“The Inspection of the Curious” The Country-House Guidebook c. 1750–1990

D R A W I N G R O O M D I S P L AY S

“The Inspection of the Curious” The Country-House Guidebook c. 1750–1990

5 September 2016 – 6 January 2017

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Introduction The English country-house guidebook is a very specific genre of travel guide, with particular characteristics which, arguably, have remained relatively unchanged from its beginnings in the mid- eighteenth century until the present day. These guidebooks, which offer a monographic treatment of a specific country house, share certain physical, textual, and other characteristics.2 Generally small in size, lightweight, and inexpensive, they were intended to be portable and non-precious items which could be conveniently carried round the house whilst visiting.

Available to buy at the house itself and sometimes also at print sellers in London, they were often used as souvenirs and aides-memoires, with which the reader interacted long after their visit to the house. The texts presented their readership with directions, including practical advice such as opening hours and admission fees. They also suggested an ideal way of viewing the house, one which was relatively uncritical and directed the visitor towards set views, specified routes, and towards key rooms and objects.

The history of the country-house guidebook relates closely to the practice of visiting country houses. It is a genre which only developed seriously in the later eighteenth century, some years after houses such as Chatsworth, Blenheim, and Burghley opened their doors to a limited number of visitors from the governing classes. Guidebooks were still relatively rare in this period. Before 1815 only about seventeen houses in England had their own publication.3 A subsequent rise in mass tourism by the mid-nineteenth century, and the appropriation of country houses as part of the national heritage, led to the production of an increased number of guidebooks.4 However, there was a steady decline in interest in visiting country houses from the 1880s onwards, a situation stemming from a combination of factors including economic pressures on country-house owners, who therefore made their houses less accessible, Cover: Detail of front cover of item 2 Opposite: Front cover of item 1

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as well as an anti-aristocratic feeling on the part of the public.5 Such a decline in visitor numbers was mirrored by a significant reduction in both the number of new guidebooks produced and new editions of older ones. A revival in visiting country houses after the Second World War has been paralleled by the frequent publication of guidebooks in new editions at least up until the 1990s.

This display is based on the Paul Mellon Centre’s considerable holdings of guidebooks, including various editions of the same publication. The Centre has been collecting this material over a period of some years both by purchase and gift, and there are examples of donations from Sir Howard Colvin, John Cornforth, and Sir Oliver Millar in this display. The current selection is focused around three large-scale stately homes, which were all early adopters of the guidebook: Knole (Kent); Blenheim Palace (Oxfordshire), and Burghley (Lincolnshire/Northamptonshire). Examining the guidebooks of three great houses not only allows us to consider the history of this genre, but also brings the historical narratives of these houses into the foreground.

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Frontispiece and title page of item 1

Upright Display Case

Contexts The material in this section introduces the three houses addressed in the display as well as exploring the history and contexts of the country-house guidebook. Country-house touring, and consequently the guidebook, developed in the mid-1750s on the heels of more generalized travel books such as Daniel Defoe’s A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), which included brief descriptions of visits to a handful of country houses such as Chatsworth and Blenheim.

The guidebook’s development was also closely related to a burgeoning interest in architecture, as demonstrated by a boom in architectural publications, including Colen Campbell’s sumptuous foliosize survey of architectural views of national architecture, Vitruvius Britannicus (1715–25) (No. 6).

Country-house owners in the mid- and later eighteenth century wanted to promote their skill and taste as connoisseurs in acquiring paintings and sculpture: in order to do so they had to open up their houses. It is no surprise that early guidebooks often included detailed lists of pictures and sculptures which were intended to be admired by visitors. As a genre, the country-house guidebook is

therefore related to the countryhouse picture catalogues which begin to appear around the same time, with some of these being small enough in size to carry around a house. However, the countryhouse picture catalogue operated within an overlapping but different context to the guidebook, gradually evolving into large portfolio-size tomes, aimed exclusively at a more scholarly and elite audience (No. 5).

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Robert Sackville-West, Knole: Kent (The National Trust, 1998) LR: 728 KNO (PAMPHLET)

The oldest parts of Knole house were built in the fifteenth century as an Archbishop’s Palace, but later additions were made in the Elizabethan period, when it became home to the Earls and Dukes of Dorset, and the Sackville family from 1603.

This guidebook was written by Robert Sackville-West (1958–), a descendant of the original Sackville family. His authorship continues a long-standing tradition of guidebooks written by those closely connected to houses, many of whom were owners themselves.

