Hampton Court/Chapter 1
HAMPTON COURT
CHAPTER I
THE BUILDINGS AND THEIR MAKERS
1. Hampton Court :its associations: its twofold interest.—2. The characteristics of the early sixteenth-century architecture as represented in Wolsey's building.—3. The size and extent: the view from the roofs.—4. The outer Green Court: the Base Court: the Clock Court: the "Confessionary."—5. Wren's work in the Clock Court: the side-courts.— 6. The Great Hall: the great Watching Chamber :the Horn-room.—7. Wren and his style: the Fountain Court: the east front: the south front: the King's staircase and its decorations :the interior of the rooms.—8. The architect: Wolsey probably his own architect: Wren's plans: the extent of his designs: Defoe thereon: the work incomplete but characteristic.—9. Different judgments on the alterations made by Wren: Horace Walpole: "The Beauties of England and Wales:" Wren's characteristic merits.
I
There are few of the buildings which the generosity of English sovereigns has thrown open to the people that appeal to us with the same attraction as Hampton Court. For two reasons, at least, it has an interest which is unique. No English palace that still remains has borne, at least until quite our own day, so homely an air. Whitehall, Oatlands, Nonsuch are gone. Buckingham Palace, Saint James's, and Kensington have the inevitable defects of all royal dwellings in a great metropolis. Windsor Castle is a rival; but in historical association it is certainly inferior. Earlier sovereigns lived at Windsor, later monarchs since George III. have made it a home; but it has not been, like Hampton Court, for more than two centuries the almost continuous residence of the rulers of England. There Wolsey rested and gave feasts; Henry spent honeymoons; Mary sat wearily waiting for the babe that never came; Elizabeth hunted and intrigued; James talked theology; Charles collected pictures, and slipped secretly through his guards' hands; Cromwell listened to the organ as Milton played it; Charles II. made love, and William III. made gardens; and so the English rulers went on living at their ease in the most comfortable of their houses, till the day when the boy who was to be George III. had his ears boxed by his grandfather, and vowed he would never live in the place where he had received such an indignity.
Hampton Court possesses in a striking degree the interest of a continuous connection with English history and an association with the domestic lives of English sovereigns. With these two thoughts in mind it is that we pass through its courts and examine its architectural features. Each bit of 
building, it is scarcely too much to say, has an interest of its own. Historically, or because of the men who designed it, or from important events which are associated with it, each part has its special worth.
The history of the building, as we now see it, is in itself a great part of the history of English architecture, as it is a memorial of a great part of the history of the nation and its crown.
II
The Palace of Hampton Court was begun at a time when English domestic architecture was at its best. The new era which had replaced the "over-mighty subject" by the mighty monarch was out of harmony with the castles of elaborate defence and corresponding inconvenience which feudalism and medieval life had made necessary. The fortress gave place to the house. The beginning of the sixteenth century was a time of comfort, of luxury, and of enterprise; and all these were represented in the last triumphs of Gothic architecture—the great houses that were built before English architects, as well as English men of fashion, became Italianate.
Hampton Court, as Wolsey began and Henry finished it, is one of the last, as it is the greatest of the examples of that national style which was developed when the Tudor rule had settled down on the land after the tumults of the French wars and the civil strife of the fifteenth century. As the fifteenth century advanced castle-building ceased. Towns were still walled, but private dwellings in England—for in Scotland and Ireland, as well as on the Borders, the need for defensive buildings was still apparent—gradually dispensed with the visible tokens of the age of insecurity. Battlements became an ornament rather than a protection. Moats were no longer dug, though here Wolsey kept up the fashion of the former age, and before the great gate of his house had a deep and wide ditch with a drawbridge of the ancient sort. The details of the houses followed the principle which had begun to rule their general appearance. Windows were made much larger all through the century, till with the sixteenth century we have the great windows which are so characteristic of the building of the Cardinal and the King. The great dining-hall declined, though in houses of much state it survived, as at Hampton Court, in much of its old splendour. The
custom of the great men dining in common with their households was dying out, as More's "Utopia," in its plea for a common hall and common hospitality, so clearly shows. On the other hand, the comforts of the individual were far more carefully attended to. The first court of Wolsey's great building consists entirely of guest-chambers. The lavish decoration within attempted to counterbalance the economy of architectural detail without. Windows, in which the tracery no longer excites admiration by its beauty and grace, were filled with rich glass and overhung 
West Front and Trophy Gates
by heavy curtains of magnificent stuffs. Tapestries covered the walls; and of these at Hampton Court splendid specimens survive.
