The Queen’s House

by Edna Healey

  George III’s new library rooms were much needed; he was to accumulate a collection of 67,000 volumes. He sent his librarian, Richard Dalton, to Italy in search of books, Old Master drawings, medals and coins for his collection. His favourite cabinetmakers, William Vile and John Bradburn, made exquisite bookcases and cabinets for the coins and he took a close personal interest in the work. His love of books is illustrated by his establishment of a fine Royal Bindery in 1786.

  The King had inherited a collection of paintings, many of which were lying neglected in Windsor Castle. He now brought pictures for the Queen’s House from his other palaces, and bought paintings and commissioned contemporary artists. Bute, an enthusiastic collector himself, must have assisted the King with great pleasure.

  The King’s greatest purchase was the collection of Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice. Bute’s younger brother, James Stuart Mackenzie, British envoy to Turin, negotiated the sale in 1762 for £20,000.

  The collection included Italian drawings, and seventeenth-and eighteenth-century paintings, among them charming Italian villa scenes by Sebastiano and Marco Ricci. There were some Flemish and Dutch works, including the luminous A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman by Jan Vermeer, but the prize of the collection was the fifty paintings and one hundred and forty drawings by Canaletto. Smith had been for many years the patron of the artist.

  At the same time the King’s agent, the architect James Adam, bought on the King’s behalf from Cardinal Albani a collection of 300 drawings, including some by Domenichino, Maratta and Nicolas Poussin. These had belonged to Pope Clement XI.

  The King’s haul landed early in 1763. Dalton and Mackenzie supervised the loading of the consignment from Livorno, Italy, in February 1763. The excitement of the King and Queen Charlotte can be imagined as the sun-lit Canaletto landscapes were unpacked in the cold spring London light. The King supervised every detail of the hang of the pictures, drawing plans of their proposed positions, undoubtedly guided by Chambers, who worked on the alterations of the Queen’s House until 1773.

  There would be changes over the years, but from drawings and a 1792 inventory it is possible to get an idea of the hang of the pictures in the King’s rooms on the ground floor and in the Queen’s rooms on the floor above. The entrance hall was illumined by Canalettos and Zuccarellis from the Smith collection. The hall led in to an enfilade of rooms looking on to the garden. To the right, at the end, was the King’s Dressing Room, on three walls of which were Canaletto landscapes; the fourth, the window wall, looked on to the garden. It was a landscape room of a kind becoming popular in the eighteenth century. Next to it the King’s Warm Room was vibrant with seven historical paintings by one of the King’s favourite painters, Benjamin West. There were paintings by van Dyck, Rubens and Titian in the next rooms, the Passage Room and Drawing Room. In the King’s Closet twenty-four pictures were closely hung. Next came the King’s Bedchamber, adorned by twelve canvases by Luca Giordano, representing the story of Cupid and Psyche. In the Great Octagon Library more Venetian pictures were hung above the bookcases.

  Some of the greatest pictures were in the Queen’s rooms on the first floor. The famous Raphael cartoons were brought from St James’s Palace in 1763 and hung in her Saloon against wall coverings of green damask. The Queen’s Breakfast Room was dominated by the two superb van Dycks – Charles I with Monsieur de St Antoine and Charles I and Henrietta Maria and with Their Eldest Two Children. George III was fascinated by the Stuarts and this painting would have been a constant reminder that, though he was a Hanoverian, he was also descended from Charles I’s sister, and of the heavy price of kingly pride.

  This seems to have been a favourite room, which Queen Charlotte used for music. The Queen shared many of the King’s interests. She was not a ‘dim girl’, as she has been called. Over the years she was to study botany conscientiously and, though one must make allowances for flattery of royalty, she was acclaimed by leading botanists. The vivid exotic flower Strelitzia reginae, brought from the Cape of Good Hope in 1773, was named after her. Serious academics also dedicated their works to her.

  Queen Charlotte developed a genuine interest in art. It was she who, in 1772, was to commission Johann Zoffany’s famous painting of the great room in the gallery in Florence, The Tribune of the Uffizi.

  The King, too, was a patron of contemporary artists. He founded the Royal Academy in 1768 ‘under our immediate patronage and protection’ and continued to interest himself very much in its success.