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Robert Innes-Smith, Burghley House (Derby: English Life Publications Ltd, 1985)

G. F. Waagen, Works of Art and Artists in England, 3 vols.

(London: John Murray, 1838), vol. 2

LR: 728 BUR (PAMPHLET)

LR: 067 WAA

Burghley is a grand Elizabethan house, built for and designed

by Sir William Cecil, first Baron Burghley, who was Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth I between 1558 and 1572. After 1754, the grounds and surrounding parkland were substantially modernized by Lancelot “Capability” Brown.

Gustav Waagen (1794–1868), Director of the Königliche Gemäldegalerie (Royal Gallery) in Berlin spent long periods on study tours abroad, and his Works of Art and Artists in England was one of the published outcomes of these visits. Part personal travel diary, and also a description of the pictures in mainly private collections, Waagen’s text is not a guidebook.

However, it operated alongside these publications, and was quoted widely in later Victorian guides. In a passage about Blenheim Palace, the author recalls that whilst looking round the house, its owner the Duke of Marlborough handed him a guidebook “as remembrance”; suggesting that a guidebook could be used both as souvenir and aide-memoire.

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David Green, Blenheim Palace (Oxford: Alden Press, 1968; first published 1950) LR: 728 BLE (PAMPHLET)

From the collection of Sir Oliver Millar.

Blenheim Palace was built as a gift for John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, as a reward for his great victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. Its architect was Sir John Vanbrugh, who built this extraordinary Baroque “monument” to the Duke between 1705 and 1733.

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Above: Oliver Millar bookplate Opposite: Front cover of item 3

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George Scharf, A Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures at Woburn Abbey (London: Spottiswood & Co., 1890; first published 1877)

collection helped give credibility to the owner’s taste in art. This is the second edition of Scharf’s catalogue of the Duke of Bedford’s collections, first published in 1877.

LR: 066 WOB

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From the collection of Sir Oliver Millar.

George Scharf (1820–1895), the first Director of the newly founded National Portrait Gallery from 1857, was employed by several country-house owners to research and write catalogues of their picture collections. Employing experts like Scharf to catalogue a

Colen Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus, or The British Architect, Containing The Plans, Elevations and Sections of the Regular Buildings, both Publick and Private, In Great Britain, With Variety of New Designs; in 200 large Folio Plates, Engraven by the best Hands; and Drawn either from the Buildings themselves, or the Original

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Plate 59–60 of item 6

Designs of the Architects, 3 vols.

(New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967; first published London, 1715–25), vol. I LR: 72.01 VIT (LARGE)

In his introduction, Campbell called upon “travellers” to appreciate the buildings of “our own country” which were, in “most [cases] equal, and in some cases surpassed those of [their] European counterparts”.

The text offered engravings of plans, elevations, and sections by Campbell of over fifty country houses, and was the first professional survey of British architecture. A tribute

to neo-Palladianism, Campbell’s work celebrated the architectural establishment’s achievement in the period after Inigo Jones, including architects such as Sir Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and John Talman. Sir John Vanbrugh was particularly singled out for praise, with his Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace depicted in no less than seventeen images. Plates 59–60 depict the elevation of the garden front at Blenheim.

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Large Flat Display Case Blenheim Palace and Burghley House As Thomas Martyn’s text The English Connoisseur demonstrates (No. 7), both Blenheim and Burghley had begun to receive a handful of visitors in the 1760s, some years before the first guidebooks were produced for each house, in 1789 (No. 8) and 1797 (No. 11) respectively. Both houses were well entrenched on the visiting circuit by the late eighteenth century. However, Blenheim’s popularity waned in the nineteenth century, suffering from Victorian guidebook-writers’ disapproval of its classical architecture, and was only regained in the later twentieth century.6 By contrast, Burghley’s reputation survived throughout the period under discussion. Although its architecture was viewed as overdone by architectural writers, Burghley’s historical and romantic associations appealed to the Victorian mind-set.

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Thomas Martyn, The English Connoisseur: Containing an Account of Whatever is Curious in Painting, Sculpture, &C. In the Palaces and Seats of the Nobility and Principal Gentry of England, Both in Town and Country, 2 vols. (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1766), vol. I LR: 067 MAR

Martyn’s two volumes featured a number of country houses which were beginning to be visited by an increasing number of tourists, including Stowe (Buckinghamshire), Houghton Hall (Norfolk) and Blenheim. Directed at “the English Connoisseur”, Martyn’s text was addressed to the new type of tourist who was keen to participate in a culture of “politeness” and refinement. The author’s account of Blenheim is composed largely of descriptions of the various rooms (or apartments) to be seen on the public route, and lists of the pictures contained within them.

Although not a country-house guidebook, the text prefigures many of its conventions, with its focus on key aspects of landscape gardens, paintings and sculpture, and its prescribed routes for viewing a house and its setting.

