CHAPTER IX

Knole in the Nineteenth Century

§ 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 had offended the Czar in the following somewhat ludicrous manner: the Czar having forbidden that any empty carriage should pass before a certain part of his palace, Lord Whitworth, uninformed of the regulation, ordered his coach to meet him at a point which would entail passing over the forbidden area. The sentry held up the coach; the servants persisted in driving on; they came to blows; and the Czar, when the affair came to his ears, ordered Lord Whitworth’s servants to be beaten, the horses to be beaten, and the coach to be beaten too. Lord Whitworth, in a fit of rage and petulance, dismissed his servants, ordered the horses to be shot, and the coach to be broken into pieces and thrown into the Neva.

He appears to have had at least one trait in common with the Sackvilles themselves, at any rate in early life, for it was said of him that he was “more distinguished during this period of his career by success in gallantries than by any professional merits or brilliant services.” Even at the time of his marriage, when, returning from Russia to England, he found available the wealthy and desirable relict of his friend the late Dorset, he was heavily entangled with a lady named Countess Gerbetzow, whose partiality for the English Ambassador had been such that she had placed her own fortune at his disposal for the purpose of clothing himself and defraying the expenses of his household. In return for this affection and assistance Lord Whitworth promised her marriage as soon as she could divorce her husband; but during the course of the divorce proceedings the Ambassador was recalled, and left for England on the understanding that Countess Gerbetzow would follow him there as soon as she conveniently could. Meanwhile he made the acquaintance of the more eligible duchess, became engaged to her, and lost no time in marrying her. Countess Gerbetzow had, however, by now obtained her divorce, and was travelling across Europe on her way to England: at Leipzic she learnt from a newspaper that Lord Whitworth in London was engaged to the Duchess of Dorset. Indignant and outraged, she flew post-haste to London. Too late: she arrived only to find that the marriage had already been celebrated. But she would not allow the matter to rest there, and “her reclamations, which were of too delicate and serious a nature to be despised, at length compelled the duchess, most reluctantly, to pay her Muscovite rival no less a sum than ten thousand pounds.” Whether the duchess continued to think Lord Whitworth worth the price is not recorded. If he was an expensive husband, he was certainly from the worldly standpoint a very successful one, and that was a standpoint the duchess was not likely to despise. He became successively Ambassador to the French Republic, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and an earl, but “we may nevertheless be allowed to doubt,” observes Wraxall, who claims Lord Whitworth’s personal friendship,

whether a humbler matrimonial alliance might not have been attended with more felicity ... united to a woman of inferior fortune and condition ... he would certainly have presented an object of more rational envy and respect than as the second husband of a duchess, elevated by her connections to dignities and offices, subsisting on her possessions, and who will probably ere long inter him with an earl’s coronet on his coffin.—I return [_says Wraxall, having thus dismissed the pair_] to Marie Antoinette.

I doubt whether the little duke was allowed a very exuberant enjoyment of his boyhood with this couple in authority over him. Children were strictly brought up in that generation, and it is clear that the duchess was by nature a severe and not very sympathetic woman. The little boy and his sisters must have been docile and well behaved in the great house and gardens which belonged to him in name only, but which in practice were entirely under his mother’s control, for her to alter the windows as she pleased, and to put Lord Whitworth’s cognizance in the stained glass beside the Sackville arms. I visualize—I scarcely know why—the duchess and Lord Whitworth almost as the jailers of the small inheritor. There is nothing to justify such a theory; and, indeed, very little record remains of that short life: there is his rocking-horse—an angular, long-necked, maneless animal, which in due course became my property, after passing through the two intervening generations—his brief friendship with Byron as a schoolboy, and his portrait as a tall, fair young man in dark blue academical robes. There is very little else to mark his passage across the stage of Knole. He came, late in time, of a race never remarkable for strength of character, and the obituary notice which described him as having possessed gentle and engaging manners, tinctured by shyness, and of amiable temper, probably came nearer to the truth than the generality of such eulogies. Byron has told us nothing in the least illuminating of his friend. He has left a long address in verse, included in _Hours of Idleness_, in which he is careful to explain that the duke was his fag at Harrow,