III
Of the external grandeur of the building which Wolsey designed, perhaps the best impression can be obtained from the roofs, or from the north-west of what was once the tilt-yard. The extent of the buildings is amazing, and the dignity and magnificence of the design is no less impressive. The palace, says Mr. Law, "covers eight acres, and has a thousand rooms."[1]
Such a general view as is obtained from the roof gives an impression which is certainly not lost when the details are observed, and when the Palace is inspected at leisure.
IV
We pass through the "trophy gates"—poor specimens of the early Hanoverian age at its least interesting epoch—into the outer Green Court, by the unattractive barracks at the left (which may have been stables in their earliest history), to the great Gate-house. On each side project the beautiful buildings, with their fine windows, picturesque turrets, and the dull red of the bricks intermingled with lines of black, in which now live the chaplain and others on the north, and on the south Her Royal Highness Princess Frederica of Hanover.[2]
The little gardens, the creepers here and there, set off the old buildings well. But the dignity of the building, as Wolsey designed it, is gone. The great gate itself has no longer its five storeys and its pinnacles with their lead cupolas, but has dwindled, under a restoration of George III.'s, to three storeys and towers that rise but slightly over the adjacent building. But from the first the tall chimneys strike the eye. They, too, it is plain, in most cases are restorations, but restorations according to the exact pattern of the originals. Each of them has its pattern, and the different coloured bricks, where they are preserved, add a peculiar distinction to the lofty clusters, which become an ornament where a less skilful arrangement would have disfigured the court.
Through the great gate, with its groined ceiling, we pass into the first or Base Court. This at once strikes the visitor as being very low on the north and south in proportion to the high Gate-house and Clock-tower. This effect would not have been so noticeable had the cupolas with which the smaller turrets were decorated remained in situ. It is increased also by the tall span of the roof of the great hall, with its greater
Oriel Window, West Gateway
Perpendicular window, seen to the left as the court is entered from the gateway.
There is no better specimen in England than this court of what is loosely called the early Tudor style of domestic architecture. It is the exact reverse of formal or tame in colour and design. It is sombre in tone yet warm—the introduction of darker coloured bricks at intervals adding in a very marked way originality and variety. The design discards uniformity. On three sides (broken, however, by the Gate-house), the windows are ranged at regular intervals and are of the same size, and there are only two storeys. But on the third side, the east, the line is broken not only by the Clock-tower, but by a variety in the arrangement of the windows, and the building is of three storeys.
The court is particularly homely. The grass shows up the fine dark red of the buildings very happily, and the whole air of it is like that of some quiet college in one of our Universities. The interior of the rooms show something of the old plan of "double lodgings" of which Cavendish speaks. Here were the great chambers for the foreigners, and the great persons of the court, whom Wolsey so freely entertained.
Details of the work are interesting, such as Henry VIII.'s arms below the great oriel window on the gateway tower, and the arms and initials of Edward VI. on the two turrets near. From the Base Court, which is practically all Wolsey's work, we pass to the much more composite series of buildings within the Clock-court. We enter by what is called Anne Bullen's gateway, which has a restoration of what was once a beautiful groined roof. In the 
Anne Boleyn's Gateway
quatrefoils of the centre are the badges of Anne, and her initial joined in a true love-knot with that of Henry VIII. At the left goes up the staircase to the great hall. The exterior of the hall takes up the whole of the north side of the court. Low down are small windows, which light the cellars, then a great expanse of wall below the great windows. Between each window rise strong buttresses, which pass above the battlements and terminate in small pinnacles. At the east end of the north side are the two large windows of three lights which go from floor to ceiling of the dais. The hall is Henry VIII.'s work, not Wolsey's.
