Fig. 133.—Boughton House. North Front of House, with Stables beyond.
Fig. 134.—Boughton House. A Corner of the Entrance Front.
Fig. 135.—Boughton House. One of the State Rooms.
An ancestor had already, in the middle of the sixteenth century, built a fine house at Boughton, with a great hall covered by a roof of unusual beauty and excellence, and with wings and adjuncts of considerable extent. Ralph, Lord Montagu, proceeded to overlay this old house with his new work so completely (see plan, Fig. [132]) that it is only here and there, on the removal of panelling, or in the course of some minor alteration such as must from time to time occur in these old houses, that traces of the original building can be found. Fortunately the roof of the hall was preserved, but it was hidden, and remains hidden, by a new plaster ceiling on which Cheron painted a large and elaborate composition. The old house was taken as the nucleus of the new, but it was extended in various directions, especially on the north side, where a range of state rooms was erected with two boldly projecting wings (Fig. [133]). It is this part of the house which is reminiscent of Versailles, if the lofty windows and Mansard roofs can really be said to remind one of that vast and much more ornate palace. But the style of this particular work bears a certain resemblance to the grand stable buildings at Versailles; it is large in scale, sober and dignified in treatment (Fig. [134]). Indeed, it is so severe as to be thought dull by the casual visitor.
This reproach is not brought against the interior. The rooms are large and stately; their walls are panelled with the great, boldly moulded panels of the period (Fig. [135]); their ceilings are painted with the gay mythological subjects of Verrio and his school (see Figs. [310], [311]); the floors are filled with the tables, chairs, settees, cabinets, and bedsteads of the time. Portraits of the family[61] hang on the panelling, there are mirrors in which their glories were reflected, and knick-knacks which they handled. In other wings are rooms of less stateliness, intended for daily use; in the attics are long rows of still plainer rooms intended for the servants.
At the time it was built the house, no doubt, answered its purpose admirably; but times change and we change with them; and eventually the rooms were found to be cold, draughty, and inconveniently arranged—one leading, as a rule, out of another. There was space enough, but there were none of the comforts of modern life; no baths nor even any supply of water laid on; it all had to be carried long distances. The house became less constantly in use, and to this fact is largely owing the preservation of its ancient character. Nothing brings home to the mind the changes that have taken place in manners and customs during the last two centuries so forcibly as an attempt to live in an old unaltered house, where even the cooking appliances, although on a grand scale, are ill-adapted to modern needs; and it is only by drastic alterations in some of the less notable rooms that Boughton has been fitted for modern occupation.
Ralph was succeeded in 1708 by his son John, the second duke, who carried on such work as his father had left unfinished. He is responsible for several fireplaces, among other things, on which he made a considerable display of heraldry. The difference between the motif of Duke John’s heraldry and that of a hundred years earlier is that in the earlier work the aim was as much decorative as historic, while in the latter it was mainly historic. In James I.’s time the family arms were found to be excellent objects for ornamenting important panels, and if at the same time they ministered to family pride, so much the better. In Duke John’s case the aim of the heraldry is not so much to provide decoration as to set forth the descent of the ducal family and its alliances, especially the last alliance of all, the marriage of the Duke of Montagu with a daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough. It not inaptly illustrates the attitude of mind of the nobles of the time, their assumption of qualities which placed them on a plane above the rest of mankind, where “grandeur hears with a disdainful smile the short and simple annals of the poor.” The rest of mankind, however, concurred in the assumption, especially those who stood in need of patrons, and the literature of the eighteenth century makes it clear that noblemen and persons of quality wielded an influence which made their goodwill worth cultivating.