Authors – Page 6 – Number One London

The Charlotte Gunning Portrait at Chawton House by Guest Blogger Hester Davenport

The Portrait of Charlotte Gunning (1759-94)

On 15 May 1784 it was the turn of Charlotte Margaret Gunning, Maid of Honour to Queen Charlotte, to have use of the Royal Coach. Her friend Mary Hamilton called at St James’s Palace, and went with Charlotte to ‘Romney’s, the Painter’s’ where Miss Gunning was ‘to sit for her picture’. That half-length portrait now hangs in Chawton House Great Hall.

Mary Hamilton had also been employed in the royal household, to help with the education of the young princesses; she found her duties arduous, thankfully withdrawing from court after five years. Perhaps the two young women talked over the difficulties of royal service, which included their reputations as ‘learned ladies’. Both had had ‘masculine’ educations in the classical languages: according to Fanny Burney Miss Gunning was derogatively nicknamed ‘Lady Charlotte Hebrew’ for her learning.

Charlotte was the daughter of Sir Robert Gunning (1731-1816), a diplomat who was so successful in conducting the King’s business with the Empress of Russia that in 1773 he was made Knight of the Bath. His daughter’s appointment as Maid of Honour to Queen Charlotte in 1779 was no doubt a further sign of royal favour. He had two other children, his son George who would inherit the baronetcy, and another daughter Barbara. His wife had died when Charlotte was eleven-years-old, but in the 1780s he ordered portraits of himself and his three children from the society portraitist, George Romney (1734-1802).

The painting of the 25-year-old Charlotte is interesting in its apparent contradictions. The colours are muted, with the head veiled in white and the black dress severely plain, yet it is very low-cut, and the sitter looks out self-assured and even challenging. A warm glow in the sky behind suggests there is feeling and passion beneath that cool exterior. Charlotte’s hair is dressed high on her head and fashionably powdered. A hat might have been expected, but scarves, called ‘fascinators’, sometimes replaced large hats, especially for evening wear.

There were six Maids of Honour, paid £300 a year, with duties that must have been stultifyingly dull, standing in attendance at the Queen’s ‘Drawing rooms’ and other court functions (though periods of duty were rotated). Charlotte kept her position for nearly twelve years before managing to escape. It was not easy to withdraw from royal service, as both Mary Hamilton and Fanny Burney discovered, and reaching her thirtieth birthday in 1789 Charlotte must have feared a dreary life of spinsterhood. But on 6 January 1790 she achieved an honourable discharge when she married a widower, Colonel the Honourable Stephen Digby, the Queen’s Vice Chamberlain. Another of Charlotte’s friends, Mary Noel, wrote in a letter of her surprise that Sir Robert gave his consent ‘as it must be a very bad match for her if he has four children’, though she also recorded Charlotte saying that she ‘can’t live without his friendship and could not keep that without marrying him’.

For Fanny Burney the news of the forthcoming wedding was a shock: she believed that Digby had been paying her marked attention for two years and that she should have received the proposal. Her sense of betrayal was huge and she gave vent to her feelings in page after page of her journal. She never blamed Charlotte but no doubt got sly pleasure from noting the King shaking his head over ‘Poor Digby’ (because his bride was a learned lady) or recording the strange details of the wedding: that it was performed by Dr Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, in the Drawing-room of Sir Robert’s house in Northampton, with the guests sitting round on sofas and ladies’ workboxes not cleared away. The new Mrs Digby paid a visit to Miss Burney, ‘quite brilliant in smiles and spirits’ and Fanny did her the justice of saying that she believed that Miss Gunning had ‘long cherished a passionate regard’ for Colonel Digby.

Two children, Henry Robert and Isabella Margaret, were born in quick succession, but the marriage was not to be long-lasting. In June 1794 Charlotte Digby died (possibly in childbirth – the brief obituary notice in the Genteman’s Magazine gives no cause of death). She was buried in the vault of Thames Ditton church where Digby’s first wife lay: he would join his two ‘dear wives’ there in 1800.

Charlotte Gunning wrote no books, has found no place in history. But there could surely be no more suitable place for her portrait than Chawton Women’s Library, in the society of so many other ‘learned ladies’.

Permission to reprint this article, which first ran in The Female Spectator, was kindly granted by that publication and Chawton House Library.