_Whom still affection taught me to defend, And made me less a tyrant than a friend, Though the harsh custom of our youthful band Bade_ thee _obey, and gave me to command_,

and equally careful to remind him that they might in later years meet in the House of Lords,

_Since chance has thrown us in the self-same sphere, Since the same senate, nay, the same debate, May one day claim our suffrage for the state._

The rest of the poem is an exhortation to the duke, whose “passive tutors, fearful to dispraise,” may

_View ducal errors with indulgent eyes, And wink at faults they tremble to chastise_,

to be worthy of the record his ancestors have left him; of he who “called, proud boast! the British drama forth,” and of that other one, Charles, “The pride of princes, and the boast of song”—to become, in fine, “Not Fortune’s minion, but her noblest son.” One suspects, in fact, that Byron himself viewed the errors of his ducal fag with an indulgent eye, and the depth of the friendship, on Byron’s part at least, is easily measured by the letters he wrote on hearing of the duke’s death—letters whose cynicism is perhaps atoned for by their frankness:

I have just been—or, rather, ought to be—very much shocked by the death of the Duke of Dorset [_he wrote to Tom Moore_]. We were at school together, and then I was passionately attached to him. Since, we have never met—but once, I think, in 1805—and it would be a paltry affectation to pretend that I had any feeling for him worth the name. But there was a time in my life when this event would have broken my heart; and all I can say for it now is that—it is not worth breaking.

Adieu—it is all a farce.

And he alludes to it once more, a fortnight later, again writing to Moore, to say that “the death of poor Dorset—and the recollection of what I once felt, and ought to have felt now, but could not,” has set him pondering.

That, then, is all which the boy could leave behind him—that he should set Byron, for a moment, pondering. From such slight traces—the English little boy of the Hoppner, the old-fashioned rocking-horse, and the portrait of the fair young man—we have to reconstruct as best we can an entire personality. We have to figure him running about the garden at Knole; kissing his mother’s hand—surely never throwing his arms about her—his grave little bow to Lord Whitworth; the “your Grace” of his nurse’s behests; the brief contact with the dazzling personality of Byron at Harrow; the stir with which he cannot have failed to anticipate the advantages of his life and his emancipation. We have the account of him playing tennis, when a ball hit him in the eye, and obliged him to be for ever after “continually applying leeches and blisters and ointments and other disagreeable remedies,” and to be “very moderate in all exercises that heat or agitate the frame.” We have, finally, his tragic end at the age of twenty-one, to which additional poignancy is lent by the fact that he had recently become engaged.

He had gone to Ireland, where his stepfather was then Viceroy, to stay with his friend and quondam school-fellow Lord Powerscourt. On the day after his arrival the two young men, with Lord Powerscourt’s brother, Mr. Wingfield, went out hunting, and after a fruitless morning they were about to return home when they put up a hare:

The hare made for the inclosures on Kilkenny Hill. They had gone but a short distance, when the Duke, who was an excellent forward horseman, rode at a wall, which was in fact a more dangerous obstacle than it appeared to be.... The Duke’s mare attempted to cover all at one spring, and cleared the wall, but, alighting among the stones on the other side, threw herself headlong, and, turning in the air, came with great violence upon her rider, who had not lost his seat; he undermost, with his back on one of the large stones, and she crushing him with all her weight on his chest, and struggling with all her might to recover her legs. The mare at length disentangled herself and galloped away. The Duke sprang upon his feet, and attempted to follow her, but soon found himself unable to stand, and fell into the arms of Mr. Farrel, who had run to his succour, and to whose house he was conveyed. Lord Powerscourt, in the utmost anxiety and alarm, rode full speed for medical assistance, leaving his brother, Mr. Wingfield, to pay every possible attention to the Duke. But, unfortunately, the injury was too severe to be counteracted by human skill; life was extinct before any surgeon arrived. Such was the melancholy catastrophe that caused the untimely death of this young nobleman. He had been of age only three months, and had not taken his seat in the House of Lords [1815].

