Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, 1716-1783
Page 45
52 ‘I hope in God’: Chatham Papers, PRO/30/8/24, f.145, 10th September 1767
53 ‘in exchange for it’: Stroud, 1984, p.109; Hinde, p.138
54 Lancelot’s draft Will of 1769: this is in Huntingdonshire Record Office
55 ‘Break off. Break off’: Grey papers, Luton and Bedfordshire Archives, L30/9a/9/f.124, 19 Sept 1769
56 ‘Complimts of the season’: BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.20
10 Return to the North
The question arises: did Lancelot grow so grand and successful that he forgot his origins? It was not in his affectionate and loyal nature to do so, but up until now his work and travelling and his young family seem to have taken all his time, and at Stowe and Hammersmith there would have been few opportunities to break away from his preoccupations. He went as far north as Harewood near Harrogate in 1758, and all the way to Lowther near Penrith in 1763, and surely called at Kirkharle on that occasion. It appears that contacts with Biddy’s family at Boston were more frequent, as they were easier. After his brother John’s death in 1766 and the purchase of Fenstanton the following year, which gave him a base on the road to the North, Lancelot travelled that way more frequently, and his working visits to Kirkharle, Wallington and Alnwick in 1769 and 1770 were in celebratory mood, albeit tinged with some social inflexibilities.
1 ‘When You bid Me’: The Letters of David Garrick, ed. D. M. Little and G. M. Kahrl, 1963, col. II, letter no. 600
2 ‘great alterations’: Stroud, 1984, p.123
3 ‘Amsterdam design’: see Susan Campbell, Charleston Kedding, p. 154ff. and Ch. 11 on the Vinery
4 Hampton houses: see Heath, Hampton Court, 2000
5 ‘David Garrick’: he was born in Hereford, at the Angel Inn, by the accident of his parents visiting the town, though he regarded Lichfield as his home; see Robin Haig, A History of Theatres & Performers in Herefordshire, Logaston, 2002, p.16
6 ‘Garrick picked up’: Benedetti, p.188
7 ‘quit his own mind’: Benedetti, p.192
8 ‘frozen by terror’: Uglow, Hogarth, 1997, pp.399–400
9 ‘I shall content Myself’: Garrick, Letters nos 134 and 137 n.4
10 ‘Home, seeing the tunnel’: Stroud, 1984, p.81
11 Ice houses: see Tim Buxbaum, Icehouses, 2008; also Sylvia Beamon and Susan Roaf, The Icehouses of Britain, 1990
12 Lord Chalkstone: quoted in Michael Symes, ‘David Garrick and landscape gardening’, Journal of Garden History, 6:1, pp.34–49; Laird, p.163
13 The Clandestine Marriage: Symes op. cit., p.48
14 Edward Lovibond: Lovibond (724–75) lived at Elm Lodge or The Elms, High Street, Hampton, from 1748; a gentleman of leisure, poet and contributor to The World, he was also interested in the ‘rural economy’; see Twickenham Local History Society, Paper no. 67, The Fashioned Reed, by Brian Louis Pearce, 1992
15 ‘A Grotto this’: Michael Symes, The English Rococo Garden, 1991, pp. 66–8; also Heath, pp. 74–5
16 ‘Till a lawn’: Hunt, 1987, p.49, cat. nos 48 and 49, designs for Euston Hall
17 ‘not really up to the job’: Jeremy Black, George III, America’s Last King, 2008, p.93
18 George Stubbs: see Robin Blake, George Stubbs and the Wide Creation, 2005
19 ‘he will be missed’: Wallington Estate Letterbook, 1764–76, Northumberland Record Office, NRO 672/2/48, March 1766
20 John Brown and the Portland estates: Letters from 1762 (Pw F 1730) to 1767 (Pw F 1835) in the (online) Catalogue of Papers of William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3 rd Duke of Portland, Part 4, University of Nottingham Library. Subsequent letters to 1782 detail Richard Brown’s career as agent.
21 ‘charitable benefaction’: John Brown to 3rd Duke of Portland, 15th January 1763 ibid.
22 ‘4 Isle of Skye cows’: John Brown, 20th October 1764 ibid.
23 ‘unwearied diligence’: Richard Brown, 24th March 1767 ibid.
24 ‘knowledge and skill’: Colin Shrimpton, A History of Alnwick Parks and Pleasure Grounds, 2006, p.36
25 ‘upon herself the role’: ibid., p.37
26 ‘made to feel at home’: Bertram Hylton Davis, Thomas Percy, A scholar-cleric in the age of Johnson, Philadelphia, 1989, p.142
27 ‘deep sequestered Valley’: Thomas Percy, A Letter describing the ride to Hulne Abbey from Alnwick etc. (5th August 1765), University Library, Cambridge
28 ‘principal estate servant’: Shrimpton op. cit., p.37ff.