Travels with Victoria: A Visit to Strawberry Hill

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was the epitome of the 18th century man: author, collector, designer and architect, politician, diarist, raconteur — you know, the best of those “sees all, knows all, tells all” fellows. His Strawberry Hill gothic fantasy in Twickenham (website here) has received a major renovation and is open to the public; from central London, it’s a short train ride and brief walk.

One of Walpole’s accomplishments was the “invention” of the neo-Gothic movement, or Gothic Revival, in architecture, interior design, and literature. As the youngest son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, he enjoyed a typical upper class childhood, attended Eton and Cambridge, took a Grand Tour, and entered Parliament while still in his 20’s. Horace Walpole collected old glass, books, art and almost any sort of object from early England, and he was fascinated with Gothic architecture.

Walpole acquired the house on this property in the 1740’s and set about remodeling and adapting it for the next several decades. He continued his collecting of artifacts to adorn the rooms and it became the object of many visitors to tour the premises, so many that he complained about their invasion of his privacy. But before the intrusions got so bad, he had another “invention” up his sleeve. In 1765 he published The Castle of Otrano, first in a continuing tradition of “Gothick” literature, popular even today in various forms.

Having no direct heirs, and being the last of the Earls of Orford, he left the house to his friend, sculptress and society leader Anne Damer. Later it fell into disrepair, was sold and the collections dispersed. For the last decades, it has been a part of St. Mary’s University College. The Strawberry Hill Trust secured £9 million for the restoration project, which opened in October, 2010.

Above, a window, showing how Walpole incorporated his collection of Renaissance and older glass into his modern 18th century windows. Last year, in 2010, I was fortunate enough to visit the wonderful exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London: Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. The exhibition, also shown at the Yale Center for British Art, reassembled many of the objects Walpole have collected but which were dispersed in a multi-day sale in 1842. Below, a cabinet of miniatures and enamels made for Walpole and now owned by the V&A. Inside, it was full of his treasures.

Most of these objects and much of the interior furnishings remain in other collections, both private and in museums, but gradually the Trust hopes to secure some loans and gifts of the originals. For the time being, while the renovations continue, the rooms are empty.

Above, the library in 2011; below, the library as Walpole enjoyed it.

There are, however, some amenities: the gift shop and the restaurant, both of which enjoyed our custom. Due to the nature of the building, it is necessary to book visits in advance or risk a long wait. In 1784,Walpole wrote a guide to Strawberry Hill. A reproduction of this guide is given to each visitor. Walpole wrote: “In truth, I did not mean to make my house so Gothic as to exclude convenience, and modern refinements in luxury…It was built to please my own taste, and in sole degree to realize my own vision.”

The staircase from below and from above. From Walpole’s 1784 guide: “In the well of the staircase, by a cord of black and yellow, hangs a Gothic lantern of tin japanned, designed by Mr. Bentley and filled with painted glass…”

Below, I have arranged my photos in groups of architectural features. If you’d rather see each room, one by one, click here. More of the windows, incorporating Walpole’s colorful collections of glass:

Also of note are the various designs for fireplaces.

The Great Parlor

The Blue Bed Chamber

The Holbein Chamber

The Gallery

The ceilings were brilliantly executed – and restored.

The Library

The Gallery, with a fan-vault ceiling inspired by Westminster Abbey’s King Henry VII chapel, is brilliant; in the restoration, the papier mache forms were refreshed and regilded.

Finally, a few shots of the exterior. The garden is being re-developed, and it has a way to go. The white canvas at the lower right was part of a tent used for a party the previous evening and in the process of removal.

The roof.

We searched for a while before a kind St. Mary’s faculty member directed us to the chapel, now hidden beyond a car park. The design is based on the tomb of Edmund Audley, bishop of Salisbury in the Cathedral there.

For more posts on Horace Walpole, see our blogs of 4/20/10, 4/7/11, 5/11/11, 5/28/11, 6/8/11, and 6/19/11.

From the Pen of Horace Walpole

Walpole’s home, Strawberry Hill

From Horace Walpole to the Miss Berrys.

Berkeley Square, June 8, 1791.

