Memoirs of Eighty Years

by Thomas Gordon Hake

From 1839 to 1853, living in East Anglia, I was engaged in an art-novel or romance, called “Valdarno,” taking it up only from time to time, as Goethe did his “Faust.” I began its foundations in Florence, and published four numbers under the title of “Vates,” illustrated by Charles Landseer, and I then dropped it, as in costing too much money it became a gift to the world. Dante Rossetti, whose father was a professor at King’s, like Pepoli at University College, used, as a student-boy at the first-named, to purchase “Vates,” and devour it eagerly; so he told me when many years later we met.

Leaving the arena of letters and art for country life, which is, however, worth seeing once, I settled myself down in the monastic borough of Bury St. Edmunds. Like all the old county towns, it was formerly the little metropolis of a squirearchy, where the dowagers retired for life into the family mansions. The place has great architectural features in the shape of abbey ruins, still haunted by the ghost of Abbot Sampson; of noble churches, such as are not built now; of Norman tower and Gothic gateway, such as may never be built again.

There was no lord in the place to adorn it, but there was a great plenty of the kind to bless it and conserve it within reach—the Duke of Norfolk, the Marquis of Bristol, and baronets sufficient in number to engage the fingers of one hand when counted up. But the town itself had its magnates; there was an honourable Mr. Petre, brother of a lord of that name, and an honourable Mr. Pellew, son of the naval hero, and my own familiar friend, not to mention an admiral of the great name and family of Wollaston, and a post-captain, with a C.B. that he never wore; and it must not be forgotten that the august mother of the Bishop of London, Dr. Bloomfield, also resided there, among others of great worth, including a solitary baronet and his lady, Sir John Walsham.

There was a famous grammar school, too, with Dr. Donaldson of classic fame as head master, which had supplied England with a president of the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Thomas Watson; a lord chancellor, Sir Robert Rolfe, Lord Cranworth; besides a bishop of London, whose scholarship was on a par with that of the most learned of the day; and all these alive at the same time.

The Marquis of Bristol was the younger son of the earl of that house, who was also Bishop of Derry, and owing to his elder brother’s early death, he became the owner of Ickworth, a park within a short drive of Bury, which, including all the parish and part of the one adjoining, lies within a circuit of eleven miles. It is said that the father disliked the son, probably owing to some act of disobedience, and exercised his power of depriving the inheritance of its charm. He destroyed all the fine old timber in the park, but nearly a hundred years have sufficed to restore it; and he left the plan of a colossal palace, of which he himself erected the central shell, and laid the whole of the foundations. I was credibly informed that ten thousand a year was to be spent for fifty years, according to the bishop’s will, to complete the structure.

The building was completed on the original grand scale about fifty years ago, and it took fifty years to finish. In the drawings of this marvellous structure it is designated Ickworth Building, and it bears that name, which, given it by Time, it will always retain, for people call it by no other.

Ickworth Building was the design of a Mr. Sandys, I believe a clergyman, not an architect by profession. He had been much in Rome, as had the bishop, who loved Italy, and lived more in that country than elsewhere; and, though an absentee bishop, the beneficence he exercised in his see was so great that at his death the people of Derry subscribed to raise a monument of their gratitude to him, which stands near the building in Ickworth Park.

There must be descriptions of Ickworth Building in works on architecture, and I think one will be found in Mr. Rookwood Gage’s fine “History of Suffolk;” but I do not possess such, and what I say is from memory.

I have heard Lord Bristol say that often when he looked out of window in the morning on the new building from the old, he wished the earth would swallow it up. One knows the feeling of something always hanging over one; it is like that of a man sitting underneath a gallows after an execution.

The marquis might doubtless have eluded the burden imposed on him by his father’s will, but je noublieray jamais was the motto he inherited, and he lived to finish his task and to enjoy the magnificent dwelling-place as a home. The building itself, wholly unique in grace and beauty, consists of a central structure, almost circular, surmounted by a dome, intended to represent the Coliseum; its summit is belted by sculptures of the Homeric legends, the work of Flaxman. There are two square wings at a proportionate distance from the body of the building, connected with it by corridors, each being the segment of a circle, with its concavity to the front. The left wing was designed for a picture-gallery, the right one for a gallery of sculpture, intended by the bishop to receive his collections of art.