The Picture-Gallery.
The furniture is of the most costly and curious character, and in perfect preservation. Much of it, indeed, belongs to the time, or to a time not much later, when the house was constructed, and indicates the artistic feeling and manual dexterity of the foundress. Here are beds of state, with their curtains of black and silver; Venetian velvets and damascenes; “cloth of Raynes to slepe on softe,” and hangings “raied with gold;” hard cushions of blue baudekyn; high-seated chairs, covered with samit and powdered with flowers, yet most uncomfortable for use; screens of crimson velvet, covered with patterns worked in silver wires; couches, every portion of which is thickly overlaid with threads of silver and of gold; tables with legs twisted and turned about in the most picturesque manner; fire-dogs of gorgeous description; and a magnificent giant-glass, with the arms of Devonshire impaling Ormonde—these are among the beauties which greet the eye at every turn in its progress through Hardwick.
As we said at the commencement of this chapter, there is no place so likely as Hardwick to carry the mind back to those times which we have indicated and to which it belongs. One is unresistingly and forcibly carried by the imagination back to the time of Elizabeth, and while pacing along through these rooms, we are led, “in the mind’s eye,” to people them with the forms of those who lived and moved and had their being within its walls.
To the paintings in the picture-gallery and those scattered through the several rooms, the dining-room more especially, we can but make slight reference. They count some hundreds of the finest and most historically interesting portraits of which any mansion can boast. To enumerate them would occupy a dozen of our pages: we must, therefore, be content to say that among them are original portraits of Queen Elizabeth; of Mary, Queen of Scots; of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia; of Arabella Stuart; of the foundress of the building, “Bess of Hardwick,” afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury; of Kings Henry VII. and Henry VIII.; of Georgiana, the “Beautiful Duchess” of Devonshire; of Robert Boyle, the philosopher; of the seventh and unfortunate Earl of Derby; of Lord Treasurer Burleigh; of Queen Mary; of Sir William St. Loe, third husband of “Bess of Hardwick;” of George, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury; of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., cartoons by Holbein; of James V. of Scotland, and his queen; of Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury; of Mary, Countess of Shrewsbury; of Lady Grace Talbot; of several distinguished members of the Clifford family; of Queen Catherine of Arragon; of Christian, Countess of Devonshire; of Lady Jane Seymour; of Elizabeth, Countess of Devonshire; of the first Duke of Ormond; of Rachel, Duchess of Devonshire; of Edward Russell, Duke of Bedford; of John, first Duke of Rutland; of Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; of William, Lord Russell; of the Marchioness of Hartington; of Queen Anne; of Frederick, Prince of Wales; of King William III.; of King George III.; of King James I.; of Sir Robert Walpole; of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam; of the Princess of Orange; and of most of the noted men of the time; of numerous celebrities of the Cavendish family and their alliances; and of Thomas Hobbes—“Leviathan Hobbes,” or “Hobbes of Malmesbury,” as he is called.
From the leads of Hardwick Hall, which are gained by a spacious staircase, the upper rooms of the towers are reached, and a magnificent view of the surrounding country is obtained.
Having described Hardwick Hall as it now exists, and given a brief history of the noble family of Cavendish to whom it belongs, we resume the subject, to speak of the older mansion, now in ruins; of the Hardwicks to whom it belonged; of the marvellous daughter of that house, “Bess of Hardwick,” and her alliances; and of Ault Hucknall, the parish church, and its many monuments, among which is that to the great philosopher, “Hobbes of Malmesbury,” who lived and died at Hardwick.
And, first, as to the family.