The author of this obituary notice was at great pains to clear the young man of any charge of “unseasonable levity”:

It has been said [_he observes_] that the Duke, in his dying moments, made use of the expression “I am off.” He did so; but not, as has been very erroneously supposed, by way of heroic bravado, or in a temper of unseasonable levity; but simply to signify to his attendants, who, in pulling off his boots, had drawn him too forward on the mattress, and jogged one of the chairs out of its place, that he was _slipping off_, and wanted their aid to help him up into his former position. He was the last person in the world to be guilty of anything like levity upon any solemn occasion, much less in his dying moments. The fact was, when he used the expression “I am off” he had become very faint and weak, and was glad to save himself the trouble of further utterance....

Now suppose a stranger to the real character of this excellent youth to have heard no more of him than what he would be most likely to hear of one whose constitutional modesty concealed his virtues, namely, that he was very fond of cricket, that he hurt his eye with a tennis-ball, that he lost his life hunting, that his last words were “I am off”; would not a person possessed of this information, and no more, naturally conclude that the Duke was a young man of trivial mind, addicted to idle games and field sports, and apt to make light of serious things? How false a notion would such a person form of the late Duke of Dorset! As to the four circumstances above alluded to, if he was fond of cricket, it was in the evening generally that he played. When he hurt his eye [it was on the 7th of December] he had been at his books all the morning, and went between dinner and dusk to take one set at tennis. When he lost his life hunting, he had not hunted ten times the whole season. And what have been represented as his last words were not his last words; and, even if they were, they had no other meaning than “Pray prevent a helpless man from slipping down out of his place.” That he was not a mere sportsman, a mere idler, or a mere trifler, witness the wet eyes that streamed at every window in the streets of Dublin as his hearse was passing by; witness the train of carriages that composed his funeral procession; witness the throng of Nobility and Gentlemen that attended his remains to the sea-shore; witness the families he had visited in Ireland; witness the reception of his corpse in England; witness the amazing concourse of friends, tenantry, and neighbours, that came to hear the last rites performed, and to see him deposited in the tomb; witness the more endeared set of persons who still mean to hover round the vault where he is laid!

§ 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 richest women in England. Lord Whitworth, meanwhile (till 1817), continued as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and as the originals of the following letters written to him by Sir Robert Peel, with enclosures in Peel’s handwriting, are at Knole, I think it not wholly irrelevant to print them here, with a few other notes, in view of their interest as being written immediately after the battle of Waterloo, and having, so far as I know, never before been published.

IRISH OFFICE. _June 22nd, 1815._

_Private_ DEAR LORD WHITWORTH,

You will receive by this express the official accounts of the most desperate and most important action in which the British arms have ever been engaged. The Gazette details all the leading particulars—I have just been at the War and Foreign Offices to collect any further information that may be interesting to you. It is evident that the attack was in a great degree a surprise upon the Allies, Bonaparte collected his troops and advanced with much greater rapidity than could have been expected. It was supposed that it would have required three days to bring the British force into line for a general engagement—but the suddenness of the attack gave them a much shorter time for preparation. It is said that on the 16th the Prussians lost fourteen thousand men.

All the private accounts attribute the success of the day to the Duke of Wellington’s personal courage and extraordinary exertions. Flint will send you some interesting particulars on this point.

When the French Cavalry charged—the Duke placed himself in the centre of the square of infantry—a barrier that was impenetrable. Nothing could exceed the desperation with which the Cuirassiers fought. When they found they could make no impression on the solid mass of infantry—they halted in front and deliberately charged their pistols and shot at individuals of course without a chance of surviving. Lord Bathurst showed me a letter which he had received from Apsley. He says that Bonaparte had a scaffolding erected out of cannon shot from the top of which he saw the field of battle and the progress of the fight. When he found that success was almost hopeless he put himself at the head of the Imperial Guard—and charged in person. They were met by the first foot guards who overthrew them completely. The conduct of all the British infantry was beyond praise—Lord Wellington had about sixty-five thousand men in the field. Castlereagh told me that he thought Bonaparte must have lost the fourth of his army. This is of course mere conjecture.

Of the Regiments of Cavalry which distinguished themselves the Life Guards, the 10th, and the 18th are particularly mentioned. The field of battle after the action presented a most extraordinary sight. The panic of the French army after their failure—and the fruitlessness of the desperate courage they had shewn—was very great when the attack on our part commenced. They threw away their arms—knapsacks, etc., etc., in the greatest confusion. The Prussians gave no quarter in the pursuit.

