr. Parry, 236
Holbein, 200, 201
Holdernesse, Lady, 180
Holland, Henry Rich, first Lord,
203, 204 ; Robert Rich, second
Lord, 204, 306, 478, 479 ; third
Lord, 349 ; Lady, 435
Holland House, 435, 438
Holmbury, 398
Holmcote, Devon, 279, 302, 303,
307. 3o8>3io. 311
Holmwood, 456
Holwell, 348
Holwood Park,Keston, 1 17, 1 18, 1 19
Homer, 74
Hood, Tom, 256, 321 ; the younger,
136, 256
Hood, Lady, 321
Hood, Sir Alexander Acland, 318
Hood, Sir Samuel, 318
Hoods, the, 318
Hoods, the Acland, 319
Hook, Theodore, 353, 418
Hooker, Anna, 334
Hope, Mr. Beresford, 239
Hope, Henry, of Deepdene, 124,
409, 410
Hope, Thomas, 408
Hopton of Fosse, Lord, 337, 338
Horsey, Sir John, 195
Horsham, 83, 85, 91
498
Index
Horsman, 254
Hortcnse, Queen, 427
H or ton, Mrs. Wilmot, 76
Hothficld Place, 141
Hothfield, Lord, 141
Houghton, Lord, 85, 178, 369, 452,
468
Howard, Cardinal, 64
Howard, 115 ; Sir George, 286, 287
Howard, John, 469
Howards, the, 230, 233
Hughenden, 462, 473, 474
Hughes, 456
Hulse, Sir Edward, 340
Hume, Joseph, 252, 366
Hunter, Mrs. Kitty, 180, 181
Huntingdon, Lord, 224 ; Lady,
297
Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, 298
Hurley on the Thames, 132, 173,
378, 379. 443
Hurst (Oatscroft), Dunford, 79
Hurstbourne, 374, 375
Hurstmonceaux Castle, 56, 69, 99
Hurstmonccaux Place, 71-74
Huxley, 132, 133
Ibbotson, Captain, 428
Iddesleigh, first Earl of (Sir Staf-
ford Northcote), 299, 300, 306,
309,310,477
I den, Sheriff, 141
Ilchester, Lord, 353 ; Dowager
Countess of, 224
Ince, Canon, of Christchurch, 134
Inchiquin, Lord, 3,88, 418
Inglis, Sir R. H., 379
Inhoff, Countess, 459
Ireton, General, 347
Irving, Edward, 430, 431, 432
Irving, Sir Henry, 383, 420, 439
Irwine, Sir John, 93, 94
Isleworth, 426
Ismail Pasha, 126
J
Jackson, 412 ; Sir George, 434 ;
Dr., 447
James I., 149, 163, 228, 229, 333
James II., 173, 198, 224, 258, 328,
359. 372, 434
James of Hereford, Lord, 359, 471
James, Sir Henry, 360
James, G. P. R., 145
James, Mr. W., 96, 484 ; Mrs., 96,
138, 288, 484
James, Mr. Henry, 453
Janssen, Cornelius, 203
Jeaffreson, John Cordy, 375
Jeffcock, T., 139
Jeffrey, Francis, 412
Jelf, Canon, 457
Jenkinson (Lord Liverpool), 277,
278, 279
Jennings, Louis, 420
Jersey, Lord, 93, 429 ; Lady, 424,
425, 426, 428
Jervis, 349
Joan of Navarre, 128
Jocelyn, Lord, 386
John, King, 68
John of Padua, 195
Johnson, Samuel, 75, 135, 136, 182,
27s, 276, 289, 298, 319, 349, 352.
404, 481
Johnstone, James, 421
Jones, Burne, 214
Jones, Lady, 71
Jonson, Ben, 122, 161, 167, 168, 169,
178
Jowett, Benjamin, 105, 129, 141,
399, 441, 447, 448, 449
Junior Carlton Club, foundation of,
113. 114
Juxon, Archbishop, 398
K
Kaiser swerth, 187
Kat, Christopher, 269
Katharine of Aragon, 128, 222
499
Index
Kcate, 296
Keble, 80, 132, 378
Kekewich, George, 297 ; Trehawke,
297
Kckewiches, the, 297
Kelk, Sir John, 375
Kemp, Thomas, 89
Ken, Thomas (Bishop of Bath and
Wells), 196-199, 204
Ken mare. Lord, 256
Kens, the, 196
Kent, Duke of (Henry de Grey),
463 ; Duchess of, 185
Kentish Gang, the, 109, 113, 114,
115, 116, 144, 148
Kepler, 160
Keppels, the, 348
Kerry, Earl of (Thomas Fitz-
maurice), 347 ; Francis Thomas,
third Earl of, 348 ; fourth Earl,
348 ; Lady, 347, 348
Kildare, Lady, 180
Kilkhampton, 258, 259, 261
Killerton Park, 302, 310, 311
Kilve Court and Rectory, 325
King, Dr., 348
King and Ockham, Lord, 304 ;
first Lord, 304 ; seventh Lord,
305
Kinglake, A. W., 126, 235, 255, 263,
329, 330- 342, 361, 395
Kingsmills, 372
Kingston Lisle, 456
Kinsham Court, 478, 479
Kinsky, Prince, 54
Kinsman, Mr., 239, 240
Kitchener, Lord, 450
Kit-Kat Club, 269
Knebworth, 467, 468
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 269
Knight, Payne, 354
Knightley, 367
Knightleys, the, 457
Knole, 120-127, 136
Knowles, Sir James, 399
Knowsley, the Lord of, 297
Knoyle House, 359
Knutsford, Lord, 320 ; Lady, 300,
320
Konigsmark, Count, 195, 206
Labeyle, 178
Lablache, 420
Labouchere, Henry, 81
Lacordaire, 403
Lade, Lady Letty, 92
Lade, Sir John, 92
Lake, Lord, 94, 105
Lake, Warwick, 411
Lamb, Augustus, 465
Lamb, Lady Emily, 425