The Clock-tower behind has Wolsey's arms, and the rooms of the Cardinal himself stretched along from the Clock-tower to the southern extremity of the building. These are all now in private occupation. They preserve not a little of their ancient features of interest. The fine mullioned windows, the rich panelled ceilings, often gilded and highly coloured, the decorations recalling the Cardinal's own living in them—the hat, crosses, and poleaxes, the motto "Dominus Michi Adivtor"—the charming panelling of different forms of the linenfold pattern, preserve the appearance of the rooms when their great builder still lived in them. There is one delightful room, rich with no inconsiderable remnants of beautiful decoration,—it has been identified with the "Confessary,"—which is especially interesting for its preservation of the ancient features.
The "Confessionary," as Horace Walpole calls it in his "Anecdotes of Painting," has only recently been rediscovered, and it has been restored under the direction of Sir J. C. Robinson, and opened to the public. Of its extremely interesting paintings this is not the place to speak, but we may here notice the excellent "linen-scroll" pattern panels which have been collected from other parts of the Palace to cover the walls, and the splendid decorated ceiling. A private oratory for the Cardinal himself it may well have been. The fireplace would not conflict with this idea. It would be the room where he retired alone to pray or to make confession. His public devotion demanded and received, according to the idea of the time, a more stately setting.
A curious and happy variety has been formed by the restoration of this charming little Tudor room, which is now called "Cardinal Wolsey's Closet," close to the communication gallery and the Queen's great staircase. The ceiling, with its beautiful panels highly decorated, and a cornice of rich design, is in effective contrast to the sprawling goddesses of La Guerre, a few feet away. It is a delightful reminder of the sixteenth century amid the surroundings of the eighteenth. Here Wolsey and George II. touch each other. We find ourselves again, when we seem to be yet in Wren's buildings, after all among the original work of the second court.
Wolsey's Oratory or Confessionary
V
In strange contrast to the rooms of Wolsey, without and within, is the colonnade built by Wren on the south side of the court. Even the most loyal admirers of the great man's work may be pardoned if they regret its conjunction with the late domestic Gothic and the Perpendicular windows to south, east, and north. Seven Ionic columns, entablature, balustrade, every classic adornment which may cheerfully consort with William III. in a toga and a laurel wreath, or George II. disguised as a Roman general, are hardly in keeping with the great hall of Henry VIII. But the colonnade in itself is stately, graceful, perfectly proportioned. Some entrance there must be to the great staircase, which is a magnificent example of the great master's power.
The contrast with the old work is carefully made as little offensive as possible. Wren might have built a complete Palladian facade. He preferred to give as little of new work as he could. Historical continuity, indeed, can only be obtained at a price; and we may be thankful that the continuous occupation of Hampton Court for three centuries has given us no more abrupt contrasts than this.
Of the details of the court much might be said, but the artist can best picture them. The great astronomical clock itself, dated 1540, and made for Henry VIII., is as much an enigma to the ordinary visitor as it is probably a terror to those who live near it.[3] The ornamental work about the first two courts is also of great interest. The most striking feature is the series of terra-cotta busts of the Roman emperors, executed by Gian da Maiano—"rotundæ imagines ex terra depictæ"—that, is, circular portraits of terra-cotta in relief, designed by their artist for "Anton Court." They are medallions surrounded with rich borders, and are still but little damaged, and of very great artistic interest. Decorations they are rather of an Italian palace than of an English Gothic house, and strange they look against the flat, undecorated Tudor brickwork. The ugly shelters that protect them from the weather are an indication of their exotic character. But they are one of the most
charming features of the place. The finest, perhaps is the medallion of Otho, in a helmet, on the right hand of the inner tower opposite the clock. The beautiful terra-cotta, too, of Wolsey's arms under the clock should not be forgotten; it is perhaps by the same artist.
