Before I begin my description, I must, however, give the excellent inns their meed of praise. In the country, even in small villages, you find them equally neat and well attended. Cleanliness, great convenience, and even elegance, are always combined in them; and a stranger is never invited to eat, sit and sleep in the same room, as in the German inns, in which there are generally only ball-rooms and bed-chambers.
The table-service generally consists of silver and porcelain: the furniture is well contrived; the beds always excellent; and the friendly, flickering fire never fails to greet you.
A detailed description of this morning’s breakfast will give you the best idea of the wants and the comfortable living of English travellers.
N. B. I had ordered nothing but tea. The following is what I found set out when I quitted my bed-room,—in a little town scarcely so extensive as one of our villages. In the middle of the table smoked a large tea-urn, prettily surrounded by silver tea-canisters, a slop-basin, and a milk-jug. There were three small Wedgwood plates, with as many knives and forks, and two large cups of beautiful porcelain: by them stood an inviting plate of boiled eggs, another ‘ditto’ of broiled ‘oreilles de cochon à la Sainte Ménéhould;’ a plate of muffins, kept warm by a hot water-plate; another with cold ham; flaky white bread, ‘dry and buttered toast,’ the best fresh butter in an elegant glass vessel; convenient receptacles for salt and pepper, English mustard and ‘moutarde de maille;’ lastly, a silver tea-caddy, with very good green and black tea.
This most luxurious meal,—which I hope you will think I have described as picturesquely as a landscape,—is, moreover, in proportion very cheap; for it was charged in the bill only two shillings (16 Gr.). Travelling is however, on the whole, very expensive,—especially the posting (which is exactly four times as much as with us,) and the fees which you are expected to be giving all day long, in all directions, to every species of servant and attendant.
At ten o’clock we reached Cashiobury Park, the seat of the Earl of Essex. I sent in my name to him; upon which his son-in-law, Mr. F——, (whom I had formerly known in Dresden, and with whom I was happy to renew my acquaintance,) came to conduct me about. The house is modern Gothic, and magnificently furnished. You enter a hall with coloured windows, which afford a view into an inner court laid out as a flower-garden: leaving the hall, you go through a long gallery on the side, hung with armour, to the rich carved oak staircase leading to the library, which here generally serves as principal drawing-room. The library has two small cabinets looking on the garden, and filled with rarities. Among these I was particularly pleased with two numerous sketches by Denon, representing the levée of Cardinal Bernis at Rome, and a dinner at Voltaire’s, with the Abbé Maury, Diderot, Helvetius, d’Alembert, and other philosophers,—all portraits.
I was much interested too by a complete toilet of Marie Antoinette’s, on which the portraits of her husband and of Henry the Fourth were painted in several places. From the library you go into an equally rich second drawing-room; and from thence into the dining-room. Near to both these rooms was a green-house, in the form of a chapel; and in every apartment windows down to the ground afforded a view of the noble park and the river flowing through it. On a distant rising ground you look along a very broad avenue of limes, exactly at the end of which, during a part of the summer, the sun sets: its horizontal rays passing along the whole length of the green-house must afford the most splendid natural decoration, heightened by the reflection of its beams from a large mirror at the end. The walls of the dining-room are covered with oaken ‘boiserie,’ with beautiful cornices and carving; the furniture is of rose-wood, silk and velvet; and valuable pictures in antique gilded frames adorn the walls. The proportions of the room may be called hall-like, and the whole is regularly heated to a temperature of fourteen degrees of Reaumur.
The somewhat remote stables and all the domestic offices, &c., are on the left, connected with the house by an embattled wall; so that the building extends along an uninterrupted length of a thousand feet.
The flower-gardens occupy a very considerable space. Part of them are laid out in the usual style; that is, a long green-house at the bottom, in front of which are several ‘berceaux’ and shady walks around a large grass-plat, which is broken with beds of all forms, and dotted with rare trees and shrubs. But here was also something new;—a deep secluded valley of oval form, around which is a thick belt of evergreens, and rock-plants planted impenetrably thick on artificial rockeries; a background of lofty fir-trees and oak, with their tops waving in the wind; and, at one end of the grass-plat, a single magnificent lime-tree surrounded by a bench. From this point the whole of the little valley was covered with an embroidered parterre of the prettiest forms, although perfectly regular. The egress from this enclosure lay through a grotto overgrown with ivy, and lined with beautiful stones and shells, into a square rose-garden surrounded with laurel hedges, in the centre of which is a temple, and opposite to the entrance a conservatory for aquatic plants. The rose-beds are cut in various figures, which intersect each other. A walk, overarched with thick beeches neatly trimmed with the shears, winds in a sinuous line from this point to the Chinese garden, which is likewise enclosed by high trees and walls, and contains a number of vases, benches, fountains, and a third green-house,—all in the genuine Chinese style. Here were beds surrounded by circles of white, blue, and red sand, fantastic dwarf plants, and many dozens of large China vases placed on pedestals, thickly overgrown with trailing evergreens and exotics. The windows of the house were painted like Chinese hangings, and convex mirrors placed in the interior, which reflected us as in a ‘camera obscura.’ I say nothing of the endless rows of rich hot-houses and forcing-beds, nor of the kitchen-gardens. You may estimate the thing for yourself, when I repeat to you Mr. F——’s assurance that the park, gardens, and house cost ten thousand a-year to keep up. The Earl has his own workmen in every department; masons, carpenters, cabinet-makers, &c., each of whom has his prescribed province. One has, for instance, only to keep the fences in order, another the rooms, a third the furniture, &c.; a plan well worthy of imitation in the country.
I paid my visit to the venerable Earl, who kept his chamber with the gout, and received from the kind friendly old man the best information, and some (highly necessary) cards of admittance for my further journey.