CHAPTER VIII

Knole at the End of the Eighteenth Century JOHN FREDERICK SACKVILLE 3rd Duke _of_ Dorset

§ 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.” There is much in him which recalls his forefather, Charles, the Dorset of the Restoration, but this is a personality less opulent, less voluminous, more wistful and more romantic; all his accessories are essentially of the eighteenth century—his Chinese page, his diamonds, his scarf-pin, his Italian mistress who caused so much scandal by dancing at the Opera in Paris with his Garter bound about her forehead. He is the immediate precursor of the generation which replaced by Gothic the Tudor windows in the Orangery, made serpentine some of the straight paths in the garden, and decorated the windows in the Colonnade with representations of knights in full armour. He himself escaped the baronial tendencies. He belonged to an age more delicate, more exquisite; an age of quizzing glasses, of flowered waistcoats, of buckled shoes, and of slim bejewelled swords. When he had his mistress sculpted, it was lying full-length on a couch, naked save for a single rose looping up her hair. When he had her drawn, it was pointing her little foot in the first step of a dance, a tambourine in her hand, and the Chinese boy in the background. When he wrote to his friends, it was in a bored, nonchalant style, half in English and half in French. His manner was “soft, quiet, and ingratiating.” He treated the women who loved him with an easy heartlessness which failed to diminish their affection. He was possessed of no very great talents but those calculated to render life agreeable to him in the circles into which he was born, for it was his good fortune to be born handsome, rich, charming, and a duke, in a century when those qualifications were a certain passport to success.

John Frederick Sackville became Duke of Dorset at the age of twenty-four. He was the son of that Lord John Sackville who passes across the annals of the family early in life as a poet and cricketer, and later as a sad and shabby figure, “always dirtily clad,” living under mild restraint at Vevey, a victim to melancholia. There was, however, no hint as yet of this hereditary strangeness of temper in his son, the new Duke of Dorset. The young man came brilliantly into his new possessions, paid the undertaker £66 6_s._ for the late duke’s funeral, paid the Sheriff £418 2_s._ for “things taken at Knole”—from which it would seem that the late duke had died in debt—bought four thousand ounces of silver, and entertained his neighbours and tenantry to a feast in celebration of his succession, at which sixty stone of beef, mutton, and veal were consumed, thirty-four pounds of wax-lights used, and musicians provided. It is curious to see how the price of wine had altered between the days of Charles II and this time; namely, 1769. Claret now cost 54_s._ a dozen, Burgundy 60_s._ a dozen, Champagne 97_s._ a dozen, and port for the servants’ table cost 20_s._ a dozen, in comparison with the few shillings paid per gallon a century earlier. The only thing which did not [_see_ p. 133] alter in proportion is beer, for which 35_s._ a hogshead was paid in the seventeenth century and £2 10_s._ a hogshead in the eighteenth. The young duke’s time, we are told, was “devoted to gallantry and pleasure among the fashionable circles as well in France and Italy as in England,” a phrase which begins to acquire a fatally familiar ring through the generations of the family. Perhaps nothing else could reasonably be expected of him. Life offered him too great an ease and too many advantages; why should he have rejected them? Before he had been for a year in the enjoyment of his honours and estates he had set out on the Grand Tour accompanied by the celebrated Nancy Parsons and a train of singers, actors, and Bohemians, who clustered round him in every European capital which he visited. Echoes of his extravagance and his escapades come down to us from Paris and from Rome. He entertained lavishly every evening, inviting only those who could amuse his already blasé appetite; he rescued his Nancy Parsons in the nick of time as she was about to be abducted from a masked ball by a noble Venetian; he indulged his taste for the fine arts “even beyond the limits of his fortune”; he bought a Perugino, he bought a doubtful Titian, and a number of Italian primitives; he bought from a Mr. Jenkins in Rome “_the figure of Demosthenes in the act of delivering an oration_, a fine Grecian relick in marble,” and a bronze cast of the Gladiator Repellens, on whose shield he caused his own coat-of-arms to be embossed. This kind of existence he continued to lead for two or three years, when he threw over Nancy Parsons, returned to England, and became the lover of a Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead. Meanwhile, it appears from his account-books that large sums were being spent by his orders on both outdoor and indoor repairs at Knole. He put down new floors, altered some of the windows, and bought further enormous quantities of silver, 5920 ounces in one year alone, costing £2463 17_s._ 7_d._, and including a hundred and forty-four silver plates, eight dozen each of forks and spoons, dishes of all kinds, covers, and tureens. Occupied with Knole, love affairs, and cricket, he dawdled away a particularly gilded youth. Details from his account-books give a good idea of his expenses and occupations:

