Chatsworth

“ My honest sweet Chatsworth: I like the weekly price of my hired court stuff so evil that upon Thursday next I will send it home again, at which day the week endeth. I pray you cause such stuff as Mowsall left packed in a sheet to be brought hither by the next carrier: there be hand towels and other things therein that I must occupy when I shall lie at Whitehall. My men hath neither shirt nor any other thing to shift them until that come. Trust none of your men to ride any [of] your housed horses, but only James Cromp or William Marchington ”

“ Belonging to his Grace the Duke of Devonshire—one of the most enlightened and liberal-minded of our English aristocracy—Chatsworth, with its park and grounds, is thrown open to “the people,” under such restrictions only as are essentially necessary to its well-being and proper conservation. Assuredly no mansion and grounds are more freely and liberally made available to the public, while none are more worthy of being visited. ”

“ I should be ashamed to confess, indeed, that I was not pleased with the pictures, and more than pleased with the exquisite carvings and magnificent sculpture, viewed merely as works of art; but I was fatigued with the vast worldliness of such a house, and felt that it would better have suited a Hadrian, than it does a Christian nobleman of England. Such a residence as Warwick Castle comes to its possessor historically, and a nobleman may well keep it up; but Chatsworth seems built for display, and must be altogether too much for comfort. ”

“ In 1820 the late Duke—William Spencer Cavendish, sixth Duke of Devonshire—who had succeeded to the title in 1811, commenced some great improvements at Chatsworth by erecting, from the designs of Sir Jeffrey Wyatt, the north wing, containing, with all the domestic offices, a number of other apartments, as well as the dining-room, sculpture-gallery, orangery, banqueting-room, and pavilion ”

“ Some months, however, elapsed, and to put a stop to his idleness in London, he was summoned to Chatsworth. On reaching Nottingham he found his father in arms, under the Earl, who had raised some troops in favour of William, Prince of Orange. As the old sculptor could make but an indifferent soldier, his son was readily accepted as his substitute, and he entered upon his new career with high glee. ”

“ It is also essential here to note, that during these troublous times, the ill-fated Lady Arabella Stuart—the child of Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, and of his wife Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of Sir William Cavendish, by his wife “Bess of Hardwick”—was born at Chatsworth. The beautiful, much-injured, and ill-fated Lady Arabella, whose sole crime was that she was born a Stuart, is thus in more ways than one, like her relative, Mary Queen of Scots, not only mixed up with Chatsworth, but with the family of its noble [329] possessor. ”

“ Rufford—gives more alms than all they.” It is curious that Chatsworth, so famous in history, has no part in the rhyme. Save for an old engraving of it in the new, the present Chatsworth, no trace of the fabric of the second mansion, the house planned by William Cavendish the first, exists; and in the grounds no relic is to be found belonging to the date of Queen Mary’s imprisonment except a scrap of ivied ruin known as her “bower.”
What is the fate of the rest of the long list? Wingfield is an exquisite ruined fragment. ”

“ The new year found the household re-established there. While Mary, in poor health, acted as though she had no inkling of conspiracy, while the Duke of Norfolk and the Bishop of Ross, her adviser, were in the Tower, miniature plots again disturbed the tenor of existence, and for once the Earl was permitted to choose his own road, and to remove his captive with bag and baggage to Chatsworth. ”

“ Brown’s life was made up of such excitements now: her children always going and returning. Mildred, Mrs. Crittenden Rutledge, had left for Iowa only two days before, having spent two months with her little family at Chatsworth; now Kent was almost home; and in less than a month the Greens would make their annual move to Wellington. Sue, the eldest daughter, married to young Cyrus Clay, lived within a few miles of Chatsworth and seemed the only one who was a fixture. ”

“ She built Chatsworth, Oldcotes, and Hardwicke; and Fuller adds in his quaint style that she left "two sacred (besides civil) monuments of her memory; one that I hope will not be taken away, (her splendid tomb, erected [234] by herself, 51) and one that I am sure cannot be taken away, being registered in the court of heaven, viz. her stately almshouses for twelve poor people at Derby."
Of Chatsworth, the hereditary palace of the Dukes of Devonshire, all its luxurious grandeur, all its treasures of art, it is not here "my hint to speak." ”