Lamb, Matthew, 465
Lamberhurst, 94, 95
Lambs, the, 467
Landor, Walter Savage, 73
Lanerton, Lord, 64 ; Lady, 64
Langdon Court, 288
Langston, J. H., 458
Languet, 174
Lansdowne House, Berkeley
Square, 60
Lansdowne, Lord, 259, 260 ; the
first Marquis of, 268, 348, 349 ;
second Marquis of, 352 ; third
Marquis of (Lord Henry Peter),
351. 352, 353; fifth Marquis of,
353. 354. 355. 369. 483
Lascelles, Colonel H enry Arthur, 64
Latimer, Bishop, 202
Latimer, Lord, 201
Laud, Archbishop, 447
Lauderdale, Lord, 411
Laughton, 85
Lavater, 435
Lavington House, 80, 81
Lavington West, 79, 80
Lawley, Frank, 210, 230, 453
Lawson, Sir Edward (Lord Burn-
ham), 453
500
Inde
X
Layard, H. A., 218, 219, 220, 221,
396
Le Breton, Lucien, 394 ; Madame,
393. 394
Leconfield, 39 ; first Lord, 358
Lee, Sir H. Austin, 105
Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, 128,
129
Leeds, Duke of, 242
Lehmann, R. C, 419
Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's Earl
of, 175 ; Lady, 164, 165, 174
Leigh, Henry S., 248 ; Mrs,, 479
Lely, Sir Peter, 205, 210
Lemon, Mark, 127
Lennox, Lord Henry, 103, 439;
Lady George, 182
Leo Xin., Pope, 38
Lever, Charles, 103, 142, 253, 422
Leveson-Gower, Mr., M.P., 249,
250 ; E. F., 354, 397, 398, 399, 449
Leveson-Gowers, the, 420
Lewes, 133
Lewes, George Henry, 374
Lewknors, the, 96
Liardet, Colonel Charles, 269 ;
Mrs., 269
Lichfield House, Richmond, 421,
422
Liddell, H. G., 142, 447
Liddell, H. P., 448, 449
Lightfoot, Bishop, 135
Ligonier, Lady, 381
Lindsay, Sir Coutts, 437
Lindsey, Theophilus, 355
Linton, Mrs. Lynn, 240
Lintot, Bernard, 83
Liskeard, 254
Lisle, Lord de, and Dudley, 174
Lisles, the, 162
Livingstone, David, 420
Llewellyn, Mr., 314
Locke, John, 272, 304
Locke, Joseph, 98
Lockwood, Colonel, 483
London, Bishop of, 108
Longfellow, 265
Longleat, 115, 194-210
Longman, Thomas and William,
391. 393
Longmans, the, 314
Lorraine, Duke of, 183
Louis Philippe, 90
Louis XH., 154
Louis XIV., 93, 146, 406
Louis XVL, 90
Louvaine, Jocel3'n de, 40
Lovelace, Lady Ada, 304, 305
Lovelace, Lord, 165, 304, 305
Lubbock, Lady, 131
Lubbock, Sir John (Lord Avebury),
131, 132, 134, 440
Lucas, Family of, 84
Lucys, the, 372
Ludlow, General, 293 ; Lord and
Lady, 483
Lullingstone Castle, 114, 149
Lulworth Castle, 229-234, 367
Luther, 335
Luttrell, James, 279 ; Fownes, 314 ;
Mr., of Dunster, 314 ; Colonel
Henry Laws (second Earl of
Carhampton), 315, 320, 325 ;
Temple, 315, 316 ; Elizabeth,
315; Henry, 316, 318
Luttrells, the, 320, 322
Lyall, Dean, 138
Lyall, Sir Alfred, 137, 138
Lycurgus, Greek Archbishop of
Syr OS, 311
Lympsham Manor, 340
Lytton, Earl, 332, 374, 422, 436,
440, 467, 468 ; second Earl,
467 ; Lady, 460
M
Mabille, 464
Macaulay, Lord, 119, 263, 287,
353. 354. 355. 438, 440
Macaulay, the elder, 302
501
Index
Macbride, Captain, 279
MacColl, Canon, 208
Macdonald, Dr. George, 214
Macdonald, Sir J. N. A., 432
McDonnell, Sir Schomberg, 483
Mackintosh, Sir James, 404, 405
Macvey, 257
Magrath, Dr., 447
Mahon, Lord, 120
Mailly, Comtesse de, 48
Maine, H. S., 100, 147
Malagrida, 353
Malakhoff, Duke of, 382
Malibran, 420
Mallet, Sir Louis, 373
Mallets, the, 319
Mallock, W. H., 100
Malmesbury, Lord, 125, 385, 388,
389, 428 ; second Lord, 386 ;
third Lord, 186
Malthus, 397
Mann, Sir Horace, 62
Manners, General, 223, 226
Manners, Lady Louisa, 349
Manners, Lord John, 410
Manning, Cardinal, 58, 80
Mansel, Dean, 447
Marble Hill, Twickenham, 178
Marden Park, 404-407
Mare, John de la, 218
Maria Francesco, Cardinal, 63
Maria Theresa, 269
Marie Antoinette, 405
Mario, 463
Marlborough, Duke of, 57, 63,
180, 216, 269; seventh Duke of,
220 ; eighth Duke of, 209
Marlborough, Lily, Duchess of,
408 ; eighth Dowager Duchess
of, 341
Marochetti, 187
Marriott, Sir William, 221
Marryatt, Captain, 103, 446
Marston, 192-195
Martin, Philip Wykeham, 128
Mary, 155, 282
Mary, Queen of Scots, 283
Massinger, 178
Mathews, Mr. and Mrs. Charles,
256
Mathews, Mr. and Mrs. Frank, 256
Matsys, Quintin, 273
Maud, the Empress, 34, 234
Maudle, Mr., 107
Maurice, F. D., 73
Maxwell, John, 421, 422; Mrs.
