Wiltshire

by Edith Olivier

  Among the illuminated manuscripts at Longleat is a handwritten copy of Wyclif’s Bible, and his Postils or Lessons for the whole year, also his Rules to find the Epistles, Origen’s Homilies and the Glastonbury Chartulary. The rare printed books are mostly in the libraries downstairs. It is hardly possible to believe that these include copies of each of the first four Shakespeare folios; also Caxton’s Poems of Chaucer, his History of Troye, his Lives of the Saints, his Polycronicon and Virgil’s Æneid, translated into English by the printer himself in 1490. Other interesting printed books are Wynkyn de Worde’s Crafte to lyve well and to dye well, the Chronicle of England, his Polycronicon and Floure of the Commaundments of God. There is also an edition of the works of Sir Thomas Moore dated 1557.

  Longleat contains some very beautiful French and Flemish tapestries, and in the Chinese bedroom is a most decorative eighteenth-century Chinese wallpaper. The pictures at Longleat are less remarkable than these other treasures, but they include Wootton’s six famous foxhunting pictures in the great hall, Holbein’s portrait of the Duke of Somerset, the Countess of Nottingham, infamous as having kept the ring of Essex from Queen Elizabeth until after he had been beheaded, and also family portraits by most of the English eighteenth-century masters.

  LONGFORD CASTLE

  The romance of Longford really begins in 1584, when Sir Thomas Gorges, who owned the manor-house near the site of the present castle, married that fascinating woman Helena Snakenborg, the widow of the Marquis of Northampton. She was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth; and she quickly “incited” her husband to build at Longford “a more convenient lodge to her Majesty (when her Majesty came to hunt in Clarendon) than Wilton might bee, that was three miles further off”. The “ pile” was mainly paid for from the treasure found after the Armada in a Spanish galleon wrecked off Hurst Castle. Lady Northampton begged this hulk of the Queen, and it turned out to be full of silver bars. The date on the keystone of the centre arch in front of the house is 1591, and the ground plan of Longford was based by Helena on the shield of the Holy Trinity in a mediæval coat-of-arms. The result was a triangular house with a tower at each corner, each one dedicated to a separate Person of the Holy Trinity. Longford was bought by the Bouveries in 1717, and the second Earl of Radnor greatly enlarged the castle at the end of the eighteenth century. In the early 1870’s a final renovation of the house was carried out; but the present owner has the idea of reducing the scale of the building by reverting to the original triangular house as it was built by John Thorpe in 1591.

  Longford stands on the very bank of the Avon, a few miles below it has been entered by the four rivers which join it at Salisbury. “Capability” Brown, who was responsible for the very fine planting of the park, took away the formal garden which had stood in front of the original house, but the third Lord Radnor replaced it in 1828.

  The furniture in the house cannot officially be called a “collection”, for it was obviously placed there by successive owners for their personal use. Fortunately these owners had excellent taste, and they also employed most of the great cabinet-makers in the eighteenth century. There are specimens of the work of Kent, William Vile and Benjamin Goodison, clearly designed not only for the house but each for a special position in it. The tables in the parlour, for instance, have rounded backs to fit its circular walls. The delicate carving on the walls of this parlour comes from Tudor days, and it was gilded and repainted two hundred years ago at a cost of £38. The complete suite of furniture in the gallery is by Benjamin Goodison, and is covered with contemporary green brocade, and in the dining-room is a set of twenty-four eighteenth century chairs. The Genoa velvet on the wall of the Green Drawing Room dates from 1720 and cost twelve shillings a yard. These prices are all found in the household accounts, which are very complete, and show contemporary costs of many of these now almost priceless pieces. All this furniture is completely at home in the house, but there is one “museum piece” of quite another kind. This is the celebrated steel chair, which the city of Augsburg presented, about 1577, to the German Emperor Rudolph II. It can never have been what is called an “easy chair”, and though it does not seem at ease among its domestic neighbours in the Longford gallery, it is a most interesting piece of work. There are upon it more than 130 compartments, on which are depicted, in relief, a series of “ select and remarkable events” in world history, from the siege of Troy to the time of the Emperor Rudolph himself.

