The Queen’s House

by Edna Healey

  The sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey was commissioned for 9,000 guineas to execute a statue of His Majesty to crown the Arch. Nash had intended to have three panels on the parapet commemorating Trafalgar, and a continuous frieze representing Waterloo. The sculptors engaged for the marble work were E. H. Baily and Richard Westmacott, and the estimate for the whole was some £50,000.

  It was this vision that was enthusiastically described in Fraser’s Magazine in 1830.

  The whole of this gorgeous pile will, when finished, be about sixty feet high. The gates are to be of mosaic gold, and the palisade which is to connect it with the wings of the Palace are to be spears of the richest workmanship that has yet been executed for such a purpose in that superb metal.11

  Those splendid gates, wrought by Samuel Parker and costing 3,000 guineas, were nearly ruined by last-minute penny-pinching. The beautiful semi-circular head was damaged during its transportation in a ‘common stage wagon’.

  The Arch always looked out of place, jutting up like some great rock in a bay, but it remained in front of the Palace until 1850, when it was taken down and rebuilt on its present site at Marble Arch.

  The Building of the New Palace

  During the years from 1825, when the work on the new Palace began, to 1837, when it was finally completed, the peace of St James’s Park was shattered. Buckingham’s house could no longer be described as ‘Rus in urbe’. The air was thick with dust as Buckingham House was rebuilt and Carlton House demolished. The park resounded with the crash of falling masonry. Wagons laden with precious furniture or heavy with slabs of marble, loads of rubble, pillars and pediments rumbled along the Mall.

  To add to the babel, St James’s Park was undergoing a major transformation: sweeping curves were dug out, widening the old formal canal. In 1764 George III had appointed Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown as his landscape gardener. His plans for a romantic lake bounded by sweeping banks, with an island in its midst, had never been adopted. Now George IV gave Repton (son of Humphrey Repton) the opportunity to reshape the Park. The gardener had worked closely with Nash for many years – indeed Nash often called him his ‘partner’.

  St James’s Park became part of Nash’s vision of the new London, a romantic counterpart to Regent’s Park linked by a graceful street. The new Park owed much to Brown’s original plans, but Repton also widened the Mall to accommodate a carriage drive in a direct line to the Palace. The gardens at the rear of the Palace were transformed from ‘a meadow with a formal dingy canal … into a cheerful … pleasure ground’.12 Redesigned in the new ‘picturesque’ fashion, there were now winding walks and a serpentine lake. The earth excavated was used to build a great mound at the end of the garden.

  Nash’s plan followed the lines of the Duke of Buckingham’s house. The main block was still flanked by two wings, but these were now changed and moved further out, giving an enlarged courtyard (and making more room for the servants). Sadly the Duke’s graceful fountain was no longer there and the comfortable red brick was now clad in Bath stone. A flight of stone steps still led up to the entrance under the classical portico.

  The design on the garden side of the Palace was simple and elegant. The long line of the house was relieved by a graceful central semi-circular bay and above it a corresponding dome. This latter was to be much mocked and later removed. Nash had not intended it to be seen from the front of the house, where it popped up like an upturned cup. Later he would cheerfully admit to a Commission of Enquiry that he had not realized how wrong the wings in the front courtyard would appear, nor how absurd the dome on the garden front would appear when seen from the front.

  A wide terrace before the garden front was to be flanked by four garden pavilions, although eventually only three were built.* Today visitors to the Queen’s annual garden parties can still admire what Professor Richardson has called the terrace’s

  simple yet regal grandeur … The level lines of the façade emphasise the projecting curves of the central bow. Touches here and there, for example the ellipsoids with ornamental surrounds beneath the projecting portions of the cornice, recall the elegances of the Louis XVI style and pay a compliment to Sir William Chambers.13

  The two frieze panels on either side of the bow were sculptured in Coade stone. Inside the building there were major alterations. The Grand Hall and sweeping staircase follow much the same plan as that of the Duke’s old house, but Nash lowered the floor of the Hall, making more dramatic the flight of stairs with its elegant wrought balustrade.

