Category Archives: Regency

Devonshire House – “Its Beauties all Within Reside”

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So much has been written about Devonshire House, most of it concerning the period of the Devonshire House Circle, presided over by the beautiful Georgiana, wife to the 5th Duke.

south front – Devonshire House

After such brilliance, it seemed anticlimatic when the house was inherited by the 6th Duke, William “Hart” Cavendish, a man witty and handsome. Alas, because of a disability, he was unable to carry on his mother’s significant political career and leader of the Whig circle.

One of my characters, Lady Diana, quite liked the young duke whose Devonshire House gardens abutted those belonging to her friend, Louisa, Marchioness of Lansdowne.

Long after those days when it was thought they might make a match of it, Diana heard that Hart was planning to leave London.

“Di, I mean it. I’m removing to Chatsworth. Never coming back to London, I daresay.”

Diana eyed the duke’s tall form in dismay. “But you’ve done so much work on this house. I can’t imagine you shutting it up for years and years.”

His Grace rubbed his ear and motioned for her to repeat herself. “You’ll have to shout, my dear. Can’t hear a damn thing, you know.”

“Oh, you heard me well enough,” she retorted. “You’ve joked often enough that you hear more than people imagine, and a good deal more than they intended.”

Hart laughed. “I can never fool you, Di.”

He looked up at carved blue and silver ceiling of his mother’s boudoir. “The thing is, I’m bored. I’ve remodelled and redecorated this place, all except this room.  Belonged to Mama, you know.”

“But to leave London? What could you possibly find to do in the country?”

Hart reached out and stroked the fine organza of her sleeve. He sometimes did that with beautiful women, taking the opportunity to touch them under the excuse of having to stand close by to capture the fading sound of their voices.  Sounds that had become almost inaudible.

“There’s much to amuse me at Chatsworth.”

“How silly of me to forget your little rookery you keep there for your lady-birds.” She covered his hand with hers and squeezed it. “I shall miss you, Hart.”

The sixth Duke was really far more important to Devonshire House than his mother ever was. He had carried out necessary repairs and renovations, refreshing the gilding and the like, before leaving London in the 1830s. But by the 1840s, he had returned and transformed the Piccadilly mansion.

He removed the Palladian entrance with its external stairs. A porte-cochere now led to the ground floor, which had formerly been the servants’ area. Visitors passed through it directly to a crystal staircase leading to the main floor above. A ballroom was created from two drawing rooms and many of the entertainment areas had their ceilings lifted at the expense of bedrooms above. Hart had clearly returned to London, according to Lady Eastlake in May 1850:

“..the stairs themselves splendid, shallow, broad slabs of the purest white marble, which sprang unsupported, with their weight of gorgeous crystal balustrade, from the wall; and such a blaze of intense yet soft light, diffused round everything and everybody by a number of gas jets on the walls. The apartments were perfect fairyland, marble, gilding, pictures and flowers….”

When Devonshire House was demolished, it was already in a somewhat dilapidated state. The large brick wall that shielded it from the street (built in the eighteenth century to deter burglars that plagued London’s great houses) was a magnet for graffiti. There were only a few statues remaining in the gardens. The house was sold in 1920, along with its three acres. All of it, including the crystal staircase were soon to be nore more, lamented in a poem by Siegfried Sassoon.

But all was not lost. Thanks to an intrepid duchess, the house lives on, in bits and pieces. They are by and large the legacy of the sixth Duke. These numerous Regency pieces are to be found in the most surprising places.

north front Devonshire House

James Bond and the Regency Townhouse

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I was rather ambivalent about the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. HM Elizabeth II actually received her spy in person, and that’s not the half of it.

She’s the Head of Government, the Queen. He’s supposed to be a secret agent known only by a number.  Should they need to communicate, that’s what M is for.

James Bond and the Regency townhouse have something in common, it seems.  Neither are immune to changing tastes.

In Dr. No, we learned 007 had a name.  It was in the Le Cercle club when he uttered those immortal words, “Bond, James Bond.”

The club is housed in the famous casino known as Les Ambassadeurs–or, “Les-A.” It occupies No. 5 Hamilton Place, an area of Mayfair developed for the Regent in 1806 by the architect Thomas Leverton.