The numerous side-courts to the north, with quaint stairways, massive roofs, dark corners, beautiful projecting buttresses, and windows and gables, and every sort of delightful surprise, must be examined in detail. At every turn the artist finds a subject, and his description says what words cannot say. The Lord Chamberlain's Court, the Master-Carpenter's Court, the Court near the Great Kitchen, the Back Court, the Chapel Court, and others, have each their charm. And the Great Kitchen itself, with its high roof and its grand open space, like a great hall, its hatches, and the approaches to it, form a series of characteristic pictures. So we turn back to the Clock-tower, and mount the stair from Anne Bullen's gate.
VI
The Great Hall itself, with the rooms that open from it, forms the most magnificent series of interiors that the Palace now presents. The hall was begun when Wolsey was dead. The Record Office contains all the accounts of its making, of the expenses of material and work, and even of every piece of painting and carving. It was hurried on with all the impetuosity of the King in seizing every pleasure with rapidity.
The staircase that leads up from Anne Bullen's gateway corresponds to another stair leading on the other side from the kitchen, as in the arrangement of many college halls, notably Merton College at Oxford.
The hall is entered through a screen of dark oak, above which is the Minstrels' Gallery.
By two points the visitor is immediately struck as he enters the hall—its size and the magnificence of the roof. The later is what is called a single hammer-beam roof, divided into seven compartments. The beams are terminated by elaborate pendants, 4 feet 10 inches long, very rich in ornament, fleur-de-lys, and putti, animals, and conventional flower designs. The springs of the side arches, again, are elaborately ornamented. The spandrels have the arms of Henry and Jane Seymour. The "Louvre" has disappeared, but otherwise the roof is much as it was when Henry's last wife was proclaimed queen in 1543. The whole effect is one of exceeding richness, especially since the colour has been restored with a more than Tudor profuseness.
There seems some doubt as to whether the dais which now exists is original, or rather whether there was originally a daïs at all.[4] Some have considered that the hall marks the period at which dining in public had died out, and that the King dined in the room at the east end, sometimes called the "With-drawing-chamber." But this is almost certainly an error. The hall rather emphasises an attempt to restore or to revive the public dining, and the large 
The Great Oriel to Hall
window at the south-east was evidently intended to light the daïs. It was here, tradition says, that Surrey the poet wrote with a diamond some lines on the fair Geraldine.
From the hall we pass into the Withdrawing-room, more properly named the Great Guard or Watching-chamber. By this, access to the great hall was obtained from the royal apartments, which in Henry's day extended to the east of the Clock-court. Here the guards waited, and through this passed the applicants for an audience. It forms really an ante-chamber to many different parts of the Palace—to the Queen's lodgings, the "haunted gallery" and chapel, to the Horn-room, which leads to stairs down to the kitchen, as well as to the King's rooms. The room is over sixty feet long and nearly thirty wide, and its height is twenty-nine and a half feet. It is thus in striking contrast to the great hall. Its low flat ceiling, with oak pendants with the arms of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, is full of character and richness. The old tapestry still hangs on the walls, and the room is chiefly lighted by the great bay window, which extends to the whole height.
From the Watching-chamber the Horn-room is entered. Through this the dishes were brought up to the high table on the dais of the hall. The three rooms together give the happiest example left in England of a great dwelling-place of Henry VIII.'s day.
VII
So, leaving the Tudor buildings of their different dates, we pass to the complete contrast of the new Fountain Court. The second court had after Elizabeth's day been called by that name, but when the fountain was removed from it, and Wren's new building rose on the site of the old Cloister Green Court, the title was transferred.
It is late in the day to enter the lists in defence of Wren. Critics must be content to differ. Some may think that these buildings have "an air of pretentious meanness," while others raise perpetual protest against any architecture but Gothic as unnatural in "these realms." But Wren's work, as we see it at Hampton Court, seems to many almost the perfection of colour in the contrast of white and red, and as the most comfortable, and at the same time stately and dignified, style of domestic architecture for an age which demands both dignity and comfort. The design of the Fountain Court as seen from within consists of four storeys resting on broad classical arches supported by square piers. The first feature that attracts notice, here and in the outside facing parks and gardens, is the exactness of the proportions. The three rows of windows exactly correspond, and cover the space marked out for them by decoration on the centre of the arches. The columns fall exactly below the space which is unrelieved by light.