  The garden side of the house was greatly altered. Queen Charlotte’s long enfilade of state rooms opening off each other was swept into one long, wide gallery, and beside it Nash created a new line of state rooms looking on to the garden. Nash had admired galleries like this for paintings or statuary in the great country houses he had visited. In fact, he had built one for his own house in Regent Street.

  As Nash’s biographer, John Summerson, has written, he ‘was not and never had been a great interior designer … but to be faced now at seventy-six with the creation of a set of Royal Apartments of the greatest possible dignity and richness might have daunted a Mansart or an Adam’.14 He succeeded: each salon had a ‘marked stylistic character’. It is not surprising that the King found the state rooms ‘handsome’.

  In the Green Drawing Room and the Throne Room on the courtyard side the eye is drawn up by tall pillars to the intricate beauty of the coved ceilings. On the garden side, in the dignified White Drawing Room once again pillars with carved capitals support a ceiling of delicate design. Next is the Music Room, which is quintessential Nash: five tall windows overlook the garden and ten massive pillars support a ceiling where the half dome over the bay window sings in counterpoint with the dome in the centre. In describing Nash’s work it is a musical analogy that comes most frequently to mind.

  Although his work has all the grace of the period, Nash was prepared to experiment. All the pillars throughout the state rooms were made of scagliola in rich, vibrant colours. Scagliola was an Italian technique which had been used in England since Charles II’s time. It had a base of wood, covered with coarse grained plaster undercoat, which could be painted to look like marble of many colours. Sir William Chambers described the new process of manufacture:

  first basic layer plaster – then finer paste with less marble 1.5” thick, and after having beat it for some time then strew in bits of marble of different kinds and beat them into the paste, then when dry put on paste made of powder of tites, lime and soap water – this lay on the thickness of sheet of paper and smooth and polish it with polished towel before it dries then rub it with linseed oil and a woollen cloth.15

  Nash also used the artificial stone made by Mrs Coade for sculptures and friezes on the exterior of the Palace. The remarkable lady who invented it deserves her place in the history of the Palace. As the author of her obituary in The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1821 wrote,

  Eleanor Coade was the sole inventor and proprietor of an art which deserves considerable notice. In 1769 a burnt artificial stone manufactory was erected by Mrs Coade at King’s Arms Stairs, Lambeth … Coade stone resisted frost and consequently retained ‘that sharpness in which it excels, every kind of stone sculpture and even equals marble’.16

  Mrs Coade was obviously a formidable character who ran her ‘manufactory’ with great efficiency. She was a stalwart supporter of her local Baptist church and left most of her considerable wealth to charity.

  In her biography of Mrs Coade, Alison Kelly describes Coade stone as:

  a material, [that] although composed of various ingredients may be described as a species of terracotta. It combines in one mass pipe-clay, flint, sand and glass and stoneware, that had already passed the furnace. These are ground to a very fine powder, and are mixed in the proper proportions and the whole is well kneaded together by means of the addition of water. In this state it forms a kind of paste which has the ductility of the clay usually employed in modelling. It is now wrought into the form des
ired … and when finished it is left to dry gradually. When thoroughly desiccated the performance is placed in a kiln, where it undergoes an intense white heat; and being allowed to cool it is now complete.17

  In her last years Eleanor Coade employed a distant relation of her aunt, William Croggan, as her manager and after her death he bought the business. It was he who was employed at Buckingham Palace, supplying not only Coade stone but also scagliola. He worked on the Duke of York’s mansion, now Lancaster House. Croggan went bankrupt in 1833, and died two years later.

  Nash also tried new methods in the construction of the Palace chimneys. As The Times reported on 10 March 1826:

  The chimnies [sic] of the new palace building in St James’s Park for the King, are being built upon a new construction, to avoid the nuisance of smoke, and the necessity of climbing boys to sweep them, agreeably to Mr Hiort’s patent for an improvement in the architectural construction of chimnies.