An interesting side note: Leverton had been hired in 1802 to build the home of the Fraternal Guild of Grocers.  The Grocers were once known as the Pepperers. Their interesting history may be found here.  To the Order’s dismay, Leverton’s edifice turned out to be unsatisfactory, that is, “badly built, due to defective foundations (!)”

Happily, No. 5 still remains–built in 1805 it was first occupied by Robert Hobart, 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire (1760 – 1816). A Tory, he was the Secretary of State of War and for the Colonies (1801 – 1804) and President of the Board of Control (1812 – 1816).  The latter occupation was a difficult endeavor, fraught with petitions from various persons railing against the abolition of the East India Trade Company.  In a letter from one known only as Fabius, the Regent’s plan to open up trade was despised.  It was thought that such a plan would bring about a glut of cheap Indian goods.  The Indians themselves had no need for British goods.  Why should they by good English wool, for example, when their

“..warm climate renders any clothing beyond what decency requires intolerable.”

He died at No. 5.

The earl met an early end at the age of 56, the consequence of being thrown from a horse. He suffered a “tedious” three months after the accident, going to Bath upon the advice of his doctors.  He did not improve and demanded to be taken back to No. 5 Hamilton Place where he died.

No. 5 then became the home of the 1st Marquess of Conyngham.  Henry Conyngham (1766 – 1832) was an Irish peer and a “familiar” friend of the Regent, serving as lord steward when the Prince became George IV.  Upon his king’s death, he broke his staff of office upon the coffin of the monarch, as was the custom.

Lord Conyngham had an interesting lineage.  A considerable part of his fortune came to him by way of his grandmother, who retained full control of her estate through two marriages.  Another ancestor, one Edward Burton, narrowly escaped imprisonment and execution during the persecution of the Protestants.  His death was apparently the result of “excessive joy” at the death of Bloody Queen Mary in 1550.

The marquess, like the earl, died in the house at No. 5.  His funeral procession was headed by “two mutes and a plume of black feathers.”

Years later, the house passed from the Conyngham family to the Rothschilds, who made it over in the fin de siecle Louis XV style.  This heavily ornamented renovation covered over the elegant Regency decoration both inside and out.

Like 007, No. 5 is something to be made over to suit modern taste, until it is scarcely recognizable.

The Treacherous Hills of Greenwich Park

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Summer Olympics. Three-Day Eventing. Greenwich Park. What could go wrong?

Queen’s House – Olympic Equestrian Stadium under construction
Licensed by Paul Arps

Queen’s House is one of several historic buildings on the grounds of the park. It was the first major commission for the great Inigo Jones, who brought Palladian design with him after his tour of Italy. Its famous Tulip Stairs, the first spiral staircase to be built in England, are reportedly haunted.

The Queen in question was Anne of Denmark, consort of James I. Legend has it the palace was compensation from the king for swearing at his lady in public, after she accidentally shot one of his dogs.

Some say Greenwich Park is an accident waiting to happen.

The lovely weather on Easter Monday and Tuesday drew crowds to Greenwich and many a fair and slender ancle tripped it gaily in the park, as well as down the hill; while others, whose understandings proved they do not stand upon trifles, were less venturous. A few old sinners of the male sex, far down in the hill of life as that at Greenwich, were waiting for those little accidents which, though sport to them, are no joke to the parties…  — The Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review, 1825

It is very easy to trip down the slopes at Greenwich Park. A number of horses and riders discovered this just last week during the cross-country phase of the Olympic Three-Day Event for equestrian sport. The undulating terrain of this oldest of all the Royal Parks poses a difficult obstacle in and of itself. Indeed, I believe there were less jumps on this course than what one would normally find on at a cross-country event–an apology for the terrain, you might say.

Compensation, indeed.

Olympian and Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips aboard High Kingdom
licensed Henry Bucklow/Lazy Photography

“The Stately Homes of England”

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THE stately Homes of England,

How beautiful they stand! Amidst their tall ancestral trees,

O’er all the pleasant land. The deer across their greensward bound

Thro’ shade and sunny gleam, And the swan glides past them with the sound

Of some rejoicing stream.

—The Homes of England, Felicia Hemans (1827)

Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans (1793 – 1835) was an English poet.  Born in Liverpool she came to refer to Wales as her adopted birthplace:

The land of my childhood, my home and my dead.