Fountain Court
The first floor consists of the state apartments. Above is the half-storey, or entresol, the windows of part of which light the larger state-rooms, while the others, as those of the top storey, belong to private apartments. The design of the whole is as simple as it is regular. The decoration, on the other hand, where it occurs, is elaborate and rich. The lion-skins round the windows, the flowers within the arches, are carved with that stately conventional grace which is one of the most prominent points of the work of this period. The cloisters are admirably proportioned, cool on the hottest day, and shaded from wind and rain, which too often in a cloister renders one side, at least, useless in a storm. The whole is surmounted by a high balustrade.
In the west cloister is the door which admits to the room which Wren himself used while the work
was being carried on. Over the doorway are his initials. On the south wall, within the circular spaces of the half-storey, are insignificant and almost obliterated frescoes of La Guerre. Decoration does not destroy the air of comfort, of homeliness, of a stately seclusion, that reigns in the court. It is above all things a living house that he has built; nothing too great or good for human nature, but a home.
If the court, when viewed from the cloister, appears somewhat small, the effect of the east and south fronts is entirely the reverse of this. There was compactness; here is size and magnificence.
Through the cloister at the middle of the eastern side we enter, under the state-rooms, into the great Fountain Garden. Here the design of William III. to rival Versailles becomes at once apparent, as the trees and canals stretch out in vistas before the eye.
But of the gardens we do not now speak. We turn rather to examine the great front of Wren's building, which shows more than any other part of the Palace the impressive dignity of his design. Formal it is certainly, and geometrical, the work of an accurate draughtsman, whose eye was ruled, it might seem, by mathematical calculations. But it is impossible to deny the magnificence of the plan. It were absurd to compare it with Wolsey's front, the characteristic excellences of each are so distinct and different. It is the most important specimen of Louis Quatorze architecture that we have in England. It should be compared with Versailles; and it will bear the comparison. But inappropriate though the thought may be, I cannot but confess that it makes me think also of the Italian palaces which were raised in the fifteenth century, like the Strozzi Palace at Florence, or the sixteenth or seventeenth century palaces of Florence and Genoa, and it seems to me that Wren's building has a variety and attractiveness which the others lack. In Hampton Court Wren brought this particular style, Neo-classic, or what you will, to perfection. The buildings are impressive, distinctly decorative, and unmistakably comfortable.
On this east front the white of the windows, the pediments, and balustrade, of the carved trophies, flowers, fruit, putti, and all the paraphernalia of the craftsmen of the age, is in striking but never startling contrast to the rich red of the bricks. There are here some wonderful specimens of under-cutting in stone,—the carved keystones of the windows of the ground floor looking over the gardens, with the initials of William and Mary intwined under a crown. The effect of this is now often lost because the birds' nests inside them are allowed to remain. The whole front has a brightness which the English climate indisputably needs. One might be saddened by the solemn court of Wolsey, but Wren's work, if it could be monotonous, could never be depressing.
The south front, which looks upon the private garden, is slightly varied from the design of the east. It is, very slightly, less long; it has two projecting wings, each of the space of four windows, and the central compartment has not the same rich pediment or abundant decoration. At the west end the building joins Wolsey's work, the window of Queen Elizabeth. And the contrast is striking if not particularly pleasing; for Wren's work, it must be admitted, here (as in S. Mary's Church at Warwick) does not look at its best in conjunction with another style.
If Wren was always impressive in his exteriors, his interiors can hardly be denied to be admirably suited for the conventional courtesies of an eighteenth-century household.
