Hampton Court/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
MEMORIES AND LEGENDS OF TO-DAY
Residents of later days: the families to whom the Crown has given apartments: the Wellesleys: Lady Mornington, the "mother of the Gracchi": the caretaker of the Palace: its condition to-day: its romantic interests: Charles I.: Catherine Howard: the White Lady: Mrs. Penn: ghost stories: the artistic pictures on the verge of the twentieth century: a picture of the future by William Morris.
Princess Frederica's Lodgings
representation) to her Royal Highness Princess Frederica, daughter of the late King of Hanover, her Majesty's cousin, and sister of the Duke of Cumberland. Her Royal Highness still resides in these apartments with her husband, Baron von Pawel Rammingen.
During the century and a quarter which have passed since George III. finally removed the royal furniture, and gave up the state rooms, the Palace has held many hundreds of distinguished inhabitants. Talbots and Walpoles, Berkeleys, Greys, Wellesleys, Burgoynes, and Gordons,—the record is one that reads like the index to a history of England. It were invidious to particularise among so distinguished a list. Happily the tone of contempt with which the dwellers in the private apartments were spoken of by some of the sovereigns, and by many of the Radical newspapers, may now be considered a thing of the past. The recognition of public service could take no form more graceful, or more in accordance with the best popular feeling, than in assigning to the widows or kindred of distinguished public servants a share in the life of a great historic palace.
The association of the later history of the Palace with two ladies whose name has a very special interest cannot be forgotten. In 1795 Countess of Mornington (Anne, daughter of the first Lord Dungannon, who had married Garret Wesley, Lord Mornington, musician and politician, in the year in which he was raised to an earldom), received rooms in the Palace. A keen-eyed and stately old lady, as her picture shows her, beautiful even in old age, she was the mother of the most eminent triad of public servants that the same family ever produced—Richard, the "great proconsul," Arthur, Duke, of Wellington, and Henry, Lord Cowley. Her other children would rank as distinguished were their brothers less famous. The Wellesleys, as they came to call themselves before the end of the century (Richard was matriculated at Christ Church as Wellesley in 1778), soon formed a little colony in the Palace. Another son, Gerald Valerian, who held one of the rich prebends of Durham, was chaplain of the Palace—and a daughter, Lady Anne, had also rooms in what are called "the Queen's half-storey." Years afterwards, in 1843, the beautiful Marchioness of Wellesley received apartments in the Palace. An American lady, whose sisters were Duchess of Leeds and Lady Stafford, she had married the great Marquis in 1825, when he was for the first time Viceroy of Ireland. They had lived happily together till his death in 1842, chiefly in London, in literary society and among old friends. The Marquis's little volume, "Primitiæ et Reliquiæ," published when he had reached the age of eighty, shows the charm of those quiet years; and in the copy which he gave to his wife he wrote Dryden's lines—
"All of a tenour was their after-life,
No day discoloured with domestic strife,
No jealousy, but mutual truth believed,
Secure repose and kindness undeceived."
Lady Wellesley lived till 1853. It is interesting to observe that the papers of her distinguished husband have recently found a home in the precincts.[1]
Lady Mornington's rooms were on the ground-floor of the north-east corner of the Palace, looking upon a charming little garden and across to the end of "Prince Edward's lodgings." The garden in which she often sat is still called Lady Mornington's garden. By the arch from the cloister into the garden, at the right hand, is the little nook to which the Duke of Wellington gave the name of "purr corner" from its attraction for the old ladies who in his mother's day delighted to sit and gossip there.
The Wellesley family affords a happy instance of the pleasant domestic life which has sprung up and been nourished in the Palace under the kindly and gracious arrangements of the sovereign. Her Majesty has delighted to reward public service in this most delicate and appropriate fashion.
It is impossible to walk through the Palace or the grounds without recognising the care which is now taken of everything which may preserve or enhance its historic interest. In the early days of July this year (1896), I have seen some of the old statues which formerly decorated the south front being replaced in their old positions among the oranges which line the walk in the summer.
It would be invidious to particularise the persons to whose care so much is due, where all work together with common enthusiasm for the public good. But a word must be said of that admirable Surveyor of the Royal Parks and Palaces, Mr. Edward Jesse, who, more than any man, made the experiment of the free opening to the public a success. He wrote a charming little "Summer Day at Hampton Court," which very pleasantly expresses his interest, his knowledge, and his activity. Sir Henry Cole revised an earlier guide, under the nom de plume of "Felix Summerly," and Mr. Ernest Law has re-issued it with the improvements which his own knowledge has enabled him to add.
Hampton Court to-day appeals to the visitor in two different aspects. It is the holiday-ground of thousands of Londoners, and it is in this light that travellers and foreign critics regard it with pleasure and a little wonder. Thousands of orderly folk, merry, and not very attentive to historic association or even natural beautv, make sport and play here, as to the manner born. "As some men gaze with admiration at the colours of a tulip or the wing of a butterfly, so I was by nature an admirer of happy human faces," said the good Vicar of Wakefield: it is a happiness many a parish priest and many a philanthropist can now enjoy to the full at Hampton Court.