(Miss Braddon), 421, 422
Measor, 92
Medmenham, 345
Medici, Grand-duke, 63
Medina-Sidonia, 282
Melbourne, Lord, 185, 306, 308,
388, 425, 429, 464, 466; first
Lord (Sir Peniston Lamb), 465 ;
Lady, 425
Melbourne Hall, 465 ; House, 466
Mentmore, 472, 484
Merivale, Herman, 54, 249
Merton, 407
Metaxas, M., 450
Metternich, 426
Michael, Grand-duke, 54
Michells, the, 81
Middleton, Lord, 180
Middleton, R. W. E., 114
Mill, James, 249, 364, 365, 366
Mill, John Stuart, 253, 364, 366
Millais, 127
Millbanke, Miss, 425
Milner, Lord, 42, 142, 144
Milnes, Richard Monckton (Lord
Houghton), 230, 231, 370
Milton Abbey, 222, 223, 226
Milton, John, 75, 275, 408
Mirabeau, 480
Missolonghi, 305
Mohun, William, 314
Mohuns, the, 267, 315
Molesworth, Sir William, 249, 252,
255-257
502
Index
Molesworth, Lady, 250, 252, 254-
257
Molyneux, Lord, 203
Monck, General, 261 ; Humphrey,
261
Moncks, the, 261
Moncton, Miss, 194
Monmouth, Duke of, 163, 206, 224
Montacute, Lord, first, 45 ; fourth,
46
Montagu, George, 182 ; Matthew,
445
Montagu, Mrs,, 288, 445
Montague, Lady Mary Wortley,
290
Montalembert, 484
Montgomery, Alfred, 464; Roger
de, 33
Moody, 214
Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury,
298; Thomas, 351, 352
Mordaunt, 214
More, Hannah, 303, 355, 356
Morley, John, 208, 402, 440, 483 ;
Howard, 483
Mortimer, Edmund (Earl of
March), 57
Morton, Mr., 231
Morwenstow, 263, 269
Moyle, 274
Mozart, 362
Mozleys, the, 73
Mulgrave, Lord, 279
Miiller, Max, 400
Munster, Count, 374, 375
Muntz, G. F., 184
Murchison, Sir Roderick, 355
Muriettas, the, 95
Musgrave, Sir Richard, 50; Lady, 50
Musters, John, 376
Musurus Pasha, 54
N
Napiers, the, 224, 257
Napoleon, 386, 414, 426, 434, 458
Napoleon IIL, 98, 123, 124, 230,
231, 276, 328, 332, 393, 427, 436,
437
Napoleon, Prince Victor, 394
Nash, Beau, 343
Naylor, Miss Grace, 70
Nelson, 318, 407, 458 ; William,
407
Nesselrode, 426
Nettlecombe Court, 326
Neugent, George, 139
Nevill, George (Baron of Raby),
no
Nevill, Lady Dorothy, 78, 383
Nevill, Richard (the Kingmaker),
217
Nevills, the, no, in, 115
New Court, 484
Newcastle, Duke of, 85, 163, 239,
285, 348, 369 ; Duchess of, 408
Newdegate, C. N., 477, 478
Newman, John Henry, 81
Newton, 353, 383
Newton, Charles, 49 ; Sir Isaac,
374
Nicholas of Horsham, 83
Nightingale, Florence, 187
Norfolk, Duke of, 28, 33 ; Thomas,
34; eleventh, 34, 35; twelfth
(Bernard Howard), 35, 36 ;
fifteenth, 37
Nork House, Surrey, 56
Norman, Sir Henry, 372
Normanhurst, 97-102
North, Lord, 66, 75, 82, 154, 235,
341,433,480
Northbrook, Lord, 469
Northcote, first baronet, 299;
Justice, 299; Sir Stafford, 115
Northumberland, Earl of, 28, 164,
179, 430, 483; Algernon, 130;
John, 155 ; sixth, 50, 430
Norton, Daniel, 201
Norton, Mrs., 186
Norton, Speaker Fletcher, 292
503
Index
Noy, the Solicitor-General, 211
Nugent, Lord, 315, 482
Nugent, Mrs., 275
Nuneham, 444-446
O
Oakley Grove, 224