Your No. 34, that was interrupted, and of which the last date was of May 24th, I received on the 6th, and if I could find fault, it would be in the length; for I do not approve of your writing so much in hot weather, for, be it known to you ladies, that from the first of the month, June is not more June at Florence. My hay is crumbling away; and I have ordered it to be cut, as a sure way of bringing rain. I have a selfish reason, too, for remonstrating against long letters. I feel the season advancing, when mine will be piteous short; for what can I tell you from Twickenham in the next three or four months? Scandal from Richmond and Hampton Court, or robberies at my own door? The latter, indeed, are blown already. I went to Strawberry (Hill) on Saturday, to avoid the Birthday [4th June] crowd and squibs and crackers. At six I drove to Lord Stafford’s, where his goods are to be sold by auction; his sister, Lady Anne [Conolly], intending to pull down the house and rebuild it. I returned a quarter before seven; and in the interim between my Gothic gate and Ashe’s Nursery, a gentleman and gentlewoman, in a one-horse chair and in the broad face of the sun, had been robbed by a single highwayman, sans mask. Ashe’s mother and sister stood and saw it; but having

no notion of a robbery at such an hour in the high-road, and before their men had left work, concluded it was an acquaintance of the robber’s. I suppose Lady Cecilia Johnstone will not descend from her bedchamber to the drawing-room without life-guard men.

Madame d’Albany

The Duke of Bedford eclipsed the whole birthday by his clothes, equipage, and servants: six of the latter walked on the side of the coach to keep off the crowd—or to tempt it; for their liveries were worth an argosie. The Prince [of Wales] was gorgeous too: the latter is to give Madame d’Albany (1) a dinner. She has been introduced to Mrs. Fitzherbert. You know I used to call Mrs. Cosway’s concerts Charon’s boat: now, methinks, London is so. I am glad Mrs. C.[osway] is with you; she is pleasing—but surely it is odd to drop a child and her husband and country all in a breath!

I am glad you are disfranchised of the exiles. We have several, I am told, here; but I strictly confine myself to those I knew formerly at Paris, and who all are quartered on Richmond-green. I went to them on Sunday evening, but found them gone to Lord Fitzwilliam’s, the next house to Madame de Boufflers’, to hear his organ; whither I followed them, and returned with them. The Comtesse Emilie played on her harp; then we all united at loto. I went home at twelve, unrobbed; and Lord Fitzwilliam, who asked much after you both, was to set out the next morning for Dublin, though intending to stay there but four days, and be back in three weeks.

. . . . . The Duke of St. Albans has cut down all the brave old trees at Hanworth, and consequently reduced his park to what it issued from—Hounslow-heath: nay, he has hired a meadow next to mine, for the benefit of embarkation; and there lie all the good old corpses of oaks, ashes, and chestnuts, directly before your windows, and blocking up one of my views of the river but so impetuous is the rage for building, that his Grace’s timber will, I trust, not annoy us long. There will soon be one street from London to Brentford; ay, and from London to every village ten miles round! Lord Camden has just let ground at Kentish Town for building fourteen hundred houses—nor do I wonder; London is, I am certain, much fuller than ever I saw it. I have twice this spring been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, to inquire what was the matter, thinking there was a mob—not at all; it was only passengers. Nor is their any complaint of depopulation from the country: Bath shoots out into new crescents, circuses, and squares every year: Birmingham, Manchester, Hull, and Liverpool would serve any King in Europe for a capital, and would make the Empress of Russia’s mouth water. Of the war with Catherine Slay-Czar I hear not a breath, and thence conjecture it is dozing into peace.

Dulwich College

. . . . . This morning I went with Lysons the Reverend to see Dulwich College, founded in 1619 by Alleyn, a player, which I had never seen in my many days. We were received by a smart divine, tre bien poudri, and with black satin breeches—but they are giving new wings and red satin breeches to the good old hostel too, and destroying a gallery with a very rich ceiling; and nothing will remain of ancient but the front, and an hundred mouldy portraits, among apostles, sibyls, and Kings of England. On Sunday I shall settle at Strawberry; and then woe betide you on post-days! I cannot make news without straw. The Johnstones are going to Bath, for the healths of both; so Richmond will be my only staple. Adieu, all three!

1. Mme. d’Albany was the widow of Prince Charles Edward, who had died in 1788 in Italy. She was presented at Court, and was graciously received by the Queen. She was generally believed to be married to the great Italian tragic poet, Alfieri. Since her husband’s death she had been living in Paris, but had now fled to England for safety.

Victoria in England 2011

Penshurst Place, Kent

Yes, both Kristine and I confess we are unrepentant when it comes to spending our time and money on trips across the pond to England. Many of you do the same. We work hard to book ourselves into a variety of cities and London neighborhoods, lots of museums and other historic attractions, gardens for wandering, evenings in the theatre or concert hall, and wonderful meals… and, believe it or not, time in libraries and archives. My upcoming two weeks in England will be no different … castles, stately homes, gardens, museums, several different hotels…and archives at the University of Southampton and Hatfield House.

