Hampton Court

Front matter

View from River

· HAMPTON · COURT ·

BY

Preface

PREFACE

A word, with all apologies for its egoism, as to how this book came to be. It is the record of travel over familiar ground. It tells again what has, perhaps often, been better told before. It originates in what schoolmasters used to call a 'holiday task.' College Dons, unlike the popular idea of them, are busy folk, who are constantly at work, teaching or preparing to teach, examining or writing, and each of these things as part of their professional obligation. But even Dons must have a holiday sometimes, and much more so must undergraduates.

Years ago, when I lived in the suburbs, I spent many days out of Oxford vacations in the gardens and galleries of Hampton Court. Week by week I was there, and was never tired of the delightful prospect and its memories. This year I have found the fascination still as strong as it was a decade ago; and I have had the delight of wandering about with Mr. Railton, and of trying, under his guidance, to see the familiar scenes with something of his artistic inspiration. Curious nooks, quaint byways, courts in which a stranger's footfall rarely sounds, here a solitary turret, there a garden that Henry VIII. may have planned just as it now lies, have appealed with a new force as I saw how they had been, or could be, the subjects of the artist's most delicate draughtsmanship. With the kind help of the Chaplain of the Palace, I have penetrated to many a place which I had never seen before. Each hour the impression has deepened, and at last I have sat down to put together a few memorials of some happy vacation days.

This book has no ambitious claim. It attempts only to say, in a series of sketches not always closely connected with each other, something about what the writer has enjoyed and what he has learnt.

To wander about the gardens, to study the architecture and the pictures, with the records of the great men of past ages who planned and built and lived there, is the first and best way to know Hampton Court and its history. The stately Palace has had its historian. It is not too much to say that our pleasure in and our knowledge of Hampton Court is increased tenfold by the work of Mr. Ernest Law. At every step he has been before us. There is not a source of information which he has not studied, there is no memory which he has not appreciated and preserved. The recognition which Her Majesty the Queen has bestowed upon his labours of love, the most graceful and appropriate that could be found, is the fit expression of the gratitude which Her Majesty's subjects feel to him who has done so much to enhance the pleasure with which the public receives the privileges which the sovereign has so generously bestowed.

Not only has Mr. Law studied the Palace and its history with the minute care of a scholar and antiquary: he has also continued most successfully the work of Mr. Jesse and Sir Henry Cole in popularising the knowledge which can alone enable visitors to rightly enjoy the beauties which they witness.

Those who wish to study the records of the Palace will find at every turn that Mr. Law has been before them. I have searched the State Papers for references to the events that happened at Hampton Court from the days of Wolsey onward, but hardly ever have I come across information which Mr. Law has not discovered and utilised. It is the same with the classical literature of England, and with the books in which foreign travellers have set down their impressions. All I can do, then, is to express most cordially my gratitude to Mr. Law for his catalogue and his guide-book, and for the three noble volumes in which he has told the history of the Palace from its earliest days to the present time, and to say that, though much that is in my book is also in his, and I have learnt, as has every one who has been in Hampton Court, from him, yet I hope it will appear that the aim and style of my book does not bring it into any comparison or competition with his.

That is the first and foremost of my obligations. Next to it I must place the kind and generous help of the Rev. A. G. Ingram, Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty, whose courtesy and patience on the day I troubled him I acknowledge with most sincere thanks. Nor am I ungrateful to those whose kindness has permitted me to visit their apartments, and to see much of great interest which is not open to the public at large: especially my thanks are due to Lady Cecil Gordon for the courtesy with which she showed me her rooms and explained their interest. In Mr. William Brown, the most efficient caretaker of the picture gallery, I was pleased to discover a fellow-countryman, doubly anxious from old associations to assist me.

Among Oxford friends I have to thank Miss Florence Freeman for most valuable help, and Mr. Gordon McNeil Rushforth, to whose taste and wide knowledge of art I am greatly indebted.