“ The Small Dining-Room.
Fig. 140.—CHATSWORTH HOUSE, Derbyshire, 1687–1706.
Talman had adopted the same treatment at Chatsworth, which was being built at this time [62] for the first Duke of Devonshire (Fig. 140) . Chatsworth is on a much larger scale than [207] Dyrham, and is far better known to the public. Indeed to many persons it presents itself as the model of what a great nobleman’s seat should be. This is owing to its simple and dignified treatment, and to its admirable situation and the lordly nature of its lay out. When examined closely, it lacks interest and variety in its detail. ”

“ An hour's drive or so, brought us to the pretty little village of Edensor, close by the inn of which, is the entrance to Chatsworth. The village is situated within the park, and is the property of the Duke, and certainly it is the most charming one we ever saw. Every cottage is of stone, and no two alike in their architecture. One is a mimic Gothic castle ”

“ His view is that we ought to pay for the innocent vanity of living at Chatsworth House instead of 236, Belinda Avenue. Now if that principle is carried into effect, I see no end to its operation. I am not sure that Sir Edward himself would escape. I have often admired his magnificent side-whiskers. I doubt whether there is a pair of side-whiskers to match them in London. That he is proud of them goes without saying. Nobody could possibly have whiskers like them without feeling proud of them. I feel that if I had such whiskers I should never be away from the looking-glass. ”

“ There is ever so much more to see there, and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us through the grounds, Jone and I struck. We left the gang we was with, and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that gate and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton. ”

“ And every man five marks a year.”
During the civil wars the old hall of Chatsworth was taken possession of, and garrisoned, in 1643, for the Parliament by Sir John Gell, being then placed under the command of Captain Stafford, from whose company at Chatsworth in the latter part of the year, forty musqueteers were ordered to be drafted off, and joined to the army of Fairfax for his proposed march to Chesterfield and the North. ”

“ His son George, who succeeded, was the earl to whom the custody of Mary Stuart was committed, his task being rendered all the more difficult for him by the intrigues of his second wife, Bess of Hardwick, the builder of Chatsworth, who had married three husbands before her union with him. ”

“ It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance, touching the captivity of Mary under the constableship of the Earl of Shrewsbury, that the places belonging to him where she was confined, Sheffield Castle and Manor, Tutbury Castle, Wingfield Manor, and Chartley (as well as Fotheringhay, where she was executed) , have all fallen to ruin, while Chatsworth and other places which belonged to the countess still flourish. ”

“ Nellie O'Brien, whose portrait hangs in the Wallace Collection, is one of the exceptions, and an attempt is made to make the "Duchess of Devonshire and Child," now at Chatsworth, equally feminine, but one cannot escape the thought that the mother's gesture as expressed on the canvas is altogether exceptional. She could not have played for long with such a strong healthy baby without ruffling the delightful costume or the carefully arranged hair, and this, one feels, would have been unendurable. ”

“ I never knew of any dealing between the Queen and the Duke of Norfolk, either by Lassells or anyone else. If I had I trust you think I would have discovered it.”
It is not surprising that the Earl’s wife kept aloof for a while and preferred Chatsworth just now. Sheffield was a regular dungeon: the Scottish Queen was only allowed to take an airing on the leads. No 86domestic cheerfulness was possible, no social intercourse, and every letter sent or received was a source of anxiety. ”

“ According to a manuscript memorandum in Cavendish's own hand (Harl. MS. 1154, f. 28) the marriage was celebrated ‘at 2 of the clock after midnight.’ Sir William had so great an affection for his third wife that ‘on her desire he sold his estate in the southern parts of England to purchase lands in Derbyshire where her kindred lived.’ From some of her relatives he purchased the estate of Chatsworth, and began there the noble manor-house which, upon his death (25 Oct. 1557) , he left his widow to finish. By her second husband alone had Bess of Hardwick any issue ”