She was only fourteen when she published her first works, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, and soon attracted the notice of Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Her husband left her, so she supported herself and her five sons with her pen.

When she died of the dropsy, she had a considerable following in both the UK and the US.

I love the stately homes of England.  So did she.  Neither of us have ever lived in one.

“Husbands are Dreadful and Powerful Animals”

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“Now, that’s Lady Pembroke. Handsome woman, what? Daughter of the Duke of Marlborough. Stuff of generals. Blood of Blenheim. Husband an utter rascal. Eloped in a packet-boat.” – George III in The Madness of King George 

Elizabeth Spencer (1737 – 1831) was a handsome woman, much admired by the King.  She became Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte in the latter half of the eighteenth century.  Suffering through the numerous infidelities of her husband, Henry Herbert, 10th earl of Pembroke, she finally separated from him in 1788, thanks to the King’s generosity in giving her a residence.

Some awkwardness was to be expected.  In his madness, George III is alleged to have given her “sporadic and unwanted attentions until his recovery in 1805.”

She lived forever, it seems, even outlasting her son, the third Earl of Pembroke.

Her London residence was Pembroke House, immortalized in Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (1832).  It was built on the rubble of Whitehall Palace, where various persons swore they saw the ghost of Henry VIII on the night of his only son’s death.  Now Pembroke House is rubble, the foundation for the Ministry of Defense.

The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, Constable (1832) – Pembroke House is to the left

The Salon of Nature – Kenwood House

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Sometimes one must get away from the salons of London’s great houses.  Elegant Lansdowne with her sculpture and paintings.  The convivial meals at Holland House.  Even the bohemian conversation at No. 10 St. James.  Let us repair to the country just outside the metropolis and follow in the footsteps of Constable and Coleridge.  To the northern end of Hampstead Heath and a creation in the highest order of Palladian design.  To Kenwood House, I say.

They called it Caen Wood in the old days.  Caen from an old Norman town, the place where the Conqueror’s body rests, if in a somewhat scattered state by tomb raiders.  Wood from that part of the old county of Middlesex, a “very wild and darlking region.”

Kenwood was close to London but remained as it was when it was buiilt, protected from urban expansion and development by the uneven terrain of Hampstead Heath. A nearby hill was called Highgate:

“The old green of Highgate yet boasts its old buildings, it old elm and lime-tree avenue, and has an air of quiet and of the past.  Around stretch fields, and hills, and glades that possess an eminent beauty, which on Sundays and holidays suddenly make the Londoner think himself a countryman, and almost poetical.” — The northern hieghts of London:  or Historical associations of Hampstead, Highgate, etc. Howitt, 1869

Purchased by Baron Mansfield in 1754, Kenwood House was remodelled by Robert Adam, and contains one of the finest libraries that master artist had ever designed.   It was a fitting residence for the baron, even more so when he was raised to an earldom in 1776.

Robert Adam library at Kenwood House

In that year, his nephew married the third of seven daughters sired by Lord Cathcart (try saying that nine times).  Louisa (1758 – 1843) would soon be in a position to do a service for the earl.

His lordship had it in his mind to bequeath Kenwood and his earldom to David, but at the time there was a strong aversion to passing an English peerage to a Scot.   Thus, the earldom of Mansfield seemed destined to end.

Happily, Lord Mansfield was Chief Justice of the King’s Bench and a rather clever lawyer.  The earl cast his eye over his nephew’s pretty wife.  No Scot was she.  So he devised a special remainder to his own title so that it could pass to her upon his death and save the earldom for the family.

Louisa became a countess in her own right.

But her real value lay in being hostess at Kenwood, happy to receive the weary tourist to Hampstead Heath.  She was also a Patroness of Almack’s, hostess to the weary debutante.

Altogether Her Ladyship was a rather accomodating person.

A Shrewd and Masculine Mind – No. 10 St. James Square (Part Two)

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She was an Irish nobody, an outrage to the haute ton.  She had married a man who died during a drunken orgy when he fell out of a window at King’s Bench prison.  She had lived under the “protection” of another who received 10,000 pounds reimbursement for her upkeep.  She had snatched up a titled, rich husband.  Now she had come to make her mark upon society, not even troubling to hide her desire of becoming a posh London hostess.