£ _s._ _d._ Mrs. Gardiner, lace ruffles 41 0 0 Butler, new chain 80 0 0 Opera, expenses last winter 17 19 0 Opera, subscription 21 0 0 Paid Sir Joshua Reynolds 78 15 0

Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead reigned for three years, but the duke had other diversions in other circles: the gay, frivolous, and wanton Lady Betty Hamilton, trailing from ball to ball with her suitors in her wake, set her heart upon him, and he, not unresponsive, was ready to trifle so long as he was not expected to marry. Lady Betty was finally married off to Lord Derby, reputed the ugliest and the richest peer in England.

Many were the means employed till Lord Derby’s constant and assiduous care veiled the ugliness of his person before the idol he worshipped. Time and despair made Lady Betty give a hasty and undigested consent. After a day of persecutions from every quarter, while a hair-dresser was adorning her unhappy head, she traced the consent with a pencil on a scrap of paper, and sent it wet with her tears to her mother.

A re-shuffle now took place: the duke became the new Lady Derby’s lover, and Lord Derby became the lover of Mrs. Armistead. This arrangement, however, was not of long duration. Lord Derby fell in love with Elizabeth Farren; Lady Derby, it was rumoured, ran away and had to be brought back by her brother, the Duke of Hamilton: still bent upon marrying the Duke of Dorset, she wished to divorce Lord Derby, but was foiled by the prudence of Miss Farren. The gossips of London were much excited by all these occurrences. Lady Sarah Lennox wrote: “It is no scandal to tell you it is imagined that the Duke of Dorset will marry Lady Derby. I am told she has been and still is most thoroughly attached to him.” It would be satisfactory to know exactly what part Dorset played; I fear not a very creditable one. Lady Derby was an impulsive, headstrong, attractive creature, capable of real passion under all her lightheartedness and easy virtue; her husband was unfaithful to her; her rival more sage and experienced than she herself; her lover ready to take what he could without incurring an irksome responsibility. My grandfather’s sister, Lady Derby, used to show at Knowsley the window through which the Duke of Dorset was reported to have been admitted to the house, disguised as a gardener, and it was commonly supposed that the infant Lady Elizabeth Stanley was in reality the duke’s daughter. But when the affair threatened to become too serious he was only too ready to resume his travels abroad.

I can only suppose that it was during one of his absences that Horace Walpole went to Knole and found it not at all to his liking, for he draws a picture of the place in a state of desertion which would surely not have been warranted had the duke and his household been in occupation:

I came to Knole [_he writes to Lady Ossory_], and that was a medley of various feelings! Elizabeth and Burleigh and Buckhurst; and then Charles [_he means Richard_] and Anne, Dorset and Pembroke, and Sir Edward Sackville, and then a more engaging Dorset, and Villiers and Prior, and then the old duke and duchess, and Lady Betty Germaine, and the court of George II.

The place is stripped of its beeches and honours, and has neither beauty nor prospects. The house, extensive as it is, seemed dwindled to the front of a college, and has the silence and solitude of one. It wants the cohorts of retainers, and the bustling jollity of the old nobility, to disperse the gloom. I worship all its faded splendour, and enjoy its preservation, and could have wandered over it for hours with satisfaction, but there was such a heterogenous housekeeper as poisoned all my enthusiasm. She was more like one of Mrs. St. John’s Abigails than an inhabitant of a venerable mansion, and shuffled about in slippers, and seemed to _admire_ how I could care about the pictures of such old _frights_ as covered the walls.

