40 chapters
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40 chapters
§ i
§ i
There are two sides from which you may first profitably look at the house. One is from the park, the north side. From here the pile shows best the vastness of its size; it looks like a mediaeval village. It is heaped with no attempt at symmetry; it is sombre and frowning; the grey towers rise; the battlements cut out their square regularity against the sky; the buttresses of the old twelfth-century tithe-barn give a rough impression of fortifications. There is a line of trees in one of the inner
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§ ii
§ ii
The other side is the garden side—the gay, princely side, with flowers in the foreground; the grey walls rising straight up from the green turf; the mullioned windows, and the Tudor gables with the heraldic leopards sitting stiffly at each corner. The park side is the side for winter; the garden side the side for summer. It has an indescribable gaiety and courtliness. The grey of the Kentish rag is almost pearly in the sun, the occasional coral festoon of a climbing rose dashed against it; the l
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§ iii
§ iii
Into the very early mediaeval history of the house I do not think that I need enter. It is suggested that a Roman building once occupied the site, and that some foundations which were recently unearthed beneath the larder—evidently one of the oldest portions—once formed part of that construction. The question of dating the existing buildings, however, is quite sufficiently complicated without going back to a building which no longer exists. Nor do I think that the early owners—the Pembrokes, or
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§ iv
§ iv
The main block, therefore, meanders from Henry VII through Henry VIII to Elizabeth and James I: that is to say, roughly, from the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth. There may be earlier out-buildings and later excrescences, but it is safe to say that the greater portion was built in the reigns of the Tudors. It is all of the same Kentish rag, with the exception of a row of gables which have been plastered over, and which were probably once of the beam-and-plaster f
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§ v
§ v
The galleries are perhaps the most characteristic rooms in such a house. THE STONE COURT: BOURCHIER’S GATEHOUSE Long and narrow, with dark shining floors, armorial glass in the windows, rich plaster-work ceilings, and portraits on the walls, they are splendidly sombre and sumptuous. The colour of the Cartoon Gallery, when I have come into it in the evening, with the sunset flaming through the west window, has often taken my breath away. I have stood, stock still and astonished, in the doorway. T
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§ vi
§ vi
There are other galleries, older and more austere than the Cartoon Gallery. They are not quite so long, they are narrower, lower, and darker, and not so exuberant in decoration; indeed, they are simply and soberly panelled in oak. They have the old, musty smell which, to me, whenever I met it, would bring back Knole. I suppose it is really the smell of all old houses—a mixture of woodwork, pot-pourri, leather, tapestry, and the little camphor bags which keep away the moth; the smell engendered b
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§ vii
§ vii
As there are three galleries among the state-rooms, so are there three principal bedrooms: the King’s, the Venetian Ambassador’s, and the Spangled Room. The King’s bedroom is the only vulgar room in the house. Not that the furniture put there for the reception of James the First is vulgar: it is excessively magnificent, the canopy of the immense bed reaching almost to the ceiling, decked with ostrich feathers, the hangings stiff with gold and silver thread, the coverlet and the interior of the c
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§ viii
§ viii
In a remote corner of the house is the Chapel of the Archbishops, small, and very much bejewelled. Tapestry, oak, and stained-glass—the chapel smoulders with colour. It is greatly improved since the oak has been pickled and the mustard-yellow paint removed, also the painted myrtle-wreaths, tied with a gilt ribbon, in the centre of each panel, with which the nineteenth century adorned it, when it was considered “very simple, plain, and neat in its appearance, and well adapted for family worship.”