“ No section of rural England, possibly excepting the Stratford-upon-Avon country is more favored by tourists; motors, carriages and chars-a-bancs were everywhere in evidence and stirred up clouds of limestone dust, which whitened the trees and hedges and filled the sky with a silvery haze. The number of English visitors is greater than at Stratford, and the more [Pg 146] intelligent Englishman who has not visited Chatsworth is rather the exception. A thousand visitors a day is not uncommon ”

“ WATSON, SAMUEL (1663–1715) , sculptor, was born at Heanor, Derbyshire, in December 1663. He executed some of the fine wood-carvings at Chatsworth, commonly attributed to Grinling Gibbons [q. v.] The dead game over the chimney piece in the great chamber is by his hand, and for this and other decorations in the same chamber in lime-tree wood, all completed in 1693, he received 133l. ”

“ Moreover, there is the more excuse for her superstition, since, as we know, crystal-gazers and conjurers with their charmed plates of gold, their phials and symbols, came and went in the country and about the English and foreign courts. It is more than possible that such persons, though included in Shrewsbury’s roll of “practicers” and suspects, occasionally found their way into my Lady’s parlour in Chatsworth or Hardwick. There is behind this old soothsayer’s story a deeper meaning. ”

“ E. of New Zealand, and politically connected with it; the chief industry is the rearing of cattle.
Chatsworth, the palatial seat of the Duke of Devonshire, in Derbyshire, 8 m. W. of Chesterfield, enclosed in a park, with gardens, 10 m. in circumference.
Chatterton, Thomas, a poet of great promise, had a tragic fate, born at Bristol, passed off while but a boy as copies of ancient MSS., and particularly of poems which he ascribed to one Rowley, a monk of the 17th century, what were compositions of his own, exhibiting a genius of no small literary, not to say lyric, power ”

“ Moxon is my go between, call on him, 63 New Bond St., he is a very good fellow and the bookseller is not yet burn'd into him." Patmore was seeking a publisher for, I imagine, his Chatsworth.
Here should come a letter from Lamb, dated April 13, 1831, which Canon Ainger considers was written to Gary and Mr. Hazlitt to Coleridge. It states that Lamb is daily expecting Wordsworth. ”

“ Interspersed with these sheets were others in which Sloper, the urban John Bull, had his fling with gin bottle and obese umbrella, or the kindly, empty faces of the Royal Family appeared and reappeared, visiting this, opening that, getting married, getting offspring, lying in state, doing everything but anything, a wonderful, good-meaning, impenetrable race apart. . . .
I have never revisited Chatham; the impression it has left on my mind is one of squalid compression, unlit by any gleam of a maturer charity. All its effects arranged themselves as antithetical to the Bladesover effects. ”

“ The Englishman, looking from the Oriental to Flora, still demanded explanations with expostulating gesture.
"It is the man who sold us the sapphire," she whispered; and "Oh, what does he want of you?"
"Eh?" said Chatworth, interrogating the goldsmith with his monocle. "What do you want?"
The little man finished his long, and, what had seemed his blind, stare; then dived into his sleeve. He drew forth a crumpled thing which seemed to be a pellet and this he proceeded to unfold. ”

“ A great many here, both in town and country, have perished by the frost, and been lost in the snow.
You have heard, no doubt, of the changes at Court, by which you have got a new provincial, Lord Weymouth; who has certainly good parts, and, as I am informed, speaks very well in the House of Lords; but I believe he has no application. Lord Chatham is at his house at Hayes; but sees no mortal. Some say that he has a fit of the gout, which would probably do him good; but many think that his worst complaint is in his head, which I am afraid is too true. ”

“ Had but the faintest warning reached me, do you suppose I should not have emptied the pit of all human souls? I am as sorry for Rupert as you can be: but the blame is not mine. It is not any one's—unless it be his own. There was plenty of time to leave the pit after he had delivered the message I sent him down with, had he chosen to do so. But I suppose he stopped gossiping with the men. This land belongs to me, sir. Unless you have any business here, I must request you to leave it."
There was so much truth in what Mr. Chattaway urged that the stranger began to be a little ashamed of his heat. ”