§ 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 Vine. The young Duke of Dorset inherited his father’s taste, keeping in his employ professional cricketers such as Bowra, Miller, and Minskull, and we have endless details of the matches played, an old print of one match taking place on the Vine between the duke’s men and Sir Horace Mann’s men, which shows the players all wearing jockey-caps and finally a number of cricketing ballads, more noticeable for their enthusiasm than for their excellence:

_His Grace the Duke of Dorset came_ [we read], _The next enrolled in skilful fame. Equalled by few, he plays with glee, Nor peevish seeks for victory, And far unlike the modern way Of blocking every ball at play, He firmly stands with bat upright And strikes with his athletic might, Sends forth the ball across the mead And scores six notches for the deed._

There is in particular a great contest between Kent and Surrey, celebrated in a ballad of sixty-five verses, in which

_The fieldsmen, stationed on the lawn, Well able to endure, Their loins with snow-white satin vests That day had guarded sure_,

and it is related that in this match also the Duke of Dorset was playing for the honour of his county, for we are told that

_Young Dorset, like a baron bold, His jetty hair undrest, Ran foremost of the company, Clad in a milk-white vest._

Despite the efforts of the duke and the men of Kent, they were defeated by Surrey, and the duke met with disaster:

_“O heavy news!” the Rector cried, “The Vine can witness be, We have not any cricketer Of such account as he.”_

It is satisfactory to learn that in the return match Surrey was beaten.

§ 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 conceive a moment of more perfect tranquility than the present, the French government, free from the late causes of its anxiety, appears entirely bent upon improving the advantages of peace,”—it is sad, and certainly ironical, to reflect that the taking of the Bastille was distant by a paltry three years. With no foreboding of those tremendous events, which more than any war, more even than the career of Napoleon, were to change the fortunes of humanity, the Court of France and the English envoy continued on their course of enjoyment. The Duke of Dorset became, naturally, extremely popular in Paris. He was himself not sure that he wholly liked the French:

All the French are _aimable, si vous voulez_, but they are capricious and inconstant, especially the women [_he wrote home to the Duchess of Devonshire_]; in short, I have really no friend here but Mrs. B. [Marie Antoinette], and then I see her so seldom that I forget half what I want to say to her. The Frenchmen are all jealous and treacherous, so that between the capriciousness of the fair sex and the want of confidence I have in the other _je me sens vraiment malheureux_, I assure you, my dearest duchess.

But the French had no corresponding fault to find. The English ambassador was princely and lavish; he was spending money, as he himself owned, at the rate of £11,000 a year; he was greatly in the Queen’s favour, so greatly that he has been included by certain authorities (notably Tilly) in their lists of her lovers. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who, although an inaccurate was yet a contemporary writer, says that this was not so, and that he has seen a letter-case, preserved by the duke, full of Marie Antoinette’s notes addressed to him. Wraxall says that they were written on private concerns, commissions that she requested him to execute for her, principally regarding English articles of dress or ornament, and other innocent and unimportant matters. Whether Dorset was or was not her lover is not of the smallest importance; and surely no one would grudge, at this distance of time, any pleasure that a princess so young and so unfortunate might have enjoyed in life.

A question in which the Duke was naturally much interested was the affair of the diamond necklace. His despatches to the Foreign Office are full of references to the story, from August 1785 onwards:

The usually credited account is, that the Cardinal [de Rohan] has forged an order from the Queen to the Jeweller of the Crown to deliver to him diamonds to the amount of 1,600,000 livres, and which diamonds he actually received. What makes this event the more extraordinary is that the Cardinal is known to be a man of extremely good parts, and is in the enjoyment of the greatest honour and revenues to which any subject in the Church can aspire.

And again:

Mme. de la Motte, from an apprehension that her life is in danger, affects to have lost her senses. The jailer, upon entering her room the day before yesterday, was some time before he discovered her, and at length found her under her bed, quite naked.

It would, of course, take up too much space to give all Dorset’s despatches on this subject. I mention them chiefly because a large proportion of the diamonds composing the original necklace are at Knole, one half having been purchased by the Duke of Dorset after the necklace had been split up and brought to England, and the other half by the Duke of Sutherland. This, at least, is the tradition; and there is some evidence to support it, in a receipt among the Knole papers:

=Received= of his Grace the DUKE of DORSET nine hundred and seventy-five pounds for a brilliant necklace.

£975 For Mr. JEFFERYS and self, W M JONES.

and this receipt is endorsed “Paid 1790,” which tallies with the date when the necklace was sold by De la Motte to Jefferys, a jeweller in Piccadilly. They are beautiful diamonds, small, but very blue, and are set at present in the shape of a tasselled diadem.