  Among the Longford pictures must be mentioned first the remarkable group of Dutch pictures, most of which were collected by the first Viscount Folkestone. This group includes Holbein’s famous “ Erasmus” and Quentin Matsys’ “Egidius”. These were originally framed as a pair, and the Matsys was enlarged by a little panel joined to its side to make it the same size as its companion picture. A curious coincidence is that this picture includes another objet d’art which had an almost similar experience. In 1946 two very knowledgeable collectors discovered to their delight that two hitherto separated portions of an early sixteenth-century cup fitted one another. They had acquired a complete and almost unique piece of early silver. Then it transpired that the cup which had thus been divorced and remarried was the same as that painted by Matsys in his “Egidius”. Lord Radnor has therefore, unknowingly, always possessed a contemporary portrait of a work of art which till 1946 had not for centuries existed in its entirety.

  Other Dutch pictures at Longford are two delightful small specimens of Franz Hals, a beautiful Rubens “Boy”, the triptych of Jan der Beer, some Van Dycks, many Teniers and an Avercamp. Although many of these are most striking pictures, the chief interest of the house is the very complete series of family portraits. Here are pictures by Kneller, Hudson, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Cotes, Cosway, Beechey and nineteenth-century pictures carrying us on to the days of Shannon.

  Another famous picture is the Velasquez “ Juan de Pareja”, and there is a most tragic portrait of Queen Elizabeth painted towards the end of her life by Marc Gheeraerts. Murillo, Correggio and Claude are also represented.

  Queen Elizabeth by Nicholas Hilliard heads the collection of miniatures, and there are four others by the same master. Also a good many Cosways, one of which is derived from a Gainsborough portrait.

  STOURHEAD

  The Stourton Estate was acquired by Mr Henry Hoare from Lord Stourton’s family in the year Queen Anne died. This event is everywhere looked upon as the end of an epoch, and at Stourton it is even more so than in most places. Lord Stourton’s family had led turbulent lives and had met tragic and dramatic ends, and Mr Hoare instituted in all ways a new era. To begin with, he changed the name of the house, calling it Stourhead, after the River Stour which rises from six wells (or springs) in a little valley in the Park. Not only a new name but a new house was given to the estate by Mr Hoare, who in 1720 employed Colin Campbell to build the main part of the present mansion. This original building was greatly enlarged by Sir Richard Colt Hoare in the last decade of the eighteenth century. He added two wings, each containing a room forty-five feet by twenty-five, and designed to hold his library and his pictures.

  But already, within ten years of Mr Hoare’s acquiring the place in 1714, he had founded the gardens which are in their perfection today. At the opening of the eighteenth century the English school of landscape painters had hardly come into existence; but the early garden artists did not paint pictures of gardens. Instead they made gardens into pictures. Chatsworth and Stourhead are early instances of this. The arrangement of the trees and the water at Stourhead is picturesque in the original and literal sense of the word. The Stourhead gardens are aptly called the “pleasure grounds”, for they are laid out so as to give a succession of pleasurable shocks of surprise when almost every turn in the path reveals a vista of hitherto unexpected beauty. Such shocks of surprise were among the aims of the devotees of this new English art of garden creation, brought to England by Lord Burlington and William Kent, and ardently practised by country gentlemen of whom the earliest perhaps was Mr
Henry Hoare. He quickly understood the art of setting here and there, amid the natural beaty of his gardens, the formal masterpieces of art. The Bridge, the Temple of Flora, the Pantheon, the Grottoes, the Temple of the Sun and the Convent are among these buildings, and most of the sculpture in them is by Rysbrach, who created the marble statutes of Hercules, Flora and Diana, as well as filling the interiors of the various buildings with delicately beautiful plaster work and casts.

