Entirely different is the impression which we take away with us of the Orange portion of Hampton Court Palace from that which remains in memory of the Tudor parts. From the west and north we see nothing but the medley of red brickwork, gables, turrets, and irregular chimneystacks. From the east and south sides we get views that contrast greatly with those of the older portions. Here we have long straight fronts broken with many stone-framed windows, and surmounted by a regular stone parapet that quite inadequately masks the more modern chimneystacks. These south and west fronts are sometimes criticized by those who regret the parts of the Tudor palace demolished to make room for them, but they are by no means wanting in either dignity or beauty. Their red brick—less rich in tone than that of the Tudor buildings—is much broken with white stone ornamentation, and the southern side as seen from the gardens through massed shrubs is particularly fine. This part of the palace probably remains in the memory of most visitors as being Hampton Court, and it is only natural that it should be so, for it is the portion mainly seen from the grounds, and it is the portion with which visitors make the most intimate acquaintance—for within it, on the first floor, are the many State Rooms in which are hung the magnificent collection of pictures.
To reach the State Rooms, as has been said, we enter the Clock Court and catering across it to the right pass under the colonnade which uglifies the front of Wolsey’s rooms, and so come to the King’s Great Staircase by which the public reaches the galleries. This staircase, its walls and ceiling painted by Verrio, has on the whole a somewhat sombre and certainly unpleasing effect. It is true that we have in it one of the most notable examples of Verrio’s decorative achievements, but it is an example which I frankly find unattractive. It is sombrely gorgeous but in an unrestful fashion, with its sprawling gods, goddesses, and heroes in all manner of impossible positions, its pillars overhung with clouds or clouds swooping down, as though weighted with the figures, about the pillars. Beneath in a brownish tone are painted various “trophies”. The art of decoration, one cannot help feeling, was at the time that William the Third had this staircase painted, at a very low ebb indeed.
Curiosity may make some visitors pause to single out from the medley the figures of the Fates, the CÆsars, or particular gods and goddesses, but most will pass on into the noble King’s Guard Room with its wonderful mural decoration of muskets, pikes, and pistols. Though there are some pictures here—notably, opposite the fireplace, a large portrait by Zucchero of Queen Elizabeth’s porter—it is chiefly the old arms marvellously arrayed in diverse patterns that take the eye. Upwards of a thousand pieces are said to have been utilized in decorating this room—their arrangement being made by a gunsmith who had earlier done similar work at Windsor Castle and the Tower of London. It may be added that he utilized his materials more successfully than did Verrio in painting the staircase, and it is pleasant to learn that Gunsmith Harris’s work was so well appreciated that he was granted a pension by way of reward. From the tall windows at the farther end of the Guard Room we look out over the Privy Garden to the river, with the terraced Queen Mary’s Bower on the right.
It is not necessary to describe in detail the things to be seen in the long succession of State Rooms, from the entrance to them by the King’s Great Staircase to the exit by the Queen’s Great Staircase. Varying in size in accordance to the purpose for which they were designed, audience rooms, bedrooms, writing closets, or galleries, all are lofty rooms, and some of the smallest are the most crowded with pictures—as, for example, the Queen Mary’s closet—leaving which we pass from the rooms that occupy the first floor of the south front to those of the rather longer east front. Details as to the paintings, tapestries, or furnishings would alone occupy more than the space of this little book, and the visitor in search of such details will find them in the official handbooks. The tall windows, rising from the window seat level, and affording beautiful views of the grounds, form a feature of the Orange portion of the buildings, which shows a distinct advance upon the earlier style of fenestration—picturesque as are the smaller type of windows of the Tudor period.
EAST FRONT FROM THE LONG WATER
The southern range of rooms formed the King’s suite, and passing from the Guard Room, we go successively through: the First Presence Chamber, in which are to be seen Sir Godfrey Kneller’s “Beauties” of the Orange Court; the Second Presence Chamber, the most memorable thing in which is Van Dyck’s fine equestrian portrait of Charles the First; the Audience Chamber with a portrait of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, over the fireplace; the King’s Drawing Room; King William’s Bedroom, with an ornate ceiling painted by Sir William Thornhill, and the great canopied bed with time-worn crimson silk hangings; the King’s Dressing Room, in which are several Holbeins including two portraits of Henry the Eighth; and the last of King William’s rooms, the Writing Closet, in which are to be seen Zucchero’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth in fancy dress, also a smaller one of her, and a remarkable full length of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, in scarlet costume.