Another topic which temporarily exercised the duke while in Paris was the “very extraordinary proposal” made to the French Government by a M. Montgolfier to

construct a balloon of a certain diameter to carry sixteen persons. The project [_the despatch continues_] is to carry on a trade between this part and the South of France; Paris and Marseilles are the two places named. The balloon is to be freighted with plate glass, and the return to be made in reams of paper. M. de Calonne has hitherto received the proposal with great coolness, as M. Montgolfier requires an advance of 60,000 livres Tournais. It is, however, under contemplation, as M. Montgolfier has declared his intention of making the offer to our government in case he does not meet with encouragement here. It is said that the Comptroller General rather discourages enterprises of this sort, as any further progress in the art of conducting balloons might tend to prejudice the revenues of the City of Paris, which will shortly be surrounded by a wall, the cost of which is estimated at four or five millions.

The duke naturally thought M. Montgolfier’s plans nonsensical:

I should almost scruple to mention to your Lordship an undertaking so extraordinary [_he says_] had I not heard from exceedingly good authority that such a plan is seriously in agitation. Great credit is given to M. Montgolfier’s superior skill in these matters, and that gentleman’s friends are sanguine in their expectations of his success. The weight he proposes to carry _exceeds that of a waggon-load_!

He gives some further details of what M. Montgolfier, who “pretends to have at last discovered means of directing the course of Balloons,” proposes to do:

He has obtained the sanction of M. de Calonne for his first experiment, which is to be made the first day of next May, when he engages to depart from a town in Auvergne, distant from Paris 150 miles, and to descend at or near this City in the space of seven hours.

A month later he writes:

The government has at last accepted M. Montgolfier’s proposal. 30,000 livres are to be granted to him in advance for the experiment, and if it succeeds the whole of his expenses will be paid without any examination of his accounts, a pension granted to him, and every honorary recompense bestowed on him to which he can aspire. He pretends to have discovered the means of guiding his machine, but it was not till after his project to England, in case of refusal here, that it was accepted.

On such topics as the diamond necklace and M. Montgolfier and current affairs Dorset beguiled his leisure and that of the Foreign Office. There is no indication that he detected any signs of the trouble in store. It is true that occasionally he writes in this strain:

Their Majesties, the Dauphin, and the rest of the Royal family, are removed from Fontainebleau to Versailles. The expenses attending these journeys of the Court is incredible. The duc de Polignac told me that he had given orders for 2115 horses for this service.... Besides this, an adequate proportion of horses are ordered for the removal of the heavy baggage.... It is asserted that M. de Calonne will be under the necessity of borrowing at least eight millions of livres next year,

and that after the fall of the Bastille he was moved to write: “I really think it necessary that some public caution be given to put those upon their guard who may propose to visit this part of the continent.” But beyond these occasional comments he does not seem to have been troubled by any thoughts of the future. He did not foresee that his friend “Mrs. B.,” to whom after his return to England he continued to supply English gloves, would lose upon the scaffold that little head which had carried so gaily the butterfly or the frigate, or that within two or three years’ time the English newspapers would be writing: “The Duke of Dorset’s seat at Knole is a place of rendezvous for the banished French _noblesse_ at this time resident in England,” or that he would be entertaining there as a fugitive his friend Champcenetz, a young officer in the Swiss Guards and author of a “_Petit traité de l’amour des femmes pour les sots_.” Dorset would no doubt have proved a perfectly adequate ambassador in normal times, but that vast situation with its infinite ramifications was beyond an intellect that accepted for granted the existing régime under which dukes were born for pleasure and labourers were not. But with all the foresight in the world it is difficult to see what he could have done, or how the course of history could have been affected, had he sent home grave warnings instead of babbling of the diamond necklace and M. Montgolfier.

There was another distraction for him in Paris: Giannetta Baccelli, an Italian dancer. The duke seems to have lost his head completely over her for the time being, for he gave her his Garter to wear as a hair-ribbon, with “HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE” in diamonds, brought her home to England with him, sent her to a ball in Sevenoaks wearing the family jewels—which provoked a great scandal in the county—and gave her one of the towers at Knole, which to this day remains, through the mispronunciation of the English servants, “Shelley’s Tower.” It was for this lady, or so the rumour ran, that he finally rejected the faithful and unfortunate Lady Derby. There was nothing that Dorset would not do for Baccelli. He had her painted by Reynolds, and painted and drawn by Gainsborough, and sculpted from the nude. He even wrote to his friend the Duchess of Devonshire asking her to do what she could for his protégée, “I don’t ask you to do anything for her openly,” he wrote, “but I hope _que quand il s’agit de ses talents_ you will commend her. I assure you,” he adds rather pathetically, “she is _une bonne fille_, very clever, and _un excellent cœur_, and her dancing is really wonderful.”