The Duke and Blucher met for a moment after the action—in the village of _La heureuse Alliance_ [sic].

The Belgian Cavalry and some of the British did not much distinguish themselves. I hear that the 7th, Lord Uxbridge’s own regiment, have not added much to their reputation—but do not quote me for this piece of intelligence. General Picton was shot through the head. He behaved with the greatest possible gallantry.

Schartzenburg [_sic_] is supposed to have crossed the Rhine with an immense force—perhaps 200,000 men on or about the 20th. I should rather say it was expected that he would cross about that time. There is no account from Paris—or from the French army.

I have sent you a strange mixture of detached and unconnected particulars. I heard them one by one—in such a hurry—and am now obliged to write to you in such a hurry that I may not detain the express that I cannot reduce them into any shape.

The consequence of our success must infallibly lead to a reduction of our regular force in Ireland—forthwith I apprehend. The Duke entreats in the strongest manner that reinforcements of infantry may be sent to him.

Believe me ever dear Lord Whitworth, Yours most truly

_The Lord Lieutenant_. ROBERT PEEL.

PARIS Rue de la Paix—Hotel du Montblanc— _July 15th, 1815_.

DEAR LORD WHITWORTH,

As I owe my trip to Paris in great measure to the kindness and readiness with which you dispensed with my services in Ireland—it is but just that I should give you some account of my proceedings—Croker, Fitzgerald and myself left Town on Saturday Morning last [8th] arrived at Dover that night. I was a little disappointed to hear that the Tricolor Flag was flying at Calais—However we were determined, perhaps rather rashly—to make an attempt to land, and sailed the next morning in an armed schooner—putting the guns below and hoisting a flag of truce when we got into Calais roads. The Governor however was inexorable—and positively refused us permission to land. We heard that the white flag was flying at Dunkirk and at Boulogne and the wind favoured for the latter—we made for it. As we passed Vimereux and Ambleteuse we saw the white flag flying there and indeed at every intervening village between Calais and Boulogne. It was late in the evening when we arrived off Boulogne—we could discern that there was a flag hoisted, and on standing in close into the harbour we found it was the Tricolor.

Fitzgerald and I were so sick and heartily tired of our voyage, that we resisted most strenuously Croker’s proposition to make for Dieppe—we wrote a very civil note to the Commandant—hoisted our flag of Truce and despatched a messenger. He was detained about three hours—he said that our arrival in the roads had caused great alarm in the garrison—that he had been placed under arrest on his landing—had been taken to the Commandant who was holding a sort of Council of war—that the flag of truce was mistaken for the white flag—particularly as the Schooner was armed—and unfortunately for us three or four English Brigs were in the offing.

However he brought with him a civil answer from the Commandant informing us that “une mesure de sureté militaire l’occupoit à le moment,” but when he was at leisure he would send a boat for us.

We were half afraid to trust ourselves to him, particularly as he told our envoy that he could not recognize a flag of truce in an armed vessel, but the apprehension of a sail to Dieppe with a contrary wind overcame the apprehension of a day or two’s confinement at Boulogne. The boat arrived—and we landed at Boulogne about 3 o’clock on Monday morning. The Commandant was civil to us but did not conceal from us that he was a furious Bonapartist. He said he had no soldiers—if he had 30 that white flag in the next village should not be hoisted—or there should be a massacre if it was. We proceeded on our journey about 7 o’clock on the morning of Monday—nothing could exceed the apparent devotion of all the inhabitants of the country through which we passed to the cause of Louis—the white flag was hanging from every window. Vive le Roi was in every mouth. We met with no interruption until we arrived at Montreuil—where there was a strong garrison—the Commandant like the officers—determined Bonapartists. We had nothing but Castlereagh’s passport except La Chatre’s which was worse than nothing, but the Commandant allowed us after some parley to proceed. The presence of the military was hardly sufficient to keep down the popular feeling in favour of the King—among the inhabitants it was universal here as every where else, there was not a single exception. At Abbeville we were again stopped. Here there was a very strong garrison—2000 men. Party spirit was running very high. The inhabitants were armed—the military seemed disposed to resist the order which they expected to receive on the day of our arrival, to lay down their arms and leave the town.