29 ‘Look about you’: ibid., p.49
30 ‘Lady Loraine’: Wallington Letterbook 672/2/48, October 1769
31 ‘that he would have’: ibid., 3rd March 1770
32 ‘a vast ruin’d Castle’: Hedley, op.cit., 1983, p.27
33 ‘a very fine’: Young, 1771, Vol.3, p.94
34 exhibition in Newcastle: Capability Brown and the Northern Landscape, Tyne and Wear County Council Museums and the North East Chapter of the Landscape Institute, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, June–July 1983, and Bowes Museum, Temple Newsam and Cleveland Gallery, Middlesbrough
35 ‘desiring me to’: Wallington Estate Letterbook, NRO 672/2/48, 18th September 1770, to Mr Lancelot Brown at Lady Loraine’s at Kirkharle
36 Stubbs ‘shooting pictures’: Blake, pp.172–3
37 ‘and gives me some direction’: Wallington Letterbook, NRO 672/2/48, 18th September 1770
38 ‘the impropriety’: Wallington Letterbook, NRO 672/2/48, 30th September 1770, to ‘Mon. Blackett’ in Paris
39 ‘If you have five Minutes’: BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.116
40 ‘Their Majestys’: Stroud, 1984, p.124
41 ‘not in so good a condition’: Stroud, 1984, pp.124–5; PRO Works ¼, pp.86–7, letters dated 29th October and 5th November 1770
11 ‘All Over Estates and Diamonds’
Meant as an insult, this quote is Horace Walpole on Robert Clive (from Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire, 2006, p. 32), in disdain of the latter’s flashy wealth, made up of jewels and gold given to him by Indian princes. Diamonds turn out to be de rigueur the basis of Indian fortunes, including that of the Pitt family and of the Pigots of Patshull. George Durant of Tong was one of the clients with an overtly West Indian sugar and spice fortune, which involved slave labour. Attempts have been made to tarnish Lancelot for working for tainted money, but this was not a concept that applied during his lifetime. William Cowper wrote of slavery in The Task 1785): the first Quaker moves calling for abolition came after Lancelot’s death, and it was in December 1785 that William Wilberforce confessed to the younger Pitt that his sudden conversion to evangelical Christianity had made him susceptible to social evils (see Hague, pp.216–18; the Wilberforce shipping fortune came from trading between the West Indies and Russia). The effects of enclosures and the ‘Captain Swing’ riots were not felt until well after Lancelot’s death, either; it might be argued that he was working on the coat-tails of the ‘flowering of rural England’ that Professor Hoskins once assured us was a Georgian reality. Rather late in the day, I realised that Lancelot’s story could be told almost entirely in the context of the works of Gray, Fielding and Sterne and their contemporaries, whose worlds he did inhabit. Lancelot was always concerned for the welfare of his workers, there are endless evidences of this, and it was quite possible that he exercised his own unspoken censorship, working only for landowners who felt the same, notably Lord Exeter, the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Coventry and others, most of whose (old) money came from their landed estates. What was perhaps most remarkable was that the ownership of a green park, and a park dressed by Lancelot Brown, had outstripped all other luxuries, to become the ultimate in aspirational jewels.
1 ‘No man that’: Henry Holland to Humphry Repton, see Kedrun Laurie in G. Carter, P. Goode and K. Laurie (eds), Humphry Repton catalogue, 1982, Norwich, p.11, quoting Repton’s Sketches and Hints, 1794, p.30. Repton apparently paid additional homage to Brown by studying forest scenery in Hainault Forest in Essex (as Lancelot had done) – the information coming from Samuel Knight, wh
o was Repton’s friend and a connection of the younger Browns in Huntingdonshire.
2 ‘The nomination’: Lord Sandwich to Sir John Hynde Cotton, March 1764, in Stazicker, p.92
3 ‘county dignity’: see Sidney and Beatrice Webb, ‘The Parish and the County’ chapter, in English Local Government, 1906 (reprinted 1963)
4 ‘hence a sort of tacit’: ibid.
5 ‘Brown should be relieved’: N. A. M. Rodger, The Insatiable Earl, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, 1993, p.88, quoting PRO 30/29/1/14 ff.6–16, November 1769
6 ‘I remember hearing’: Uvedale Price, Essay on the Picturesque, 1794, p.192. Rare Books, Cambridge University Library.