Gainsborough’s large full-length portrait of Baccelli, originally at Knole, has been sold; but his pencil sketch for it remains, rather faded and very delicate of line. It is drawn in the ball-room: Baccelli stands on a model’s throne, pointing her toe and lifting up her skirt; Gainsborough himself stands in front of her, a palette in his hand, so that he turns his back towards the person looking at the drawing; the Chinese page, in a round hat, stands by. It reconstructs with great vividness the scene of her posing in the ball-room. The only pity is that the artist should not have drawn in the duke, who was surely there, looking on, and criticizing and making suggestions. The receipt for the big picture is at Knole, though no mention is made of the drawing (_see illustration facing p. 208_):

=Received= of his Grace the DUKE of DORSET one hundred guineas in full for two ¾ portraits of his Grace, one full-length of Mad^{sle} Baccelli, two Landskips, and one sketch of a beggar boy and girl.

£105 _THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH_, _June 15, 1784_.

One of the “two ¾ portraits of his Grace” mentioned in this receipt is the one now in the ball-room, one of the most beautiful Gainsboroughs I know—included with five other pictures for the ludicrous sum of £105.

Reynolds’ portrait of the dancer shows a mischievous and attractive face, with slightly slanting eyes, peeping out from behind a mask which she holds up in her hand. The duke even went to the length of ordering the portraits of the servants he had provided for her, and among the collection of servants’ portraits in Black Boy Passage are Daniel Taylor and Elinor Law, servants of Mad^{me} Baccelli; Mrs. Edwards, attendant on Mad^{me} Baccelli; and Philip Louvaux, servant to Mad^{me} Baccelli. She evidently, with her servants and her tower, had a regular establishment at Knole, and many receipts bearing her signature witness the duke’s generosity towards her: “Received 7th April 1786 of Mr. Burlington [the agent] the sum of fifty pounds on account of his Grace the Duke of Dorset, Jannette Baccelli,” and so on. They had several children, all of whom died in babyhood, except one, alluded to in the following letter: “The duke has a very fine boy to whom Baccelli is mother, now at school near Knole. This, we think, is the only surviving progeny of the alliance,” but, much as I should like to know, I have no idea what became of this romantically-begotten scion, or even of whether he lived to grow up.

Perhaps the “heterogenous housekeeper” of Horace Walpole’s letter was Baccelli’s importation, for in another place he writes disgustedly of “Knole, which disappointed me much. But unless you know how vast and venerable I thought I remembered it, I cannot give you the measure of my surprise; but then there was a trapes of a housekeeper, who, I suppose, was the Baccelli’s dresser, and who put me out of humour....”

The connection seems to have lasted for a long time, for it is not until the end of 1789 that we come across an old newspaper cutting announcing with curious candour that “the Duke of Dorset and the Baccelli have just separated, and she is said to have behaved very well,” so that she eclipsed the records of Nancy Parsons, of Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead, and of poor Lady Derby. It is, I think, a not unpicturesque incident in the story of Knole—the dancer sitting in those stately rooms to Reynolds and Gainsborough, or descending from her tower to walk in the garden with the duke, attended by the Chinese boy carrying her gloves, her fan, or her parasol. Those were the days when the Clock Tower, oddly recalling a pagoda, was but newly erected; when the great rose-and-gold Chinese screen in the Poets’ Parlour was new and brilliant in the sun; when the Coromandel chests were new toys; and the Italian pictures and the statuary brought back by the duke from Rome were still pointed out as the latest acquisitions. And no doubt then the statue of the Baccelli reposing in her lovely nudity on her couch was not relegated to the attic, where a subsequent and more prudish generation sent it, but stood somewhere in the living-rooms, where it might be seen and admired in the presence of the smiling model. Amusement was caused too, no doubt, among the guests of the duke and the dancer by Sir Joshua’s portrait of the Chinese boy squatting on his heels, a fan in his hand, and the square toes of his red shoes protruding from beneath his robes. It was more original to have a Chinese page than to have a black one; everybody had a black one: “Dear Mama,” wrote the Duchess of Devonshire to her mother, “George Hanger has sent me a Black boy, eleven years old and very honest, but the duke don’t like me having a black, and yet I cannot bear the poor wretch being ill-used; if you liked him instead of Michel I will send him, he will be a cheap servant and you will make a Christian of him and a good boy; if you don’t like him they say Lady Rockingham wants one.” But the black page at Knole, of which there had always been one since the days of Lady Anne Clifford, and who had always been called John Morocco regardless of what his true name might be, had been replaced by a Chinaman ever since the house steward had killed the John Morocco of the moment in a fight in Black Boy’s Passage. This particular Chinese boy whom I have mentioned, whose real name was Hwang-a-Tung, but whom the English servants, much as they called Baccelli Madam Shelley, more conveniently renamed Warnoton—fell on fortunate days when he came to Knole, for not only was he painted by Sir Joshua, but he was educated at the duke’s expense at the Grammar School in Sevenoaks.