Turning at an angle through Queen Mary’s closet we pass on to inspect the series of rooms which Her Majesty did not live to occupy, and from the generous windows we get beautiful views of the yew-grown lawns and the park beyond—the view straight up the Long Canal from the Queen’s Drawing Room is particularly fine, especially when the broad gravel walks between the avenued yews are dotted with summer visitors, and the beds are gorgeous with many flowers set in the wide greenery of the lawn. Before reaching the Drawing Room we come to the Queen’s Gallery, hung with rich tapestry and ornamented with splendid china vases, and the Queen’s Bed Room, the bed hung with remarkably fresh-looking ornate hangings in red and gold. Beyond the Drawing Room are the Queen’s Audience Chamber, the Public Drawing Room, and at the end of the eastern front the Prince of Wales’ suite.
Through the farther end of the Drawing Room is the Queen’s Presence Chamber, with another magnificent canopied bed, and beyond it, the Queen’s Guard Room, giving on to the stairs. These last two rooms look out on to the Fountain Court, of which they form the northern side, but they do not exhaust the rooms open to public inspection; for along the eastern side of the Court is a series of smaller rooms, containing further pictures and furnishings. Owing to the smallness of these rooms, their darkness, and the fact that visitors can only pass straight through them from door to door, close inspection of the pictures is not easy. Along the whole length of the southern side of the Fountain Court is the King’s Gallery or Great Council Chamber—a magnificent room in which used to hang the Raphael Cartoons now at South Kensington. The room was, indeed, designed by Sir Christopher Wren as a setting for those famous pictures; and the walls are now covered by reproductions of them in tapestry. On the west side of the Court is the Communication Gallery leading to the Queen’s Great Staircase, and it is worthy of note that from the last of the State Rooms the visitor should carry away impressions of one of the most splendid of Hampton Court’s many splendid art treasures. Along the wall here are the nine large tempera pictures by Mantegna—“one of the chief heroes in the advance of painting in Italy”—in which are represented “The Triumph of CÆsar”. Says Mr. William Michael Rossetti, “these superbly invented and designed compositions, gorgeous with all splendour of subject-matter and accessory, and with the classical learning and enthusiasm of one of the master spirits of the age, have always been accounted of the first rank among Mantegna’s works”. Though in part restored, these paintings, by an artist who died more than four hundred years ago, are full of interest for their vivid presentation of a rich imagination of a great historical event. In front of the victor—in the last of this series of paintings—is borne a device bearing his famous words “Veni, Vidi, Vici”—and it is worthy of recollection that one tradition places the scene of Julius CÆsar’s final victory over the Britons at Kingston, not far from where this splendid delineation of his triumphal pageant on his return to Rome has hung for close upon three centuries. Though it is a fine final memory to bring away from the rooms, it is perhaps to be regretted that this series of paintings is in the last of the galleries through which we pass; for, as I have learned from various visitors—after going through more than a couple of dozen rooms and galleries, housing about a thousand pictures, and tapestries besides other articles of interest—the eye has become wearied and the mind overcharged with an embarrassment of riches. Several people have told me that they have come through these last galleries scarce noticing what was on the walls at all. It is a pity that the rule of having to pass through the rooms always in one order cannot be maintained only on Sundays, holidays, and such days as there are crowds, when such order is necessary for the comfort of all; at other times, when there are but few people about, it might surely be permissible to enter or leave the State Rooms by either of the great staircases.