Every precaution was taken as if the town was besieged. There were soldiers at every drawbridge. The Commandant however allowed us to proceed—and we arrived safely at Paris on the evening of Tuesday.

_Sunday, 16th._

Paris is surrounded by the troops of the allies and nothing can be more interesting than the present situation of it. The streets are crowded with officers and soldiers of all nations. Cossacks—Russians—Prussians, Austrians, Hungarians, etc. The English are great favourites. The Prussians held in the greatest detestation. If they had entered Paris alone—or if the Crowned Heads had delayed their entry—they, the Prussians would probably have pillaged Paris. They have taken some pictures from the Louvre—a very few, however, and none to which they had not some claim. They have demanded the payment of one hundred millions of francs from the city and at this moment—there are Prussian guards in the houses of Perigaux and some of the other principal bankers who are held as a sort of hostage—for the payment of the contribution.

We drove to-day to the Depot d’Artillerie, and were told by the sentry—one of the national guards, that we were welcome to see the salon—but that the Prussians had removed everything which it contained—the sword of Joan of Arc—the knife of Ravaillac—Turenne’s sword. I am sorry for this—not on account of the mortification which it will inflict on French vanity—but because I fear the return of the King will be less popular—than it would have been if he could have preserved entire at least those national monuments and relics which are exclusively French.

We paid a visit to Denon the other day. He had some Prussians quartered upon him, and was very loud in his exclamations against _ce_ [sic] _bête féroce_ as he called Blucher. He expressed his sentiments very freely on political subjects—said the King was not destined to govern France in times like these—and predicted a short duration to his dynasty. He spoke in terms of great and apparently sincere affection towards Bonaparte—he was the last person who saw him before he quitted Paris. Denon observed that he had committed a great error after the battle of Waterloo in quitting the army—that he had by that step lost its confidence—that he ought either to have remained with it—or to have returned to it immediately. If he had summoned the two chambers, informed them without reserve of his disasters and concluded by stating that his travelling carriage was at the door and that he was going to resume the command of the army, that even still he need not have despaired of ultimate success.

At the Tuileries after mass there was a great collection of Marshals—Peers of France—and other rogues of the higher order. We saw Marmont—Macdonald—Masséna—St. Cyr—Dupont, etc., and almost all the General officers of the French army who are in Paris—and did not take a decided part against the King. The garden of the Tuileries was absolutely full of people, and nothing can exceed or describe the enthusiasm of the women and children in favour of the King. If shouts—and applause and Vive le Roi—and white handkerchiefs could contribute to his strength—his throne would be established on solid foundations, but I do not see that men—fighting men—partake so much of the general joy—I confess I think the King has been ill advised in making Fouché his chief confidant and minister. It seems to me that it must preclude him from punishing treason in others—if he rewards so notorious a traitor as Fouché so highly. Fouché betrayed the King—then he betrayed Bonaparte—then he betrayed the Provisional Government of which he was the head and now he is minister. In fact he betrayed the Provisional Government deliberately—and on condition that he should be the King’s adviser. The virulence of French traitors—owing to the impunity of Treason—is beyond conception. Grouchy has written a letter to the Emperor of Russia requesting him to intercede in his favour with the King—and to procure for him permission to retain his rank as Marshal in the French army or, if that cannot be granted, that the Emperor will allow him to enter the Russian army retaining his present rank. The Emperor’s answer was not amiss. He had nothing to say to his first Proposition—and with respect to his second—it was an indispensable qualification in a Russian officer that he should be a man of honour.

Pray remember me very kindly to the Duchess of Dorset and believe me ever

Dear Lord Whitworth, Yours most truly ROBERT PEEL.

_His Excellency_ _The Lord Lieutenant._

PARIS, _Monday, July 17th_.

Arbuthnot saw Mr. Lane about an hour since I had this account from him—½ past 3.