Upon our arrival in Dover, I hope we can visit Walmer Castle. We “did” Dover Castle a few years ago, and this time, I want to see the Duke of Wellington’s home when he was in residence as the Warden of the Cinque Ports, less than ten miles north along the Channel coast.

We have a stop planned at Penshurst Place, in which many centuries of British History are enveloped…as well as a great slice of architectural history. And stunning gardens, which I hope will be in full bloom in early June.

While we are in London, we want to re-visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, this year to see the Cult of Beauty exhibition, which comes highly recommended by Jo Manning and many others.

Last year, at the V and A, I enjoyed the Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill exhibition, in which many of his treasures were reassembled and shown while the house itself was undergoing a thorough renovation. This year, I intend to see the finished house, just a short train ride from London in Twickenham.

Next I head to Southampton to visit the Archives in Hartley Library at the University of Southampton.

And while I am in town, I will make time to see the sights, though I understand that the house in which Jane Austen once resided is long gone. Parts of the city walls, however, still stand, and the famous port should be interesting to see.

After a short stay in London again, I will go to Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, to study diaries in their Archive. Hatfield has an amazing history and renowned gardens. I wrote about a previous visit to Hatfield on this blog, August 13 2010.

My final stop will be in Windsor, where I will visit the brand new Museum of Windsor and, if the stars are in perfect alignment, visit with our friend Hester Davenport, author of biographies of Mary Robinson and Fanny Burney, and an expert on Windsor history, among other achievements.

Then it will be time to fly home. And start planning the next trip (anticipation is more than half the fun). I will report more fully after I return, and perhaps, along the way.

From the Pen of Horace Walpole

Horace Walpole

To George Montagu, Esquire

Arlington Street, May 11, 1769

. . . . . Strawberry (Hill) has been in great glory; I have given a festino there that will almost mortgage it. Last Tuesday all France dined there: Monsieur and Madame du Chatelet, the Due de Liancourt, three more French ladies, whose names you will find in the enclosed paper, eight other Frenchmen, the Spanish and Portuguese ministers, the Holdernesses, Fitzroys, in short we were four and twenty. They arrived at two at the gates of the castle I received them, dressed in the cravat of Gibbons’s carving, and a pair of gloves embroidered up to the elbows that had belonged to James the First. The French servants stared, and firmly believed this was the dress of English country gentlemen. After taking a survey of the apartments, we went to the printing-house, where I had prepared the enclosed verses, with translations by Monsieur de Lille, one of the company. The moment they were printed off, I gave a private signal, and French horns and clarioiets accompanied this compliment. We then went to see Pope’s grotto and garden, and returned to a magnificent dinner in the refectory. In the evening we walked, had tea, coffee,and lemonade in the gallery, which was illuminated with a thousand, or thirty candles, I forget which, and played at whist and loo till midnight. Then there was a cold supper and at one the company returned to town, saluted by fifty nightingales, who, as tenants of the manor, came to do honour to their lord.

Vauxhall Gardens

I cannot say last night was equally agreeable. There was what they called a ridotto el fresco at Vauxhall, for which one paid half-a-guinea, though, except some thousand more lamps and a covered passage all round the garden, which took off from the gardenhood, there was nothing better than on a common night. Mr. Conway and I set out from his house at eight o’clock; the tide and torrent of coaches was so prodigious, that it was half-an-hour after nine before we got half way from Westminster-bridge. We then alighted; and after scrambling under bellies of horses, through wheels, and over posts and rails, we reached the gardens, where were already many thousand persons. Nothing diverted me but a man in a Turk’s dress and two nymphs in masquerade without masks, who sailed amongst the company, and, which was surprising, seemed to surprise nobody. It had been given out that people were desired to come in fancied dresses without masks. We walked twice round and were rejoiced to come away, though with the same difficulties as at our entrance; for we found three strings of coaches all along the road, who did not move half a foot in half-an-hour. There is to be a rival mob in the same way at Ranelagh to-morrow; for the greater the folly and imposition the greater is the crowd. I have suspended the vestimenta that were torn off my back to the god of repentance, and shall stay away. Adieu! I have not a word more to say to you. Yours ever.

P. S. I hope you will not regret paying a shilling for this packet.