The pictures, sculptures, carving, graving, gilding,
’Twould be as long in writing, as in building.”
There dwelt Thomas Hobbes, as favoured by my lord the earl and my lady the countess as was Samuel Johnson by the brewer Thrale and his vivacious Hester. Probably the Leviathan was written there, stimulated by the ten or twelve pipes of tobacco that Doctor Kennet tells about.
Bess of Hardwick had more magnificent taste than Sir William. Hardwick Hall, the Duke of Devonshire’s seat near the Nottinghamshire border, is one of the finest Elizabethan mansions in the country, a place of great bays with latticed panes that turn into gold when the sun creeps westward. Her ladyship must have loved the daylight—there is still extant a distich:
“Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall”.
Some biographers of this remarkable woman—perhaps the most striking female genius ever born in Derbyshire—express surprise that the daughter of a simple country squire should have attained such a lofty position; but all who have seen the old house in which Bess was born will understand that her sire must have been a person of considerable importance. The ruins still stand not far from the stately palace she commanded, and in some respects the old house is more interesting than the inhabited one. One wonders why her ambition prompted her to raise another so near; possibly it was because of the prophecy that she would live as long as she continued to build.
Her first spouse was one Robert Barley, of Barlow, a little hamlet about six miles from Chatsworth. Both were of tender years, and he died very soon, leaving her mistress of his estates. After him she wedded Sir William Cavendish, by whom she had several children. Her third husband was Sir William St. Lo, a south-country knight; and her fourth George, Earl of Shrewsbury, the unhappy jailer of Mary Queen of Scots. Before accepting the offer of the last, she stipulated for the marriage of two of her Cavendish children with two of his young Talbots.
At first Lord Shrewsbury doted on his shrewd and comely wife, but as the years passed honey turned to gall, and finally both agreed to part. The countess was no mate for a peace-loving old man, and, moreover, she boasted a bitter tongue and a cruel pen. She was coarse and vulgar—as probably were all the great ladies of her time—she professed to be jealous of the royal captive, she well-nigh lost her husband the favour of Elizabeth by arranging the marriage of Darnley’s brother with her step-daughter, from which union resulted Arabella Stuart. None the less she was a woman with a heart, and in her letters may be found one or two profoundly touching expressions. She won her way through life; she trampled on the weak, and possibly her only real happiness proceeded from the knowledge of realized ambition. She lived to a great age, and only died because a frost interfered with her building operations. Several dukes now living claim her as ancestress, and owe much to her splendid business ability. Somehow one associates her more closely with the Cavendish family, since she had no offspring save by the master of Chatsworth.
QUEEN MARY’S BOWER, CHATSWORTH