  Apparently Mr Hiort, who was an architect in the Office of Works, had given a lecture to explain his invention. He wrote that he had never met anyone who had actually thought of seriously eliminating smoke. Evidently no one in the Ministry had read Evelyn’s treatise Fumigorium, which had impressed Charles II more than a century earlier. ‘His new chimneys were to be of patent bricks glazed inside which need less cleaning and have no need of climbing boys. All sharp angular turns and other impediments had been eliminated.’18

  There was still concern about climbing boys a year and a half later. The Times reported in 1827 that

  Joseph Glass, the mechanical chimney-sweeper, patronised by the Society for superseding climbing boys, was sent for last week to make trial of his newly-invented machine in some of the most difficult flues in the building, and succeeded in passing the machine through them with great ease. Several surveyors were present and expressed great admiration at the facility with which it was apparent that the cleansing of the flues might be effected, and the prospect of a total abolition of the barbarous climbing boy practice.19

  Samuel Parker designed the intricate balustrades on the main staircase and the bronze capitals of many of the pillars; George Seddon worked the exquisite marquetry of the floor of the Music Room; Richard Westmacott, William Pitts and Charles Ross modelled much of the charming detailed plasterwork. Joseph Theakston, the sculptor who carved the monumental chimneypiece that dominates the Grand Hall, is remembered with affection. William Jeakes made the grates and the steel and brass firedogs in the Throne Room, and an immense iron spit which still hangs on the wall of the kitchen over gleaming modern appliances. He makes a tantalizing appearance in the letters of the novelist Charles Dickens as a skilled engineer, ‘ingenious in his trade’, who made a washing machine for him to be sent to Florence Nightingale when she was a nurse in the Crimea.

  ‘The End of the Imperial Dream’

  There is a pathos and some bathos in the King’s last years. His other dream palace, Carlton House, was a pile of rubble, an oriental fantasy, like Prospero’s dream, now faded from his mind. But there was still Buckingham Palace, which he would never occupy, but which was to reflect so much of his personality in the fabulous possessions he left behind: the exquisite furniture, mirrors and chandeliers, gilded fittings, priceless china and vases, and superb collection of paintings that had been removed from Carlton House were later to be transferred to the new Buckingham Palace.

  When the sad old King’s last days are forgotten he can at least be remembered as one of the great collectors, rivalled only by Charles I. Many of the paintings he bought are still to be seen in Buckingham Palace. He is justly praised for his artistic discrimination; however, one cannot help reflecting that it is easy to be a great collector if you can spend vast sums of money that you do not possess. The King collected great paintings: he also collected great debts. In partnership with Nash he brought elegance and grace to the streets and parks of London. Above all he encouraged Nash to create in Buckingham Palace some of his finest work.

  At the last, he hid away in his splendid robes either at Windsor or at his last refuge, Virginia Water. Here was a magical Chinese pavilion: across the lake he built Roman ruins, and rode under the broken arch with his commander, the Duke of Wellington. The victor of Waterloo, often impatient with his impossible master, listened with a wry smile. But he also later remembered, with pleasure, days quietly fishing with the King from the barge on the lake.

  At the end of his life the King’s fantasies were imperial; here at Buckingham Palace he would be remembered – triumphant in battle. Had he not, at least in his dreams, fought at Waterloo? Through the Marble Arch he could ride forth like a Roman emperor: his victories, Trafalgar and Waterloo, were to be engraved there. Immortal in marble he would be a hero, remembered with Nelson and Wellington. The other entrance gates, he mused, could be for visitors, but this ‘would be for us’.*

  In the last years of his life, the King, who had once been the ‘first gentleman of Europe’, was a sad wreck living as a recluse at Windsor Castle. Increasingly large doses of laudanum mixed with cherry brandy eased his gout but confused his mind. His ministers, Wellington and Peel, wanted him to sign the Catholic Relief Bill, a measure that he obstinately refused to accept, believing it conflicted with his Coronation oath. Finally he agreed, but the struggle left him exhausted. On 12 April 1830 he took his last drive and early in the morning of 26 June he died. He was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

  * One was later removed to Kew, and one transformed into a chapel in Queen Victoria’s reign; the third eventually became the swimming pool.

