The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only)

by Christopher Hibbert

  Clipt hedges, avenues, regular platforms, strait canals have been for some time very properly exploded [so The World suggested to its readers in 1753]. There is not a citizen who does not take more pains to torture his acre and half into irregularities, than he formerly would have employed to make it as formal as his cravat. Kent, the friend of nature, was the Calvin of this reformation, but like the other champion of truth, after having routed tinsel and trumpery, with the true zeal of a founder of a sect he pushed his discipline to the deformity of holiness: not content with banishing symmetry and regularity, he imitated nature even in her blemishes, and planted dead trees and mole-hills, in opposition to parterres and quincunxes.13

  Yet the extravagant and tireless gardener was not in the least deterred. ‘Every Man now, be his fortune what it Will,’ the publication, Common Sense, declared in 1739, ‘is to be doing something at his Place, as the fashionable Phrase is; and you hardly meet with any Body, who, after the first Compliments, does not inform you, that he is in Mortar and moving of Earth; the modest terms for Building and Gardening.’14

  Modest cost was rarely possible when executing the designs suggested by Lancelot Brown, once kitchen-gardener at Stowe, who acquired his nickname, ‘Capability’, from his habit of observing in his amiable way when looking over his clients’ rolling acres that he saw ‘great capability of improvement here’. Brown, who acquired a large fortune from his practice, endeavoured to emphasize the essential features of a site and improved them where he could by artificial or enlarged pieces of water, carefully planted trees, accentuated mounds and hollows in which cattle grazed, enhancing the pleasures of the view. There were those who considered his work insipid. Among them were William Chambers who said that Brown’s gardens differed ‘very little from common fields, so closely is common nature copied in most of them’. Chambers himself was a devotee of orientalism which he had introduced to the royal gardens at Kew where his Chinese pagoda and other features, had, in his own opinion, transformed a ‘Desart into an Eden’.15

  Humphry Repton had a higher regard for Brown but considered that his numerous imitators, his ‘illiterate followers’, had betrayed his achievement. Whereas Brown had allowed the lawns to approach as close to the house as the drawing-room windows, Repton reintroduced terraces and flowerbeds, shrubberies and gravelled walks.16 His work for an acquaintance of James Rushworth in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park makes Rushworth so envious that he is determined to make similar improvements to his own property:

  ‘I wish you could see Compton,’ said he, ‘it is the most complete thing! I never saw a place so altered in my life. I told Smith I did not know where I was. The approach now is one of the finest things in the country; you see the house in the most surprising manner. I declare when I got back to Sotherton yesterday, it looked like a prison – quite a dismal old prison.’

  ‘Oh, for shame!’ cried Mrs. Norris. ‘A prison, indeed! Sotherton Court is the noblest old place in the world.’

  ‘It wants improvement, ma’am, beyond anything. I never saw a place that wanted so much improvement in my life; and it is so forlorn, that I do not know what can be done with it.’…

  ‘Your best friend upon such an occasion,’ said Miss Bertram calmly, ‘would be Mr. Repton, I imagine.’

  ‘That is what I was thinking of. As he has done so well by Smith, I think I had better have him at once. His terms are five guineas a day.’

  ‘Well, and if they were ten,’ cried Mrs. Norris, ‘I am sure you need not regard it. The expense need not be any impediment. If I were you, I should not think of the expense, I would have everything done in the best style, and made as nice as possible. Such a place as Sotherton Court deserves everything that taste and money can do. You have space to work upon there, and grounds that will well reward you. For my own part, if I had anything within the fiftieth part of the size of Sotherton, I should be always planting and improving, for naturally I am excessively fond of it …’

  After a short interruption Mr. Rushworth began again. ‘Smith’s place is the admiration of all the country; and it was a mere nothing before Repton took it in hand. I think I shall have Repton.’17

  William Shenstone, creator of the celebrated garden at the Leasowe’s, Worcestershire, expressed in 1764 some ‘Unconnected thoughts on Gardening’ which found general approval:

  Gardening may be divided into three species – kitchen gardening – parterre-gardening – and landskip, or picturesque gardening: which latter consists in pleasing the imagination by scenes of grandeur, beauty, or variety. Convenience merely has no share here, any farther than as it pleases the imagination …

  A ruin may … afford that pleasing melancholy which proceeds from a reflexion on decayed magnificence … A rural scene to me is never perfect without the addition of some kind of building.