§ 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 dislike perceptible between the lines of all his accounts of her, that “her person, though not feminine, might then be denominated handsome; and, if her mind was not highly cultivated or refined, she could boast of intellectual endowments that fitted her for the active business of life.” Wraxall writes, possibly, with a prejudiced pen, for at one time he was employed in sorting and classifying the Knole manuscripts, and in this matter his views clashed with those of her Grace and her Grace’s second husband; the business was abandoned half way through, but Wraxall’s trace remains in the neat, ejaculatory notes which I find on the reverse side of many of the papers—“curious!” or “not without merit!” This may account for the subtle spitefulness of his remarks. Nevertheless, I imagine that Knole perceived under the duchess’ régime a considerable contrast with the days of the merry and pleasure-loving Baccelli. The new duchess was a severe and orderly lady, “under the dominion of no passion except the love of money, her taste for power and pleasure always subordinate to her economy,” and the duke himself, perhaps under the influence of his wife, began to turn from his extravagant ways towards parsimony, curtailing his expenses in spite of the enormous increase in his income, and becoming, moreover, irascible, fretful, morbid, and quarrelsome. The days of his patronage of opera and Parisian ballet were over, the days when he was confident that the talk of his ball in Paris would reach the ears of the Duchess of Devonshire in London. His expenses at Knole were reported to be reduced to four or five thousand a year, yet he could not endure to hear the praise of other houses, for Knole he considered “as possessing everything.” It is not an attractive picture of the gay duke’s declining years. Hoppner, who had been staying at Knole for nine or ten days painting the three children, described the duke as most unpleasant in his temper, anxious and saving, humoursome and uncomfortable, “not suffering the dinner to be all placed on the table,” and when, playing at Casino, he lost fifteen shillings to Hoppner he “fretted when the cards he wished for were taken up.” The three children were brought up with the utmost severity; they were scarcely allowed to speak in the presence of their elders; and little Lord Middlesex was sent out of the room in disgrace at luncheon for asking his sister for the salt. Yet I fancy that the real control, under a show of submission, was exercised by that commanding figure, the duchess. She never betrayed any signs of exasperation, whether the duke sent away the dinner, or grumbled that Neckar was a man of no family, or that Mr. Hailes, the secretary, was a man of no family either—much to Mr. Hailes’ discomposure. This dwelling upon family was one of his many crotchets, and he was fond of pointing out that the Sackvilles had never branched, but remained the only family of that name in the Kingdom, and would draw attention to the coincidence that Sackville Street was the longest street in London without branch or turning. Prudent and long-suffering, no doubt the duchess had in her mind the advantages she intended to secure when she should be no longer a wife and sick-nurse, but a widow. Baccelli’s statue was in the attic, and Mr. Ozias Humphrey, of the Royal Academy, was quite out of favour because he went to Knole in the duke’s absence and took possession of a room without previously showing proper attention to the duchess. She presided calmly, while the duke fretted and economized, and quarrelled with his friends, and deteriorated in intellect, and became a prey to gloom, and grew old and sad before his time; she presided unruffled, for all the while she rested satisfied in her knowledge of his testamentary dispositions. He was, in fact, although only in the fifties, already a very ill man. He was falling rapidly into a deeper and deeper melancholy, and there is a tradition that towards the end he could only be soothed by the playing of two musicians in a neighbouring room—the room now called the Music Room, in which hang, rather ironically, Reynolds’ portrait of the Baccelli peeping out from behind her mask, and Vigée Lebrun’s portrait of the grave, greyhaired lady, Arabella Diana, Duchess of Dorset. He sat in the library, his hands fumbling at the breast-pin in his _jabot_, while the soothing strains reached him, veiled by distance. Veiled by distance, too, the memories of his past floated to him on the music, and melted with the music into the solace of a confused and wistful harmony. The past, so luminous, was not wholly lost, since in memory it was still recoverable. There had been the fun of the masked ball in Rome; there had been the clandestine hours of tenderness with Betty Hamilton; there had been Versailles; there had been the days when he could glance down through the window and see Baccelli flirting with Sir Joshua on the lawn. The musicians in the neighbouring room played on. He had been twenty-four when Knole had come to him; he had not had to wait for his good things until he was grown too sober to enjoy them. It had been so easy to accept the urbanity, the _empressement_, everyone was eager to lavish; so pleasant to move in a world so bland, so obliging, and so polite. No effort had been necessary; the fat quails had dropped ready roasted into his mouth. No effort: a smile there; a gracious word here; tossed alike with a casual, if good-humoured, contempt. Surveying himself in his mirror while his valet knelt to buckle the diamond Order round his knee, flicking with a lace pocket-handkerchief at a few grains of powder fallen upon his coat, he had been secure in the safe conduct of his great name and his personal charm. And if the faint ghosts whispered round him now in the quiet library at Knole—a fair head thrust at him upon a pike, the reproachful eyes of Lady Derby, the stilled limbs of those half-Italian babies that the Baccelli had borne him—why, he could banish them: Lord Middlesex slept in his nursery upstairs, and the tall duchess watched, effaced though vigilant, from a corner of the library. But when she rose and came towards him, thinking that he had fallen asleep in his nodding over the fire, he repulsed her fretfully, with the gesture of an old man, and wondered at himself in his confused and unhappy mind for this anomalous discourtesy towards a woman.