Mr. Lane of No. 5 Essex Court in the Temple states himself to have arrived to-day from France; and he gives the following account:

That on the 20th he left Paris, and notwithstanding there were firing of guns and other marks of rejoicing, there was a general feeling in the town that all was not going well; that at Boulogne Mr. Lane saw the _Moniteur_ of the 22nd which gives a long account of what is called the battle of Marennart, stating that the British were 90,000 men and the French not so many, that until four in the Evening the French had completely won the battle, but that about that hour the English Cavalry had attacked the Cuirassiers and routed them, that the young guards coming to their assistance got entangled in their confusion, and the old guard was likewise “_entrainée_.” At this moment some _Malveillant_ in the army cried “Sauve qui peut” and a general flight commenced; the whole left wing of the army _dispersed_: He lost all his cannon caissons etc. Buonaparte had ordered the wreck of his army to be collected near Phillipville, and he had issued directions calling on the Northern provinces to rise in mass. This, says the _Moniteur_, ended a battle so glorious yet so fatal to the French arms. Buonaparte has arrived in Paris on the morning of the 21st. The Council of Ministers and the two chambers had been placed in a state of permanency and it was declared high treason to vote an adjournment.

Extract of a letter from the DUKE _of_ WELLINGTON to SIR CHARLES FLINT. dated BRUSSELS. _19 June 1815._

What do you think of the total defeat of Bonaparte by the British Army?

Never was there in the annals of the World so desperate or so hard fought an action, or such a defeat. It was really the battle of the Giants.

My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained of my old friends and companions and my poor Soldiers; and I shall not be satisfied with this Battle however glorious, if it does not of itself put an end to Bonaparte.

[I have been asked for so many Copies of this (all of which I have refused) that I am glad to return it.]

_19 June 1815._

On the 16th to the very great astonishment of everyone the French attacked us or rather the Prussians, Lord Wellington came up with a very few Troops including the 7 Divisions and succeeded in stopping them, the next day was passed in partial Cavalry actions and yesterday was fought the severest battle that I believe ever has been known, the disproportion was immense so much so that altho’ we constantly repulsed them yet had not the Prussians come up at 7 (altho’ in fact they might have been up long before) we perhaps might ultimately have been annihilated. Trotter and I was on the field at the beginning and I count it as the best day of my life—I was there also to-day—the French have abandoned everything—In point of Artillery it is a second Vittoria.

Our loss is so great that our Army will not I fear be in a state to act efficiently—but as we have done the material thing, the Allies may do the rest—the French Cavalry which was very fine suffered beyond expression—For a mile the road is actually strewed with Cuirasses—when I say this, I do not exaggerate. The Prussians are pursuing as fast as they can and with a large body of Troops. There will not be a stop by possibility till we get over the Frontier, after that time I dare not prophesy, but I do not think they will like to attack us again.

The Action was fought in front of _Waterloo_ where two Roads separate—the one going to Nivelle, the other to Genappe—the position which was a very beautiful one was in front of the junction of the two roads. [_unsigned._]

NIVELLE. _19 June 1815._

The great action of yesterday was the severest contest either Frenchmen or Englishmen ever witnessed—it was the most obstinate struggle of two brave and rival Nations each firm in its cause—The gallantry of the French could only be exceeded by the resolution and intrepidity of John Bull. It raged from 11 till 9 and was once nearly lost. The Duke seconded by his Troops repaired every momentary disaster.

Buonaparte placed himself at the head of his guards and led them on. The 1st Guards defeated them and put them to the rout and then the dismay became general—The Guards and generally the Infantry were the mainstay of the Action. Our Brigade had the defence of a Post which if lost, lost all. Our Light Company under Colonel Macdonnell were there, the Coldstreams then went down and we held it to the last, tho’ the Houses were in Flames. The loss has been immense—The French are totally defeated.

