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During Open House Weekend, Victoria and I visited Marlborough House.

For the history of Marlborough House, see Victoria’s post about her visit there in 2011 and our post from Monday, May 9, 2016.

from London Gardens Online:

Marlborough House is a former ‘town mansion and genuine `hotel particulier’ of 1707-11′ built to a design of Sir Christopher Wren, which still possesses much of the extent of its original garden. It was commissioned by the first Duke of Marlborough but the idea for a town house was his Duchess Sarah’s. She secured the lease of the site from Queen Anne and chose Wren in preference to Sir John Vanbrugh as architect, although she fell out with Wren during construction and supervised the completion of the house herself. She laid the foundation stone in 1709 and it was completed in 1711, the actual design probably drawn by Wren’s son under his father’s supervision. Sarah died here in 1744, and the Dukes of Marlborough had the house until 1817, after which it was given as the London home to Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After Charlotte’s death Prince Leopold continued to use Marlborough House until he became King of the Belgians in 1831, the same year of William IV’s accession to the throne, whose consort Queen Adelaide was granted the house for life in the event of widowhood.

The Queen Dowager continued to spend time here after the King’s death and gave a wedding banquet for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. After Queen Adelaide’s death it was settled on the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII as his residence from the age of 18. At that time it was substantially altered by Sir James Pennethorne, chief architect at the Office of Works. It continued in royal occupation into the 1950s, by the Duke of York later George V, Edward VII’s widow Queen Alexandra, and finally Queen Mary on the death of George V came to Marlborough House in 1936 and died here in 1953. In 1959 Elizabeth II placed it at the disposal of the Government as a Commonwealth Centre, which it became in 1962, becoming the headquarters of the Commonwealth Secretariat in 1965.

The House was wonderful, but the thing I really wanted to see was Queen Alexandra’s pet cemetery. Regular readers of this blog may recall that on a previous trip to England I’d gone to Oatlands near Windsor in order to view the pet cemetery of Frederica, Duchess of York.

From The College of St. George website:

JUST A BRIEF BREAK FROM ALL THINGS ENGLISH….

A collection of lovely paintings from the New York historical Society just closed at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Victoria here, to tell you a little bit about them.

As the artists discovered more and more of the spectacular scenery, their paintings inspired more settlers and even caught the attention of the European art world.

Here is the official description of the exhibition: “Nature and the American Vision is a landmark exhibition featuring nearly fifty masterpieces from the New-York Historical Society’s acclaimed collection of landscape paintings, the most revered in the country. In addition to the beauty and historic value of the paintings, the exhibition charts the emergence of the Hudson River School, considered the nation’s first original artistic movement, and includes iconic works by luminaries alongside rarely seen masterpieces. Rising to eminence during the mid-nineteenth century, this loosely knit group of painters, poets, and writers forged a self-consciously American artistic voice, one grounded in the exploration of the natural world as a resource for spiritual renewal and as an expres
sion of cultural and national identity. This exhibition was organized by the New-York Historical Society and is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

IN CARLTON TERRACE, occupying Numbers 10 and 11, the British Academy is the UK’s national body for the humanities and social sciences – the study of peoples, cultures and societies, past, present and future. It funds fellowships, research grants, awards,  and charitable activities, including British Film Awards.

The British Academy website is here.

In 1918, Lady Ridley was made a Dame in recognition of her work as donor and administrator of the Hospital. Upon the hospital’s closure in February 1919, she  wrote to express her gratitude to those who had worked there: ‘It is largely owing to the devoted band of VADs  that the hospital achieved such a standard of efficiency and comfort, and was and was able to bring such a great measure of relief and happiness to those who suffered so much in the War.’”

Lady Rosamund Ridley  (1877-1947)

Lady Ridley’s Hospital stayed open for several months after the war ended. In later years, the building was the residence of Lord Monson, four-time Prime Minister William Gladstone (1856 to 1875), and the Guinness family, before becoming home to the British Academy in 1998.

The British Academy was established in 1902; a fellowship of more than 900 leading scholars spanning all disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. it is an independent registered charity. The exterior of the building 10-11 Carlton House Terrace can be seen on the popular BBC’s Sherlock,as the Diogenes Club.

Our next goal was a stroll down Pall Mall to Marlborough House…

Welcome author Tracy Grant, who newest title, London Gambit. is released tomorrow.  She is continuing her series about Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch…and this time, they are to be found at none other than our favorite Apsley House, residence of the Dukes of Wellington and the Wellington Museum.

From Tracy Grant: 

A decade ago, on a research trip to London, I spent a wonderful morning at Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington’s London home, now the Wellington Museum, which stands at Hyde Park Corner. Along with taking in fascinating details, from the beautiful and surprisingly livable rooms, to the Waterloo memorabilia, to the naked statue of Napoleon Bonaparte at the base of the stairs, I learned about the banquets Wellington gave for Waterloo veterans on the anniversary of the battle. The idea of those banquets stayed with me through the years. Through writing the adventures of married spies Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch at the Congress of Vienna, the battle of Waterloo, and post-Waterloo Paris (the latter of which two books, Imperial Scandal and The Paris Affair, include Wellington himself and several of his officers as characters), through the birth of my daughter (now four), through researching numerous other settings and bringing Malcolm and Suzanne and the series back to London. 

