CHAPTER VII
Knole in the Early Eighteenth Century
LIONEL SACKVILLE
7th Earl and 1st
Duke of Dorset
§ i
The first duke of Dorset remains to me, in spite of much reading, but an indistinct figure. I do not know whether the fault is mine or his. Perhaps he was a man of little personality; certainly he was lacking in the charm of his scapegrace father or of his frivolous great-nephew, the third duke. And yet he is a personage of some solidity: weighty, Georgian solidity. The epithets chosen by his contemporaries to describe him are all concordant enough, “a man of dignity, caution, and plausibility,” “worthy, honest, good-natured,” “he preserved to the last the good breeding, decency of manner, and dignity of exterior deportment of Queen Anne’s time, never departing from his style of gravity and ceremony,” “a large-grown, full person,” and finally—the words come almost with the shock of being precisely what we were waiting for—“in spite of the greatest dignity in his appearance, he was in private the greatest lover of low humour and buffoonery.” He was fitted, if I piece together rightly my scraps of evidence, to lead the life of a country gentleman, performing his duty towards his county, entertaining his friends, enjoying with them after dinner the low humour to which he inclined, rolling out his laughter in the Poets’ Parlour, slapping his great thighs, and rejoining his wife afterwards in the spirit of affectionate domesticity which induced him to begin his letters to her “dear, dear, dear girl,” or “my dear, dear Colly.” He lived, says one account of him, after detailing his amiable qualities as a kind husband and father, “in great hospitality all his life, and he was so respected that when at Knole on Sundays the front of the house was so crowded with horsemen and carriages as to give it rather the appearance of a princely levee than the residence of a private nobleman.” It was his misfortune that he was not allowed to remain leading this kind of life so much to his taste: “the poor Duke of Dorset,” said Lord Shelburne, “was made by his son to commence politician at sixty.” The local offices which he held were well suited to his disposition and abilities; the titles of Custos Rotulorum, Lord Lieutenant of Kent, Constable of Dover Castle, and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports sit admirably upon his rather provincial dignity. He could discharge these offices while surrounding himself with friends, and keeping open house at Knole. He was surely happy at Knole, with the duchess and the duchess’ friend Lady Betty Germaine installed in her two little rooms in a corner of the house, and the correspondence with Dean Swift, and the echoes of the Restoration reaching him in the shape of dedications from Prior and Pope, who had been his father’s friends. He must have been happy superintending the building of the “ruins” in the park, in ordering the removal of the clock from the roof of the Great Hall to a safer place over Bourchier’s oriel, in putting up the balustrade in the Stone Court, in adding to the picture-gallery his own full-length Kneller, painted in Garter robes—a dignified and ponderous addition—in continuing his father’s kindly and contemptuous patronage of Durfey, in entertaining the Prince of Wales, in receiving the present of a pair of elk-antlers measuring 7 foot from tip to tip, in playing at cards with his wife and Lady Betty, in watching the bull-baiting in the park, in inspiring the following tribute on the occasion of his birthday:
Accept, with unambitious views,
The tribute of a female muse;
Free from all flattery and art,
She only boasts an honest heart;
An heart that truly feels your worth,
And hails the day that gave you birth;
Of younger men let others boast,