  Landskip should contain variety enough to form a picture upon canvas; and this is no bad test, as I think the landskip painter is the gardener’s best designer …

  The eye should always look rather down upon water … Water should ever appear as an irregular shape or winding stream. Islands give beauty …

  The side-trees in vistas should be so circumstanced as to afford a probability that they grew by nature …

  Hedges, appearing as such, are universally bad. They discover art in nature’s province. Trees in hedges partake of their artificiality. There is no more sudden, and obvious improvement, than an hedge removed, and the trees remaining; yet not in such manner as to mark out the former hedge.18

  The garden at Grandison Hall as described by Samuel Richardson was one of which Shenstone would have largely approved and most country gentlemen in the middle of the century would have felt proud:

  The park itself is remarkable for its prospects, lawns, and rich-appearing clumps of trees of large growth.

  The gardens, vineyard, &c. are beautifully laid out. The orangery is flourishing; everything indeed is, that belongs to Sir Charles Grandison. Alcoves, little temples, seats are erected at different points of view; the orchard lawne and grass-walks, have sheep for gardeners; and the whole being bounded only by sunk fences, the eye is carried to views that have no bounds.

  The orchard, which takes up near three acres of ground, is planted in a peculiar taste. A neat stone bridge in the centre of it, is thrown over the river: It is planted in a natural slope; the higher fruit-trees, as pears, in a semicircular row, first; apples at further distances next; cherries, plumbs, standard apricots, &c. all which in the season of blossoming, one row gradually lower than another, must make a charming variety of blooming sweets to the eye, from the top of the rustic villa, which commands the whole.

  The outside of this orchard, next the north, is planted with three rows of trees, at proper distances from each other; one of pines; one of cedars; one of Scotch firs, in the like semicircular order; which at the same time that they afford a perpetual verdure to the eye, and shady walks in the summer, defend the orchard from the cold and blighting winds.19

  The countryside beyond the orchard and garden was more valued than it had been in the past when ‘many landowners treated their visits to their country seats like a visit to the dentist. It was something which had to be done, but the quicker it was over the better. They found the remoteness of the country acutely painful after the gay social life in London.’20 Now, improved roads and carriages had made the countryside less remote, while farming occupied more of a gentleman’s time, and country pursuits were becoming more pleasurable and, often, more exciting.

  30 Interiors

  The Yorkshire home of Dr Daniel Dove, so Robert Southey related, consisted of seven rooms including the dairy and cellar:

  As you entered the kitchen there was on the right one of those open chimneys which afford more comfort in a winter’s evening than the finest register stove; in front of the chimney stood a wooden bee-hive chair, and on each side was a long oak seat with a back to it, the seats serving as chests in which the oaten bread was kept. They were of the darkest
brown and well polished by constant use. On the back of each were the same initials as those over the door, with the date 1610. The great oak Table, and the chest in the best kitchen which held the house linen, bore the same date. The chimney was well hung with bacon, the rack which covered half the ceiling bore equal marks of plenty; mutton hams were suspended from other parts of the ceiling; and there was an odour of cheese from the adjoining dairy, which the turf fire, though perpetual as that of the Magi, or of the Vestal Virgins, did not over-power. A few pewter dishes were ranged above the trenches, opposite the door, on a conspicuous shelf. The other treasures of the family were in an open triangular cupboard, fixed in one of the corners of the best kitchen, half-way from the floor, and touching the ceiling. They consisted of a silver saucepan, a silver goblet and four apostle spoons. Here also King Charles’s Golden Rules were pasted against the wall, and a large print of Daniel in the Lion’s Den … Six black chairs were arranged against the wall, where they were seldom disturbed from their array. They had been purchased by Daniel the grandfather, upon his marriage, and were the most costly purchase that had ever been made in the family; for the goblet was a legacy.1