  * In 1816 the Prince Regent had bought for 500 guineas three superb models of Roman arches constructed of white marble and gilt bronze by Giovacchino and Pietro Belli in 1815. The Arch of Constantine was surmounted by the Emperor in a white marble chariot drawn by four gilded horses and crowned by victory.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  William IV

  ‘The King never calculated upon the use of

  Buckingham Palace for any purpose of state.’1

  LORD HOLLAND

  The Palace at Pimlico

  With the death of George IV on 26 June 1830, Nash lost his strongest supporter: now there was no hope of the knighthood he so longed for. On 22 October 1830 Nash was suspended from the office of Architect to the Board of Works. As Prime Minister the ‘Iron Duke’, the Duke of Wellington, had been stringent enough; now Nash could expect even less generosity from the Whigs who won the elections in November. In fact the waste and extravagance of the ‘Palace in Pimlico’ was exactly the kind of corruption they had been elected to root out.

  Lord Grey, the new Whig Prime Minister, appointed a Select Committee to investigate the Palace affair. It was particularly concerned about the structural safety. It must have galled Nash to hear of his old colleagues, Smirke and Soane, being appointed to judge the safety of his building. They found this difficult: without ripping up the floors it was not possible to judge, because of what they called ‘the extensive and peculiar use of iron’. Nash had been one of the pioneers of cast-iron construction and was so confident of its strength that he suggested that they should bring in the Army to march on every floor. The Committee did not share his confidence but could not prove his cast-iron work faulty. Indeed their conclusion was that, though Nash had been guilty of ‘inexcusable irregularity and great negligence’, he had committed no crime and was not to be prosecuted. In December the brief report of the Committee was published and their Lordships directed that Nash’s appointment as architect responsible for the work on the Palace be withdrawn.

  The full report of October 1831 was damning. Not only were there complaints of incompetence, but the Committee had also received suggestions of malpractice. Nash had sent Joseph Browne to Italy to purchase Carrara marble for the Marble Arch: his account was questioned. There had been ‘no fair competition’ for the purchase of iron.

  Upon the whole, my Lords see in the paper before them no justification of Mr Nash’s conduct. The estimate subm
itted to and sanctioned by Parliament has been exceeded to a large amount; the progress of such excess has been concealed from my Lords and their earlier interposition therefore prevented. My Lords feel it incumbent upon them to mark their sense of such conduct by every means in their power.2

  There were still criticisms of the use of cast-iron and the Committee considered that some of the constructional defects which ‘at present render the building ineligible as a royal residence’ could be remedied. However, they still regretted the site chosen; they thought it might have been cheaper to have built on a new site. As Nash’s biographer, Sir John Summerson, has calculated, ‘The cost of converting Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace estimated in 1826 at £252,690 had increased to £331,973 in 1827, to £432,926 in 1828, to £496,169 in 1829, and now stood at £613,269. It would cost still more to finish the work.’3

  During his last years, Nash spent most of his time at his castle on the Isle of Wight, leaving his London office to the care of his wife’s cousin, James Pennethorne. This young man, who was destined to play an important part in the Palace improvements in Queen Victoria’s reign, had great talent. Nash started him off in his own office and then paid for his further training, first as a pupil of the architect, A. C. Pugin, and then two years’ study abroad. Through Nash he met many of the talented artists and architects of the day; he travelled from the mainland with Turner when the great artist came to stay at the castle. He must have been closely concerned with Nash’s final work for the West Strand improvements and for the building of Clarence House, and certainly would have been consulted by Blore on the work at Buckingham Palace. Pennethorne owed much to Nash and never forgot his great debt.