"In short, I heard of no ball, assembly, basset-table, or any place where two or three were gathered together, except Madam Kilmansegg's, to which I had the honor to be invited, and the grace to stay away.
"I was heartily tired, and posted to —— Park (q. Bushy?); there we had an excellent discourse of quackery; Dr. S—— was mentioned with honor. Lady —— walked a whole hour abroad without dying after it, at least in the time I stayed, though she seemed to be fainting, and had convulsive motions several times in her head. I arrived in the forest by Tuesday at noon."
At another time we find him at Orchard Wyndham, the seat of Sir William Wyndham, in Somersetshire. "The reception we met with," says he, "and the little excursions we made, were every way agreeable. I think the country abounds with beautiful prospects. Sir William Wyndham is at present amusing himself with some real improvements, and a great many visionary castles. We are often entertained with sea views and sea-fish; and were at some places in the neighborhood, among which I was mightily pleased with Dunster Castle, near Minehead. It stands upon a great eminence, and hath a prospect of that town, with an extensive view of the Bristol Channel, in which are seen two small islands called the Steep Holms and Flat Holms, and on the other side we could plainly distinguish the divisions of the fields on the Welsh coast. All this journey I performed on horseback." To how many readers will this fine scene here mentioned be familiar!
But another visit of Pope's to Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, an old mansion of Lord Harcourt's, who lent it to him for the summer, has furnished us with a description which, though somewhat long, we must take in full. So much delighted was Pope with it, that he has described it twice; once to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and once to the Duke of Buckingham. The following account is made complete by a careful comparison of both these letters; but may be supposed to be addressed to Lady Mary.
"I am fourscore miles from London; and the place is such as I would not quit for the town, if I did not value you more than, nay, every body else there; and you will be convinced how little the town has engaged my affections in your absence from it, when you know what a place this is which I prefer to it. I shall therefore describe it to you at large, as a true picture of a genuine ancient country seat.
"You must expect nothing regular in my description of a house which seems to be built before rules were in fashion. The whole is so disjointed, and the parts are so detached from each other, and yet so joining again, one can not tell how, that in a poetical fit you could imagine it had been a village in Amphion's time, when twenty cottages had taken a dance together, were all out, and stood still in amazement ever since.
"You must excuse me if I say nothing of the front; indeed, I do not know which it is. A stranger would be grievously disappointed who should think to get into this house the right way. One would reasonably expect, after the entry through the porch, to be let into the hall; but alas! nothing less! you find yourself in a brew-house. From the parlor you think to step into the drawing-room, but, upon opening the iron-nailed door, you are convinced, by a flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of dust in your eyes, that it is the pigeon-house. On each side of our porch are two chimneys, that wear their greens on the outside, which would do as well within; for whenever we make a fire, we let the smoke out of the windows. Over the parlor window hangs a sloping balcony, which time has turned to a very convenient pent-house. The top is crowned with a very venerable tower, so like that of the church just by, that the jackdaws build in it as if it were the true steeple.
"The great hall is high and spacious, flanked on one side with a very long table, a true image of ancient hospitality. The walls are all over ornamented with monstrous horns of animals, about twenty broken pikes, ten or a dozen blunderbusses, and a rusty matchlock musket or two, which we were informed had served in the civil wars. There is one vast arched window, beautifully darkened with divers scutcheons of painted glass. There seems to be a great propriety in this old manner of blazoning upon glass, ancient families, like ancient windows, in the course of generations being seldom free from cracks. One shining pane, in particular, bears date 1286, which alone preserves the memory of a knight whose iron armor has long since perished with rust, and whose alabaster nose has moldered from his monument. The youthful face of Dame Elinor, in another piece, owes more to that single pane than to all the glasses she ever consulted in her life. Who can say, after this, that glass is frail, when it is not half so perishable as human beauty or glory? And yet I can not but sigh to think that the most authentic record of so ancient a family should be at the mercy of every boy who flings a stone! In this hall, in former days, have dined gartered knights and courtly dames, with ushers, sewers, and seneschals, and yet it was but the other night that an owl flew in hither, and mistook it for a barn.
"This hall lets you, up and down over a very high threshold, into the great parlor. It is furnished with historical tapestry, whose marginal fringes do confess the moisture of the air. The other contents of this room are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet chairs, with two or three moldered pictures of moldy ancestors, who look as dismally as if they came fresh from hell with all their brimstone about them. These are carefully set at the further corner, for the windows being every where broken, make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and mustard-seed in, that the room is appropriated to that purpose.
"Next to this parlor lies, as I said before, the pigeon-house, by the side of which runs an entry that leads, on one hand and on the other, into a bed-chamber, a buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study. Then follow the brew-house, a little green and gilt parlor, and the great stairs, under which is the dairy. A little further on the right, the servants' hall; and, by the side of it, up six steps, the old lady's closet for her private devotions, which has a lattice into the said hall, that, while she said her prayers, she might cast an eye on the men and maids. There are, upon the ground floor, in all, twenty-six apartments, hard to be distinguished by particular names, among which I must not forget a chamber that has in it a huge antiquity of timber, which seems to have been either a bedstead or a cider-press.