To chronicle my obligations to other books besides those of Mr. Ernest Law would be a tedious task. I have tried to mention most of them as they occur, but I cannot forbear to particularise Mr. Claude Phillips's charming account of "The Picture Gallery of Charles I." (Portfolio, January 1896), and the wholly admirable "Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court" (Kyrle Pamphlets, No. 2), by 'Mary Logan.'

W. H. HUTTON.

The Great House, Burford, Oxon., August 1896.

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

"I AM never merry when I hear sweet music." So, when the "spirits are attentive," is it with the sight of a beautiful old house. The memories of those who have lived in and loved it crowd in upon the mind. Their passions and their sorrows seem to speak now like the "music of the spheres," in a solemn cadence that only the thoughtful and abstracted heart can hear. They are become part of Nature: all that strange symphony of colour and sound and feeling that breathes in upon us as we walk the courts where they lingered, or trace their names cut with a diamond on the old window-panes, or pray where they too have laid down their sins,—all that subtle impression that steals over us and saddens is made of their struggles and their tears. There, we say, men have worked out their lives in duty and loyalty and faith: or there they have made shipwreck, driven by fierce demons of desire, for fame, for pleasure, or for wealth. And now they sleep so still, and thousands pass by and heed them not: and yet they are part of it all, this great Palace, this home of English history, this chronicle in little of what men have done and suffered for their country and their age. Here Wolsey planned to restore the greatness of England. Here Elizabeth plotted and schemed, and yet learnt somehow to say, "I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects… I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too"—some of the finest words man-kind ever uttered. Here Charles showed the beauty of his nature through its outer husk of unworthy duplicity. Here Milton meditated and Cromwell agonised: and here, since the days of these heroes, many noble souls have passed, in quietness and simplicity, to their reward. It were as ill to romp and be facetious here as in some old abbey, or in any ancient place where history has been made. It is ours rather to linger over its memories and to cherish them, and to dream again of the great days that are gone by. And so as we ponder, and as the noble names come up before us, and merge insensibly into the present, where still the echoes of renown are heard in the lodgings of the kindred of our English worthies, the scene assumes an unity which brings the old time together with the new.

It seems as if in one were cast The present and the imaged past, Spanning, as with a bridge sublime. That fearful lapse of human time, That gulf unfathomably spread Between the living and the dead."

And thus it is one picture we are to look upon, the old Palace with its history and its memories and its art. It presents one story, and that the world will not willingly let die.

Chapter I

HAMPTON COURT

CHAPTER I

THE BUILDINGS AND THEIR MAKERS

1. Hampton Court: its associations: its twofold interest.—2. The characteristics of the early sixteenth-century architecture as represented in Wolsey's building.—3. The size and extent: the view from the roofs.—4. The outer Green Court: the Base Court: the Clock Court: the "Confessionary."—5. Wren's work in the Clock Court: the side-courts.— 6. The Great Hall: the great Watching Chamber: the Horn-room.—7. Wren and his style: the Fountain Court: the east front: the south front: the King's staircase and its decorations: the interior of the rooms.—8. The architect: Wolsey probably his own architect: Wren's plans: the extent of his designs: Defoe thereon: the work incomplete but characteristic.—9. Different judgments on the alterations made by Wren: Horace Walpole: "The Beauties of England and Wales:" Wren's characteristic merits.