7 ‘Permit me to hope’: William Constable, BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.31, 22nd July 1772
8 ‘400 or 500 acres’: Deborah Turnbull, ‘The Making of the Burton Constable Landscape’, in Burton Constable Hall: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, East Yorkshire Local History Society, 1998, p.10
9 ‘the Management’: Burton Constable Hall guide, revised by Gerardine Mulcahy, Burton Constable Foundation, 2008, p. 2
10 ‘2 stoves with’: Turnbull op. cit., p.11
11 ‘hollies and laurels’: ibid., p.13
12 Thomas White: see Deborah Turnbull, Thomas White 1739–1811: Eighteenth-Century Landscape Designer and Arboriculturist, Ph.D. thesis, University of Hull, 1990
13 ‘after the manner of Rousseau’/‘bit of a Vertu’: Burton Constable Hall guide, p.2
14 ‘How to Clump my Avenues’: William Constable, BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.31; Elisabeth Hall, ‘Mr Brown’s Directions, Capability Brown’s landscaping at Burton Constable 1767–82’, in Garden History, 23:2, Winter 1995, pp.145–74
15 ‘Trench the ground’: Hall op. cit., 8th September 1772
16 ‘by breaking the side’: ibid., 4th September 1773, p.156
17 ‘the lawn before’: ibid.
18 ‘lower the surface’: ibid., 30th September 1775
19 ‘make a clay wall’: ibid.
20 ‘the islands to be’: ibid., 3rd August 1776
21 ‘Mr Brown will send’: ibid.
22 ‘in levelling and uniting’: ibid.
23 ‘to a Christmas gambol’: Lord Coventry from Croome, BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.42
24 Knowsley Park: Lancelot was paid £100 in 1775 for ‘A General Plan’ and visited Knowsley again in 1776, just after the death of the 11th Earl of Derby, to plan the ‘New Kitchen Garden’ and grounds around the house, and was paid £84. These plans (which are not at Knowsley) were ‘most probably’ carried out by estate workmen; the formal pools were not loosened until 1796, and then Richard Yarnell, formerly a gardener at Hampton Court, became Head Gardener. Information sent to the author by Edward Perry at Knowsley, 29th October 2008.
25 ‘fortunate swain’: James Jodrell, BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.46, 21st December 1772
26 ‘that my lord has enjoyed’: Lady Chatham, ‘Exact copy to Mr Brown’, 17th October 1772, Chatham Papers, op.cit., f.147
27 ‘the family at Hampton’: BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.48, 4th January 1773
28 ‘old friend Mr Brown’: ibid., f.27, 4th January 1773
29 ‘a piece of hung beef’: George Brown, ibid., f.55
30 note from Drummonds: ibid., f.58, 5th March 1773
31 Lord North: ibid., f.40, 5th October 1772
32 ‘I have made the’: William St Quentin, ibid., f.57, 2nd March 1773
33 Edward Hussey Montagu: ibid., f.60
34 ‘regards to Mrs Brown’: ibid., f.61, 12th April 1773
35 ‘going on very properly’: Lord Sandwich, ibid., f.69
36 ‘you can possibly spare’: Lord Craven, ibid., f.67, 8th June 1773
37 Clive in India: see Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire, New York, 2006, p.32ff., see also Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, 1995, p.125ff.; Lucy Sutherland, The East India Company in 18th-century politics, 1952; Robert Harvey, Clive, The Life and Death of a British Emperor, 1998
38 a ‘small box’: Laurence Whistler, ‘Newly Discovered Vanbrugh Designs for Claremont’, Country Life, 25th February 1949, p.426; see also Whistler, 1954, on Claremont; and the National Trust guide to Claremont Landscape Garden, 1989
39 ‘Liberal Brooks’: Stroud, 1966, p.50
40 ‘that the great wicked Lord’: Phyllis M. Cooper, The Story of Claremont, 7th edn, 1979, p.17
41 ‘always ye Greatest’: Lambert, BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.73, 4th November 1773. Brown’s payment for Claremont has been much exaggerated mainly because of Repton’s assertion in his Fragments that house and grounds cost £100,000 (Cooper op. cit., p.17); Lancelot’s account book shows £30,612. 16s. 11d. received from January 1771 to June 1776, with an additional £3,000 paid in March 1778 and the account balance received – an unstipulated amount – in 1780. As this letter from Lambert reveals, Lancelot was responsible for the lavish interior fittings to the house, and so all these expenses went through his hands. Most was passed on to Henry Holland and the craftsmen suppliers.
42 golden guineas: see Cooper op. cit., p.18
43 ‘once had full of gold’: Boswell, Vol. 3, p.58
44 ‘Two of Lord Clive’s sisters’: BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.38, 21st August 1772
45 ‘several specimens’: Lord Arundell, ibid., f.71, 16th August 1773
46 ‘I should be glad’: Lord Lisburne, 17th August 1772, Stroud, 1984, pp.97–8
47 ‘sorry to find you’: Lord Dacre, BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.75, 7th November 1773
48 ‘which may be material’: Lord Lisburne, ibid., f.77, 7th November 1773
49 ‘that the amendment’: Lord Howe, ibid., f.81, 18th December 1773
50 ‘affectionate Friend’: Lancelot, ibid., f.83, 20th March 1774
51 ‘I have now lived’: David P. Miller, ‘My favourite studdys, Lord Bute as a Naturalist,’ p.230 in Lord Bute: Essays in Re-interpretation, ed. K.W. Schweizer, Leicester, 1988, pp.213–39
52 ‘but spend the poor remains’: ibid.
