But although Burlington cannot be regarded as an architect who did anything great in design, he was a munificent patron of the art and of those who pursued it more practically.
Contemporary with him, and indeed starting a little before him, was another well-known but more skilful amateur, the witty dramatist, Sir John Vanbrugh, who has left behind him some of the largest and most ponderous houses ever built in England. His patrons and friends among the nobility were all esteemed good judges of architecture, and to their judgment he submitted at least one of his largest designs.
Among the noblemen who employed him was the third Earl of Carlisle, who conceived the idea of making himself a magnificent home at Castle Howard, in Yorkshire, to replace the ancient castle of Hinderskelf, which had been brought into the family by marriage with one of the co-heiresses of Lord Dacres. The scheme embraced not only a new palace, but a large lay out of plantations, vistas, lakes, temples, obelisks, lodges, and other objects of interest, such as had been employed by Le Nôtre at Versailles and elsewhere. The completion of his scheme is recorded in verses too bald (one would imagine) to be any but his lordship’s, engraved on an important obelisk. They give the date of commencement as 1702, the inscription is dated 1731, so that year may be held to have witnessed the fulfilment of the main project.
But the house had been occupied long before this; for in 1714 Lady Mary Wortley Montague wrote from Yorkshire to her husband, professing to be “in a great fright” about attempts from Scotland in favour of the Pretender. “The four young ladies at Castle Howard,” she says, were as much alarmed as she was, for their father had gone away and was not likely to return for months. They had asked her to join them, a suggestion which she was inclined to comply with, since Castle Howard would be a safe retreat, although rather like a nunnery, as no mortal man ever entered its doors in the absence of the father.
Fig. 148.—Lord Burlington’s Villa at Chiswick.
Drawn by A. C. Bossom.
It must have been early in the year 1699 that the earl called Vanbrugh to his assistance, for the latter writes on the 25th December that he had been that summer at Lord Carlisle’s, and had visited most of the great houses of the North. Amongst others he had been to Chatsworth, where he stayed four or five days, and had shown to the duke all the designs for Castle Howard, which he “absolutely approved.” Since then they had been submitted to a great many other critics, and as no objection had been raised to them, the stone was already being quarried and the foundations were to be laid in the spring. A model of the house was being prepared in wood, which was to be sent to Kensington for the criticism of the king.[66] Thus fortified with general approval the design was carried out, the works extending over some thirty years. The cost must have been very great, and in a later letter Vanbrugh tells how it was met in part, for in July 1707 he says that Lord Carlisle had “£2,000 from the Sharpers, and is gone down to lay it out in his buildings.”[67]
Although the whole of Vanbrugh’s design was not carried out the house is of great size and of palatial magnificence (Fig. [150]). Indeed no modern person can be incessantly as grand as the grandeur of the building demands. It requires innumerable servants to keep it in order, innumerable guests to make it cheerful. It involves a great drain upon the owner’s resources, both of temperament and of purse, to fill it with enough people to prevent its being dull, and to maintain it in suitable repair and tidiness. From a practical standpoint the corridors are too many and are out of all proportion to the rooms they serve. There are indeed no rooms of a size commensurate with the outside grandeur; most of them appear small and narrow, their height is as great as their width (Fig. [152]), and this must have tended, before the introduction of modern heating, to make them cold. The finest apartment is the hall (Fig. [151]), so large and lofty as to occupy an undue proportion of space compared with what is devoted to domestic use. Its effect is more nearly allied to what we are accustomed to associate with a large museum or other public building than with a house.
The view in “Vitruvius Britannicus” does more justice to Vanbrugh’s conception than does the building itself. The house is there shown with a subsidiary court on each side, one being devoted to laundries and so forth, and the other to stables. In front there was to have been a forecourt enclosed by a monumental fence with the main entrance gates on the axial line. Actually but one of the side courts was built, and the forecourt was not carried out. The road, instead of approaching the house directly opposite to the centre of the façade, thus giving the visitor a coup d’œil of the whole vast composition, approaches it laterally, close to the end of one of the wings, and it is only on passing the corner of the wing that the visitor is suddenly aware at close quarters of the recessed entrance front.