I

There are few of the buildings which the generosity of English sovereigns has thrown open to the people that appeal to us with the same attraction as Hampton Court. For two reasons, at least, it has an interest which is unique. No English palace that still remains has borne, at least until quite our own day, so homely an air. Whitehall, Oatlands, Nonsuch are gone. Buckingham Palace, Saint James's, and Kensington have the inevitable defects of all royal dwellings in a great metropolis. Windsor Castle is a rival; but in historical association it is certainly inferior. Earlier sovereigns lived at Windsor, later monarchs since George III. have made it a home; but it has not been, like Hampton Court, for more than two centuries the almost continuous residence of the rulers of England. There Wolsey rested and gave feasts; Henry spent honeymoons; Mary sat wearily waiting for the babe that never came; Elizabeth hunted and intrigued; James talked theology; Charles collected pictures, and slipped secretly through his guards' hands; Cromwell listened to the organ as Milton played it; Charles II. made love, and William III. made gardens; and so the English rulers went on living at their ease in the most comfortable of their houses, till the day when the boy who was to be George III. had his ears boxed by his grandfather, and vowed he would never live in the place where he had received such an indignity.

Hampton Court possesses in a striking degree the interest of a continuous connection with English history and an association with the domestic lives of English sovereigns. With these two thoughts in mind it is that we pass through its courts and examine its architectural features. Each bit of build

, it is scarcely too much to say, has an interest of its own. Historically, or because of the men who designed it, or from important events which are associated with it, each part has its special worth.

The history of the building, as we now see it, is in itself a great part of the history of English architecture, as it is a memorial of a great part of the history of the nation and its crown.

II

The Palace of Hampton Court was begun at a time when English domestic architecture was at its best. The new era which had replaced the "over-mighty subject" by the mighty monarch was out of harmony with the castles of elaborate defence and corresponding inconvenience which feudalism and medieval life had made necessary. The fortress gave place to the house. The beginning of the sixteenth century was a time of comfort, of luxury, and of enterprise; and all these were represented in the last triumphs of Gothic architecture—the great houses that were built before English architects, as well as English men of fashion, became Italianate.

Hampton Court, as Wolsey began and Henry finished it, is one of the last, as it is the greatest of the examples of that national style which was developed when the Tudor rule had settled down on the land after the tumults of the French wars and the civil strife of the fifteenth century. As the fifteenth century advanced castle-building ceased. Towns were still walled, but private dwellings in England—for in Scotland and Ireland, as well as on the Borders, the need for defensive buildings was still apparent—gradually dispensed with the visible tokens of the age of insecurity. Battlements became an ornament rather than a protection. Moats were no longer dug, though here Wolsey kept up the fashion of the former age, and before the great gate of his house had a deep and wide ditch with a drawbridge of the ancient sort. The details of the houses followed the principle which had begun to rule their general appearance. Windows were made much larger all through the century, till with the sixteenth century we have the great windows which are so characteristic of the building of the Cardinal and the King. The great dining-hall declined, though in houses of much state it survived, as at Hampton Court, in much of its old splendour. The custom of the great men dining in common with their households was dying out, as More's "Utopia," in its plea for a common hall and common hospitality, so clearly shows. On the other hand, the comforts of the individual were far more carefully attended to. The first court of Wolsey's great building consists entirely of guest-chambers. The lavish decoration within attempted to counterbalance the economy of architectural detail without. Windows, in which the tracery no longer excites admiration by its beauty and grace, were filled with rich glass and overhung

West Front and Trophy Gates

by heavy curtains of magnificent stuffs. Tapestries covered the walls; and of these at Hampton Court splendid specimens survive.

III

Of the external grandeur of the building which Wolsey designed, perhaps the best impression can be obtained from the roofs, or from the north-west of what was once the tilt-yard. The extent of the buildings is amazing, and the dignity and magnificence of the design is no less impressive. The palace, says Mr. Law, "covers eight acres, and has a thousand rooms."

Such a general view as is obtained from the roof gives an impression which is certainly not lost when the details are observed, and when the Palace is inspected at leisure.

IV

We pass through the "trophy gates"—poor specimens of the early Hanoverian age at its least interesting epoch—into the outer Green Court, by the unattractive barracks at the left (which may have been stables in their earliest history), to the great Gate-house. On each side project the beautiful buildings, with their fine windows, picturesque turrets, and the dull red of the bricks intermingled with lines of black, in which now live the chaplain and others on the north, and on the south Her Royal Highness Princess Frederica of Hanover.

