Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, 1716-1783
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Burghley House, Frederick Mackenzie, 1819, from the west, showing Lancelot’s three-arched bridge and his long lake. The coach has come via Lancelot’s new south drive and will sweep around to the entrance court on the north side of the house.
Brownlow, 9th Earl of Exeter (1725-1793), in Van Dyck costume by Thomas Hudson. The Earl and Lancelot worked on Burghley together for more than twenty-five years.
Lancelot Brown (1716-1783), by Nathaniel Dance, c.1769
Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland (1716-1776), by Sir Joshua Reynolds: Lancelot’s favourite duchess who championed his work at Syon House, Sion Hill and at Alnwick Castle.
Alnwick Castle, Northumberland. Vilet’s view of workmen finishing the new castle approach under the direction of Lancelot’s foreman, Cornelius Griffin.
Syon House, a conversation sketch by Robert Adam and Lancelot Brown, standing at the door of Syon House and looking north to where the siting of the obelisk conflicted with the site of the new bridge over Lancelot’s ‘river stile’ lake. The bridge was offset. This drawing, with others, was saved by Thomas Percy.
Thomas Percy, later Bishop of Dromore (1729-1811), by William Dickinson, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1775. Percy was chaplain and tutor at Alnwick Castle, myth-master to the Northumberlands in their restoration of Hulne’s romantic landscape and a good friend to Lancelot.
Hampton Court from the south, by J. Kip and L. Knyff, 1702-14, showing the newly-built Wilderness House at the far corner of the Wilderness or Maze. This was the palace and garden as completed for William III and Queen Mary, with Henry Wise’s new avenues in Bushy park (top right), and the extensive kitchen gardens. When Lancelot arrived in 1764 the gardens were intact, though considerably matured.
Hampton House and Garden with Garrick Writing, 1762, by Johann Zoffany, showing the ground modelling and entrance to the tunnel beneath the Hampton road, made by Lancelot to connect the garden to the riverside lawn. Lancelot was a frequent visitor to Hampton House and the sociable Garricks.
Blenheim by J.M.W. Turner, 1830-31. Painted sixty-five years after Lancelot started work at Blenheim, this is the most powerful tribute to his skills in planting and making virtues out of the difficulties with Vanbrugh’s great ‘bridge in the air’. Turner takes his view (though foreshortened) from the Woodstock entrance, showing that the townspeople were in the habit of enjoying the park, though this was perhaps not such a good idea on days when the hunt was out!
Labourers by George Stubbs, one of three pictures commissioned by Lord Torrington of workers on his estate at Southill in Bedfordshire. Apart from the atmosphere of bucolic well-being – the dozing dog, the interfering pensioner – there is the poignancy of the end of an era, imminent through Torrington’s bankruptcy, which he undoubtedly foresaw. Lancelot worked at Southill in the late 1770s, immediately prior to the disaster, so these men had almost definitely worked on his schemes.
Hannah More (1745-1833) by Frances Reynolds. Frances was the same age as Lancelot’s daughter Bridget, and yet he spent a companionable two hours in the garden at Hampton Court discussing his work with her, in the last autumn of his life. What a pity he had not warmed to such an inquiring mind before, and revealed his secrets?
The new lake at Kirkharle in Northumberland, imagined by the landscape architect Nick Owen from the plan of 1770-1, and now being made.
Rev. William Mason and Mrs Elizabeth Montagu, caricatured as Abelard and Heloise, mezzotint, 1775. Whatever the social commentary, these two great personalities of the eighteenth century were Lancelot’s loyal friends and lifelong supporters.
NOTES AND SOURCES
Notes
One-off references are given in full; for abbreviated references, please see full details in the list of Sources on p.358.
Prologue
1 ‘this planet, Earth’: Colvin, pp.2–4
2 ‘the visual degradation’: ibid.
3 ‘The choice then’: Fairbrother, pp.7–8
4 ‘It was in the eighteenth century’: Colvin, pp.59–60
5 ‘whose name was’: Stroud, Foreword, 1975. 1984 edn used throughout.