Oatlands Park, 411-416, 423, 424
Oatscroft, 79
O'Brien, Lucius, 388
O' Byrne, 92
O'Connell, Daniel, 387
O'Connell, Morgan, 387
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, 116
Ogilvy, 62
"Old Q," 412
"Old Stagers, the," 137, 138
Old Swinford Manor, 140, 141
Oliphant, Lawrence, 100, 395
O'Neill, Miss, 317
Onslow (George " Cocking "), 76
Opie, 404
Oppenheim, Mr. and Mrs., 470
Oppenheim, Mr. and Mrs. Henry,
55
Orchard Wyndham, 312, 318, 330,
345. 358
Orde, Mrs., 362
Orford, Lord, 178, 469
Orkney, Earl of, 418 ; Lady, 418
Orleans, Duke of, 164
Ormond, the Duke of, 313
Ormsby, John, 100
Orrery, fourth Lord, 192 ; fifth
Lord, 192
d'Orsay, Count, 328
Osborne, Bernal, 254,431
Ossory, Lady, 280
Osterley, 423, 429
Otway, 57 ; Sir Arthur, 439
Over Stowey Rectory, 325
Ovingdean Grange, 87
Owen, Professor, 436
Oxford, Lord, 426 ; first Lord (Lord
Treasurer Harley), 207, 288, 314
Padwick, Henry, 267
Paget, 200
Pakington, Sir John (Lord Hamp-
ton), 477
Paley, General, 275
Palmer, Edward, 321 ; Henry
321 ; John, 321 ; Thomas, 321 ;
William, 448, 449
Palmer, Sir Roger, 419 ; Sir Roun-
dell, 79 ; Sir Thomas, 74, 321
Palmerston, Lord, loi, 176, 187,
188, 215, 216, 218, 219, 230, 354,
425, 465, 466 ; Lady, 186
Parham, 74-77
Paris, Comte and Comtesse de, 257
Parr, Katharine, 201, 242
Patterson, Elizabeth, 231
Patti, 439
Pattison, 447, 448
Paul, Grand-duke of Russia, 61
Paulet family, the, 193
Payne, Admiral, 94
Payne, George, 94, 176, 177, 428
Peacheys, the, 96
Peamore, 296-298, 302
Peel, Sir Robert, 185, 186, 187, 256,
326, 348, 379, 447, 463 ; second,
328 ; third, 126, 230, 328, 329
Pelham, Henry, 85 ; John, 163 ;
Thomas, 85
Pelham, Lord and Lady, 86
Pelham House, 85
Pelhams, the, 84, 88, 90, 240, 385
Pelly, Sir H., 84
Pembroke, Countess of, 155, 177,
388 ; third Lady, 178 ; ninth
Lady, 178-180 ; eleventh Lady,
183 ; twelfth Lady, 183, 184
Pembroke, Earl of, 184, 371 ;
Thomas, Earl, 372 ; William
Marshal, Earl, 177 ; WiUiam,
third Earl of, 177 ; seventh
Earl, 178 ; ninth Earl, 178 ;
tenth Earl, 180, 181 ; eleventh
504
Index
Earl, 182; twelfth Earl, 183;
present fourteenth Earl, 188
Pencarrow House, 249, 254-257
Penchester, Sir Stephen, 151
Penheale Manor, 262, 263, 281
Penshurst, 122, 126, 150-178, 236,
272, 303. 308, 398, 401, 403, 429,
435
Perceval, Captain, 322 ; Robert,
322 ; Spencer, 322
Percevals, the, 321, 322, 326, 432
Percies, the, 39
Percy, Dorothy, 164
Perry, Mr., 246
Perry s, the, 173
Peterborough, Bishop of, 416
Petersham, Lord, 424
Petre, Lord, 58 ; Mr. and Mrs., 483
Petres, the, 233
Petty, Sir William, 347 ; Anne, 347
Petworth, 39, 40, 164, 171, 172, 358
Peyton, Sir John, 376
Philip IL, 155
Philipot, John, 19-21
Philippe Egalite, Due de Chartres,
90
Phinn, Thomas, 300
Pitt, Thomas, 267, 268, 286
Pitt, William (Lord Chatham),
116-119, 155, 267, 276-280, 284-
289, 341. 342, 344. 348, 349. 369.