THE WILDERNESS IN SPRING
Of the riches of art in the Palace this is not the place to speak in detail, it is only possible to hint at them. Before leaving the Communication Gallery for the exit staircase there are small rooms to the left which call for inspection—rooms which not only mark internally the linking of the original Tudor Palace with the Orange additions, but which also are traditionally associated with the builder of the Palace himself, for here is Wolsey’s Closet. In the outer lobby the most interesting object is the drawing (after Wynegaarde) of Hampton Court Palace as seen from the Thames in 1558. From this may be noted the extent of building demolished, or masked, when Wren carried out his work of rebuilding for William the Third. The Closet is chiefly notable for its beautiful ceiling, its mullioned window, and its fine linen-fold panelling which, however, though of old workmanship, has been brought together here from various parts of the Palace. The room is supposed, from the frieze, to have been at one time much larger than it now is. In the corner, between fireplace and window, is a small room, sometimes described as an oratory. Though other of Wolsey’s rooms remain, they are part of the private apartments of the Palace, and not, of course, accessible to visitors, and this small Closet and its lobbies is, therefore, worth lingering over.
During the latter part of a promenade through the State Rooms, as has been pointed out, we go practically round the four sides of the Fountain Court, and when descending the stairs and leaving the hall below them, we find ourselves in the north-western corner of the Cloisters that surround the Court. Entirely differing from the Tudor ones, this is the most impressive of all the courts here, with its cloisters surrounding a quadrangle of greenery in the midst of which a fountain plays. Whether looked at from the gallery windows, where the plashing of the water may be heard on a summer day, or examined in our walk round the Cloisters, the Fountain Court is a beautiful and restful place, which, with its surrounding of untrodden grass—starred in spring with myriad daisies—forms a delightful contrast to the white cloister pillars and the red brick walls above. Over the windows of the King’s Gallery on the south side are a dozen round, false windows, filled with time and atmosphere darkened paintings. These paintings, now but dimly discernible as such, were the work of Louis Laguerre, who had been employed in “restoring” the Mantegna “Triumph” in the Communication Gallery, who was very highly esteemed as an artist by William the Third, and who was granted by that monarch apartments in Hampton Court. Probably these pictures, representing the Twelve Labours of Hercules, are beyond fresh restoration, otherwise they might presumably be cleaned and glazed to save them from disappearing completely. Laguerre is said also to be responsible for the painting of imitation windows in similar circular spaces on the south front of the Palace—imitations which are frankly hideous. The spaces would look far better if filled with plain brick or stone. Perhaps some of these spaces being occupied with practical windows, it was thought necessary for the sake of symmetry to make the rest appear such to the casual glance. Around the Fountain Court—along the north cloister of which the public way passes to the gardens—are entrances to various apartments allotted to private residents. On the east side flights of steps go up to the two private suites, known as the Gold Staff Gallery, at the south-eastern corner of the Palace above the State Rooms. One of these suites—at the south-east angle—is interesting as being the one in which, according to tradition, took place that “Rape of the Lock”, which Pope was to celebrate in the most remarkable poem of its kind in the language. Hither came the fair Belinda—Arabella Fermor—to play that game of ombre which the poet was to make famous; and here, her triumph at cards achieved, she was taking coffee—
“For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned
The berries crackle and the mill turns round”—
when “the Peer”, Lord Petre, “spreads the glittering forfex wide” and snips off the lock of hair!
“Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.
Not louder shrieks to pitying heav’n are cast,
When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last,
Or when rich china vessels fall’n from high
In glitt’ring dust and painted fragments lie!”
The Gold Staff Gallery has tragedy as well as comedy in its history, for at one time the other suite formed out of it—that facing south—was occupied by Richard Tickell, grandson of that Thomas Tickell, who, though a poet of some note in his day, is chiefly remembered from his association with Addison. Richard Tickell, who was also a poet and political writer, married as his first wife the beautiful Mary Linley, sister-in-law of Sheridan. On 4 November, 1793, Tickell—who appears to have been financially embarrassed—threw himself from the window of one of his rooms here, and was killed instantly on the gravel path below. Though it was officially decided at the time—thanks, it is believed, to the influence of Sheridan—that it was an accidental death, the historians have no hesitation in describing the tragedy as suicide.
THE LONG WALK