6 ‘Your Dryads’: Stroud, 1984, p.201
7 ‘With one Lost Paradise’: Stroud, 1984, p.202/Walpole and Mason, p.329
8 ‘genius/good spirits’: Stroud, 1984, p.202
9 ‘Now Mellicant’: Hinde, p. 204
10 Newcastle Courant: 15th February 1783
11 ‘Le Bran’: Stroud, 1984, p.205
12 ‘finished England’: Stroud, 1984, p.202
13 ‘Ye Sons of Elegance’: upon close examination this is a puzzling monument, almost certainly constructed some considerable time after Lancelot’s death. The epitaph is shallowly cut in a curious hand, and the lettering – now painted in Roman red – is contorted to fit the centre of three panels, suggesting that the slab, with delicate Gothic decoration, had a previous life. The names of Lancelot, his ‘relict’ (unconventionally given as Mrs Bridget Brown), their sons Lancelot and John, and John’s wife Mary (née Linton), who did not die until 1834, are all engraved in the same hand; the younger Lancelot’s inscription has been spaced to compensate for the absence of the name of his wife, Frances (née Fuller), who died in 1792, and who has a fine tablet with a veiled figure and an urn by John Bacon the Younger nearby. In 1910 the church architect, S. Inskip Ladds, whose papers are in the Norris Museum in St Ives, noted the poor condition of the Brown monument but could find no relative willing to take responsibility for repairs. Outside the north-chancel wall is a gravestone for Mary Anne Cowling (d.1884), who is also remembered in the adjacent and very fine stained-glass window. It appears that the Browns and the Cowlings, twelve of them in all, lie in a sealed vault below this north-chancel wall. A modern stone commemorating Lancelot has been placed near the spot (see Family Tree, p. xiii).
14 ‘with dirges due’: Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 1750
1 Northern Perspective
The material for this chapter was gathered from places in the Northumberland landscape that Lancelot knew; I rented a cottage in a farmsteading that dated from his time, and spent my days haunting Kirkharle, Wallington, Cambo, Rothley, Rothbury, Alnwick, Redesdale and Coquetdale. Morpeth Library has a comprehensive local collection, and all the parish registers and major histories are at the Northumberland Collections (Archives) at Woodhorn: www.northumberland.gov.uk/collections.
John and Kitty Anderson’s Kirkharle Courtyard – presiding deity, one Lancelot Brown – is a welcome source of creature comforts.
1 ‘high-boned faces’: Colley, p. 16
2 ‘fyrebrande’: George Macdonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets, the Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers, 1971 1986, p.321ff.
3 ‘fause-hearted Ha’s’: see Wedgwood, p.72; Reed, pp.110–18 (The Ballad of Parcy Reed)
4 Joyous Gard/Lancelot: Alcock, Arthur’s Britain, p.67; Christina Hardyment, Malory, The Life & Times of King Arthur’s Chronicler, 2005
5 ‘Tillage’: Welford, p. 78
6 Robert Loraine: inscription taken from the stone at Kirkharle
7 ‘marquess or duke’: Wedgwood, p.72
8 Merchant Venturers: Reed, p.110
9 ‘misterie of Gardening’: Jennifer Potter, Strange Blooms, The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants, 2006, p.245
10 ‘Forest-trees’: Welford, p.78
11 Loraine arms: Hodgson, p.246
12 ‘faultless arithmetic’: Lisa Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, 2003, p.146
13 Evelyn, Sylva: quoted in Campbell-Culver, spreading oak, p.66; elm, tree of comfort, p.78; glittering beech leaves, p.81; enigmatic ash, p.89
14 ‘happiness would be the lot’: Stephen Switzer, Ichnographia Rustica, quoted in Hunt and Willis 1975, pp.151–8
15 ‘honour in his own hand’: Raleigh, Wallington guide 1994, p.37
16 Daniel Garrett: see Peter Leach, ‘Designs from a Practical Man, the Architecture of Daniel Garrett’, Country Life, 12th September 1974;’A Pioneer o
f Rococo Decoration’, 19th September 1974; ‘In the Gothic Vein’, 26th September 1974
17 Knowlton: see Blanche Henrey, No Ordinary Gardener: Thomas Knowlton 1691–1781, ed. A. O. Chater, 1986
18 ‘proper instruments’: Newcastle Courant, 15th January 1737
19 theodolite: see Wallington archives, Letter Book, 1764–76, NRO Woodhorn 672/2/48, 10th October 1769
20 Hesleyside: see Brian Hackett, ‘A Formal Landscape at Hesleyside in Northumberland’, Archeologia Aeliana, Newcastle upon Tyne, MCMLX [1960]; see also Barbara Charlton, Recollections of a Northumbrian Lady 1815–66, Stocksfield, 1989, p. 123
21 ‘pleasant and romantic’: the Woodland Trust leaflet on Hartburn Glebe Woods (available at the site)
2 Cherchez la femme, or Lancelot’s Bride
A skeletal framework of facts prompted this chapter: that Lancelot had introductions to the Smiths in Buckinghamshire and the Vyners (see Steffie Shields in Garden History, 34:2), in Lincolnshire, and that John Penn giving the date of 1739 for the lake at Kiddington in Oxfordshire confirms that Lancelot came south that year; the Langton letter of December 1739 places him in Lincolnshire, emphasising just how inconvenient it was that he fell in love with Bridget Wayet of Boston, which really upset his plans, as his best prospects were miles away in middle England; they married at Stowe in 1744. The rest is geography: the order of his gruelling rides to keep in touch with Bridget, and the undoubted appeal of the countryside back from Boston; the lovely ‘Spilsby Crescent’ country of the southern wolds, where he might have settled, had there been someone – perhaps William Banks of Revesby (father of Joseph, born in 1743) – with the wit to employ him. Finding the Wayet monuments in St Botolph’s church was a comfort; the family continued to prosper and become ever more prominent, though they called themselves Waite in the nineteenth century: see The Personal and Professional Recollections by the late Sir George Gilbert Scott, R.A., ed. G. Gilbert Scott, FSA, 1879.