Next door to the Music Room hangs the lovely full-length of the three children, painted by Hoppner while on that uncomfortable visit. One is bound to admit that their appearance bears no impress of the grand, solemn, and gloomy household in which they were being brought up. The little boy, rosy, flaxen-curled, in high nankeen trousers and a soft frilly shirt, has his arms round his baby sister, who, with bare toes, is looking sulkily at her elder sister’s shoes; they are out in the park; nothing could be more natural or unconstrained. My grandfather used to show me the baby girl, telling me that while Hoppner was seeking for a pose for his picture a grievance arose between the two little girls because one had shoes and the other had not, and that on Lord Middlesex taking his sister into his arms for consolation, Hoppner rushed at them exclaiming that he could not improve upon the charm of this accidental pose. I think this story has a convincing ring about it. Certainly it was the only anecdote which my grandfather had to tell of any picture in the house; usually he did not know a Hoppner from a Vandyck, a Kneller from a Gainsborough. He said that he had the story straight from his mother, Lady Elizabeth, the sulky baby of Hoppner’s picture, and the young woman in fancy dress of Beechey’s portrait in the same room.

The only pleasant aspect of these later years of the gay duke’s life is his friendship and constant employment of the artists of his day. Before he fell into what Wraxall calls his “mental alienation” he counted Reynolds among his intimates, was a pall-bearer at his funeral in Westminster Abbey, and accumulated so many works of that artist at Knole, including one at the back of which is written, “Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted by himself and presented to his Grace the Duke of Dorset in 1780,” that what was once the Crimson Drawing-Room became known as the Reynolds Room; and the Reynolds Room it is to this day. Madame Vigée Lebrun stayed at Knole, which she found too gloomy for her taste, the duchess warning her, the first time they sat down to dinner, “You will find it very dull, for we never speak at table.” Ozias Humphrey, before he was so unfortunate as to offend the duchess, contributed a number of canvases to the duke’s collection:

Two pastels, 12 guineas each.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE, _June 25th, 1792_.

£ _s._ _d._ His Grace the Duke of Dorset to Ozias Humphrey, for a portrait in miniature 16 16 0 A small crayon picture of the crossing-sweeper at Hyde Park Corner with a rich gold frame and glass 21 0 0 A portrait of the Duchess of Dorset in crayons 12 12 0 ——— —— — £50 8 0

=Received= of his Grace the Duke of DORSET the sum of fifty pounds in full for the amount of the annexed bill.

OZIAS HUMPHREY.

