CHAPTER V.
The New House at Twickenham.—Its First Tenants.—Christened 'Strawberry Hill.'—Planting and Embellishing.—Fresh Additions.—Walpole's Description of it in 1753.—Visitors and Admirers.—Lord Bath's Verses.—Some Rival Mansions.—Minor Literature.—Robbed by James Maclean.—Sequel from The World.—The Maclean Mania.— High Life at Vauxhall.—Contributions to The World.—Theodore of Corsica.—Reconciliation with Gray.—Stimulates his Works.—The Poëmata-Grayo-Bentleiana.—Richard Bentley.—Müntz the Artist.—Dwellers at Twickenham.—Lady Suffolk and Mrs. Clive.
On the 5th of June, 1747, Walpole announces to Mann that he has taken a little new farm, just out of Twickenham. 'The house is so small that I can send it to you in a letter to look at: the prospect is as delightful as possible, commanding the river, the town [Twickenham], and Richmond Park; and, being situated on a hill, descends to the Thames through two or three little meadows, where I have some Turkish sheep and two cows, all studied in their colours for becoming the view. This little rural bijou was Mrs. Chenevix's, the toy woman à la mode,[70] who in every dry season is to furnish me with the best rain water from Paris, and now and then with some Dresden-china cows, who are to figure like wooden classics in a library; so I shall grow as much a shepherd as any swain in the Astræa.' Three days later, further details are added in a letter to Conway, then in Flanders with the Duke of Cumberland: 'You perceive by my date [Twickenham, 8 June] that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little play-thing-house, that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filagree hedges:
'"A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd,
And little finches wave their wings in gold."'[71]
'Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect; ... Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville predecessed me here, and instituted certain games called cricketalia, which have been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.'[72]
The house thus whimsically described, which grew into the Gothic structure afterwards so closely associated with its owner's name, was not, even at this date, without its history. It stood on the left bank of the Thames, at the corner of the Upper Road to Teddington, not very far from Twickenham itself. It had been built about 1698 as a 'country box' by a retired coachman of the Earl of Bradford, and, from the fact that he was supposed to have acquired his means by starving his master's horses, was known popularly as Chopped-Straw Hall. Its earliest possessor not long afterwards let it out as a lodging-house, and finally, after several improvements, sub-let it altogether. One of its first tenants was Colley Cibber, who found it convenient when he was in attendance for acting at Hampton Court; and he is said to have written in it the comedy called The Refusal; or, the Ladies' Philosophy, produced at Drury Lane in 1721. Then, for eight years, it was rented by the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Talbot, who was reported to have kept in it a better table than the extent of its kitchen seemed, in Walpole's judgement, to justify. After the Bishop came a Marquis, Henry Bridges, son of the Duke of Chandos; after the Marquis, Mrs. Chenevix, the toy-woman, who, upon her husband's death, let it for two years to the nobleman who predecessed Walpole, Lord John Philip Sackville. Before this, Mrs. Chenevix had taken lodgers, one of whom was the celebrated theologian, Père Le Courrayer. At the expiration of Lord John Sackville's tenancy, Walpole took the remainder of Mrs. Chenevix's lease; and in 1748 had grown to like the situation so much that he obtained a special act to purchase the fee simple from the existing possessors, three minors of the name of Mortimer. The price he paid was £1356 10s. Nothing was then wanting but the name, and in looking over some old deeds this was supplied. He found that the ground on which it stood had been known originally as 'Strawberry-Hill-Shot.' 'You shall hear from me,' he tells Mann in June, 1748, 'from Strawberry Hill, which I have found out in my lease is the old name of my house; so pray, never call it Twickenham again.'
The transformation of the toy-woman's 'villakin' into a Gothic residence was not, however, the operation of a day. Indeed, at first, the idea of rebuilding does not seem to have entered its new owner's mind. But he speedily set about extending his boundaries, for before 26 December, 1748, he has added nine acres to his original five, making fourteen in all,—a 'territory prodigious in a situation where land is so scarce.' Among the tenants of some of the buildings which he acquired in making these additions was Richard Francklin, the printer of the Craftsman, who, during Sir Robert Walpole's administration, had been taken up for printing that paper. He occupied a small house in what was afterwards known as the Flower Garden, and Walpole permitted him to retain it during his lifetime. Walpole's letters towards the close of 1748 contain numerous references to his assiduity in planting. 'My present and sole occupation' he says in August, 'is planting, in which I have made great progress, and talk very learnedly with the nurserymen, except that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious West Indian flowering shrub. Then the deliberation with which trees grow is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience.' Two months later he is 'all plantation, and sprouts away like any chaste nymph in the Metamorphosis.' In December, we begin to hear of that famous lawn so well known in the later history of the house. He is 'making a terrace the whole breadth of his garden on the brow of a natural hill, with meadows at the foot, and commanding the river, the village [Twickenham], Richmond-hill, and the park, and part of Kingston' A year after this (September, 1749), while he is still 'digging and planting till it is dark,' come the first dreams of building. At Cheney's, in Buckinghamshire, he has seen some old stained glass, in the windows of an ancient house which had been degraded into a farm, and he thinks he will beg it of the Duke of Bedford (to whom the farm belongs), as it would be 'magnificent for Strawberry-castle.' Evidently he has discussed this (as yet) château en Espagne with Montagu. 'Did I tell you [he says] that I have found a text in Deuteronomy to authorise my future battlements? "When thou buildest a new house, then shalt thou make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thy house, if any man fall from thence."' In January, the new building is an established fact, as far as purpose is concerned. In a postscript to Mann he writes: 'I must trouble you with a commission, which I don't know whether you can execute. I am going to build a little gothic castle at Strawberry Hill. If you can pick me up any fragments of old painted glass, arms, or anything, I shall be excessively obliged to you. I can't say I remember any such things in Italy; but out of old chateaus, I imagine, one might get it cheap, if there is any.'