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§ ix
§ ix
There would, of course, be many other aspects from which I might consider Knole; indeed, if I allowed myself full licence I might ramble out over Kent and down into Sussex, to Lewes, Buckhurst, and Withyham, out into the fruit country and the hop country, across the Weald, over Saxonbury, and to Lewes among the Downs, and still I should not feel guilty of irrelevance. Of whatever English county I spoke, I still should be aware of the relationship between the English soil and that most English ho
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§ i
§ i
You come out of the cool shadowy house on to the warm garden, in the summer, and there is a scared flutter of white pigeons up to the roof as you open the door. You have to look twice before you are sure whether they are pigeons or magnolias. The turf is of the most brilliant green; there is a sound of bees in the limes; the heat quivers like watered gauze above the ridge of the lawn. The garden is entirely enclosed by a high wall of rag, very massively built, and which perhaps dates back to the
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§ ii
§ ii
Surrounding the house and gardens lies the park, with its valleys, hills, and woods, and its short brown turf closely bitten by deer and rabbits. Its beeches and bracken, its glades and valleys, greatly excited the admiration of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, who visited it in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and she wrote with enthusiasm of shade rising above shade with amazing and magnificent grandeur, and of one beech in particular spreading “its light yet umbrageous fan” over a seat placed roun
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§ iii
§ iii
So much, then, for the setting; but it is no mere empty scene. The house, with its exits and entrances, its properties of furniture and necessities, its dressing-tables, its warming-pans, and its tiny silver eye-bath still standing between the hair-brushes—the house demands its population. Whose were the hands that have, by the constant light running of their fingers, polished the paint from the banisters? Whose were the feet that have worn down the flags of the hall and the stone passages? What
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§ i
§ i
Such interest as the Sackvilles have lies, I think, in their being so representative. From generation to generation they might stand, fully equipped, as portraits from English history. Unless they are to be considered in this light they lose their purport; they merely share, as Byron wrote to one of their number: But let them stand each as the prototype of his age, and at the same time as a link to carry on, not only the tradition but also the heredity of his race, and they immediately acquire a
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§ ii
§ ii
The Sackvilles are supposed to have gone into Normandy in the ninth century with Rollo the Dane, and to have settled in the neighbourhood of Dieppe, in a small town called Salcavilla, from which, obviously, they derived their name. Much as I relish the suggestion of this Norse origin, I am bound to add that the first of whom there is any authentic record is Herbrand de Sackville, contemporary with William the Conqueror, whom he accompanied to England. Descending from him is a long monotonous lis
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§ iii
§ iii
I have dealt as briefly as possible with the Lord Treasurer’s life, because no one could pretend that the history of his embassies or his occupations of office could have any interest save to a student of the age of Elizabeth. But as a too-much-neglected poet I should like presently to quote the opinions of those well qualified to judge, showing that he was, at least, something of a pioneer in English literature—crude, of course, and uniformly gloomy; too gloomy to read, save as a labour of love
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§ i
§ i
It so happens that a remarkably complete record has been left of existence at Knole in the early seventeenth century—an existence compounded of extreme prodigality of living, tedium, and perpetual domestic quarrels. We have a private diary, in which every squabble and reconciliation between Lord and Lady Dorset is chronicled; every gown she wore; every wager he won or lost (and he made many); every book she read; every game she played at Knole with the steward or with the neighbours; every time
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§ ii
§ ii
She is living (1616) principally at Knole, sometimes in London, sometimes making an expedition into the North to join her mother, who in all her difficulties was her counsellor and ally. The perpetual topic of the diary is the dispute with her husband: “My Coz: Russell came to me the same day, and chid me, and told me of all my faults and errors, he made me weep bitterly, then I spoke a prayer of Owens, and came home by water where I took an extreme Cold.” The Archbishop [of Canterbury] my Lord
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§ iii
§ iii
Her portraits change as her years advance, and the lines of determination harden about her mouth. Her true life—the life for which she was most truly fitted—only began after she had passed her fiftieth year, when with the death of her kinsman Lord Cumberland the northern estates passed calmly and naturally into her hands at last. All the quarrels and litigation and anxiety of her youth were left behind her; she had buried Lord Dorset; she had buried Lord Pembroke after a second marriage as disas
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A Catalogue
A Catalogue
of the Household, and Family of the Right Honourable RICHARD, EARL of DORSET , in the year of our Lord 1613; and so continued until the year 1624, at Knole, in Kent ....