It is perhaps significant of his new economy that the duke ignored the eight shillings.

With Opie, too, he was on friendly terms, and amongst the other receipts at Knole is one from Opie for the portrait of Edmund Burke for £24 3_s._ There is also a letter at Knole from Burke, who probably knew his Grace’s weakness for his house:

DUKE ST., _Sept, 14, 1791_.

MY LORD,

I am just now honoured with your Grace’s letter, and am extremely concerned that it is not in my power to accept your Grace’s most obliging invitation. I have great respect for its present possessor; and as for the place, I, who am something of a lover of all antiquities, must be a very great admirer of Knole. I think it the most interesting thing in England. It is pleasant to have preserved in one place the succession of the several tastes of ages; a pleasant habitation for the time, a grand repository of whatever has been pleasant at all times. This is not the sort of place which every banker, contractor, or Nabob can create at his pleasure.... I would not change Knole if I were the Duke of Dorset for all the foppish structures of this age.

Other receipts at Knole make it clear that the average price for a half-length was £37, while for a full-length by Reynolds the duke paid £300.

There is also a mention in a contemporary diary that the duke asked Hoppner for his portrait, which he promised should be hung next to Sir Joshua’s portrait of himself. The diary notes that Ozias Humphrey’s _Selbstbildnis_ is “still in the room, but has been removed from its place next the Reynolds.” It is “still in the room” now, a man with a delicate face and a pointed nose, on the wall with Gainsborough’s _Lord George Sackville_, Sir Joshua’s _Samuel Foote_, his _Oliver Goldsmith_, his _Peg Woffington_, and his own portrait; but the Hoppner for which the duke asked is not there, and never was; no doubt Hoppner was not sufficiently encouraged by the uncomfortable visit to send so valuable an acknowledgment.

At this period England lay under the fear of an invasion by the young victorious Bonaparte, and a scheme was set on foot for raising a corps of infantry to be called the Knole volunteers; I recently came across some of their accoutrements in an old locker at Knole; they had an amateurish look. A document bearing many blots and the signatures of all the volunteers—or, in some cases, their mark—is also at Knole:

HIS GRACE _the_ DUKE _of_ DORSET’S offer of raising a Corps of Infantry, to consist of Sixty Men, to be called the _Knole Volunteers_, for the purpose of preserving Order and protecting property in the Parish and Neighbourhood of Sevenoaks having been accepted, and George Stone, Stephen Woodgate, and Thomas Mortimer Kelson being appointed officers by his Majesty to command the same, they propose the following Rules and Regulations, which they hope will be cheerfully submitted to by all who have voluntarily come forward to offer their services in the said Corps at this important Crisis:

1st. _That_ each individual attend twice a week for the purpose of exercising from half after Six o’clock to half after Eight o’clock in the Evening.

2nd. As a regular attendance is particularly essential, it is proposed that the small Sum of Sixpence be paid by every person not present to answer to his Name when called over at the time appointed, unless it appears he is prevented by Sickness, which forfeits, should there be any, shall be spent by the Corps at the end of the year in any manner they shall think proper.

3rd. That every Man appears clean and properly accoutered.

4thly. That they do their utmost Endeavour to learn their Exercise, paying proper respect to their Officers.

_Finally_, they wish it to be clearly understood that their Services shall not be required to extend further than the Parish and Neighbourhood of Sevenoaks, unless it be for the purpose of guarding Prisoners or Convoys as far as one Stage.

KNOLE, _22 May 1798_.

But it is improbable that the duke had much to do with the raising or organisation of this corps, for during the last twenty months of his life his irascibility turned to definite melancholia, and he remained at Knole more or less alone with the duchess keeping a jealous guard over him. It is impossible not to draw the parallel between his end and that of Charles the Restoration earl, his great-grandfather, remembering especially the wildness and extravagance in which both had spent their youth; but whereas Charles was carried away to Bath at the end by that sordid woman Ann Roche, the duke was carefully tended in his own great house by the reserved and prudent woman he had married, too dignified to be accused save under the veil of polite phrases of intriguing to get the control of his affairs into her own hands. So he sank gradually, and in 1799, at the age of fifty-four, he died, when it was found that he had so disposed of his lands, his fortune, and his boroughs that Arabella Diana was left with so great an accumulation of wealth and of parliamentary influence as had “scarcely ever vested, among us, in a female, and a widow.”