t see for
themselves, or can't see for me. How I had been promised that I should
be charmed with Hardwicke,[3] and told that the Devonshires ought to
have established there! never was I less charmed in my life. The house
is not Gothic, but of that betweenity, that intervened when Gothic
declined and Paladian was creeping in--rather, this is totally naked of
either. It has vast chambers--aye, vast, such as the nobility of that
time delighted in, and did not know how to furnish. The great apartment
is exactly what it was when the Queen of Scots was kept there. Her
council-chamber, the council-chamber of a poor woman, who had only two
secretaries, a gentleman-usher, an apothecary, a confessor, and three
maids, is so outrageously spacious, that you would take it for King
David's, who thought, contrary to all modern experience, that in the
multitude of counsellors there is wisdom. At the upper end is the state,
with a long table, covered with a sumptuous cloth, embroidered and
embossed with gold,--at least what was gold; so are all the tables.
Round the top of the chamber runs a monstrous frieze, ten or twelve feet
deep, representing stag-hunting in miserable plastered relief. The next
is her dressing-room, hung with patch-work on black velvet; then her
state bedchamber. The bed has been rich beyond description, and now
hangs in costly golden tatters. The hangings, part of which they say her
Majesty worked, are composed of figures as large as life, sewed and
embroidered on black velvet, white satin, &c., and represent the virtues
that were necessary for her, or that she was forced to have, as Patience
and Temperance, &c. The fire-screens are particular; pieces of yellow
velvet, fringed with gold, hang on a cross-bar of wood, which is fixed
on the top of a single stick, that rises from the foot. The only
furniture which has any appearance of taste are the table and cabinets,
which are all of oak, richly carved. There is a private chamber within,
where she lay, her arms and style over the door; the arras hangs over
all the doors; the gallery is sixty yards long, covered with bad
tapestry, and wretched pictures of Mary herself, Elizabeth in a gown of
sea-monsters, Lord Darnley, James the Fifth and his Queen, curious, and
a whole history of Kings of England, not worth sixpence a-piece. There
is an original of old Bess of Hardwicke herself, who built the house.
Her estates were then reckoned at sixty thousand pounds a-year, and now