405
Pitt, William, jun., 35, 53, 82, 116-
119, 148, 155, 222, 284, 291, 293,
296, 298, 306, 307, 341, 342, 405-
407, 480
Pixton, 307-309, 311, 372
Place, Francis, 366
Playfair, Sir John Lyon, 307
Pleydell-Bouverie, H. H., 336
Plumpton Place, 85
Plympton, 76
Poe, Edgar Allan, 363
Poerio, 420
Polwhele, Truro, 269, 270
Pomfret, Earl of, 194
Poniatowski, Count, 60
Ponsonby, 280
Ponsonby, F. (Lord Bessborough),
137 ; Lady Caroline, 466
Ponsonby-Fane, Sir Spencer, 137
Poole, Thomas, 322, 323
Pope, 58, 224, 288, 416
Pope's Villa, 439
Popham, Sir Home, 247 ; Sir John,
336
Porchester, Lord, 308
Porlock, 305
Portland, second Duke of, 206 ;
Earl of, 463 ; Duchess of, 416 ;
Dowager Duchess of, 288, 289
Portsmouth, Duchess of, 178
Potheridge, 261
Potter, T. Bailey, 78, 79, 345,
373
Poultney, Sir John, 152
Power, Harold, 420
Poynter, 127
Praed, W. M., 294
Pratts, 95
Preston, Sir Amias, 337
Pretyman, 298
Prideaux, Sir Edward, 365
Priestley, 349
Prince Consort, 98
Prior, Matthew, 288
Prior Park, 297, 342, 343, 346
Prussia, King of, 426
Pulborough, 81
Pulteney, Miss, 82
Pusey, E. B., 73, 78, 442-445;
Philip, 443
Pycroft, Rev. J., 105
Pym, John, 135, 136, 203, 275, 333-
336, 457
Pym, Sir Charles, 336
Pynes, 297-302, 306, 310
Pynham, the priors of, 37
Pynsent, Burton, 341, 342
Pynsent, Sir William, 341
Index
Q
Quantock Lodge, 323-326
Quantocks, the, 311
Quantoxhead Manor House, East,
314. 320
Queensberry, Duke of, 179 ;
Duchess of, 180
Querouaille, Louise de, 178
Quin, Dr., 125, 346
R
Raby, 21, 46, 47, 126, 484
Raglan, Lord, 387
Raikes, Robert, 355, 411, 413, 414
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 122, 153, 161,
191, 290
Ralli, Pandeli, 450
Rathbone, William, 440
Ratisbon, 62
Ravaillac, 75
Ravignan, 403
Rayleigh, Lord and Lady, 359
Rayners, 474, 475
Reade, Charles, 244-248, 446
Ready, General, 42, 142, 144
Reay, Lord, 441
Reeve, Henry, 48, 119, 254, 295,
391, 400, 401
Reid, Robert T. (Lord Loreburn),
143
Rembrandt, 273
Renan, Ernest, 440
Rendel, Lord, 450, 451
Retailer, George, 167
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 40,43, 74-76,
181, 269, 273, 27s, 276, 349, 404,
425, 481
Rhodes, Cecil, 97
Ribblesdale, Lord, 471
Ribot, M., 440
Rich, Henry (first Lord Holland),
203
Richard L, 328
Richard IL, 22, 129
Richard IH., 284
Richards, David, 246
Richelieu, Cardinal, 335
Richelieu, Due de, 415
Richmond, Duke of, 42, 116, 142,
208, 222, 278, 279, 280 ; third
Duke of, 41 ; Duchess of, 42,
182, 194
Rigby, 179, 292
Rivenhall, 482
Robartes, Lord, 203, 280
Roberts, General, 50
Robertson, 325
Roche, Walter, 169
Rochford, Lady, 180
Rockery, the Dorking, 399
Rockingham, Lord, 66, 116
Rodney, Lord, 292, 306, 318
Roebuck, John Arthur, 253, 254
Rogers, Rev, " Hang Theology,"
453
Rogers, Sir P., 300
Rogers, J. E. Thorold, 78, 80
Rogers, Samuel, 41, 42,89, 117,316,
317. 353. 354. 361, 363. 434
Rogers, the, 367
Rolfes, the, 481
Rolle, George, 290 ; Henry, 291 ;
Mark, 296 ; Robert, 290
Rolle, John, Lord, 291-296
Rolle, Margaret, 290 ; Lady, 295
Roosevelt, President, 231
Rose, second Sir Philip, 474
Rosebery, Lord, 47, 84, 452, 453,
472
Rossini, 420
Rosslyn, Dowager Countess of,
224
Rothesay, Lord and Lady Stewart
de, 255
Rothschild, Alfred, 472
Rothschild, Miss AUce, 472
Rothschild, Baron Ferdinand de,
56, 421, 470, 471, 472
Rouher, 394
Rous, Lady, 333, 334
506
Index
Rosseau, Jean Jacques, 416
Rowe, Elizabeth, 199
Rowton, Lord (Montagu Corry),
279, 474
Rumbold, Sir Thomas, 77
Ruskin, 429
Russel, 92 ; Lady William, 203
Russell, Lord Arthur, 440 ; Lord
John, 215, 249, 303, 431, 436,
437
Russell, Sir William Howard, 126,
247
Russells, the, 267
Russia, Emperor of, 426
Rutland, Duke of, 230 ; (Lord John
Manners), 475
" Sacharissa," 153, 163, 164-168,
171, i73> 174
Sackville, Lady Elizabeth (Coun-
tess of Delaware), 124
Sackville, Lady Mary, 134
Sackville, Thomas (Lord Buck-
hurst), 115, 121-123
Sackvilles, the, 124, 125
Saffi, Count, 400
St. Albyn, 323, 324 ; Mrs., 344
St. Aldwyn, Lord (Sir Michael
Hicks-Beach), 306
St. Anne's Hill, Chertsey, 434,
435
St. Asaph, Lord, 439
St. Audries, 318, 319, 320, 321
St. Germans, third Earl of, 280
St. John's College, Oxford, Presi-
dent of, 135
St. Leger, Colonel, 92
St. Maximin in Provence, loi
St. Simon, 93
Salisbury, Marquis of, 115, 126,
135, 146, 209, 217, 230, 451, 459 ;
third Marquis of, 469, 483 ;
Marchioness of, 459, 460, 461
Sala, George Augustus, 422
Sand, George, 456
Sandilands, 445
Sands, Mrs. Mahlon, 471
Sankey, Mr., 214
San Souci, 60
Santlow, Miss, 276
Sargent, Rev. John, 80
Sargent, Mrs., 80
Sarsden, 458
Sarsden Rectory, 451
Sawyer, Sir Robert, 372
Saye-and-Sele, Lord, 457
Sayers, 39
Scarbrough, Lord, 65, 67, 68
Scherer, Edmond, 395
Schlegel, 407
Schlippenbach, Countess, 457
Scillies, the, 238
Scott, Lord Charles, no
Scott, Rev. William, 147
Scott, Robert (Dean of Rochester),
142
Scott, Sir Walter, 231, 352
Scott, Sir Thomas, 141
Scott's Hall, 141, 142
Scotts, the, of Scott's Hall, 141
Seacox Heath, 134, 135, 143
Sebastiani, Count, 426
Sefton, Lord, 40-42, 387
Selborne, Lord, 448, 461; Roundell
Palmer, 325
Selsey, Lord, 96
Selwyn, George, 76, 77, 130, 412
Senlac, 44
Seymour, 138, 359
Seymour, Protector Edward, First
Duke of Somerset, 195, 200, 201,
202 ; Viscount Beauchamp, Lord
Hertford, 200
Seymour, Lady Jane, 200 ; Lady
Catharine, 358
Seymour of Sudelcy, Lord Thomas,
201, 202, 242
Shaftesbury, first Earl of, 211, 212,
213, 214, 215 ; third Earl of.