  ‘He has given unlimited power to the Treasurer to draw on his Privy Purse for whatever money shall be wanted for the Academy.’9 Although Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote this with gratitude he was never in the King’s favour, even though he became the Academy’s first president. When the King was asked to sit for Reynolds he replied, ‘Mr Ramsay is my painter.’ Allan Ramsay was commissioned to paint the Coronation portraits of the King and Queen. Perhaps no one has succeeded so well in capturing the charm and intelligence of a lady whom no one considered beautiful. Thomas Gainsborough, too, was a favourite and was chosen in 1782 to paint fifteen oval portraits of the royal family.

  The King enjoyed chatting with his artists, accepting their eccentricities with good-humoured tolerance. So we see him in the Queen’s House patiently suffering as the sculptor, Joseph Nollekens, pinched his nose while measuring it with his callipers, and listening with amusement to the sculptor’s odd explanations for failing to keep his appointments.

  The King chose the best craftsmen and women at a period when the standards of workmanship were very high indeed.

  The elegant carved bookcase that today is in the 18th-Century Room at the Palace was made in the workshops of Vile & Cobb. Cobb, the master upholsterer, appears in J. T. Smith’s life of Nollekens, strutting through the Queen’s House in all his pompous self-importance. He was, apparently,

  a singularly haughty man, the upholsterer. One of the proudest men in England, he always appeared in full dress of the most superb and costly kind, whether strutting magnificently through his workshops, giving orders to his men, or on some errand at the ‘Queen’s House’, where the King who smiled at his pomposity frequently employed him for cabinet work of an elaborate and expensive sort.

  Cobb himself became immensely wealthy, living in some great state himself. When Nathaniel Dance painted his picture he nobly sent the painter home in his own carriage.

  Smith records an occasion in

  His Majesty’s library at the Queen’s House when giving orders to a workman whose ladder chanced to stand before a book required by the King, His Majesty desired Cobb to hand him the work. Instead of obeying, Cobb called to his man, ‘fellow, give me that book!’ The King with his usual condescension rose and asked Cobb for his man’s name. ‘Jenkins, your Majesty,’ answered the astonished upholsterer. ‘Then,’ observed the King, ‘Jenkins. You shall hand me that book.’10

  William Vile, a cabinetmaker of distinction, had worked for Horace Walpole in his remarkable house at Strawberry Hill. The King gave large orders to Vile & Cobb in the years 1760–4 and their workshop at 72 St Martin’s Lane must have been extremely busy. The street was much frequented by artists and wealthy patrons – Thomas Coutts, the King’s banker, had a house there at this time. William Vile supplied to the Queen music desks and ‘a very handsome jewel cabinet’ for £138 10s. at the beginning of her reign in 1761, ‘mahogony [sic] stands for birdcages, 2 mahogony houses for a Turkey monkey’.

  It was William Vile to whom was entrusted the delicate work in ‘the conversion of the late Japan room into the new Japan room’. This entailed removing the black and gold ‘japanned’ panels from the Duke of Buckingham’s Saloon and refitting them in the Queen’s Breakfast Room; and making a ‘quantity of new Japan to make out the new’. William Vile was succeeded by the equally distinguished cabinetmaker, John Bradburn, who provided delicate and elegant furniture for the Queen’s House between 1764 and 1767.

  Most tantalizing are the references to Mrs Na
ish, joiner, who apparently not only carved the most elaborate bedsteads, but could also turn out square boxes for beds for Queen Charlotte’s little dogs and innumerable commodes for all the palaces. Mrs Naish was the daughter of the joiner Henry Williams, who had worked for the King’s father, Frederick, Prince of Wales. We know that she was given many commissions.

  Some of the Queen’s most elaborate furniture was made by Eastern craftsmen. Mrs Warren Hastings gave her a carved ivory sofa with a canopy of white satin.

  Many craftswomen stitched away during these years of refurbishment at the Palace. Mrs Priscilla MacEwan, presumably a Scot, was paid the immense sums of £3,778 14s. as well as £225 18s. 6d. for feathers. Queen Charlotte, herself an accomplished needlewoman, became the patroness of the ‘Royal School of embroidering females’, where poor girls learned embroidery. There was also a lacewoman for Flanders point lace’11.

