The colouring here is rich and warm, the panelling with its carved boars’ heads, and peacocks, and crescents has darkened until it resembles walnut. Originally the pargeting was painted and gilt. Traces of this decoration still remain. The windows are excellently designed; the central bay is as large as an ordinary-sized room.
The dominating spirit here must surely be that of Lady Grace Manners, whose death mask hangs in a glass case under the great east window. It is the face of a sad and worn-out lady, with the bitterness of death upon her lips. None the less she appears to have enjoyed a pleasant enough life, since in Bakewell Church we read that she “bore to her husband four sons and five daughters, and lived with him in holy wedlock thirty years. She caused him to be buried with his forefathers, and then placed this monument at her own expense, as a perpetual memorial of their conjugal faith, and she joined the figure of his body with hers, having vowed their ashes and bones should be laid together.”
From the Long Gallery is entered the Lord’s Parlour, called in the seventeenth century the Orange Parlour. Here is something that is viewed with the greatest interest by sentimentalists old and young—the doorway through which the heroine of Haddon is said to have passed on the night of her elopement. There are folk who profess to believe that Mistress Dorothy Vernon wedded Sir John Manners in quite a humdrum fashion, and that the pretty tradition only dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century. But Haddon is such an admirable setting for romance, that one prefers to believe the story.
In the State Bedroom stands one of those magnificent draped bedsteads beloved by quality folk in olden time. It is over fourteen feet high, a curious and weird four-poster hung with rich green embroidered velvet, and is supposed to date from the fifteenth century. The last person who slept in it was the Regent, during a visit to Belvoir Castle. This room contains a remarkable old washing-tally with revolving disks of ivory, whereon one may read of “Ruffes, Bandes, Boote Hose, Pillowberes”, and other strange personal and domestic articles. Near the window is a dim mirror with a lacquered frame. Tradition holds that this was once the property of the Virgin Queen. A very quaint and daintily made spinet stands near the farther doorway; some of its wires still respond janglingly to the pressed key.
The fireplace is surmounted by an alto-relievo of plaster, representing Orpheus in the very act of charming the beasts. This is grotesque and out of keeping with the solemn dignity of the house. From the State Bedroom one soon reaches a corkscrew staircase that climbs the Peveril Tower, whence a singular view may be had of the roofs and courtyards and the green Haddon meadows. Fuller, in his History of the Worthies of England, observes concerning the richness of this pasture land, that “one profferred to surround it with shillings to purchase it, which, because to set sideways, not edgeways, was refused”.
DOROTHY VERNON’S BRIDGE, HADDON
The Gardens with their lichened balustrades and staircases are perhaps as famous as any in our country. From the upper one is to be gained an extraordinarily fine view of the principal façade. They are formal gardens but formal without embarrassment; the yews, which must be almost as old as the house itself, seem to diffuse a pleasant calm. In the narrow borders grew ancient roses with loose petals—roses such as were used in still-rooms by the high-born dames who loved to prepare their own simples and sweet extracts. The Lower Garden is terraced down the hillside, and across the river stretches a wonderful old footbridge, somewhat similar to those reared in pack-horse days in the remoter part of Peakland. Fond legend declares that Dorothy Vernon crossed this on the night of her elopement.