The little gardens, the creepers here and there, set off the old buildings well. But the dignity of the building, as Wolsey designed it, is gone. The great gate itself has no longer its five storeys and its pinnacles with their lead cupolas, but has dwindled, under a restoration of George III.'s, to three storeys and towers that rise but slightly over the adjacent building. But from the first the tall chimneys strike the eye. They, too, it is plain, in most cases are restorations, but restorations according to the exact pattern of the originals. Each of them has its pattern, and the different coloured bricks, where they are preserved, add a peculiar distinction to the lofty clusters, which become an ornament where a less skilful arrangement would have disfigured the court.

Through the great gate, with its groined ceiling, we pass into the first or Base Court. This at once strikes the visitor as being very low on the north and south in proportion to the high Gate-house and Clock-tower. This effect would not have been so noticeable had the cupolas with which the smaller turrets were decorated remained in situ. It is increased also by the tall span of the roof of the great hall, with its greater

Oriel Window, West Gateway

Perpendicular window, seen to the left as the court is entered from the gateway.

There is no better specimen in England than this court of what is loosely called the early Tudor style of domestic architecture. It is the exact reverse of formal or tame in colour and design. It is sombre in tone yet warm—the introduction of darker coloured bricks at intervals adding in a very marked way originality and variety. The design discards uniformity. On three sides (broken, however, by the Gate-house), the windows are ranged at regular intervals and are of the same size, and there are only two storeys. But on the third side, the east, the line is broken not only by the Clock-tower, but by a variety in the arrangement of the windows, and the building is of three storeys.

The court is particularly homely. The grass shows up the fine dark red of the buildings very happily, and the whole air of it is like that of some quiet college in one of our Universities. The interior of the rooms show something of the old plan of "double lodgings" of which Cavendish speaks. Here were the great chambers for the foreigners, and the great persons of the court, whom Wolsey so freely entertained.

Details of the work are interesting, such as Henry VIII.'s arms below the great oriel window on the gateway tower, and the arms and initials of Edward VI. on the two turrets near. From the Base Court, which is practically all Wolsey's work, we pass to the much more composite series of buildings within the Clock-court. We enter by what is called Anne Bullen's gateway, which has a restoration of what was once a beautiful groined roof. In the

Anne Boleyn's Gateway

quatrefoils of the centre are the badges of Anne, and her initial joined in a true love-knot with that of Henry VIII. At the left goes up the staircase to the great hall. The exterior of the hall takes up the whole of the north side of the court. Low down are small windows, which light the cellars, then a great expanse of wall below the great windows. Between each window rise strong buttresses, which pass above the battlements and terminate in small pinnacles. At the east end of the north side are the two large windows of three lights which go from floor to ceiling of the dais. The hall is Henry VIII.'s work, not Wolsey's.

The Clock-tower behind has Wolsey's arms, and the rooms of the Cardinal himself stretched along from the Clock-tower to the southern extremity of the building. These are all now in private occupation. They preserve not a little of their ancient features of interest. The fine mullioned windows, the rich panelled ceilings, often gilded and highly coloured, the decorations recalling the Cardinal's own living in them—the hat, crosses, and poleaxes, the motto "Dominus Michi Adivtor"—the charming panelling of different forms of the linenfold pattern, preserve the appearance of the rooms when their great builder still lived in them. There is one delightful room, rich with no inconsiderable remnants of beautiful decoration,—it has been identified with the "Confessary,"—which is especially interesting for its preservation of the ancient features.