  Not since Charles II, who encouraged men like Grinling Gibbons, had a king and queen taken such an interest in the work of craftsmen and women. In George Ill’s reign traditions were established that were carried on by families of craftsmen for generations. The Crace firm, for example, was founded in 1768 by Edward Crace, who worked for George III in many capacities. Son of coachmaker John Crace, Edward Crace was apprenticed to an artist and ‘set up his business’ as a decorative house painter to the nobility and gentry. The most famous example of his work in this field was in 1770 on the spectacular interior of the Pantheon in Oxford Street. George III had been much impressed by the decoration of the Pantheon and also by the obvious quality of Edward Crace’s work. He therefore sent his librarian, Richard Dalton, to engage Edward Crace for the cataloguing and care of the paintings in the Royal Collection – and he remained in the King’s service until his death in 1799.

  The King and Queen occasionally looked in to watch the cleaning and revarnishing of the collection. Edward Crace also worked on the King’s paintings at Hampton Court and Windsor Castle. He was succeeded by his son, John, who became the greatest of the family. He worked as a decorator and upholsterer – amongst his bills are one for the supply of ‘39 yards of yard wide Morone Chintz’, and another for ‘A turkey pattern Brussells Carpet with a neat border’. According to his son, Frederick, John Crace introduced ‘Imitation of marbling and graining of woodwork’ into English decoration during the 1790s. Frederick Crace was taken up by the Prince of Wales – ‘being first noticed by the Prince of Wales and Mrs Fitzherbert being at work upon gilding the iron railing of the staircase’.12 The Prince of Wales was to employ John and Frederick Crace to work on the chinoiserie interior of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and at Carlton House.

  In 1765 the firm Wedgwood made an exquisite green and gold service for Queen Charlotte, named Queen’s Ware in her honour. Mr Josiah Wedgwood, who recorded his visits to the Palace, was charmed by the Queen and instructed his partner Bentley to smarten himself up for the visits to the Queen’s House. The delicate service of Chelsea china which, early in the reign, the Queen sent to her brother the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was given back to Queen Elizabeth (now the Queen Mother) in 1947, and is now displayed in glass-fronted cabinets in the Bow Room at Buckingham Palace, through which thousands of visitors to the royal garden parties pass each year.*

  The King took great interest in acquiring furniture for the Palace. In 1781, he attended an auction.

  On Monday his Majesty passed by West Thorpe House near Marlow, the seat of the late Governor Winch [sic]. He sent one of his Equerries to enquire whose goods were selling by auction; when Mr Christie requested his most dutiful respects might be presented to his Majesty for he wished to show him some very curious ivory chairs and a couch that were to be disposed of.

  His Majesty turned back, they were shown him on the lawn opposite the house and he liked them so well that he ordered them to be purchased for the Queen … the chairs cost 14½ guineas each, the couch 48 guineas and two small cabinets 45 guineas.13

  Governor Wynch had ordered this furniture in 1770 to be made at Madras by native craftsmen from English models. Deposed in 1775 by the Court of the East India Company, he returned to England, where he died in May 1781.

  We know of other furniture acquired by Queen Charlotte from the sale of her collection in 1819. James Christie, son of the ‘Mr Christie’ who had sold this lot to George III, offered in his Great Room, Pall Mall,

  A rare and costly sopha, veneered with ivory, with carved back, arms and feet, engraved with devices of serpents and tiger’s heads, with cane bottom.

  A set – 1 corner armchair and 8 square back chairs veneered with ivory.14

  Two sofas made £106 12s., two sets of chairs £171 5s. 6d., two miniature cabinets £55 2s. 6d. The Prince Regent bought these at the auction and placed them in the Corridor or the Long Gallery at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton; they were brought to Buckingham Palace in 1847. Some of them are now in the Principal corridor at Buckingham Palace.

  George III’s own rooms were uncarpeted and simply furnished, but his extravagance was his collection of clocks. Some are still to be seen in Buckingham Palace. He particularly admired the work of Benjamin Vulliamy, a member of another family that served the Crown for generations. A German lady, Sophie von la Roche, met Vulliamy’s father in the Queen’s House in 1786.

