Although the grandeur and magnificence of the mansion became the theme of poetic inspiration, and evoked the satirical remarks of a poetical writer whose verse is calculated to survive the finest building of stone, very little as to detail occurs concerning it in the prosaic pages of topography. Three architects appear to have been employed on the building, namely: Gibbs, James of Greenwich, and Sheppard, who designed the theatres in Goodman's Fields and Covent Garden; and Dr. Alexander Blackwell, the author of a "Treatise on Agriculture," superintended the laying out of the grounds and pleasure-grounds. expense of the building and furniture is said to have amounted to £200,000. Gough, in his "Additions to Camden," sets down the cost at a quarter of a million sterling. It is somewhat strange that no painting of Canons, as it was in its glory, is known to exist; nor is there any engraving of it in the print-room of the British Museum, though there are two elevations of its principal front in the King's Library, dated in 1721 and 1730, engraved by Hulsberg. These display its chief features: eleven windows in three tiers above one another, divided by lofty columns, the cornice at the top being crowned with six or seven classical and symThe house was commenced in 1715, when the bolical statues, not unlike those to be seen in old north front was built by Strong, the mason who was employed on the building of St. Paul's Cathedral. "It stood," writes Lysons, in his "Environs of London," "at the end of a spacious avenue, being placed diagonally, so as to show two sides of the building, which at a distance gave the appearance of a front of prodigious extent. Vertue describes it as 'a noble square pile, all of stone; the four sides almost alike, with statues on the front; within was a small square of brick, not handsome; the out houses of brick and stone, very convenient and well-disposed; the hall richly adorned with marble statues, busts, &c. ; the ceiling of the staircase by Thornhill; the grand apartments finely adorned with paintings, sculpture, and furniture' (Strawberry Hill MSS.). The columns which supported the building were all of marble, as was the great staircase, each step of which was made of an entire block, above twenty feet in length. The whole | drawings of the "Queen's House," the predecessor of Buckingham Palace. The building also bore a strong family likeness to Wanstead House, Essex, of which we shall give a description later on in this volume. In the "Gentleman's Tour through Great Britain," Canons is said to have been "one of the most magnificent palaces in England, built with a profusion of expense, and so well furnished within, that it had hardly its equal. The plastering and gilding were the work of the famous Pargotti, an Italian. The great salon, or hall, was painted by Paolucci. . . . The avenue was spacious and majestic; and as it gave you the view of two fronts joined, as it were, in one, the distance not admitting you to see the angle which was in the centre, so you were agreeably drawn in to think the front of the house almost twice as large as it was. And yet when you came nearer you were Little Stanmore.] THE FAMILY OF BRYDGES. again surprised by seeing the winding passage opening, as it were, a new front to the eye of near one hundred and twenty feet wide, which you had not seen before; so that you were lost awhile in looking near at hand for what you so plainly saw a great way off." The building, which was in the Classical or Palladian style, appears to have been designed with the view of standing for ages, seeing that the walls were "twelve feet thick below, and nine feet above." The north front of the mansion was adorned with pilasters and columns of stone; and above every window in each front was an antique head carved in stone, and at the top of each front were ranged statues as large as life. The locks and hinges to the doors of the state rooms were of gold or silver, and the fitting-up of the apart ments matched this costliness. Altogether, Canons must have been exceedingly magnificent. The park, several miles in extent, swarmed with deer, and avenues of elms led to each corner of the house from the surrounding roads. The principal avenue, nearly a mile long, was on the side towards Edgware, and the entrance to it was gained by iron gates enriched with the arms of Chandos, the stone 289 sergeants of the army, whom the duke took out of Chelsea College to guard the whole, and perform the same duty at night as the watchmen do in London, and to attend his Grace to chapel on Sundays." Few families have played a more conspicuous part in the history of England than that of Brydges, Lords Chandos of Sudeley, and afterwards Dukes of Chandos. Sir Bernard Burke traces them up to one Sir Simon de Bruge, or Brugge, a knight of large possessions in the county of Hereford in the reign of Henry III., whose immediate descendants for several generations represented both that county and also Gloucestershire in Parliament, whilst one of them fell fighting at Agincourt, and several married the heiresses of illustrious houses. One of their descendants, Sir John Bruges, held Boulogne as governor against the French king in the reign of Henry VIII., who afterwards constituted him Governor of the Tower, and gave him a grant of the manor and honour of Sudeley Castle, which his grandson gallantly held for King Charles against the Parliamentary Roundheads. Henry also created him Lord Chandos of Sudeley, in consideration not only of his nobility and loyalty, but of his quality, valour, and other virtues. Whilst his elder son continued the line of the Lords Chandos, his younger son became the father of a line of baronets, who adopted the orthography of Brydges, and were seated for some generations at Wilton Castle, in Herefordshire, a pleasant seat on the Wye. Sir