At THE LONG TABLE IN THE HALL

THE LAUNDRY-MAIDS’ TABLE

KITCHEN AND SCULLERY

CHAPTER V
Knole in the Reign of Charles I
EDWARD SACKVILLE
4th
Earl of Dorset

§ i

The wreckage of Richard’s estates devolved at his death upon his brother Edward, who at that time was travelling in Italy. This Edward Sackville was once to me the embodiment of Cavalier romance. At the age of thirteen I wrote an enormous novel about him and his two sons. He had the advantage of starting with Vandyck’s portrait in the hall, the flame-coloured doublet, the blue Garter, the characteristic swaggering attitude, the sword, the lovelocks, the key of office painted dangling from his hip and the actual key dangling on a ribbon from the frame of the picture—and then the account of his duel with Lord Bruce, his devotion to Charles I, the plundering raid of Cromwell’s soldiers into Knole, the murder of his younger son by the Roundheads, the picture of the two boys throwing dice—all this was a source of rich romance to a youthful imagination nourished on Cyrano and The Three Musketeers. I used to steal up to the attics to examine the old nail-studded trunks from which the Roundheads had broken off the locks. There they were—the visible evidence of the old paper in the Muniment Room, which said, “They have broken open six trunks; in one of them was money; what is lost of it we know not, in regard the keeper of it is from home.” There they were, carelessly stacked: on one of them was stabbed the date in big nails, 1623; and there were others, curved to fit the roof of a barouche; of later date these, but all intimate and palpitating to a very ignorant child to whom the centuries meant Thomas or Richard or Edward Sackville; Holbein, Vandyck or Reynolds; farthingale chairs or love-seats. What were dates when the centuries went by generations? The battered trunks were stacked near the entrance to the hiding-place, which, without the smallest justification save an old candlestick and a rope-ladder found therein, I peopled with the fugitive figures of priests and Royalists. I peeped into the trunks: they contained only a dusty jumble of broken ironwork, some old books, some bits of hairy plaster fallen from the ceiling, some numbers of Punch for 1850. Nevertheless, there were the gaping holes where the locks had been prised off the trunks, and the lid forced back upon the hinges by an impatient hand. Down in the Poets’ Parlour, where I lunched with my grandfather, taciturn unless he happened to crack one of his little stock-in-trade of jokes, Cromwell’s soldiers had held their Court of Sequestration. The Guard Room was empty of arms or armour, save for a few pikes and halberds, because Cromwell’s soldiers had taken all the armour away. The past mingled with the present in constant reminder; and out in the summer-house, after luncheon, with the bees blundering among the flowers of the Sunk Garden and the dragon-flies flashing over the pond, I returned to the immense ledger in which I was writing my novel, while Grandpapa retired to his little sitting-room and whittled paper-knives from the lids of cigar-boxes, and thought about—Heaven knows what he thought about.

Edward Sackville in the big Vandyck was indeed a handsome, rubicund figure, “beautiful, graceful, and vigorous ... the vices he had were of the age, which he was not stubborn enough to resist or to condemn.” What these vices were I do not know; the records of his life make no allusion to them. It is true that the cause of his duel remains a mystery; Lord Clarendon knew it, but beyond mentioning that it was fought on account of a lady, kept his own counsel. It is true also that his sister-in-law, Lady Anne Clifford, disliked him greatly and spoke of the malice he had always shown towards her; but then amicable relationship with Lady Anne was not easily sustained. On the face of it, his life seems to have been loyal and honourable: he suffered considerably for the sake of the cause he had at heart, and his few speeches and letters are full of reserve and dignity, supported by the facts of his own misfortunes; I do not see what more he could have done to deserve the adjective staunch. To me at thirteen he was very staunch and doughty, and one does not willingly go back on one’s first impressions. His wife, too, in the pointed stomacher, and the shoes with huge rosettes, governess to the royal children, voted a public funeral in Westminster Abbey, was another staunch figure: severe, uncompromising, but impeccable.