The "Confessionary," as Horace Walpole calls it in his "Anecdotes of Painting," has only recently been rediscovered, and it has been restored under the direction of Sir J. C. Robinson, and opened to the public. Of its extremely interesting paintings this is not the place to speak, but we may here notice the excellent "linen-scroll" pattern panels which have been collected from other parts of the Palace to cover the walls, and the splendid decorated ceiling. A private oratory for the Cardinal himself it may well have been. The fireplace would not conflict with this idea. It would be the room where he retired alone to pray or to make confession. His public devotion demanded and received, according to the idea of the time, a more stately setting.

A curious and happy variety has been formed by the restoration of this charming little Tudor room, which is now called "Cardinal Wolsey's Closet," close to the communication gallery and the Queen's great staircase. The ceiling, with its beautiful panels highly decorated, and a cornice of rich design, is in effective contrast to the sprawling goddesses of La Guerre, a few feet away. It is a delightful reminder of the sixteenth century amid the surroundings of the eighteenth. Here Wolsey and George II. touch each other. We find ourselves again, when we seem to be yet in Wren's buildings, after all among the original work of the second court.

Wolsey's Oratory or Confessionary

V

In strange contrast to the rooms of Wolsey, without and within, is the colonnade built by Wren on the south side of the court. Even the most loyal admirers of the great man's work may be pardoned if they regret its conjunction with the late domestic Gothic and the Perpendicular windows to south, east, and north. Seven Ionic columns, entablature, balustrade, every classic adornment which may cheerfully consort with William III. in a toga and a laurel wreath, or George II. disguised as a Roman general, are hardly in keeping with the great hall of Henry VIII. But the colonnade in itself is stately, graceful, perfectly proportioned. Some entrance there must be to the great staircase, which is a magnificent example of the great master's power.

The contrast with the old work is carefully made as little offensive as possible. Wren might have built a complete Palladian facade. He preferred to give as little of new work as he could. Historical continuity, indeed, can only be obtained at a price; and we may be thankful that the continuous occupation of Hampton Court for three centuries has given us no more abrupt contrasts than this.

Of the details of the court much might be said, but the artist can best picture them. The great astronomical clock itself, dated 1540, and made for Henry VIII., is as much an enigma to the ordinary visitor as it is probably a terror to those who live near it. The ornamental work about the first two courts is also of great interest. The most striking feature is the series of terra-cotta busts of the Roman emperors, executed by Gian da Maiano—"rotundæ imagines ex terra depictæ"—that, is, circular portraits of terra-cotta in relief, designed by their artist for "Anton Court." They are medallions surrounded with rich borders, and are still but little damaged, and of very great artistic interest. Decorations they are rather of an Italian palace than of an English Gothic house, and strange they look against the flat, undecorated Tudor brickwork. The ugly shelters that protect them from the weather are an indication of their exotic character. But they are one of the most

charming features of the place. The finest, perhaps is the medallion of Otho, in a helmet, on the right hand of the inner tower opposite the clock. The beautiful terra-cotta, too, of Wolsey's arms under the clock should not be forgotten; it is perhaps by the same artist.

The numerous side-courts to the north, with quaint stairways, massive roofs, dark corners, beautiful pro buttresses, and windows and gables, and every sort of delightful surprise, must be examined in detail. At every turn the artist finds a subject, and his description says what words cannot say. The Lord Chamberlain's Court, the Master-Carpenter's Court, the Court near the Great Kitchen, the Back Court, the Chapel Court, and others, have each their charm. And the Great Kitchen itself, with its high roof and its grand open space, like a great hall, its hatches, and the approaches to it, form a series of characteristic pictures. So we turn back to the Clock-tower, and mount the stair from Anne Bullen's gate.

VI

The Great Hall itself, with the rooms that open from it, forms the most magnificent series of interiors that the Palace now presents. The hall was begun when Wolsey was dead. The Record Office contains all the accounts of its making, of the expenses of material and work, and even of every piece of painting and carving. It was hurried on with all the impetuosity of the King in seizing every pleasure with rapidity.

The staircase that leads up from Anne Bullen's gateway corresponds to another stair leading on the other side from the kitchen, as in the arrangement of many college halls, notably Merton College at Oxford.