There never was a more severe Battle than that of the 18th. I enclose a little Sketch of it. The dotted Line from Braine la Leud to above La Haye is the brow of the Hills occupied by the Duke of Wellington. The Troops had bivouaced just in the rear. The other dotted line near La Belle Alliance marks the brow of the Hills from where the French attack was made. There are two small Hedges in the Rear of this one. The Attack on Hougomont was very severe from a little before 12 to half past one. Bonaparte then moved a strong Force (continuing however his first Attack for several hours) to attack the left of the Centre where Picton and Ponsonby were killed. He drove our people from the Hedges a short distance but they soon returned and drove him considerably beyond those Hedges. In the Evening he collected a very great force near La Haye Sainte and attacked the Right of the Centre. This was done repeatedly by Infantry and Cavalry but though they frequently got through the Line they could never drive them from their position. The British Artillery was a little in front. The Duke several times left the Guns taking away the Horses and Ammunition, but his Fire was too heavy for the Enemy to bring up Horses to take them off and he as often regained them. At about 7 o’clock the French were heartily sick of it and retired rapidly. The Duke immediately changed his Defensive operations to that of Attack and at the same time Bulow brought up about 30,000 fresh Troops on the right flank of the Enemy near the Village of La Haye. Blucher was also near at hand.

The Rout at this time was complete. The Pursuit was rapid and I really believe that the following morning the French Army had not 50 Guns out of 300 and no Baggage of any sort.

The latter part of this Account I take from others and from seeing the Field of Battle two days afterwards. The first and second attacks I was present at.

The Returns are arrived of Killed and Wounded. The British and Hanoverians lost on the 16th, 17th and 18th 845 Officers and 13,000 Men. The French lost much more. The Method in which the Duke received the united Charges of Cavalry and attacks of Infantry is not common. He formed two Regiments in Squares and united them by a Regt. in Line four deep making a Sort of Curtain between two Bastions. [_unsigned._]

§ 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, however, was never carried out. The bowling-green still rises, square and formal, backed by the two great tulip trees and the more distant woods of the park. The long perspective of the herbaceous borders was left undisturbed. The apple-trees in the little square orchards, that bear their blossom and their fruit from year to year with such countrified simplicity in the heart of all that magnificence, were not uprooted. Consequently the garden, save for one small section where the paths curve in meaningless scollops among the rhododendrons, remains to-day very much as Anne Clifford knew it. It has, of course, matured. The white rose which was planted under James I’s room has climbed until it now reaches beyond his windows on the first floor; the great lime has drooped its branches until they have layered themselves in the ground of their own accord and grown up again with fresh roots into three complete circles all sprung from the parent tree, a cloister of limes, which in summer murmurs like one enormous bee-hive; the magnolia outside the Poets’ Parlour has grown nearly to the roof, and bears its mass of flame-shaped blossoms like a giant candelabrum; the beech hedge is twenty feet high; four centuries have winnowed the faultless turf. In spring the wisteria drips its fountains over the top of the wall into the park. The soil is rich and deep and old. The garden has been a garden for four hundred years.

And here, save for a few very brief notes to bring the history of the house down to the present day, these sketches must cease. The duchess Arabella Diana dying in 1825, her estate devolved upon her two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, my great-grandmother, who married John West, Lord de la Warr, and who died in 1870, left Buckhurst to her elder sons and Knole to her younger sons, one of whom was my grandfather. He was, as I remember him, a queer and silent old man. He knew nothing whatever about the works of art in the house; he spent hours gazing at the flowers, followed about the garden by two grave demoiselle cranes; he turned his back on all visitors, but sized them up after they had gone in one shrewd and sarcastic phrase; he bore a really remarkable resemblance to the portraits of the old Lord Treasurer, and he seemed to me, with his taciturnity and the never-mentioned background of his own not unromantic past, to stand conformably at the end of the long line of his ancestors. He and I, who so often shared the house alone between us, were companions in a shy and undemonstrative way. Although he had nothing to say to his unfortunate guests, he could understand a child. He told me that there were underground caves in the Wilderness, and I believed him to the extent of digging pits among the laurels in the hope of chancing upon the entrance; he made over a tall tree to me for my own, and I mounted a wooden cannon among its branches to keep away intruders. When I was away, which was seldom, he would write me harlequin letters in different coloured chalks. When I was at home he would put after dinner a plate of fruit for my breakfast into a drawer of his writing-table labelled with my name, and this he never once failed to do, even though there might have been thirty people to dinner in the Great Hall, who watched, no doubt with great surprise, the old man who had been so rude to his neighbours at dinner going unconcernedly round with a plate, picking out the reddest cherries, the bluest grapes, and the ripest peach.