507
Index
217; fifth Lord, 217; seventh
Lord, 213, 216 ; Lord, 224, 420 ;
Lady, 214, 216
Shakespeare, 141, 161, 167-170, 178
Sharpe, Richard, 403, 404, 407
Sheffield Place, 77
Sheffield, 37
Shelburne, Lord, 35, 116, 277, 346,
349. 35o» 351. 353 ; Lady, 388 ;
Baroness, 347
Shelley, Sir Bysshe, 81 ; P. B., 81,
83
Shelleys, the, of Field Place, 81,
91. 173
Sherbrooke, Lord (R. Lowe), 373,
407
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 53, 57,
92, 291, 481
Ship Inn, Porlock, 303
Shipley, Dean, 297, 298
Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, 297
Shoreham, Sussex, 66
Shortlands, 130
Shrewsbury, Earl of, 451, 474
Sidney, Algernon, 158, 160, 161,
163, 166-170, 172, 174, 293
Sidney, Lady Dorothy, 153, 163,
164, 165-171
Sidney, Henry (Earl of Romney),
163, 166, 172, 173
Sidney, Isabella, 163
Sidney, Lucy, 163
Sidney, Mary (Lady Pembroke), 153
Sidney, Nicholas, 154
Sidney, Sir Philip, 123, 153, 155,
156, 157. 159. 163, 171, 174,
175-178
Sidney, Sir Henry, 153, 155, 156,
157, i6r, 171
Sidney, Robert (first Earl of
Leicester), 153, 159, 161, 167,
168, 169, 178 ; second Earl of
Leicester, 158, 159, 160, 161,
162, 163, 166, 172 ; third Earl
of Leicester, 163
Sidney, Sir William, 152, 153, 154
Sidneys, the, 150, 151, 154, 158, 162,
163, 167, 171, 173
Sillery, Marquis de, 93
Simcoe, Rev. H. A., 262, 281
Simeon, Rev. Charles, 262
Simpson, Mr., 399, 450
Singleton, Mrs., 395
Sion House, Isleworth, 164, 430
Smalley, Mr. G. W., 453
Smith, Augustus, 239, 242, 243-
247, 248, 254, 266
Smith, Goldwin, 120
Smith, Henry, 441
Smith, Horace and James, 295,
479
Smith, Sydney, 225, 281, 326, 353,
401,417
Smith, Thomas Assheton, 375, 377,
378 ; John, 375, 376 ; Tom, 376
Smithson, Sir Hugh, 430
Smollett, Patrick Boyle, 269, 431 ;
Tobias, 345
Smythes, the Heavitree, 258
Somerleaze Manor, 340
Somerset, Lord Raglan, 49 ;
second Duke of, 203 ; Algernon,
seventh Duke of, 358, 359, 430 ;
Protector Edward Seymour,
first Duke of, 200, 202 ; Duke
and Duchess, 483
Sothern, E. A., 256
South Hill, 469, 484
Southampton, Earls of, 202, 213 ;
third Lady, 203
Southey, Robert, 304
Spain, Queen of, 394
Spalding, Augustus, 138
Spankie, Serjeant, 245, 246, 247
Spencer, Earl, 72, 164, 165, 399,
341 ; Lord Robert, 57, 58 ; Earl
of Sunderland, 213 ; Lady Eliza-
beth (Countess of Pembroke),
180-182 ; Lady, 399
Spencer, Herbert, 132, 133, 134
508
Index
Spenser, 121, 122, 123, 153, 160,
167, 178
Spiller, Sir Henry, 212
Spinosa, 323
Spofforth, Markham, 112, 113, 114
Stael, Madame de, 414, 415
Stafford, the Marquis of , no
Staffords, tlie, 152
Stanhope, Edward, 49, 120
Stanhope, Earls of, " Citizen
Charles," 118; first Earl of,
269; fifth Earl of, 119, 131;
Harriet, first Countess of, 269;
Sibyl, second Countess of, 119;
Lady Hester (Queen of the
Lebanon) 118, 342, 368, 464;
Lady Griselda, 368 ; Lady Wil-
helmina, 47 ; Countess, 118
Stanley, E. J., 326
Stanley, 105
Stanley of Alderley, Lord, 186;
Lady, 456
Stanley, Dean, 120, 399, 400, 448
Stanley, Mrs., 49
Stanmer, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 94,
149- 343- 385
Stanstead, 56, 65-68, 86, 276
Stapletons, the, 249
Stephen, King, 34, 234, 314
Stephen, Lord Mount, 463