The hall is entered through a screen of dark oak, above which is the Minstrels' Gallery.

By two points the visitor is immediately struck as he enters the hall—its size and the magnificence of the roof. The later is what is called a single hammer-beam roof, divided into seven compartments. The beams are terminated by elaborate pendants, 4 feet 10 inches long, very rich in ornament, fleur-de-lys, and putti, animals, and conventional flower designs. The springs of the side arches, again, are elaborately ornamented. The spandrels have the arms of Henry and Jane Seymour. The "Louvre" has disappeared, but otherwise the roof is much as it was when Henry's last wife was proclaimed queen in 1543. The whole effect is one of exceeding richness, especially since the colour has been restored with a more than Tudor profuseness.

There seems some doubt as to whether the dais which now exists is original, or rather whether there was originally a daïs at all. Some have considered that the hall marks the period at which dining in public had died out, and that the King dined in the room at the east end, sometimes called the "With-drawing-chamber." But this is almost certainly an error. The hall rather emphasises an attempt to restore or to revive the public dining, and the large

The Great Oriel to Hall

window at the south-east was evidently intended to light the daïs. It was here, tradition says, that Surrey the poet wrote with a diamond some lines on the fair Geraldine.

From the hall we pass into the Withdrawing-room, more properly named the Great Guard or Watching-chamber. By this, access to the great hall was obtained from the royal apartments, which in Henry's day extended to the east of the Clock-court. Here the guards waited, and through this passed the applicants for an audience. It forms really an ante-chamber to many different parts of the Palace—to the Queen's lodgings, the "haunted gallery" and chapel, to the Horn-room, which leads to stairs down to the kitchen, as well as to the King's rooms. The room is over sixty feet long and nearly thirty wide, and its height is twenty-nine and a half feet. It is thus in striking contrast to the great hall. Its low flat ceiling, with oak pendants with the arms of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, is full of character and richness. The old tapestry still hangs on the walls, and the room is chiefly lighted by the great bay window, which extends to the whole height.

From the Watching-chamber the Horn-room is entered. Through this the dishes were brought up to the high table on the dais of the hall. The three rooms together give the happiest example left in England of a great dwelling-place of Henry VIII.'s day.

VII

So, leaving the Tudor buildings of their different dates, we pass to the complete contrast of the new Fountain Court. The second court had after Elizabeth's day been called by that name, but when the fountain was removed from it, and Wren's new building rose on the site of the old Cloister Green Court, the title was transferred.

It is late in the day to enter the lists in defence of Wren. Critics must be content to differ. Some may think that these buildings have "an air of pretentious meanness," while others raise perpetual protest against any architecture but Gothic as unnatural in "these realms." But Wren's work, as we see it at Hampton Court, seems to many almost the perfection of colour in the contrast of white and red, and as the most comfortable, and at the same time stately and dignified, style of domestic architecture for an age which demands both dignity and comfort. The design of the Fountain Court as seen from within consists of four storeys resting on broad classical arches supported by square piers. The first feature that attracts notice, here and in the outside facing parks and gardens, is the exactness of the proportions. The three rows of windows exactly correspond, and cover the space marked out for them by decoration on the centre of the arches. The columns fall exactly below the space which is unrelieved by light.

Fountain Court

The first floor consists of the state apartments. Above is the half-storey, or entresol, the windows of part of which light the larger state-rooms, while the others, as those of the top storey, belong to private apartments. The design of the whole is as simple as it is regular. The decoration, on the other hand, where it occurs, is elaborate and rich. The lion-skins round the windows, the flowers within the arches, are carved with that stately conventional grace which is one of the most prominent points of the work of this period. The cloisters are admirably proportioned, cool on the hottest day, and shaded from wind and rain, which too often in a cloister renders one side, at least, useless in a storm. The whole is surmounted by a high balustrade.