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§ i
§ i
The wreckage of Richard’s estates devolved at his death upon his brother Edward, who at that time was travelling in Italy. This Edward Sackville was once to me the embodiment of Cavalier romance. At the age of thirteen I wrote an enormous novel about him and his two sons. He had the advantage of starting with Vandyck’s portrait in the hall, the flame-coloured doublet, the blue Garter, the characteristic swaggering attitude, the sword, the lovelocks, the key of office painted dangling from his hi
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§ ii
§ ii
Between this affair and the date of his succession to his brother Richard, Edward Sackville was employed on various missions: he sat in the House of Commons, he was twice sent as ambassador to Louis XIII, and he travelled in France and Italy. He was thus, when he succeeded, an experienced man of thirty-four, and he pursued, uninterruptedly, the sober path of office, now Lord Chamberlain, now Lord Privy Seal, now a Commissioner for planting Virginia, always in the confidence of the King, and his
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§ iii
§ iii
On the approach of civil war there could be, of course, no doubt on which side the Earl of Dorset would range himself. He had been for many years closely connected with both the King and Henrietta Maria, and Lady Dorset stood in a yet more intimate relationship to the King and Queen as governess to their children. Since 1630, the date of the birth of Charles II, she had held this position, and from this little anecdote it may be judged that she was not so severe a preceptress as her portrait mig
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§ iv
§ iv
More tragical events than the desecration of his house or the imprisonment of his chubby friend marked for Lord Dorset the progress of the Civil War. His eldest son, Lord Buckhurst, was early taken prisoner at Miles End Green with Lord Middlesex and that same Sir Kenelm Digby, and his younger son, Edward, was also taken prisoner at Kidlington, near Oxford, and murdered in cold blood by a Roundhead soldier shortly after, at Abingdon. I know nothing of this Edward Sackville except that he was knig
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§ i
§ i
Edward Sackville was succeeded by his son Richard, married to Lady Frances Cranfield, a considerable heiress, who, on the death of her brother, inherited the fortune and property of their father, Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, sometime Treasurer to James I. I mention this marriage especially, because it brought to the Sackvilles the house called Copt Hall in Essex and its contents, which included much of the finest furniture now at Knole, some of the tapestry, the many portraits of the Cra
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§ ii
§ ii
This Richard Sackville and Frances Cranfield had seven sons and six daughters. There are some delightful portraits of the little girls at Knole, one in particular of Lady Anne and Lady Frances, painted in a garden, leading a squirrel on a blue ribbon, and in the chapel at Withyham there is an elaborate monument to commemorate the youngest son, Thomas, no doubt the “little Tom” for whom the playthings and the silver porringer were to be remembered. The monument bears the following inscription: Of
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§ iii
§ iii
Pomp, wealth, and infirmities now began to take the place of brilliant youth and comparative irresponsibility. The frivolous Lord Buckhurst became Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, he succeeded to the estates of the Cranfields, he married, he was made Lord Chamberlain, he was given the Garter, and he had a fit of apoplexy in the King’s bedroom. In order to recover his health he went abroad; his passport is at Knole, on yellow parchment, with the King’s signature at the top: Charles the Second by the
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§ iv
§ iv
In 1685 Charles II died, and with him departed that devil-may-care existence into which Lord Dorset had fitted so readily and so well. He was no favourite with the new King; for one thing he had addressed verses in this vein to Lady Dorchester, mistress of James II: He appears also at this time to have grown more serious in his outlook, for he disapproved of the new King so strongly as to have taken an active part in the accession of William III to the English throne. He was instrumental, indeed
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§ v
§ v
He had been one of the most notorious libertines of the wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the city watch, had passed many nights in the round house, and had at least once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Nell Gwyn, who always called him her Charles the First, had given no small amusement and scandal to the town. Yet, in the midst of follies and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his natural goodness of heart, had been conspicuou
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§ i
§ i
The first duke of Dorset remains to me, in spite of much reading, but an indistinct figure. I do not know whether the fault is mine or his. Perhaps he was a man of little personality; certainly he was lacking in the charm of his scapegrace father or of his frivolous great-nephew, the third duke. And yet he is a personage of some solidity: weighty, Georgian solidity. The epithets chosen by his contemporaries to describe him are all concordant enough, “a man of dignity, caution, and plausibility,”
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§ ii
§ ii
The early impressions of the first duke, who grew to be so pompous, stout, and good-natured, and whose three sons gave him in their several ways so much anxiety, are not unattractive. There is a picture of him as a little slim boy, with his sister and their pet fawn; and there is Lord George’s own anecdote of his father’s childhood: My father, having lost his own mother, was brought up chiefly by the Dowager Countess of Northampton, his grandmother. She being particularly acceptable to Queen Mar