53 ‘[Lord Bute] is sorry’: ibid.
54 ‘the dreaded East’: The Correspondence of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford and the Rev. William Mason, ed. Rev. J. Mitford, 2 vols, 1851, Vol. 1, 9th May 1772
55 ‘I have read Chambers’s book’: ibid., 25th May 1772
56 ‘In England’: Chambers, Dissertation, 1772, Rare Books, Cambridge Unviversity Library
57 ‘liked that Country best’: Nikolaus Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art, 1956, pp.173–4; see also John Harris, 1970
58 ‘regular professors’: Chambers, Dissertation, 1772, Rare Books, Cambridge Unviversity Library
59 ‘whole woods have been’: ibid.
60 ‘waters for sailing’: ibid.
61 ‘Come then, prolific Art’: Rev. William Mason, An Heroic Epistle, 1773, see Jacques, p. 108
62 ‘Haste, bid you livelong terrace’: ibid.
63 Berrington Foreman’s notes: kindly given to me at Berrington Hall
64 ‘which was rather too much’: Lancelot, BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.91, 11 th December 1775
65 ‘very much upon’: ibid., f.91
66 John Byng: quoted in Robin Moore, A History of Coombe Abbey, Coventry, 1983, p.64
67 ‘I shall leave’: Stroud, 1950, p.170
68 ‘the famous man’: The Beautiful Lady Craven, The Original Memoirs of Elizabeth Baroness Craven, etc., ed. A. M. Broadley and Lewis Melville, 2 vols, 1914, Vol. 2, p. 100
69 ‘with the finest trees’: Mowl and Barre p. 180
70 ‘the approach road’: ibid., p.181
71 Anne Seymour Conway: see Percy Noble, A Woman of Art and Fashion 1748–1828, 1908; and Angelica Goodden, Miss Angel, The Art and World of Angelica Kaufman, 2005
72 1769 For the demolition of Middleton, see Milton Abbas, Dorset, an illustrated guide by C. H. R. Fookes, 8th edn, 2004; maps and plans of the Milton estate are in Dorset Record Office
73 ‘unmannerly, imperious Lord’: see Harris, 1970, p.237
74 ‘the layout of the village’: ibid., p.238
7
5 ‘had given plans’: Stroud, 1984, p. 119
76 ‘with great difficulty’: Janet Waymark, ‘Sherborne, Dorset’, Garden History, 29:1, 2001, pp.64–81 (Architectural Association Diploma thesis, 1996), quoting Sherborne Castle Estate Archives, Game Book, 1771–84
77 ‘Mr Brown came’: ibid., see also Sherborne Castle guide by Ann Smith, Sherborne Castle Estates, 2007
12 Treading the Enchanted Ground
This phrase is taken from Jemima, Marchioness Grey’s description of her exploration of Wimpole Park with Lancelot; combined with the opening quotation from her well-schooled daughter, Lady Amabel Polwarth, on the visit of a ‘great Man’ – which (‘as happens sometimes with great Men) has ended in very little’ – it subscribes to Lancelot’s elevation to somebody approaching a mythical magician. To many people he is no longer a mere gardener, even a royal one, but a worker of miracles.
1 ‘Now I must request’: Lady Amabel Polwarth, 19th November 1778, Luton & Bedfordshire Archives
2 ‘I will not fail’: Lord Chatham to Lady Stanhope, 1777, Stroud, 1984, p. 186; see also Chatham Correspondence, ed. W S.Taylor and J. H. Pringle, 1838–40, Vol. iv, p.430
3 ‘My dear Sir’: Garrick, Letters, Vol. 3, 5th February 1776, letter 980
4 ‘The eagerness of the people’: Benedetti, p.223
5 ‘My Wife is resolv’d’: Garrick to Lancelot, Letters, op.cit., fn. to letter 980
6 Jack Brown from Boston: BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.89
7 ‘though in a wretched condition’: ibid.
8 ‘as he has lived’: Black, p.99
9 ‘the oldest new place’: the Rev. William Gilpin, in Remarks on Forest Scenery, 1791, wrote of the first Cadland that the ‘abundance of old timber gives the house, tho’ lately built, so much the air and dignity of an ancient mansion that Mr Brown, the ingenious improver of it, used to say “It was the oldest new place he knew in England”. The clumps he has managed ‘with great judgment.’ Stroud, 1984, p. 178
10 ‘I find you added’: Stroud, 1984, p. 178
11 ‘Today, and indeed’: Lancelot to Lady Chatham, Chatham Papers; Stroud, 1984, p. 187