When we were at Knole alone together I used to go down to his sitting-room in the evening to play draughts with him—and never knew whether I played to please him, or he played to please me—and sometimes, very rarely, he told me stories of when he was a small boy, and played with the rocking-horse, and of the journeys by coach with his father and mother from Buckhurst to Knole or from Knole to London; of their taking the silver with them under the seat; of their having outriders with pistols; and of his father and mother never addressing each other, in their children’s presence, as anything but “my Lord” and “my Lady.” I clasped my knees and stared at him when he told me these stories of an age which already seemed so remote, and his pale blue eyes gazed away into the past, and suddenly his shyness would return to him and the clock in the corner would begin to wheeze in preparation to striking the hour, and he would say that it was time for me to go to bed. But although our understanding of one another was, I am sure, so excellent, our rare conversations remained always on similar fantastic subjects, nor ever approached the intimate or the personal.

Then he fell ill and died when he was over eighty, and became a name like the others, and his portrait took its place among the rest, with a label recording the dates of his birth and death.

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 in course of time many use it without knowing that they do so; cant, on the other hand, remains definite and obscure of origin. Slang is loose, expressive, and metaphorical; cant is tight and correct: it has even a literature of its own, broad and racy, incomprehensible to the ordinary reader without the help of a glossary. Its words, for the most part, bear no resemblance to English words; unlike slang, they are not words adapted, for the sake of vividness, to a use for which they were not originally intended, but are applied strictly to their peculiar meaning.

Although the origin of cant as a separate jargon or language is obscure—it does not appear in England till the second half of the sixteenth century—the origin of certain of its words may be traced. Of those included in the vocabulary on page 135, for example, _ken_, for house, comes from _khan_ (gipsy and Oriental); _fogus_, for tobacco, comes from _fogo_, an old word for stench; _maund_, or _maunder_, to beg, does not derive, as might be thought, from _maung_, to beg, a gipsy word taken from the Hindu, but from the Anglo-Saxon _mand_, a basket; _bouse_, to drink (which, of course, has given us booze, with the same meaning, and which in the fourteenth century was perfectly good English), comes from the Dutch _buyzen_, to tipple. _Abram_, naked, is found as _abrannoi_, with the same meaning, in Hungarian gipsy; _cassan_, cheese, is _cas_ in English gipsy; _dimber_ survives for “pretty” in Worcestershire. _Cheat_ appears frequently in cant as a common affix.

As for _autem mort_, I find it in an early authority thus defined: “These _autem morts_ be married women, as there be but a few. For _autem_ in their language is a church, so she is a wife married at the church, and they be as chaste as a cow I have, that goeth to bull every moon, with what bull she careth not.”

INDEX

ANNE, Queen, as Princess Anne, 138 her death, 160

ARMISTEAD, Mrs. Elizabeth, mistress of 3rd Duke of Dorset, 179

BEAUMONT, Francis, his friendship with 3rd Earl of Dorset, 55

BACELLI, Giannetta, mistress of 3rd Duke of Dorset, 188–192

BERKELEY, Lady Betty. _See_ GERMAINE, Lady Betty

Berkeley Castle, 169

BLACKMORE, his poem _Prince Arthur_ quoted, 148

BOURCHIER, Archbishop of Canterbury, buys Knole from Lord Say & Sele, 5 Builds on to Knole, 6, 7 Encloses the park, 21 Allows glass-making in the park, 24

BOWRA, a cricketer, 182

BRUCE, Lord, his duel with Edward Sackville, 84–90

BUCKHURST, Lord. _See_ SACKVILLE, Thomas house at Withyham, 18; and mentioned _passim_

BUCKINGHAM, Duke of, his opinion of Charles, Earl of Dorset, 144

BUTLER, Samuel, his opinion of Charles, Earl of Dorset, 144 his portrait at Knole, 151

BURKE, Edmund, letter from, 197–198 his portrait at Knole, 197

BYRON, Lord, quoted, 28, 204 friendship with 4th Duke of Dorset, 203–204 his letters to Thomas Moore, 204–205

CARTWRIGHT, William, his portrait at Knole, 151

CHAMPCENETZ, Comte de, a French fugitive, 188

CHARLES I, verses on the death of, 106–107

CHARLES II, anecdote of his childhood, 98 at Edgehill, 107