  Mr Vulliamy, senior, also showed us one of his eldest son’s inventions, which cannot but interest a British sovereign with affection for his subjects. For on a large semi-sphere set in the wall, he can follow which parts of the world are affected if a heavy gale is sweeping England; while the weather-vane on this house, with its eminent situation, calculates and records so accurately on this sphere that the king can conjecture how his fleet is faring. I told Mr Vulliamy that I thought him a very lucky father.15

  Typically, the King was not content to be a mere collector: he made a study of the clocks’ workings. In a memorandum in his handwriting he shows how to take a watch apart and put it back together. With the help of his architect, Sir William Chambers, he even designed a domed case in gilt and tortoiseshell for an astronomical clock by Christopher Pinchbeck and others. In 1765 he acquired a four-sided astronomical clock by Eardley Norton for his Octagon library. He also encouraged new talent, granting £100 to John Arnold, a young Cornish watchmaker, to help him in his researches. In 1764 he was rewarded: on his birthday Arnold presented him with the smallest repeating watch ever made, set in a ring, for which the delighted King gave him 500 guineas.

  Sir William Chambers was not only the King’s architect, surveyor and clock designer: he also designed his state coach. Commissioned in November 1762, it cost a prodigious £7,587 19s. 9 ½d. The well-known sculptor, Joseph Wilton, was paid £2,500 for the carving, G. B. Cipriani painted the panels and the wheels were copied from an ancient triumphal car. Three cherubs perched on the roof represented the genius of England, Scotland and Ireland. Horace Walpole saw it:

  There is come forth a new state coach which has cost £8,000. It is a beautiful object, though crowded with improprieties. Its supports are Tritons, not very well adapted to land carriage, and formed of palm trees, which are as little aquatic as Tritons are terrestrial.16

  The Queen’s House was splendidly furnished, and infinitely more magnificent than other great town houses such as Marlborough House and Devonshire House.

  It is fortunate that we have a rare description of the interior of the Palace in the early days of the King’s reign by an acute and experienced observer. Mrs Philip Lybbe Powys seems to have spent her life inspecting great houses and her greatest triumph was on 23 March 1767 when she went to see what is rather difficult to see at all, the Queen’s Palace’. It is worth reproducing her account in full.

  The hall and staircase are particularly pleasing. The whole of the ground floor is for the King, whose apartments are fitted up rather neatly elegant than profusely ornamental. The library consists of three rooms, two oblong and one octagonal. The books are said to be the best collection anywhere to be met with. The Queen’s apartment
s are ornamented as one expects a Queen’s should be, with curiosities from every nation that can deserve her notice. The most capital pictures, the finest Dresden & other china, cabinets of more minute curiosities. Among the pictures let us note the famed cartoons from Hampton Court & a number of small & beautiful pictures; one room panelled with the finest Japan. The floors are all inlaid in the most expensive manner, and tho’ but in March, every room was full of Roses, carnations, hyacinths etc, dispersed in the prettiest manner imaginable in jars & different flowerpots on stands. On her toilet, besides the gilt plate, innumerable knick-knacks. Round the dressing room, let into the crimson damask hangings in a manner uncommonly elegant, are frames of fine impressions, miniatures etc. It being at that time the coldest weather possible we were amazed to find so large a house so warm but fires, it seems, are kept the whole day, even in the closets, and to prevent accidents to furniture so costly from the neglect of the attendance, there is in every chimney a lacquered wire fire board, the cleverest contrivance that can be imagin’d as even the smallest spark cannot fly through them, while you have the heat & they are really ornamental.

  By the Queen’s bed was an elegant case with twenty-five watches, all highly adorned with jewels.17

  Both the King and the Queen shared a deep love of music. Even as a boy, George III had been enchanted by the music of Handel, who, alas, did not live to see his young admirer crowned. Queen Charlotte took singing lessons from Johann Christian Bach, youngest son of the great composer. A room in the palace was fitted up as a music room with an immense organ, elaborately carved in 1764. Three new harpsichords were bought for the Queen. The King would sometimes accompany her on his flute. It was here that the seven-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came to enchant them: Queen Charlotte sang, accompanied by the young prodigy on the organ. In her honour Mozart composed four sonatas.