  Southey was writing in the nineteenth century, but the doctor’s room, like thousands of others like it, had changed little in appearance in over a hundred years. The interiors of more modish professional men and the lesser, though fashionable, gentry, however, had been transformed in the course of the eighteenth century. Their houses, preferably built on rising ground commanded a view – sites which improved methods of water supply now made more practicable – their rooms were spacious, high-ceilinged and well lit by large sash windows. Under the influence of Robert and James Adam, the Scottish architects, panelling began to disappear in the larger houses from the 1770s. But before that, as Isaac Ware wrote in his A Complete Body of Architecture of 1756, it was considered ideal for the reception rooms of a house. For the hall ‘nothing is so well as stucco,’ Ware continued, ‘and for the apartment of a lady, hangings … this last comprehending paper, silk, tapestry and every other decoration of this kind’.2 Silk damask was widely used as a wall covering, so, increasingly, was paper, Chinese hand-painted wallpapers being particularly popular with those who could afford them or who had generous friends serving in embassies or working as merchants in the East. Over 2 million yards of wallpaper of various kinds were sold in 1785 compared with less than 200,000 yards in 1713.3 Prints were also pasted on walls, a form of decoration favoured by Horace Walpole and later by the Duke of Wellington. And when the Adam style came into vogue, semicircular alcoves at one end of a room and niches at intervals became common, as well as ceilings divided into compartments containing, amid festoons and scrolls, pateras and rosettes, ‘cheese cakes and raspberry tarts’ as they were described by one of those contemporary critics who thought the taste too showy.4 Adam motifs could also be bought ready-made and stuck on to walls, ceilings and chimney-breasts as fancy dictated.

  But these motifs, so house-owners were advised, must not distract attention from the pictures, from the works of Italian masters or those of English masters now also much admired, Hogarth and Gainsborough, Reynolds and Devis, Romney and Lawrence. In more modest households the prices demanded by such fashionable artists could not be afforded – Reynolds who regularly charged £200 for a ‘whole length’ was paid more than this for his Marlborough group and, so Walpole said, for his group of the Ladies Waldegrave – but there would be oil paintings by lesser-known names, a few watercolours, Cotmans perhaps, or, at least, some family portraits painted by those journeyman artists who travelled about and were prepared to capture a perfectly respectable likeness for £15 or less.

  In cabinets were displays of Continental porcelain, of Chelsea, Bow and Derby, or Worcester and Spode, and of the finer pieces from Wedgwood’s works which supplied pottery for all classes, ‘Ornamental’ and ‘Useful’. On the floors were Axminster and Wilton carpets; and arranged upon them, or upon the polished floors between their edges and the skirting boards, were screens and sofas, chairs and grandfather clocks in lacquer-work cases and those pieces of furniture made to the designs recommended by Chippendale, Hepplewhite and Sheraton.

  Thomas Chippendale’s book of furniture designs, The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, first appeared in 1754. Almost every type of domestic furniture was illustrated in it, and the designs, many of them based on models in earlier English and Continental pattern books, were copied all over England as well as used for pieces made in Chippendale’s own workshop in St Martin’s Lane, London. George Hepplewhite’s The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide was published in 1788. It contained about 300 designs and was widely used as a trade catalogue by country craftsmen. Thomas Sheraton’s Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book was issued in parts between 1711 and 1794 and was intended to bring to the notice of the trade the most up-to-date designs of the late eighteenth century.5