Apsley House (English Heritage)

The timeline of the series naturally set the most recent book, London Gambit (which will be released tomorrow, May 5), in June 1818. Perhaps the date, three years after Waterloo, subconsciously influenced me, because as I developed the plot,  I found echoes of the battle running through the story, both for the fictional characters – Malcolm and Suzanne, their friend Harry who was wounded at Waterloo, Harry’s wife Cordelia, their friends David and Simon who helped Suzanne and Cordelia nurse the wounded during the battle – and the real historical characters such as Fitzroy Somerset, Wellington’s military secretary, who lost his arm at Waterloo. 

I needed a major social event for the denouement of the book, and I really wanted it to revolve round the anniversary of Waterloo on 18 June. But in 1818, Wellington was still British ambassador to France and based in Paris, though he already had come into possession of Apsley House. The house was designed by Robert Adam and built in the 1770s for the second Earl of Bathurst (who had been Baron Apsley before he succeeded to the earldom). Wellington’s brother Richard, Marquess Wellesley, purchased Apsley House in 1807 and engaged James Wyatt to improve it (with the assistance of Thomas Cundy). Though the grateful nation offered to build Wellington a London home, Wellington instead bought Apsley House from his brother in 1817 (to help Richard out of financial difficulties). In 1818 Wellington engaged Benjamin Dean Wyatt, James Wyatt’s son, to make repairs to the house. Wyatt installed the nude statue of Napoleon by Antonio Canova, which Wellington had acquired, at the base of the stairs. 

Napoleon by Canova, in Apsley House (Victoria’s photo)

Though he purchased Apsley House in 1817, Wellington probably didn’t give his first banquet for Waterloo veterans at Apsley House until 1820, and the first of his banquets took place in a dining room that could only seat 35, so the guests were limited to senior officers. After the Waterloo Gallery was completed in 1830, up to 85 guests could attend, including guests who had not been present at the battle, but the guest list was limited to men. There’s a painting of the banquet in 1836 by William Salter (capturing the moment when Wellington proposed a toast to the sovereign, after which the band played the national anthem) that shows some ladies standing by the door, including Fitzroy Somerset’s wife Emily Harriet, who was Wellington’s niece, and a “Miss Somerset” who may be their daughter who was a baby at the time of Waterloo, born in Brussels in the weeks before the battle. Perhaps they had been dining separately in the house and joined the gentlemen for the toast.

Waterloo Banquet by William Salter, 1836

While I worked on the first draft of London Gambit, I danced round what to do with the Waterloo anniversary. I thought about having a fictional character give a dinner on 18 June. I even thought about having Wellington come over from Paris for the fictional dinner. And then I thought—Wellington did own Apsley House in 1818. He could have given a dinner on the anniversary of Waterloo (even if in fact he did not). And, since the dinner in my book would be fictional, he could include women among the guests…

Historical novelists always to a certain degree combine fact and fiction because we fill in gaps in the historical record. This is even more true when one writes novels such as I do with fictional main characters and real historical figures in major supporting roles. One inevitably combines historical events with fictional ones. I try to stick closely to the historical record, but of course I end up taking some liberties with it whether it’s Lady Caroline Lamb, a childhood friend of my fictional Cordelia Davenport, putting Lord and Lady Castlereagh at a fictional ball they of course wouldn’t have attended, having Malcolm pressed not delivering messages for Wellington during Waterloo (though in point of fact with so many of his aides-de-camp wounded, Wellington did press some civilians into service), or having Castlereagh, Wellington, and Sir Charles Stuart preoccupied with the intrigue surrounding the death of my fictional Antoine Rivère in post-Waterloo Paris. I try to stick to having real historical characters only do things they might have done. For instance, if a real histori
cal figure was known to have a string of love affairs, I might involved them in a fictional one, but if they were known to be a famously faithful spouse, I wouldn’t think it was fair to do so.

By that logic, since Wellington could have come to London and given a dinner on the third anniversary of Waterloo, having him host a dinner in the book was in line with the sort of historical liberties I take in the series. Fitzroy Somerset was Wellington’s secretary at the British embassy in Paris in June 1818, but he stood for and won a parliamentary seat at Truro in the General Election in 1818, and he was in Truro for the election, so I had already decided it was all right to have him visiting England in June so he could be a character in the book. I debated some more about the banquet, wrote the ending with Wellington giving the dinner at Apsley House, debated changing it in subsequent drafts. In the end I left it, with an historical note explaining the liberties I had taken. Reading over the galleys, I was glad I did. The Waterloo anniversary ties the themes in the book together beautifully and having the event at Apsley House with Wellington present gives the added resonance to the echoes of Waterloo that run through the story.

Author Tracy Grant with her daughter and their kitties

For more information about Apsley House and Wellington, the Victoria and Albert Museum offers an excellent publication book Apsley House: Wellington Museum(London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2001). The Apsley House website is here.

Readers, how do you feel about writers taking liberties with the historical record? Writers, what liberties have you taken with historical figures, events, and timing?