  John Wesley visited Stourhead in September 1776, and he wrote in his journal:

  “I have seen the most celebrated gardens in England, but these far exceed them all, in the situation … in the vast basin of water enclosed between them covering I suppose sixty acres of ground … in the delightful interchange of shady groves and sunny glades, curiously mixed together … above all in the lovely grottoes.… Others were delighted with the Temples but I was not, (i) because several of the statues about them were mean; (ii) because I cannot admire the images of devils—and we know the gods of the heathen are but devils; (iii) because I defy all mankind to reconcile statues with nudities either to common sense or common decency.”

  The outdoor portion of the Stourhead collection also includes the Bristol Cross, originally built in that city in 1373 to replace an older one. In it are niches containing the statutes of King John, Henry III, Edward III, Edward IV, Henry VI, Elizabeth, James I and Charles I. It had various adventures in Bristol, where it was thought by the city magnates to interfere with the traffic of their merchandise, without giving corresponding financial return. For some time it lay in fragments in the Guild Hall, and then its stones were transferred as “ useless lumber” to a corner of the cathedral. Sir Richard Colt Hoare now takes up the story, saying, “In 1768, Dean Barton was an intimate friend of Henry Hoare, Esq., the possessor of Stourhead, who took compassion on it (i.e. the cross) and collected its scattered fragments and removed them to his house at Stourhead.”

  Eight hundred and fifty-four feet above the sea level, at the highest point in the park, stands King Alfred’s Tower, built by the second Mr Henry Hoare of Stourhead in 1772. Over its entrance is a statue of King Alfred, with the following inscription:

  “Alfred the Great, A.D. 879, on this summit erected his Standard against Danish invaders. To him we owe the origins of juries and the creation of a naval force. Alfred, the light of a benighted age, was a philosopher and a Christian; the father of his people and the founder of the English monarchy and liberties.”

  From this key position can be seen a superb view over the three counties, Somerset, Dorset and Wilts. It stands practically at the junction of them all, and to each of them it stands as a landmark.

  It is known that Sir Richard Colt Hoare built his two wings on to Stourhead House to hold, the one his library and the other his pictures, the work being commenced in 1792. He also left to Stourhead his unique collection of Wiltshire antiquities, the results of his nearly forty years of excavating no less than three hundred and seventy-nine barrows of Wiltshire. The library was sold at Sotheby’s in 1883, and the antiquities were bought by the Wiltshire Archæological Society for the Devizes Museum in the same year.

  These two collections were of interest primarily to specialists, but the treasures now at Stourhead attract artists of all kinds. First of all is the collection of Chippendale furniture. Chippendale lived and worked at Stourhead, and there is now in the house, written in his own handwriting, the list of all his work for it, with the prices paid for each piece of furniture. This list is bound in a green leather book in the library. The collection at Stourhead proves that Chippendale was an even more versatile workman than most people realise. His style was not only the “Chippendale” style, for he worked in many manners. How valuable he must have been as a house-carpenter is proved by the two movable library staircases which enabled his patrons to mount to the top of any part of any bookcase in the house. These staircases show what “ utility furniture” meant in the days of Thomas Chippendale.

  The immense variety of chair designs is a revelation, showing Chippendale to have possessed a richness of artistic imagination equalling, if not excelling, his magnificent craftsmanship. In the great dining-room is a set of chairs made for Marie Antoinette. They have a freedom within their uniformity revealing the fundamental difference between the direct work of a great artist and the docility shown in machine-made work, however fine the original design. The serving-tables, the sideboard, the dining-table, the screens, the gout-stools and the wine coolers—in fact, all the furniture in the dining-room is made by Chippendale.

  Chippendale’s hunting-chairs, with their cane seats, backs and arms, are of a shape completely to satisfy the tired-out hunting-man; his large writing-table, of a design which for many generations would set the model for every great library writing-table, yet retains an uncopiable grace and beauty of its own; a circular rent table with a well in the middle to receive the money payments, and drawers all round where such uninspiring but essential articles as account books were stored away under hand, probably by Chippendale; the more “ ladylike” rosewood writing-table with harp-shaped supports; the elaborate carved mahogany table, “ boy’s head with grapes” in the music room; the Chinese Chippendale square armchairs and the carved stands in the picture gallery—these are only some of the wonderful “ pieces” which make the Stourhead rooms as redolent of the cabinet-maker as of the architect. All this furniture has the distinction given by the unconscious facility of the workman who knew what he meant to do and how to do it.

