(412) Lady Pomfret bought the statues, after her lord's death, and presented them to the University of Oxford.
176 Letter 83 To John Chute, Esq. Stowe, Aug. 4, 1753
My dear Sir, You would deserve to be scolded, if you had not lost almost as much pleasure as you have disappointed me of.(413) Whether George Montagu will be so content With your commuting punishments, I don't know: I should think not; he "cried and roared all night"(414) when I delivered your excuse. He is extremely well-housed, after having roamed like a Tartar about the country with his whole personal estate at his heels. . There is an extensive view, which is called pretty: but Northamptonshire is no county to please me. What entertained me was, that he who in London -,vas grown an absolute recluse, is over head and ears in neighbours, and as popular as if he intended to stand for the county, instead of having given up the town. The very first morning after my arrival, as we were getting into the chaise to go to Wroxton, they notified a Sir Harry Danvers, a young squire, booted and spurred, and buckskin-breeche'd. "Will you drink any chocolate?" "No; a little wine and water, if you please."—I suspected nothing but that he had rode till he was dry. "Nicol`o, some wine and water." He desired the water might be warm—I began to stare; Montagu understood the dialect, and ordered a negus. I had great difficulty to keep my countenance, and still more when I saw the baronet finish a very large jug indeed. To be sure, he wondered as much at me e who did not finish a jug; and I could not help reflecting, that living always in the world makes one as unfit for living out of it, as always living out of it does for living in it. Knightley, the knight of the shire, has been entertaining all the parishes round with a turtle-feast, which, so far from succeeding, has almost made him suspected for a Jeu,, as the country parsons have not yet learned to wade into green fat.
The roads are very bad to Greatworth; and such numbers of gates, that if one loved punning one should call it the Gate-house. - The proprietor had a wonderful invention: the chimneys, which are of stone, have niches and benches in them, where the man used to sit and smoke. I had twenty disasters, according to custom; lost my way, and had my French boy almost killed by a fall with his horse: but I have been much pleased. When I was at Park-place I went to see Sir H. Englefield's,(415) which Mr. Churchill and Lady Mary prefer, but I think very undeservedly, to Mr. Southcote's. It is not above a quarter as extensive, and wants the river. There is a pretty view of Reading seen under a rude arch, and the water is well disposed. The buildings are very insignificant, and the house far from good. The town of Henley has been extremely disturbed with an engagement between the ghosts of Miss Blandy and her father, which continued so violent, that some bold persons, to prevent farther blood-shed, broke in, and found it was two jackasses which had got into the kitchen.
I felt strangely tempted to stay at Oxford and survey it at my leisure; but as I was alone, I had not courage. I passed by Sir James Dashwood'S,(416) a vast new house, situated so high that it seems to stand for the county as well as himself. I did look over Lord Jersey's(417) which was built for a hunting-box, and is still little better. But now I am going to tell you how delightful a day I passed at Wroxton. Lord Guildford has made George Montagu so absolutely viceroy over it, that we saw it more agreeable than you can conceive; roamed over the whole house, found every door open, saw not a creature, had an extreme good dinner, wine, fruit, coffee and tea in the library, were served by fairies, tumbled over the books, said one or two talismanic words, and the cascade played, and went home loaded with pine-apples and flowers.—You will take me for Monsieur de CoulangeS,(418) I describe eatables so feelingly; but the manner in which we were served made the whole delicious. The house was built by a Lord Downe in the reign of James the First; and though there is a fine hall and a vast dining-room below, and as large a drawing-room above, it is neither good nor agreeable; one end of the front was never finished, and might have a good apartment. The library is added by this Lord, and is a pleasant chamber. Except loads of portraits, there is no tolerable furniture. A whole-length of the first Earl of Downe is in the Bath-robes, and has a coif under the hat and feather. There is a charming picture of Prince Henry about twelve years old, drawing his sword to kill a stag, with a Lord Harrington; a good portrait of Sir Owen Hopton,(419) 1390; your pious grandmother, my Lady Dacre, which I think like you; some good Cornelius