Bess of Hardwick and Her Circle

by Maud Stepney Rawson

Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
BOLSOVER CASTLE
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Oldcotes, as we know, Bess Hardwick never finished, nor Bolsover, for that last duty fell upon her son, Sir Charles Cavendish, who “cleared away the loose cement and tottering stones and began to lay the foundation of the newe house at Bolsover,” only finished by his son, Marquis of Newcastle. Strangely enough, it is not this—the beautiful Elizabethan mansion, which witnessed now glorious pageants and now civil war—that remains for habitation, but a portion of the original stronghold. Says one descriptive writer: “The figure of Hercules, supporting the balcony over the principal doorway, is an appropriate symbol of the Castle’s strength. The fortress is habitable, and makes a very unconventional and picturesque residence, with its pillar parlour ornamented with old-fashioned devices; its noble Star Chamber lined with sombre portraits of the twelve Cæsars and ceilinged with blue and gold to represent the firmament at night; and its quaint bed-chambers, two of which are covered with pictures indicative of Heaven and Hades ... pictures ... of angels reclining on clouds, or wandering in delightful glades; and of angels of darkness, hideous ... and writhing in torment.” The which, says this chronicler, so affected the conscience of one inhabitant that he effaced them—“took a lime brush and ruthlessly wiped out both sinners and saints.” The ruin near this building must have stood finely “on the grand terrace to the south” in its heyday when the elasticity of good Bolsover steel spears and buckles was a household word in England.

Tutbury Castle lies a ruin by the Dove, unregretted, well detested by all who were ever immured there.

Welbeck—how true to the rhyme!—lasts and “will last”—“day bright,” a “saddle,” a place to “ride in,” a great “parish,” a home for use, for “good keepinge,”—in a word, an institution for posterity to wonder at. Such also is Rufford, one of the few great buildings which have escaped fire. Among the list of the disestablished monasteries it passed into the hands of the Talbots, who made good use of its Elizabethan gallery and its state chambers. On the other hand, the original manor house of Worksop—“the wise,” the “pallas,” the “throne,” was burnt down in 1761, was “decaide” very soon. Bolser the “maid” as aforesaid is now grown very grey, but is still lovely, the more wonderful in its isolation because of the ugly little new town below it. Welbeck “the wife” flourishes, has grown, is much increased.

Hardwick the “matron” endures. In her “hugeness,” in her character of spacious court and hall, in her seclusion and peace, her well-being, her riches and comfort, well warmed with the sun of prosperity, as at “high noone”—in her rôle as “chest,” as storehouse of unassailable fortunes, as a place “to thrive in,” Hardwick is the chiefest of all these houses, because, saving the church of All Saints at Derby, with the monument Bess Shrewsbury erected in it to herself, and the almshouses in the same town, it is the only thing of all her “workes” upon which her sole impress remains. Into this grey stone house, which bears her maiden name, has passed her extraordinary and very fine “sense of the home,” and the doggerel just quoted adds to that almost a portrait of herself. Time was when she wore stiff outstanding dresses, encrusted with network of jewels or bordered and lined with fur, like others who visited Court or the weddings and pageants of her circle. In the principal portrait of her, the one which hangs in the centre of the Cavendish group in the glorious Hardwick gallery—a stretch of 170 feet, of which the walls carry nearly two hundred portraits—she is, however, presented just in the character of matron and widow. Her child-bearing days were over, her schemes were many. One cannot read the rhymes quoted without feeling that when Hardwick is named in the jingle she herself passes in and out of the string of words, which in itself is like a ladies’ chain in a country dance. She is in black velvet with a rich quadruple necklace of pearls. Her chest, with gold and documents and household “stuff,” goes with her; we hear the jingle of her household keys, her ringing, authoritative voice, meet the glance of those clear, keen eyes, and follow the line of the thin, sensitive mouth, which could help that far-seeing brain of hers so much. That mouth could flatter, but it could also speak with terrible sharpness; it could repeat a good joke, a spicy scandal, or quiver with grief; it could say tender things—“my juwell and love, my dearest harte”—and it could bargain finely. “Hardwick is hard,” says the rhyme, and her lips seem to tighten to that phrase. She could certainly be both terribly hard and tender.

Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
PICTURE GALLERY, HARDWICK HALL
(Showing the fireplace and a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots)
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There is another smaller portrait of her, in her Countess’s coronet and an ermine tippet, which is rather more gracious in expression than the stiff, beruffed, matronly picture above mentioned. Close about her are her husbands—all save Barlow. Most comfortable of these is Sir William Cavendish, sturdy, bearded, and well-liking, in his furred robe and flat cap. Close by, and matching the figure of Arabella Stuart in sheer pathos, is that of the quiet, childless Grace Talbot, whom Fate so soon made the widow of the much-travelled Henry Cavendish. It is that of a dumpy little woman in black, holding in one hand a single pale eglantine—the flower of the Cavendishes. Her reddish-brown hair, her pale lips, a spinet of which the under portion of the open lid is faintly decorated with red-winged cherubs, and a dark green table-cloth, are the only scraps of colour in the sombre scheme. Her psalter, with diamond notation, lies open at the words “Sois moy seigneur ma garde et mon appuy, Car en toy gist toute mon esperance.”

In the same group one finds Burghley, rosy, astute, richly clad, a prince of dignitaries, than whom no statesman ever had richer experience of men and things, of power and place, of sovereigns and the royal caprice, who on the eve of death could still write to his first-born, over the trembling signature of “Your anguished father,” the words “Serve God by serving of the Queen, for all other service is indeed bondage to the devil.”

Very warm and full of life is the portrait of William Cavendish the younger, the Countess’s favourite son. To him in his right as first Earl and ancestor of the Dukes of Devonshire belongs, after his mother, the whole of this glorious gallery, typical of this magnificent house.