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§ iii
§ iii
I have already mentioned Lady Betty Germaine, who, during the lifetime of the first duke and duchess, lived almost entirely at Knole and had three rooms—her bedroom, her sitting-room, and her china closet—set aside for her exclusive use. This little prim lady, to whom the three little rooms must have provided so apposite a frame, occupied her time in writing letters, in stitching at crewel work with brightly-coloured wools, in making pot-pourri to fill the bowls on the window ledges, and in tell
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§ iv
§ iv
Since I have avoided all political details, which would have led anyone more conversant than myself with the background to the facts into pages of dissertation, there remains very little to say of the first Duke of Dorset. He died a few years before his dear, dear Colly, and was succeeded by his son, that Lord Middlesex to whom I have alluded as being so unsatisfactory. There is not much record of this good-for-nothing duke, who enjoyed his dukedom only four years, and who was married to a “very
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§ i
§ i
The portrait by Gainsborough in the ball-room is of a man with a curved mouth, deep grey eyes, and powdered hair brushed back off his forehead. He looks out from the oval of his framing, beautiful and melancholy. “I have always looked on him as the most dangerous of men,” said the Duchess of Devonshire, “for with that beauty of his he is so unaffected, and has a simplicity and a persuasion in his manner that makes one account very easily for the number of women he has had in love with him.” Ther
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§ ii
§ ii
I have said that cricket as well as love affairs occupied the duke’s time, and in this he was only carrying on the tradition begun by his father and his uncle, who were both enthusiastic cricketers and took part in the first match recorded as having been played at Sevenoaks, in 1734, between Kent and Sussex, Lord John Sackville and Lord Middlesex playing, of course, for Kent. Six years later Sevenoaks played London on the famous Vine cricket ground at Sevenoaks—the first match recorded on the Vi
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§ iii
§ iii
We come now to the period when “the gay Duke of Dorset became ambassador in Paris,” and “his encouragement of the Parisian ballet was the amazement and envy of his age.” It is entertaining, and rather sad, to read both his official despatches from Paris and his private letters to his friends, and to reflect that while he was writing to the Duchess of Devonshire, “I suppose you will hear talk of my ball, it has made a great noise at Paris”; or to the Foreign Office, “It is hardly possible to conc
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§ iv
§ iv
The year after the parting in which the Baccelli was reported to have behaved so well, the duke married. His bride was an heiress, Arabella Diana Cope, who brought the duke, according to his own statement, a dowry of £140,000. She must have been an imposing figure, if one may trust Hoppner’s portrait, which shows her walking in a white muslin dress, a little dog frisking round her feet, and tall feathers on her head; and Wraxall, who certainly knew her, says, with the touch of awe and even disli
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§ i
§ i
The new Duke of Dorset was only five years old when his father’s dignities descended so prematurely on to his small yellow head, but he had a capable mentor in the person of his mother, and before two years had elapsed her authority was reinforced by that of a stepfather. This was Lord Whitworth, recently Ambassador to the Courts of Catherine II. and Paul I. The circumstances of Lord Whitworth’s recall had been in the least degree mysterious. Various rumours were current; amongst others, that he
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§ ii
§ ii
It now became apparent how exceedingly wise had been the precautionary measures taken by the duchess in regard to her husband’s will. A distant cousin, the son of Lord George, succeeded to the title as fifth and last duke—this part of the succession was beyond the reach of her control—but under the terms of the will Knole became her property for life, and she received in addition, on the death of her son, an increase in her income of nine thousand a year. She must certainly have been one of the
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§ iii
§ iii
After Lord Whitworth’s term of office had come to an end he and the duchess returned to live at Knole, and to make such improvements there as were agreeable to the taste of the early nineteenth century. Such were the Gothic windows of the Orangery, which replaced the Tudor ones and were inscribed with the date 1823, and further changes were projected, such as a design which was to sweep away the symmetry of the lawns on the garden front and bring a curving path up to the house. This scheme, howe
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APPENDIX A Note on Thieves’ Cant
APPENDIX A Note on Thieves’ Cant
The vocabulary given on page 135 contributes no word which may not be found in any cant dictionary, and therefore may appear undeserving of inclusion. But I put it in because I think few people, apart from students of philology, realize the existence of that large section of our language in use among the vagabond classes. Cant and slang, to most people’s minds, are synonymous, but this is an error of belief: slang creeps from many sources into the river of language, and so mingles with it that i
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