Stephens, Henry, 167
Stephenson, Rev. J. H., 340
Stepney, Sir John, 65, 67
Sterling, the Rev., 73
Stevenstone, 290, 297
Stewart, Dugald, 249
Stewart, Mrs. Duncan, 456
Stewart, Mr. and Mrs. Graham,
483
Stirlings, the, 326
Stock, Thomas, 355
Stokes, H. S., 248, 249, 265, 266
Stonor, 395
Stopham, 81
Stow, 258, 259, 260, 271
Stow, Marshal, 258
Stowe, 60
Stowe, Mrs. Beecher, 140, 141, 370,
420
Strafford, Lord (Wentworth), 145,
161, 174. 334; Lady, 180, 203
Strangford, Viscount, 163 ; Lady,
214. 395-396
Strangways, Lady Louisa, 353
Strathfieldsaye, 379, 380, 381, 382,
383
Stratton, 257, 469
Strawberry Hill, 179, 182, 316, 438,
439
Stubbs, Bishop, 340
Sturt, Colonel Napier, 225
Sturtons, the, 233
Sturts, the, 224
Suez Canal Board, 105
Suffolk, Charles, Duke of, 154, 155 ;
Countess of, 178
Sunbeam, the, 98, 99
Sunderland, Lord, 166 ; Duchess
of, 236
Sunningdale, 396
Surrenden-Dering, 139
Sussex, Earl of (Albini), 34
Sutherland, Duke of, 418 ; Duchess
of, 418, 428
Swift, Dean, 173, 192, 193, 288, 313,
340, 345, 346, 358
Tait, Archbishop, 397, 448
Talbot, 448, 449
Talfourd, Serjeant, 353
Tallard, Marshal, 216
Talman, William, 65
Taplow Court, 419
Taunton, Lord (Labouchere), 325,
326, 439
Tavistock, Abbot of, 242
Taylor, Sir Henry, 369
Taylor, Michael Angelo, 469
Taylour family, 383
509
Index
Tcdworth, 375, 376, 37S
Tekcll, John, 368
Temple, F., Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 300
Temple, Sir William, 159
Tennyson, Lord, 50, 202, 248, 264,
265, 369. 399
Tenterden, Lord, 236
Thackeray, Rev. Francis, 287
Thackeray, W. M., 103, 256, 287,369
Thiers, Adolphe, 354
Thomases, the, 177
Thomson, 416
Thorbury Palace, 28
Thornbury, Walter, 240
Thurlow, Lord, 93
Thynne, Sir James, 195, 205 ; Sir
John, 195, 200, 201 ; Thomas
(Viscount Weymouth) (" Tom
of 10,000"), 195, 196, 197, 206,
210; Sir Thomas, of Richmond,
206 ; Thomas, third Viscount
Weymouth, 206
Thynnes, the, 196, 198, 206
Tintagel, 239, 240
Tobin, Sir John, 43
Tocqueville, Alexis, 456
Toole, J. L., 420
Tooker, 211
Torby, 458
Tortworth, 459
Tour and Texas, Prince of, 62
Townsend, Meredith, 374
Townshend, Lord John, 286
Treadcroft, Sir Henry, 84
Tregarthians, the, 241
Tregonwell, Boughton, 222
Tregonwell Framptons, the, 222
Tregonwells, the, 222, 314
Tregothnan, 265
Trelawney, Atterbury, 313
Trelawneys, the, 367
Tremayne, John Hearte, 286
Tremaynes, the, 286, 287
Trench, Archbishop, 452
Tresco Abbey, 238-244, 249, 266
Trevelyan, Harrington, 419 ; Sir
John, 322, 326, 355
Trevelyan, Sir Charles, 300
Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, 300
Tricoupis, 450
Tring, 483
Tripp, Baron, 331
Tripp, Henry, 331
TroUope, Anthony, 136, 142
Troy, near Monmouth, 257, 479
Tuam, Archbishop of, 191
Tuke, Dr., 415
Tunbridge Wells, 105
Turkey, the Sultan of, loi
Turner, 354 ; Charles, 66
Tuyll, 331
Tweedmouth, Lord, 84
Twisleton, 369
Tynte, Colonel Charles, 328-332
Tynte, Kemeys, 330
Tyntes, the, 328, 329
U
Urquhart, David, 252, 253
Van Raalte, Mr. and Mrs., 483
Vane, Lord Henry {see Duke of
Cleveland)
Vassal, 478
Venables, George Stovin, 99, 147,
37i» 437
Verulam, Lord, 333
Vesey, Mrs., 289
Victoria, Queen, 98, 187, 207, 256,
295. 329, 378, 389- 428, 459. 465.