  There are overmantels and mantelpieces by Grinling Gibbons in several rooms; at least one Adam mantelpiece; an elaborate settee and mirror by Kent; a Bath carpet made in 1714 and a Wilton carpet made in 1800; while the panels in the billiard room are of cedar and tulipwood grown on the estate.

  One more piece of furniture must be mentioned, a piece which has been considered of such importance that it has given its name to a room—the Cabinet Room. This is a large antique cabinet composed of a variety of precious stones of all colours, of agates, marbles and enamels. It formerly belonged to Pope Sextus V, whose medallion portrait is included in it. This multicoloured and elaborate piece of work is interesting as showing the Italian pre-Renaissance taste.

  The collection of pictures at Stourhead is a large and varied one; but in this truly country house precedence must be given to Wootton and to his portraiture of horses. He meets the visitor in the entrance hall with an enormous grey horse on which is seated a portrait of Henry Hoare the second, painted by Dahl. Among other paintings of Wootton are the “ Bloody-shouldered Arabian”, a grey “ Lagor”, and a white Percheron horse. There are family portraits from Sir Joshua Reynolds to Leighton and Sir George Hare. Many of the family portraits are in the graceful kitcat size, and these include some delightful pastels by Coates, four small crayon portraits and other family pastels. Angelica Kauffmann painted what is called a “fancy portrait” of the second wife of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, and there is a Gainsborough of Sir Richard himself. There is a Hilliard miniature which is said to be a portrait of Shakespeare, and an interesting design by Veronese for a ceiling which he ultimately executed in Venice. Among the large collection there are paintings by Battoni, Reynolds, Breughel, Van Huysums, one good Canaletto, and pictures by Van der Velde, David Teniers, Maratti, Clouet, both the Poussins, Mola, Mabuse, and “The Woodcutters” by Gainsborough. In addition to the sculpture in the garden there are in the house some interesting statues and busts, including four busts by Roubilliac of Milton, Pope, Bolingbroke and Dryden, and the head of Voltaire from Houdon’s statue in the Théâtre Française.

  CORSHAM COURT

  In the breakfast room at Corsham there hang the portraits of two very remarkable men. These are the posthumous paintings by Adrien Carpentiers of the Rt Honourable John Methuen and Sir Paul Methuen, whose lives between them covered more than a century—from 1650 to 1757. John Methuen was that English Ambassador to the King of Portugal who, in 1703, made the famous Methuen or “Port Wine” Treaty, which
, to this day, has ensured for us our regular supply of port. John’s son, Sir Paul, succeeded his father as Ambassador in Portugal, and he also represented his country in Spain. He was Member of Parliament for Devizes in 1708, was a Principal Secretary of State, and held many important political appointments. Carpentiers’ pictures portray two forceful-looking men wearing full-bottomed wigs, and in the robes respectively of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and of a Knight of the Bath. John Methuen’s portrait was painted after a contemporary picture which is still in the possession of the family. His attractive sympathetic expression is borne out by the original. Carpentiers’ impression of Sir Paul was apparently rather autocratic, but he left behind him indications of a very different type of man. His life and writings

  “suggest that he was a man of great order; benevolent; very strict and high ideals; scrupulously honest; in fact, a man of such integrity that Queen Anne said of him that he was the only minister she could trust. When his heir, Mr Paul Methuen, came of age, he sent him some guidance with a covering letter which shows the simplicity, shrewdness and uprightness of this man.”

  Here are some extracts from this memorandum:

  “Let the love of your country be the principal and chief motive of all your actions.

  Let reason, justice, and humanity be the measures of them, and your constant guides.

  Let truth be the only object of your enquiries: since all sensible men will agree that truth alone is worthy of them.