Entrance Hall – No. 10 St. James Square

Her choice of house to accomplish this ambition was a scandal in and of itself.  No. 10 St. James Square had been the scene of grave deliberations by Prime Ministers.  Its walls had witnessed the re-drawing of Europe’s maps.  Now it was to house an empty-headed beauty and entertain a pack of frippery gentlemen.

When Lady Blessington stepped into its entrance hall, pausing to take in the “carved moulded architrave and rich pulvinated frieze and cornice,” did the house tremble in disgust?

No, indeed.  No. 10 was in alt.

It was Autumn of 1818 when Marguerite Gardiner, nee Power, took up residence in St. James Square.  Her husband, the Earl of Blessington, was seven years older than she, with children from a former marriage who conveniently remained behind in Ireland on their father’s estate, Mountjoy Forest.  Like Lady Holland, Marguerite was shunned by female callers.  But she had known adversity before and this snub in no way depressed one such as she.  Her husband knew all the great men of society and was pleased to introduce her to them.  Soon No. 10 was receiving those frippery gentlemen, the very ones other hostesses would give their eyeteeth to entertain.

It seemed that Holland House and yes, even that grande dame of Regency salons, Lansdowne House, would be destined to look to their laurels.  Fellow Irishman and noted diarist, the abolitionist Dr. Richard Robert Madden, made special note of the salon at No. 10:

Two Royal English dukes condescended not unfrequently to do homage at the new shrine of Irish beauty and intellect….Whig and Tory politicians and lawyers, forgetful of their party feuds and professional rivalries for the nonce, came there as gentle pilgrims.

Dr. Samuel Parr, noted Whig political writer and stern schoolmaster, also came under Lady Blessington’s spell, calling her “most gorgeous.”  He was the first to divine the intelligence behind the beauty, rightly predicting an unlikely development that would occur long after his death:

With her shrewd and masculine mind, she would be even more impressive in middle age than while in the lovely splendor of her youth. 

Lady Blessington would need that shrewd and masculine mind developed in the company of the Regency’s brilliant and distinguished.  It turned out that No. 10 served to be an incubator of developing intellect that would take the place of fading beauty.  After her husband died and No. 10 passed to another, Marguerite had to find a way to sustain herself, turning to writing.  Her works include Conversations with Lord Byron, Idler in Italy and Idler in France.  They were popular works that gave her the income she needed until she died in Paris in 1849, far from No. 10 St. James Square.

Let’s Do Our Business in Bed

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St. James Square was already beginning to pall as a fashionable area by the time of the Regency.  Yet the simple, classically styled No. 10 survived to become, by virtue of its occupants alone, a salon rivalling any in Kensington and Berkely Square.

No. 10 St. James Square

No. 10 was purchased by Sir William Heathcoate, a merchant elevated to the peerage.  He married the only daughter of his neighbor in no. 11, the Earl of Macclesfield and one-time Regent of Great Britain.   His family owned the house until 1890.

During that period, the house was leased to a variety of renters, the first being William Pitt the Elder.  When he was Secretary of State, he conducted government business in the house and one time from his bed when he was ill.  The Prime Minister at the time was the Duke of Newcastle.  He had gone to No. 10 to transact some business with Pitt.  The two did not get along.  Maybe that was why His Grace complained of the cold in Pitt’s bedroom.  When no sympathy was forthcoming, he cursed and climbed into the other bed in the room to finish his business with the Secretary.

Mr. Pitt moved out of the cold house in 1762 and No. 10 saw a number of tenants until it began service as a gaming hell.  Then it became known as a snug little place, “a low house, humorously called a pigeon hole.”  With expenses kept to a minimum, no. 10 was rumored to bring in 30,000 pounds in 1817.

unusually fine oak staircase with stucco work “to be done very well by an Italian” for 20 pounds sterling

Then in 1820, the house was let by one Charles John Gardiner, Earl of Blessington.  He had a new countess, and the house was ordered fitted up to her high expectations.

Society thought her bohemian before they knew where Bohemia was.

The Princess Biographer – Holland House Part Three

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In 1874 Macmillan & Col published a leather=bound set of memoirs on Holland House.  The author was the Princess Marie Leichtenstein.

