A casual remark in another letter is of interest, as showing what people thought of some of these large houses. He is speaking of Blenheim in a letter of July 1708. “He (Sir John Coniers) made mighty fine speeches upon the building, and took it for granted no subject’s house in Europe would approach it, which will be true if the Duke of Shrewsbury judges right in saying, ‘There is not in Italy so fine a house as Chatsworth,’ for this of Blenheim is, beyond all comparison, more magnificent than that.” He is certainly right as to magnificence, if not also as to the general pleasurable effect.
Vanbrugh’s houses may be taken as the highest manifestation of the spirit of the age in house building; the exaltation of social grandeur, the scenic magnificence of architecture. That they rather missed the mark in respect of comfort and convenience, as we understand those qualities, was not held to be a great drawback. Yet even contemporary voices were raised in protest, as may be gathered from Pope’s verses on “The Duke of Marlborough’s House at Woodstock,” wherein, after listening to an admirer’s description of its splendour, he suddenly interrupts him:—
“Thanks, Sir, I cried, ’tis very fine,
But where d’ye sleep, or where d’ye dine?
I find by all you have been telling,
That ’tis a house, but not a dwelling.”
Fig. 156.—STOWE, Buckinghamshire. View of Queen’s Theatre, from the Rotunda.
From an Engraving by Jean Rigaud.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the thirteenth of his admirable Discourses, remarks that Vanbrugh “was defrauded of the due reward of his merit by the wits of the time”; and we can heartily concur in his opinion as a painter, that Vanbrugh, “had originality of invention, he understood light and shade, and had great skill in composition.”