1 ‘The Brides of Enderby’: this is so evocative of Bridget’s background that I could not resist using it; the legends and realities of those devastating high tides were strong in Boston life, the tragedies of 1571 long remembered. Jean Ingelow used that memory, along with those of the 1810 disaster, in which Dinah Craik was drowned whilst milking her father’s cows, in her poem, published in Poems, 1863. See Roger Norburn, ‘Jean Ingelow and her Poetry,’ in All Things Lincolnshire, ed. Jean Howard and David Start, 2007.
2 ‘at Gateshead’: Harvey, p.68
3 Woodman correspondence: see Harvey, p.68 and App.VII
4 ‘organizer, draughtsman’: Jill Lever and Margaret Richardson, The Art of the Architect, 1984, p.50
5 ‘of respected memory’: Thompson, p.101, n.2; also Boston Guildhall, list of Mayors kindly supplied by Polly Stanley
6 lantern tower: Thompson, pp.96–7
7 Mareham: Rev. Langton to Banks, quoted in Lincolnshire Country Houses & Their Families, Part 1, p. 30
8 Vyners: see Steffie Shields ‘Mr Brown Engineer, Lancelot Brown’s Early Work at Grimsthorpe Castle and Stowe’ in Garden History, 34:2, Winter 2006
9 Mostyn: John Penn, An historical & descriptive account of Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire, 1813, p.34 (the British Library copy belonged to Thomas Grenville of Wotton Underwood)
10 ‘Kiddington still looks’: Hinde, p.18
11 John Taverner: Certaine Experiments Concerning Fish and Fruite, 1600 (reprinted 1928, Manchester, with an introduction by Eric Parker), quoted in G. M. Binnie, Early Dam Builders in Britain, 1987, pp.36–8
12 extensive garden: Jacques, p.19
13 ‘able to converse’: Penn, pp.34–5
3 The Kingdom of Stowe
My visits to Stowe have been several in the last thirty-five years or so. Perhaps it should be a principality, but whatever the title, Stowe is still to be wondered at – a fabled, haunted landscape; it is much more than a garden, and yet it must head the list of the ‘great’ gardens of England. Its heyday lasted for just 200 years; Dr Clarke notes that it gained ‘a national reputation’ in 1724, and in 1924 it was broken up and sold. The following year a vast collection of Stowe Papers was sold to Henry E. Huntington for his library in California. For most of the rest of the twentieth century the landscape led a sheltered, fugitive life, surrounded by the activities of Stowe School. The school saved the landscape, and the list of saviours includes the architect, Clough Williams-Ellis (who funded the purchase of the land covered by the Buckingham Avenue), the glass engraver Lawrence Whistler, and Dr George Clarke, whose Paper No. 26 for the Buckinghamshire Record Society, Descriptions of Lord Cobham’s Gardens at Stowe (1700–1750), provides the backbone for this chapter. Even across 6,000 miles, the Stowe Papers have been continuously analysed and, now that the garden is in their care, the National Trust continues this work; there could well be treasures illuminating Lancelot’s decade – the 1740s – still to be found, but enough has become known to construct this chapter and the next.
This chapter is dedicated to Dexter the Doggerel Dog and his Paws in Arcadia guide to Stowe (2007, with Anthony Meredith), because his amusing antics made up for the rule that kept my identical Norfolk terrier, Bertie, in the car, although he later enjoyed gallops to the Obelisk.
1 Congreve: Clarke, pp.24–7
2 Pope: Clarke, pp.30–1
3 Addison: Spectator, No. 414, 25th June 1712, (Hunt and Willis, pp.141–3)
4 ‘managing director’: Stowe School, The Stoic, July 1968, ‘The Early Life of Richard Temple’
5 ‘pretty high’: Celia Fiennes, From London to Oxford and Thence into Sussex, c.1694, p.47
6 Namur: see Ian Campbell Ross, Laurence Sterne, A Life, 2002, p.28
7 Malplaquet: Blanning, p. 554
8 ‘inferior rank’: Brown, 2006, p.37
9 the military garden: see Brown, 1999, Ch.3, for an outline history of this taste
10 ‘Mr Kent’s notion’: Jacques, p.32: see also Mowl, p.216
11 ‘Narrow Visto’: anonymous description of Lord Cobham’s gardens, 1738, in Clarke, p.67
12 ‘about 2 hours’: ibid.