Johnsons; a Lord North, by Riley, good; and an extreme fine portrait by him of the Lord Keeper: I have never seen but few of the hand, but most of them have been equal to Lely and the best of Sir Godfrey. There is too a curious portrait of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford, said to be by Holbein. The chapel is new, but in a pretty Gothic taste, with a very long window of painted glass, very tolerable. The frieze is pendent, just in the manner I propose for the eating-room at Strawberry Hill. Except one scene, which is indeed noble, I cannot much commend the without-doors. This scene consists of a beautiful lake entirely shut in with wood: the head falls into a fine cascade, and that into a serpentine river, over which is a little Gothic seat like a round temple, lifted up by a shaggy mount. On an eminence in the park is an obelisk erected to the honour and at the expense of "optimus" and 1, munificentissimus" the late Prince of Wales, "in loci amoenitatem et memoriam advent`us ejus." There are several paltry Chinese buildings and bridges, which have the merit or demerit of being the progenitors of a very numerous race all over the kingdom: at least they were of the very first. In the church is a beautiful tomb of an Earl and Countess of Downe, and the tower is in a good plain Gothic style, ind was once, they tell you, still more beautiful; but Mr. Miller, who designed it, unluckily once in his life happened to think rather of beauty than of the water-tables, and so it fell down the first winter.
On Wednesday morning we went to see a sweet little chapel at Steane, built in 1620 by Sir Thomas Crewe, Speaker in the time of the first James and Charles. Here are remains of the mansion-house, but quite in ruins: the chapel is kept up by my Lord Arran, the last of the race. There are seven or eight monuments. On one is this epitaph, which I thought pretty enough:
"Conjux, casta parens felix, matrona pudica;
Sara viro, mundo Martha, Maria Deo."
On another is the most affected inscription I ever saw, written by two brothers on their sister: they say, "This agreeable mortal translated her into immortality such a day:" but I could not help laughing at one quaint expression, to which time has given a droll sense: "She was a constant lover of the best."
I have been here these two days, extremely amused and charmed indeed. Wherever you stand you see an Albano landscape. Half as many buildings I believe would be too many, but such a profusion gives inexpressible richness. You may imagine I have some private reflections entertaining enough, not very communicable to the company: the Temple of Friendship, in which, among twenty memorandums of quarrels, is the bust of Mr. Pitt: Mr. James Grenville is now in the house, whom his uncle disinherited for his attachment to that very Pylades, Mr. Pitt. He broke with Mr. Pope, who is deified in the Elysian fields, before the inscription for his head was finished. That of Sir John Barnard, which was bespoke by the name of a bust of my Lord Mayor, was by a mistake of the sculptor done for Alderman Perry. The statue of the King, and that "honori, laudi, virtuti divae Carolinae," make one smile, when one sees the ceiling where Britannia rejects and hides the reign of King * * * * But I have no patience at building and planting a satire! Such is the temple of modern virtue in ruins! The Grecian temple is glorious: this I openly worship: in the heretical corner of my heart I adore the Gothic building, which by some unusual inspiration Gibbs had made pure and beautiful and venerable. The style has a propensity to the Venetian or mosque Gothic, and the great column near it makes the whole put one in mind of the Place of St. Mark. The windows are throughout consecrated with painted glass; most of it from the priory at Warwick, a present from that foolish Greathead, who quarrelled with me (because his father was a gardener) for asking him if Lord Brook had planted much—Apropos to painted glass. I forgot to tell you of a sweet house which Mr. Montagu carried me to see, belonging to a Mr. Holman, a Catholic, and called Warkworth. The situation is pretty, the front charming, composed of two round and two square towers. The court within is incomplete on one side; but above stairs is a vast gallery with four bow-windows and twelve other large ones, all filled with the arms of the old peers of England, with all their quarterings entire. You don't deserve, after deserting me, that I should tempt you to such a sight; but this alone is worth while to carry you to Greatworth.
Adieu, my dear Sir! I return to Strawberry to-morrow, and forgive you enough not to deprive myself of the satisfaction of seeing you there whenever you have nothing else to do.