The King's great staircase has all the features essential to a ceremonial—width, regularity, and a view of the whole from any part. Verrio's decorations, gods and goddesses, nymphs and muses, in the most inartistic and unedifying combination, must be seen to be sufficiently disliked. But a fine doorway at the top of the stairs admits to the Guard-chamber, a fine lofty room, decorated with arms set up in Wren's day by the gunsmith Harris. It were tedious to describe room after room as it is entered. Some general points apply to all. The wood-work is frequently by Grinling Gibbons, and is always light, delicate, attractive. Other work is by Gabriel Cibber, notablv the "insculpting the Relievo on the Tympan of the great Frontispiece"—the triumph of Hercules over Envy—which is the central decoration of the east front outside. Every room, except possibly the little chapel near the Queen's bathing-closet, is adequately, indeed admirably lighted. The decorations of the rooms, fine chandeliers of silver or glass, rich chairs, beds and canopies of state, are almost all of William III.'s date. Queen Mary's own work has been removed, but the richest work in damask, silk, and velvet is of her time or Anne's. The ceilings are frequently painted, whether by Verrio or Thornhill. The ill success of most of these laborious efforts does not condemn a method of decoration which may be an 
The South Front from Privy Gardens
eminently suitable completion to a scheme of decoration which includes ceiling as well as walls. The idea was not unhappy, but the execution was too often inferior.
The great galleries—the Queen's, which is eighty-one feet long by twenty-five broad, and the King's, which is a hundred and seventeen feet long and twenty-four wide, and was built for the Raffaelle cartoons, and the communication gallery, connecting the King's and Queen's apartments,—are magnificent rooms, which break the monotony of the smaller suites with their decorations all very similar to each other. It is to be observed, further, that the state-rooms, now hung with pictures and tapestry, and open to the public, by no means exhaust the building. There are numerous small rooms and staircases which are not open, but which, when all the rooms were used by the courts, must have agreeably varied what would otherwise be a somewhat stiff series of too uniformly dignified apartments. It was not necessary then to pass from room to room, as the visitor passes now, to get from one end of the court to another. Passages of communication are frequent; and the reproach which is sometimes directed against Wren's building of a sacrifice of comfort to dignity is undeserved.
VIII
When we turn back to look at the great Palace as a whole, we are met at once by the fact that we cannot adequately consider Wolsey's buildings to-day in the light in which he intended them to be viewed. Time and change have altered their whole setting. Not only is the Cloister Green Court, and not a little beside it, pulled down, but the outer buildings and the surroundings generally are entirely altered. The tilt-yard, for instance, is barely recognisable. The charming tower that stands in the midst of the east side is but a reminiscence.
And if we do not see Wolsey's buildings and Henry VIII.'s as they left them, neither do we know what they were designed to be. We have no full plans; and more than that, the name of Wolsey's architect has yet to be discovered, though perhaps it is not undiscoverable. Masters of the works and clerk comptrollers are mentioned in the accounts; but of the man who made the designs for the splendid building there is no trace. It is by no means improbable that Wolsey himself made the plans, and left the carrying out of details to the skilled workmen of that age of artistic excellence. Eustace Mascall was in 1534 "clerk of the cheque in the King's works at Hampton Court;" but there is nothing to show that he was architect.
When we come to the reconstruction the contrast is great. We know the architect—perhaps the greatest whom England has produced—and we know, with the minutest detail, the extent of his plans.
In the office of Her Majesty's Board of Works, and in the Library of All Souls' College at Oxford, are preserved probably the whole of the drawings and memoranda that Wren made for his work at Hampton Court. From these, if not from the somewhat precarious evidence of Defoe, we learn what was the intention of the King and his architect. "I have been assured," Defoe writes in his "Journey from London to the Land's End" (1724), "that had the peace continued, and the King lived to enjoy the continuance of it, His Majesty had resolved to have pulled down all the remains of the old building (such as the chapel and the large court within the first gate), and to have built up the whole Palace after the manner of those two fronts already done. In these would have been an entire set of rooms for the receiving, and, if need had been, lodging and entertaining any foreign prince, with his retinue; also offices for all the Secretaries of State, Lords of the Treasury and of Trade, to have repaired to for the despatch of such business as it might be necessary to have done there upon the King's longer residence there than ordinary; as also apartments for all the great officers of the household; so that had the house had two great squares added, as was designed, there would have been no room to spare, or that would not have been very well filled."