13 Elysium: National Trust, Stowe guide, p.35
14 new gardener’s bills: Shields, in Garden History, 34:2; Huntington Library, Stowe Volumes, V. 167, pp.8, 9
15 William Roberts: Hinde, pp.23–4
16 ‘not charg’d Christmas’: note in accounts, December 1742; Stowe School, The Stoic, December 1971, ‘Lancelot Brown’, pp.17–22
17 ‘courteous, moderate’: Friedman, p.20
18 5 per cent: Friedman, pp.327–9
19 ‘useful Knowledge’: Friedman, pp.31–3
20 ‘to the Liberty’: National Trust, Stowe guide, p.37
21 ‘Shell-work’: National Trust, Stowe guide, p.42, quoting Seeley’s 1748 guide
22 ‘Scene of Magnificence’: Samuel Richardson (ed.), Defoe’s Tour, 3rd edition 1742, in Clarke p.79
23 ‘were white washed’: Michael Bevington, Stowe Church guide, 2001, p.6. The marriage and the engraved signatures are noted on p.16.
24 ‘habitable House’: Defoe/Richardson in Clarke, p.81
25 ‘Faithful Companion’: Gilbert West, 1732, in Clarke, p.51
26 ‘Modern Xtians’: Clarke, p.74 (anon)
27 Garden descriptions: all from Gilbert West’s ‘Stowe’, in Clarke, pp.36–51, but see also David R. Coffin, ‘Venus in the Eighteenth-Century English Garden’, Garden History, 28:2, 2000, pp.173–93
28 Signor Fido: Defoe/Richardson in Clarke, p.91
29 ‘O Pitt!’: James Thompson, The Seasons, ‘Autumn’
30 Hammond: National Trust, Stowe guide, p.63
31 Whitehead: ibid.
32 ‘commanding-looking’: Ayling, p.49;Ayling’s Chapter 7, ‘The Pitt Style’, captures the elusive Pitt as well as anyone: ‘Some part of his compulsive power lay in his physical presence. Though his invalidism became chronic, he was tall, elegant, and upright in carriage; his voice was clear and musical; his gestures studied and graceful; his general a
ppearance commanding’, p.106
33 ‘cockatrice brood’: Ayling, p.30
34 ‘a little paradise’: Ayling, p.104
35 ‘with the rebels’: Hinde, p. 37, quoting Verney Letters of the Eighteenth Century, 1930, Vol. 2, p.200
36 ‘not Taste or Judgment?’: Jemima, Marchioness Grey (1748) in Clarke, p.185
37 ‘Oval’ letter from Brown: 24th February 1747, in The Stoic, December 1971
38 Chiswick: see Harris, 1994, p.250
39 ‘the plan of the Long Room’: The Stoic, December 1971
40 ‘Noble Apartments’: Sophia, Lady Newdigate, Journal 1748, in Clarke, pp.176–7
41 ‘going on Improvements’: Marchioness Grey, in Clarke, p.185
42 ‘the Wind has’: Lancelot to George Bowes, October 1750, in Hinde, pp.42–3, quoting Strathmore Coll., D/St 347/37, Durham CRO. Lancelot also wrote, ‘The scaffolding of buildings of this kind is the greatest arte in the whole, after the foundations’; and in 1754, Reinhold Angerstein saw and sketched the column being built (see p. 58). Lancelot told Bowes that he would have ‘a double pleasure’ in building at Gibside and in his ‘native country’, but things turned out differently.
43 ‘so disposed’: Turner, p. 179
44 ‘my Lady Cobham’: Anne Grenville to Richard Grenville, 1750, BL Add. MS. 57806. f.76, in Clarke, pp. 186–7
45 ‘if architectural historians’: John Harris,’ A Garden of the Mason School, Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire’, Country Life, 3rd October 1985, pp.940–42
4 Surveying His Future – Lancelot’s Great Ride
Jennifer Meir’s revelatory researches on Sanderson Miller, collected into her book Sanderson Miller and His Landscapes (2006), have provided the clues – to Lancelot’s meeting Miller at Stowe and the consequent associations and visits – that we know led to the commission for Croome. After spending several days following Lancelot’s complicated progress from Stowe to Croome Court, by car, I returned exhausted, conscious that he had done the journey on horseback, which took stamina and determination, and that this journey was crucial in dictating the pattern of his future career. It is difficult to overemphasise the importance of his capacity for hard riding, and the unsung heroic companions of his life were undoubtedly several nameless saddle-horses, of sturdy build and faithful temperament. He kept a saddle-horse (one is mentioned in his draft Will of 1769) even though he had a carriage, which suggests that he enjoyed riding, though his cross-country journeys of as much as 25–30 miles a day were probably confined to his earlier years.