Princess Marie Liechtenstein

“As it was, we must think its publication a mistake….It is impossible to say what is the central figure in it.  Holland House, Charles James Fox, the mutability of human fortune, Napoleon’s snuff-box, or the knights who dined round Holland House’s table.”–The North American Review, 1874Well, what can you expect from an American critic?Her Highness was brought up in Holland House when the 4th Baron Holland and his wife, Lady Mary Coventry, were in residence.  Lord Holland was the last of his line and the couple had no children.  They adopted a little girl and she was christened Marie “Mary” Henriette Adelaide Fox.  She was thought to be Lord Holland’s illegitimate daughter by another woman, but this circumstance seems to have posed no impediment.  After all, she married a prince.

“When ladies get hold of a little learning, they experience no sense of danger.” — Sketches (Holland House) by Abraham Hayward

Oh!  What an odious thing to say.

Despite these naysayers, Her Highness’ biography of Holland House was well-received.  By reason of her ties to the family, she had access to Holland House’s records which she used to bring it back to life long after its heyday during the Regency:

“The circle of Holland House was a cosmopolitan one, and Holland House was among houses what England is among nations–a common ground, where all opinions could freely breathe.”

On her grandmother, the indomitable Lady Elizabeth Holland:

“It is easy for some natures to say a disagreeable thing, but it is not always easy to carry a disagreeable thing off cleverly.  This Lady Holland could do.”

Her grandfather, Lord Holland:

“..while he enjoyed and preferred the society of choice spirits, while with him absence could not extinguish friendship, his benevolence and courtesy made him extend a kind reception to all who came to Holland House.”

And others, famous and in many cases, foreign:

“Talleyrand, the diplomatic wit and witty diplomatist, who cared not which party he supported, provided it was the stronger.”

“Madame de Stael, who in graceful French painted Italy, and in solid French digested German literature.”

“Whishaw (the Pope of Holland House), whose sense made his opinions valuable to have and difficult to obtain.”

We are lucky even princesses were moved to record the past.  Places like Holland House tended to be done away with in rapidly developing, expanding London.  And the old house had reason to tremble at the time of its biography.  Great Northumberland House was being pulled down and there was movement afoot to do the same in Kensington where this rival to Lansdowne House still remained.

“The Hostess from Hell” – Holland House Part Two

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Elizabeth Fox, Baroness Holland, was the daughter of a Jamaican planter.  Married off to Lord Webster, a man twenty years her senior, she gave birth to three children before falling in love with another man, bearing him a child out-of-wedlock.  Not two days divorced, she married her lover Lord Holland.

Lady Holland with her son – Louis Gauffier

The ton could not forget her scandalous past and so declined to receive her.  No matter, Lord and Lady Holland did their own receiving, hosting the most influential men of the day at Holland House.  The few women who came were fellow Whigs, the Duchess of Devonshire and that fashionable marchioness from Berkeley Square, Lady Lansdowne.

Baroness Holland was the complete opposite of her husband.  She was gruff where he was affable, imperious when he would give way.  Long, boring discourse was not tolerated at her table–her ladyship was known to dispatch her footman to admonish the offending guest.

Thomas Moore, which this blog christened Regency Poet of Wine and Love, once said, “poets inclined to a plethora of vanity would find a dose of Lady Holland now and then very good for their complaint.”

“I’m sorry you are going to publish a poem,” she said to Lord Portchester.  “Can’t you suppress it?”

And to the great English poet, Samuel Rogers, she advised, “Your poetry is bad enough, so pray be sparing about your prose.”

Lady Holland reminds me of the Gosford Park character Constance, Countess of Trentham.  There is something sinfully joyous about her acidic observations.  This one she offers to the American film and radio star Ivor Novello:

LadyTrentham: It must be hard to know when it’s time to throw in the towel… What a pity about that last one of yours… what was it called? “The Dodger”? Novello:   The Lodger. LadyTrentham:   The Lodger. It must be so disappointing when something just flops like that.

Lady Holland lived to the age of seventy-four.  When tentatively shown Byron’s memoirs, which were none too complimentary of his hostess at Holland House, she shrugged.

“Such things give me no uneasiness; I know perfectly my station in the world, and I know all that can be said of me.  As long as the few friends I am really sure of speak kindly of me, all that the rest of the world can say is a matter of complete indifference to me.”