GREAT HALL, HADDON.
To see Chatsworth to perfection it should be visited when the wooded heights in the background are rich in their autumnal colouring. The approach from Beeley village through the park and along the bank of the Derwent at this season of the year, and the view from the house and avenues of the river and park, are particularly beautiful. The elaborate waterworks recall the days of the grand monarque, and an al fresco shower-bath may be enjoyed beneath a copper willow tree, the kind of practical joke that was popular in the old Spring Gardens in London in Charles II.'s time. In addition to the splendid paintings, are numerous sketches by Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, etc., which came from the famous forty days' sale of 1682, when the works collected by Sir Peter Lely were dispersed.
Of the stately mansions erected by Bess of Hardwick, the building Countess of Shrewsbury,—Chatsworth, Oldcotes, Hardwick, Bolsover, and Worksop,—Hardwick is the most untouched and perfect. The last remaining bit of the older Chatsworth House was removed just a century after Bess's death, so the present building must not be associated with her name, nor indeed can any rooms at Hardwick have been occupied by Mary Queen of Scots, as is sometimes stated, for the house was not begun until after her death. If the queen was ever at Hardwick, it was in the older mansion, of which very considerable ruins remain. The error, of course, arises from one of the rooms at Hardwick being named "Mary Queen of Scots' room," which contains the bed and furniture from the room she occupied at Chatsworth; and the velvet hangings of the bed bearing her monogram, and the rich coverlet, are indeed in her own needlework.
Bess of Hardwick in many respects was like her namesake the strong-minded queen; and when her fourth better-half had gained his experience and sought sympathy from the Bishop of Lichfield, he received the following consoling reply: "Some will say in yor L. behalfe tho' the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and, therefore, licke enough to shorten yr life, if shee shulde kepe you company. Indede, my good Lo. I have heard some say so; but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a just cause of sep[ar]acon betweene a man and wiefe, I thinke fewe men in Englande woulde keepe their wiefes longe; for it is a common jeste, yet treue in some sense, that there is but one shrewe in all the worlde, and evy man bathe her; and so evy man might be rydd of his wife, that wolde be rydd of a shrewe." But with all her faults the existence of Hardwick and Bolsover alone will cover a multitude of sins. A fortune-teller predicted that so long as she kept building she would never die; and had not the severity of the winter of 1607 thrown her masons out of employment, her ladyship might have survived to show us what she could do with the vacant space at Aldwych.
HARDWICK HALL.
There is something peculiarly majestic and stately about Hardwick Hall. It is one mass of lofty windows. It is rarely occupied as a dwelling, and one would like to see it lighted up like Chatsworth at Christmas time. But with the setting sun shining on the windows it looks a blaze of light—a huge beacon in the distance. With the exception of the ornamental stone parapet of the roofs, in which Bess' initials "E.S." stand out conspicuously, the mansion is all horizontal and perpendicular lines; but the regularity is relieved by the broken outline of the garden walls, with their picturesque array of tall halberd-like pinnacles.