On Plate [L] two brackets will be noticed, for the support respectively of one and three China jars.
A typical English mansion of this period is Holme Lacy in Herefordshire. Though dating from Tudor days, it was partly rebuilt and decorated in the reign of William III. The principal apartments are well proportioned, and are embellished with richly stuccoed ceilings, with compartments of flowers and other designs. The “saloon” is particularly remarkable for its ceiling of pendent flowers and fruits, and carvings by Grinling Gibbons over the chimney-piece. Superb carvings by this great master, representing birds, shell-fish, fruit and flowers, are to be seen in all of the rooms on the ground floor, which communicate with one another by folding doors. The gardens, too, are noticeable, for they were also laid out in the style of King William’s day, and contain yew hedges of extraordinary height and thickness.
At this period English and Dutch taste were identical. This is only what we might expect when we consider the bonds that united the reigning houses and nobility of the two countries. Mary, the eldest daughter of Charles I, married the Prince of Orange; and their son, William, married Mary, the daughter of James II. During this period, also, some of the English nobility went to the Low Countries for wives. In 1650, the Earl of Derby married Dorothea Helena, a daughter of John Baron de Rupa, in Holland. She was a Maid of Honour of another ill-fated Stuart, Elizabeth, the beautiful Queen of Bohemia. Baron Colepepper married Margaret van Hesse, and the Earl of Arlington married another Dutch woman, Isabella, daughter of Henry of Nassau, Lord of Auverquerque, in the early days of the Restoration. The Earl of Bellomont married Isabella’s sister. The Earl of Ailesbury, in 1700, married Charlotte d’Argenteau, Countess d’Esseneux and Baroness de Melobroeck in Flanders: and the list might be extended. Incidentally we may note that, in 1646, the Earl of Berkeley married Elizabeth Massingberd, the daughter of the treasurer of the East India Company.
It has already been noted that Charles II was hospitably entertained in Holland at his sister’s court during part of his exile. We have also seen that James II was a connoisseur in Oriental art products. When the daughter of the latter, Mary, married her cousin William and settled down in Holland, her mind was fully receptive to Dutch tastes and ways of living. When she became Queen of England, on the exile of her father, it was a Dutch palace into which she transformed Hampton Court, that splendid enforced gift of Wolsey’s to Henry VIII. The English student, therefore, need not cross the Channel to study Dutch interior decoration and furniture of the close of the seventeenth century. The majority of the rooms and grounds are still practically in the same condition as they were when inhabited by William and Mary, under whose direct orders the work was designed and supervised by Marot and Sir Christopher Wren. A considerable amount of the Marot furniture still survives there. Defoe tells us in his Tour (1724):
Plate XLIX.—Mirrors and Sconces, by Marot.
“Her Majesty (Mary) had here a fine apartment (Hampton Court), with a set of lodgings for her private retreat only, but most exquisitely furnished, particularly a fine chintz bed, then a great curiosity; another of her own work while in Holland, very magnificent, and several others; and here also was Her Majesty’s fine collection of delft ware, which indeed was very large and fine; and here was also a vast stock of fine china-ware, the like whereof was not then to be seen in England; the long gallery, as above, was filled with this china, and every other place where it could be placed with advantage.”
Although an Englishwoman, Mary had all the virtues and tastes of a Dutch vrouw. She kept her husband informed of all that happened from day to day, bewailed his absence and neglect, and busied herself and her Maids of Honour with needlework, and, perhaps, with tenderly dusting her cherished porcelain. When in London, she used to spend many an hour and all her pocket money shopping at the India houses and in the New Exchange. She set the fashion for china-mania, and may well have inspired Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s lines:
“What shall I do to spend the hateful day ...
Strait then I’ll dress and take my wonted range