466
Villiers, Lady Adela, 428
Villiers, C. P., 78
Villiers, Lady Clementina, 428
Villiers, George, 185
Villiers, John, 278
Villiers, Harriet, 269
10
Index
w
Waddcsdon Manor, 56, 470, 471,
472, 484
Waddington, M., 255, 440
Wadhani College, Oxford, the
Warden of, 135
Wadhams, the, 338
Wadhurst Hall, 95
Wakefield, Gibbon, 252
Waldegrave, Earl of, 227 ; Lord,
438 ; Lady, 179, 180, 257 ; Mr.,
438
Waldegraves, the, 439
Walden, Lord Howard dc, 483
Wales, Prince of, George, 88, 89,
91, 93 ; Frederick, 60, 68, 418 ;
Princess of, 287
Walewski, 231
Wallas, 366
Waller, 153, 163, 164, 168, 169, 171 ;
Sir William, 65
Wallop family, 309, 375
Walpole, Horace, 32, 34, 38,40, 44,
45> 46, 52, 56, 62, 69, 76, 116, 155,
173. 174. 175, 176, 178, 179, 180.
181, 182, 194, 275, 280, 282, 284,
288, 316, 341, 349, 416, 463
Walpole, Sir Robert, 70, 85, 86,
193, 269, 274, 290, 469
Walpole, Thomas, 117
Walpole, Lord, 290, 291, 292
Walrond, Sir William, 483
Walton, Izaac, 186, 199 ; Mrs., 199
Warburton, 298, 342, 346
Ward, Genevieve, 106
Ward, Samuel, 421, 452
Warnham Court, 83, 84
Warren, T. Herbert, 167
Warrenden, Sir George, 418, 419
Warwick, Lord, 155, 204
Waterford, Bishop of, 191
Waterford, Lady, 255
Waye, Rev. Lewis, 68
Webster, Sir Augustus, 51 ; Sir
Godfrey, 46
Webster s, the Lady, 51
Webstcrs, the, 44, 45, 46, 95
Weld, F. A., 233
Welds, the, 229
Wellesley, Marquis, 231 ; Lord
Charles, 380
Wellington, Duke of, 185, 231,326,
379, 380, 382 ; second Duke of,
379, 380, 381, 382 ; Duchess of,
383
Weltjie, 89
Werrington Park, 261
Wesley, John, 480
West Dean, 95, 96, 97, 484
West Hill, Lyme Regis, 235, 236
West Quantoxhead, 319
West, Sir Algernon, 450
Westbury, Lord, 118, 325
Western, Lord, 66, 482, 483
Westminster, Duke of, 359, 399,
419 ; Duchess of, 399
Westmorland, Lady, 180
Wcstwood Park, 477, 478
Weymouth, Lord, 196, 197, 198;
second Viscount, 259 ; third
Viscount, 206
Wharton, Lady, 171
Whistler, 108
Whitbread, 440 ; Samuel, 469,
478 ; Mrs. Elizabeth, 469
Whitbreads, the, 469
Whiteside, 125
Whitworth, Lord, 123, 124
Wick, Robert de, 242
Wickliffe, William, 129
Wigan, Alfred, 256
Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop of
Oxford, 79, 80, 81, 118, 281, 405,
437, 449, 450, 451, 452
Wilberforce, William, 118, 279,
302, 355, 356, 405, 406, 407
Wilders, the, 68
Wildman, 124
Wilkes, 66, 67, 134, 286, 315, 346,
362, 412 ; Charlotte, 412
II
Index
William I., 33, 44, 116, 267, 322
William IV., 330
William of Orange, 173, 198, 348,
359
William " of the Strong Hand," 33
William of Wykeham, 129, 196,
372
Williams, Sir George, 311
Williams, Montague, 138
Williams, General Owen, 419
Williams, Robert, 452
Willoughby, Sir William, 471
Willyams of Carnanton, 265
Willyams, Mr. and Mrs. Brydges,
266
Willyams, Mr. E., 266
Willyamses, the, 409
Wilson, 194
Wilson, Miss Muriel, 138
Wilton, 153, 155, 176-187, 371
Wilton, the Earls of, 194
Wimborne, Lady, 220, 221
Wimborne St. Giles, 212-216
Winchester, Bishops of, 372, 385
Winningtons, the, 465
Woburn, 469
Wolcot, Dr.(Peter Pindar), 294, 295
Wolff, Sir Henry Drummond, 220,
383
Wolff, Dr. Joseph, 339
Wolsey, Lord, 300
Wombwell, Sir George, 419
Wooburn in Buckinghamshire, 171
Woodlands, 224
Woods, Nicholas, 139
Woolbeding, 56-65, 86, 376
Worcester, Lord, 411 ; Lady, 413
Wordsworth, Bishop Christopher,
311
Wordsworth, 322, 323, 324, 365
Woronzow, Count, 182, 183
Wortley, A. S., 138
Wotton House, 397
Wraxall, Nathaniel, 183
Wren, Sir Christopher, 195
Wrest, 462, 463, 464
Wrington, near Bristol, 304
Wriothesley, Thomas (Earl of
Southampton), 202, 203
Wroughton, Sir Thomas, 59-62
Wulfhall, 200, 2or
Wurtemburg, King and Queen of,
283 ; Prince, 183
Wyatt, 65
Wycombe, Baron, 348
Wyndham, Charles, 358 ; George,
358 ; Percy, 358 ; Mr. William,
312 ; Sir William, 312, 313, 358
Wyndham-Quins, the, 359
Wyndhams, the, 39, 40, 318, 357,
359
Wynn, Sir W., 387
Wynter, 447
Yard ley, William, 138
Yates, Edmund, 183, 420, 421 ;
Mrs., 420, 421
York, Charles, 345
York, Duke of, 91, 287, 298, 343,
411 ; Duchess of, 413, 414
York House, Twickenham, 401,
439, 440, 44 1 » 450
Young, 288
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