James Brydges, the third baronet, by the failure and extinction of the elder line about 200 years ago, succeeded to the Barony of Chandos, and was summoned as such to the House of Peers, and sent as ambassador to Constantinople. married the daughter and heiress of a rich Turkey merchant, who proved herself a "fruitful vine," as she brought him no less than twenty-two children, fifteen of whom lived to be christened, and seven grew up to manhood and womanhood. THE DUKE OF CHANDOS. This pillars being crowned with the supporters. avenue was broad enough to admit of three coaches going abreast, and had a large round basin of water in the middle. In an account of Canons, written before its demolition, are the following particulars concerning the adjacent grounds:-"The gardens are well designed in a vast variety, and the canals very large and noble. There is a spacious terrace that descends to a parterre, which has a row of gilded vases on each side down to the great canal; and in the middle, fronting the canal, is a gilt gladiator. The gardens, being divided by iron balustrades, and not by walls, are seen all at one view from any part of them. In the kitchen-garden are curious bee-hives of glass; and at the end of each of the chief avenues there are neat lodgings for eight old He James Brydges, the builder of Canons, was born But in 1673, and, in the lifetime of his father, wife became, according to an old English custom, was elected knight of the shire for Herefordshire the purchaser's own, to do with as he would. in several successive Parliaments. In 1707 he the duke was a noble-minded gentleman; the was called to the Council of Prince George of cast-off wife was treated by him as his ward, and Denmark in the affairs of the Admiralty, and placed where she would be educated and moulded was afterwards, as stated above, appointed Pay- into a lady. The result of his care gave him commaster-General of the Forces on active service. plete satisfaction; and, some years later, when his With reference to the large sums of money which second duchess died childless, in 1735, his Grace he secured to himself out of the above offices, raised the whilom ostler's cast-off spouse to be his Smollett, in his continuation of Hume's "History," third wife. It is certain that the duke never repented writes:-" Mr. Brydges accounted for all the moneys of his bargain, for he says in his will :—“I owe the that had passed through his hands excepting three greatest comfort I have enjoyed in this life (since I millions ;" and he adds that "all means had have been blessed with her) to my duchess, Lydia proved ineffectual to deter and punish those indi- | Catherine;" and he orders that she shall be buried viduals who shamefully pillaged their country; the villany was so complicated, the vice so general, and the delinquents so powerfully screened by artifice and interest, as to elude all inquiry." At the time of his marriage with the daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Lake of Canons, he appears to have had a town house in Albemarle Street, for Dean Swift writes, March 3, 1711:— "Mr. Brydges' house in Albemarle Street was much damaged by a fire at Sir William Wyndham's, next door." Lord Chandos died in 1714, and was buried in the parish church of Whitchurch. On the accession of George I., his son and successor was created Viscount Wilton and Earl of Carnarvon, and in 1719 he was advanced to the Marquisate of Carnarvon and Dukedom of Chandos. in the same depository as his own corpse, and that a marble figure of her should be set up in the monument room, but it was not to cost more than £200. A curious book in the British Museum, bound in some crimson velvet that remained over and above the quantity required for covering the coffin of this duchess, tells this story, and much more also, about Canons and its master. Grace. On April 22, 1736, Mrs. Pendarves writes to her friend, Dean Swift:-"The Duke of Chandos's marriage has made a great noise, and the poor duchess is often reproached with her being bred up in Burr Street, Wapping." To this a note is attached, to the effect that "she was a Lady Davall, widow of Sir Thomas Davall, and had a fortune of £40,000." This is borne out by the About this time a curious event is said to have inscription on her tomb; so that it would appear happened to the duke. When travelling to or from that the beautiful victim who had been rescued by Herefordshire, his Grace stopped at the "Castle Inn" the duke was married in the interval to a city at Marlborough, when, as he drove into the court-knight as her second husband, and that she became yard, his ears were deafened by piercing screams. a third time a wife herself when she married his The duke hastily alighted, and beheld a very lovely young woman, scarcely beyond girlhood, in the grasp of a powerful fellow, the ostler of the inn, who was striking her in a most ferocious manner with a heavy horse-whip. Blood was streaming from her face, neck, and arms; and a crowd stood round, filled with compassion, yet afraid to interfere between the ferocious brute and his victim. But the duke pressed through the group, and sternly ordered the ruffian to desist. The man, daunted by the look and manner of the nobleman, let his whip and victim both fall to the ground, and replied to his questions that the young woman was his wife, and that he had a right to do what he liked to her, offering, however, at the same time, to sell this right to his Grace for a sum of money. Really touched by the sufferings of the beautiful girl, the duke unhesitatingly closed with the offer a sum of £20 was gleefully accepted by the brute of a husband, and the stricken young It would be scarcely possible to exaggerate the pomp and grandeur which marked even the everyday life of the owner of "Princely Canons." The author of "A Journey