  While a provincial cabinet-maker might construct an excellent mahogany or walnut table to a Chippendale or Hepplewhite design, the services of a joiner, a draper and an upholsterer had each to be called upon for the construction of a custom-made bed or comfortable chair; and the difficulties involved in getting such craftsmen to work together satisfactorily were often considerable. So were the problems encountered when building or repair work was to be done. When Henry Purefoy, the unmarried owner of an estate at Shalstone in Buckinghamshire, wanted to build a new servants’ hall, he was beset with frustration. The first stone-mason he approached proved slow and forgetful, the next was scarcely an improvement. ‘This is the third day you have been from my work,’ Purefoy complained to him in September 1738, ‘I think you are a very unworthy man to neglect it so this fine weather.’ At length, after Purefoy had threatened to employ someone else, a wall high enough to take a floor was finished; but then there was trouble in getting a carpenter to come at the right time to lay it. No sooner was this work finished than there were further annoyances over fireplaces. Having decided to have one new fashionable fireplace ‘in handsome red and white marble’ and an existing fireplace fitted with a black marble slab, Purefoy ordered the materials from a stonecutter in London. After a delay of three months the marble arrived at Shalstone; but it was not only the wrong size but also cracked and had to have ‘bits of something put into it artificially’.

  Having settled the stonecutter’s bill for £12 17s, Purefoy endured a further delay of two months before he could find a mason to fit the fireplace, and, when he did find one, the man fixed it so badly that fires could not be lit in it. As the room was so cold and unusable, Purefoy decided to have it painted and the floor planed, while waiting – and waiting in vain – for the mason to come back to put the fireplace in properly. This took four months, after which another mason had to be found. But by now it had been discovered that the marble slab sent from London for the other fireplace was a fake: its surface had cracked, revealing some inferior stone beneath. A replacement did not arrive from the stonecutter until a further three months had passed; and this, so friends assured Purefoy, was no better than the first one sent and would soon go the same way. Another replacement arrived. This, too, was unacceptable, being badly cracked and bound together with iron. The parlour was still unusable in June 1741 when the distressing correspondence breaks off.6

  Although still sparsely furnished by later standards, there were far more pieces in the drawing-rooms of houses like Purefoy’s than there had been at any time in previous centuries; and on winter evenings the gloom that had once shrouded the furniture was now dispelled by candles brightly burning in chandeliers and by sconces whose light was brilliantly reflected by looking-glasses in gilded frames. In cold weather, however, the house was likely to be as cold as it ever had been. In some houses braziers and portable stoves were used; and at Holkham, so Matthew Brettingham said, there was a ‘Furnace beneath the Floor of the Hall, for the convenience of warming it; which it does by means of Brick Flues, that have their Funnels for the conveyance of
Smoke carried up in the lateral walls’.7 This form of central heating, though, was very unusual, and most houses had no other means of warming them than open fires, so that unless there was a fire in every fireplace some rooms were necessarily icy. When Mrs Lybbe Powys paid a visit to old Buckingham House in 1767, in ‘the coldest weather possible’, she was ‘amazed to find so large a house so warm and attributed the phenomenon to fires being kept the whole day, even in closets’.8

  Sanitation had also improved but little. Although not uncommon in France, bathrooms such as those described by Celia Fiennes at Chatsworth and in 1773 by Matthew Brettingham at Holkham were rarely to be found in English houses, apart from those of the richest noblemen such as the Duke of Bedford. Foreigners all agreed that English houses were clean. The Frenchman, César de Saussure, observed that not a week went by ‘but well-kept houses [were] washed twice in the seven days, and that from top to bottom; and even every morning most kitchens, staircase, and entrance [were] scrubbed. All furniture, and especially all kitchen utensils [were] kept with the greatest cleanliness.’9 Half a century later another Frenchman confirmed that in cleanliness the English seemed ‘to vie with the Hollanders. The plate, hearthstones, moveables, apartments, doors, stairs, the very street doors, their locks and the large brass knockers, are every day washed, scowered or rubbed.’10 And Peter Kalm, the Swedish scientist, discovered that English women generally had ‘the character of keeping floors, steps and such things very clean’.11