But this is not the only sight or the only thought. Hampton Court belongs to-day not only to the present but to the mighty past. Still a royal palace, with its guard of honour, its chapel royal, its chaplain and choir, its staff of royal officials and servants, it has its close links with the past in the continuous occupation of many of its rooms by those who have borne their part, themselves or their kindred,in making England great. So we may walk through its courts with thronged memories of great names—and from them we may pass to "thick-coming fancies" of a world invisible or half known. Imagination and tradition vie in bringing forth tales of strange noises and mysterious presences. That long room, now so grey and wan in the moonlight, that leads round the great kitchen-court from the great watching chamber to the top of the Queen's staircase, bears the name of the Haunted Gallery. Was it here—for it opens into the Pages' Chamber—that the Guards heard the sad, stern voice of Strafford give the countersign "Christ," as he passed by the sleeping pages and Mr. Inglesant on to where the King slept? Mr. Shorthouse may tell us that the vision was earlier and in another place; but Charles in those last days of his at Hampton must have had dark memories of the days that could not be recalled. Or is it Catherine Howard who tears herself from her guardians and runs shrieking to the door of the royal closet, that is in the west gallery of the chapel? Henry sits still within at his prayers, and the door will not open, and the guard force her back; but her shrieks can still be heard above the storm on windy nights. It is locked, and we may not enter it at night; but the custodian of the pictures, who has here some canvases that need his treatment, will not tell us that he has seen the vision of the White Lady who weeps and wrings her hands.
Or those two young cavaliers whose bones were found under the pavement of the cloister in the Fountain Court, and whose ghostly presence was felt in the rooms of a lady near; do they now sleep well where they lie in Hampton Churchyard? What tragedy lies behind their burying in the "Cloister Green "in hugger-mugger?
Edward VI.'s nurse, or Mistress Penn—not the "Mother Jak" (so labelled) of Holbein's drawing, whom we now know to be Margaret Clement, Sir Thomas More's adopted child[2]—cannot she rest in peace in Hampton Church under her fine tomb—she
"Whose virtue guided hath her shippe unto the quiet rode?"
She died in 1562 of small-pox, and her body reposed, they tell you, till 1829, when the old church was destroyed. She then returned to the Palace, and worked her ancient spinning-wheel in a room that had remained concealed for two centuries. She walks, so say those who have seen her, in a "long grey robe with a hood over her head, and her lanky hands out-stretched before her;" and, like Hamlet's father to the sentries "on their watch in the dead waist and middle of the night" she comes, and being challenged, passes into air.
Hampton Court is certainly the very place where one would expect to hear "ghost stories," if not to see ghosts; and if ghosts are to be seen, what more impressive sight could there be than that of those who have walkedhere when living, now in mysterious stateliness haunting the scenes where they lived and suffered? The White King, the lonely Cardinal who served his earthly lord better than his Heavenly Master, Elizabeth, and meek Catherine of Braganza, and the long line of the great Harry's wives—we may see them all in memory or in fancy, and maybe some will tell us that they still walk the night. Or we may wander by the great old trees, the oaks and elms in the House Park, of mighty girth, some of which perhaps may look back to Wolsey's days, as one fine elm, at least by tradition, belongs to that of the Stewarts—"King Charles's swing" it is called. And as the twilight brings memories of romance with it, and soon the moon takes up the wondrous tale, we may murmur with Keats, whose words sound so naturally in this great galaxy of trees—
"Upon a trancèd summer night
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars.
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save for one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave."
So by night or day Hampton Court still has its fascination for artists and for poets. One who knows almost every stone has drawn it, as long months have taught him, with a touch of mastery. With him we may wander round and see old scenes in a new light, as the old walls lighted by the bright creepers, or the quaint nooks approached from some new corner, pass on to the paper with deft, rapid strokes. There is very much that will bear seeing very many times. Custom will not stale its varieties. Each season, each hour, adds a new charm. And so happily men come and go, the crowds pass through, while the artist lingers, and fixes for us with his pencil what the old Palace looked like in the last years before the twentieth century.
To some the present, beautiful as it is, is but a poor image of the future; and the old Palace has been imaged in the fine prose of a modern master as it may be when the revolution, which he imagined was to come, is passed and the new time has come. Still, he says, in that dim future, when things shall have changed so much, there was a sort of tradition of pleasure and beauty clinging to the group of buildings, and still people would go there for a summer day. In the great hall tables are spread for dinner, and the old rooms still keep the pictures and the tapestry. And the old place still bears its beauty of old days, and no one can tell what that is so well as he who strives
"To build a shadowy isle of bliss,
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be."
"A little town of quaint and pretty houses, some new, some old," he sees as he rows up from the new London that is so far off from the London of to-day, all "dominated by the long walls and sharp gables of a great red-brick pile of building, partly of the latest Gothic, partly of the court style of Dutch William, but so blended together by the bright sun and beautiful surroundings, including the bright blue river which it looked down upon, that even amidst the beautiful buildings of that new happy time it had a strange charm about it."[3]
Since I wrote down these words of his, he has passed from the earth that was so beautiful to him; and he knows now the realities that were sometime dim in his eyes. He has left us many visions that we shall not forget; chiefest, perhaps, those that belong to the banks of the silver Thames. Those who go to Hampton Court on a bright summer day may well think, even now, that it does not fall very far below the poet's picture of its future.
- ↑ Four hundred volumes of his official correspondence, &c., given by his representatives, are in the British Museum; but the mass of his private correspondence passed into the hands of the late Mr. Alfred Montgomery, who left it, I believe, to Mr. Ernest Law.
- ↑ This is one of the very few points where Mr. Ernest Law is at fault ("History of Hampton Court," vol. i. p. 197, note 2).
- ↑ William Morris, "News from Nowhere," p. 162,