Another Versailles it would have been, so far as William could make it; and the parks and gardens had already put on an air suited to the new design. How much the taste of the age approved this may be seen by what Defoe adds a little later, speaking, even if he be himself ironical, most unquestionably the sentiment of his day.
"When Hampton Court will find such another favourable juncture as in King William's time, when the remainder of her ashes shall be swept away, and her complete fabric, as designed by King William, shall be finished, I cannot tell; but if ever that shall be, I know no palace in Europe, Versailles excepted, which can come up to her, either for beauty and magnificence, or for extent of building and the ornaments attending it."
The plan drawn up by Wren in 1699 shows less the extent of the destruction contemplated than the sumptuousness of the new scheme. The great approach was to have been through Bushey Park, by the Lion Gates, to a new entrance court, which would have been 300 feet long by 230 feet broad. All the buildings on the north side up to the great hall would have been swept away. The great hall itself was to have been the entrance to the Palace. Great flights of steps and a fine colonnade were to have led to it. From the hall itself was to have been the entrance to the rest of the Palace, to the Clock court directly, and by intercommunication to all other parts.
Wren did not confine himself to a general design. Every detail, it is hardly too much to say, passed under his eye. An estimate, dated April 2, 1699, shows how minutely he had entered into the internal as well as the external arrangements. He states the stone required for the stairs, the "iron rayles of good worke," while the wainscoting, and even the sewers and the smoking-room to the Guard-chamber are considered.
From 1689 to 1718, it may be said that Wren was more or less actively concerned with building and with supervision of Hampton. In that last year, when he was eighty-five, he was dismissed from the post of Surveyor-General of the Works. Still with his mind unclouded, with a character which resisted all attempts to belie it, he passed his last year "principally in the consolation of the Holy Scriptures, cheerful in solitude, and as well pleased to die in the shade as in the light."
Wren's work at Hampton Court is the best memorial of his power as a domestic architect. It suffers to some extent from cramped surroundings, and from his design never having been completed. It is probable, too, indeed certain, that in some instances he altered his plans by the direct orders of William and Mary. But still, with its faults and incompleteness, it is the greatest example of the adaptation of the Louis Quatorze style in England, and it is a monument worthy of a great man. With Wren's life and with the accession of the House of Hanover there passed away the chance of creating a great English palace such as our sovereigns, unlike the great Continental monarchs, have never possessed. The age of palace-building passed away. The two great English architects, Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, tried their hands at two palaces—the new Whitehall and the new Hampton Court, but neither was completed, and the day went by.
IX
From Wren's day to our own, conflicting opinions have been held of his alterations at Hampton Court. A reaction soon set in against his work, led by Horace Walpole, who lost no opportunity of sneering at the style, while he excused the architect. His own eccentric ideas of Gothic forced him to condemn work which he understood even less than the medieval methods which he affected to adore. He speaks of Wren's work in a tone of lordly superiority, as an imitation of the "pompous edifices of the French monarch." The author of the "Beauties of England and Wales" in 1816 gives a still more severe judgment. He compares Wren's work with Wolsey's, and adds, "So long as those impressive vestiges exist, assuredly it will be lamented that a British monarch did not preserve a consistency of English style in the most extensive palace appertaining to his crown, or did not, on another site, raise an edifice equally sumptuous in style, purely and uniformly classical."
Wren's work rises superior to such criticisms. Seen from the Long Canal, or the House Park, or from the Thames, it establishes its claim to be called an impressive English palace, as characteristic of its age, as is Wolsey's work of the early sixteenth century.
- ↑ "History of Hampton Court Palace in Tudor Times," p. 49.
- ↑ Part of this was at one time the residence of the "Lady house-keeper," an official of great pomp, while the rooms at the south-west are said to have been those long dwelt in by Mistress Pen, foster-mother to King Edward VI., whose ghost, they say, still haunts the precincts.
- ↑ An elaborate explanation is given by Mr. Ernest Law in his admirable guide-book.
- ↑ "In Hampton Court Palace there is a dining chamber at the upper end of the hall, and no dais; and although the present floor is not original,the levels of the different doors show that the original intention has been followed."—Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages, vol. iii.part 1, p. 78.