through England" says of the duke :-"When his Grace goes to church he is attended by his Swiss Guards, ranged as the Yeomen of the Guards at St. James's Palace; his music also plays when he is at table; he is served by gentlemen in the best order; and I must say that very few sovereign princes live with the same magnificence, grandeur, and good order." Though most liberal, his Grace never was improvident or lavishly profuse. When he first arranged the plan of Canons, one of the ablest accountants in England was employed by him to make out a table of yearly, monthly, weekly, and even daily, expenditure. This scheme was engraved on a large copper-plate, and was an extraordinary specimen of economical wisdom. The duke sold Little Stanmore.] LIBERALITY OF THE DUKE OF CHANDOS. all the garden fruit which was not required for his own table, and would say, "It is as much my property as the corn and hay and the produce of my fields." An aged man, who had been the duke's servant, and who appeared "The sad historian of the pensive scene," informed the writer of an article on Canons, published some forty years ago in the ChimneyCorner Companion, that in his occasional bounties to his labourers the duke would never exceed sixpence each. "This," he would say, "may do you good; more may make you idle and drunk." 291 "Epistle on False Taste," in the "Moral Essays," Where all cry out, 'What sums are thrown away!' In spite of great losses by his concerns in the African company, and by the Mississippi and South Sea speculations, the duke was ever a liberal patron of learning and merit, as the following story will show :-A clergyman whom he much esteemed was one day looking over the library at Canons, and was bidden by its noble owner to fix upon any book he liked, and it should be his. The gentleman very politely chose one of no great price, but afterwards found a bank bill of considerable value between its leaves. Greatly surprised, he brought the bill and the book back to Canons. The duke took back the bill, but only to exchange it for one of double the value, saying, "Accept that, sir, for your honesty." It was always said that the Duke of Chandos was abused by Pope under the name of Timon, and probably because his Grace had passed by and forgotten the spiteful little poet in his liberalities to men of letters. The following lines, from the The whole a labour'd quarry above ground; thighs, Just at his study door he'll bless your eyes." In his library the duke could boast of having a valuable collection of MS. records of Ireland before, during, and after the troubles of the Civil War, originally collected by Sir James Ware. When Lord Clarendon was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1686), he obtained these MSS. from the heir of Sir James, and brought them to England, and after his death they were bought by the Duke of Chandos. Dean Swift was very anxious that his Grace should present them to the public library at Dublin, but did not see his way to asking the favour. The following lines from the "Essay on Taste" are supposed to refer to the duke's library here: "His study with what authors is it stor'd? The duke's style of living was on a par with the splendour of his house. He dined in public, with flourishes of trumpets announcing each change of dishes. De Foe, in his "Tour through England" (1725), writes: "Here are continually maintained, and that in the dearest part of England as to house expenses, not less than one hundred and twenty in family, and yet a face of plenty appears in every part of it; nothing needful is withheld, nothing pleasant is restrained; every servant in the house is made easy, and his life comfortable." thus deals with the duke's style of living : "But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call: Pope So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear I curse such lavish cost and little skill, Yet hence the poor are cloth'd, the hungry fed; The garden and terraces, the hall, the library, and even the chapel (which was no other than the parish church of Whitchurch), come under the lash of the poet : "And now the chapel's silver bell you hear, "The graceless saints with which Laguerre disfigured the chapel walls of Canons," observes the author of the "Beauties of England," "probably identify the satire of Pope more unequivocally than any other circumstance of allusion in his essay; but assuredly the poet should have omitted to censure the Duke of Chandos for a want of correct taste as to music." In Hawkins's "History of Music" it is remarked that "his Grace determined on having Divine service performed in his chapel with all the aid that could be derived from To this end he revocal and instrumental music. tained some of the most celebrated performers of both kinds, and engaged the greatest masters of the time to compose anthems and services with instrumental accompaniments, after the manner of those performed in the churches of Italy." It appears that Handel composed not less than twenty of his finest anthems for the use of this chapel. Hogarth found a patron in the duke; and when Pope disgraced his muse by unjust and sarcastic wit levelled at the owner of Canons, the painter punished the bard of Twickenham by representing him as standing on a scaffold whitewashing Burlington House, and bespattering the Duke of Chandos's carriage as it passes along Piccadilly. Pope, in a letter written by him to Aaron Hill, denied that there was any truth in the supposition that the character of "Timon' in the essay above quoted was ever intended to apply to the Duke of Chandos; and in the Prologue to the Satires he poetically mentions, as the most severe enemy of an honest muse, that fop "Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend ; The public, however, would not give credit to See "Old and New London," Vol. IV., p. 263. |