Frontispiece of item 8

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William Mavor, New Description of Blenheim, The Seat of His Grace The Duke of Marlborough: Containing a full and accurate Account of the Paintings, Tapestry and Furniture; A Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Park; And a General Description of the China Gallery, &C. with a Preliminary Essay on Landscape Gardening (London: J. Crowder, 1800; first published 1789).

LR: 094 BLE

By the time Mavor published the first edition of his guide to Blenheim in 1789, the house was already a firm fixture on the tourist circuit. Nevertheless, this was the first guidebook to be dedicated solely to Blenheim. Its popularity, as well as that of the house it described, is suggested by the

number and frequency of the editions produced: there were eight editions made between 1789 and 1811, and it was also translated into French.7 Building on the interests of the connoisseur-tourist, the text was a highly detailed description of primarily the collections, but also of the house in relation to its landscape setting. The author’s tone was celebratory. He wrote that Blenheim was “one of the most magnificent piles of architecture in this kingdom [which] stands in the finest part of one of the finest counties in England”.8 Additionally, Mavor’s text gave practical information on when visitors could access the house and its park.

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George Scharf, Catalogue Raisonné; or a list of the pictures in Blenheim Palace; with Occasional Remarks and Illustrative Notes (London: Dorrell & Son, 1862; first published 1860)

David Green, Blenheim Palace (Norwich: Jarrold Publishing, 1999; first published 1950)

LR: 094 SCH

From the collection of Sir Oliver Millar.

Scharf’s catalogue continued the tradition of the country-house picture catalogue which began in the 1730s. However, it also represented a new, more scientific interest in cataloguing works of art, with detailed descriptions, including a discussion of iconography and the technical qualities of the paintings. Scharf’s text was first published in 1860 and was followed by two further editions in 1861 and 1862, a fact suggestive of its popularity. Like a guidebook, Scharf’s text also contained a ground plan, to provide the visitor with orientation through the house.

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LR: 728 BLE (PAMPHLET)

Much of the text in this catalogue repeats that of earlier editions; what is new is the inclusion of a photograph, adjacent to the frontispiece, of the then owners of Blenheim, the 11th Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Here they are presented in a relaxed fashion, situated within what appears to be a relatively modest domestic interior, in contrast to the grandeur of the house as depicted on subsequent pages.

Title page of item 10

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[J. Horn], A History or Description, General and Circumstantial, of Burghley House, the Seat of the Right Honorable [sic.] The Earl of Exeter (Shrewsbury: J. and W. Eddowes, 1797)

[Thomas Blore], A Guide to Burghley House, Northamptonshire, The Seat of the Marquis of Exeter; Containing A Catalogue of all the Paintings, Antiquities, &c. (Stamford: John Drakard, 1815)

LR: 094 BUR

LR: 094 BUR

Published anonymously, Horn’s account was the first guidebook to Burghley. It was an ambitious publication amounting to over 200 pages, including exhaustive descriptions conducting the visitor through the house on a set route, room by room, picture by picture.

Horn’s text was sold locally near the house, but also at various print sellers in London, suggesting that it may have had a sizeable print run. Indeed, it was reviewed in the periodical press, including an anonymous article in The Monthly Review which was particularly critical of Horn’s discussion of the paintings “which abound[ed] in fustian sentiment, bombastic ejaculation, or feeble attempts at pleasantry”.9

As with Horn’s earlier guidebook, the present volume was published anonymously, a common practice for country-house guidebooks. In addition to a verbal description describing a set route for visitors to follow through the house, the publication also included an engraving of a numbered plan of the ground and first floors. This plan included those rooms which were not on the public route, giving visitors a tantalizing allusion to rooms which remained out of bounds.

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William Henry Charlton, Burghley.

The Life of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Lord High Treasurer of England, Etc.; Biographical Notices of his Successors the Earls and Marquises of Exeter; A Description of Burghley House, with a Complete and Accurate Guide to the Several Paintings, Tapestries, Antiquities, and other articles of interest and vertu with which it is enriched; and a brief notice of the family monuments, &c., in St. Martin’s Church, Stamford Baron. To which is appended a list of the artists by whom the collection of pictures in the above residence was painted, with the places where they were born, and the dates of their births and deaths (Stamford: W. Langley, 1847)

Detail from frontispiece of item 13

LR: 094 BUR

Larger and even more ambitious than those guidebooks which had preceded it, Charlton’s Burghley had to be funded by a group of subscribers who agreed to purchase copies in advance of its publication.

The text included many of the familiar tropes to be found in earlier guidebooks, including detailed descriptions of the route to be taken and lists of the contents of each room, to which was appended a detailed history of the Cecil family. Although described in the

preface as “a guide and handbook”, the size and weight of this publication meant that in practice it was probably used as a souvenir guide, rather than one to be carried around the house.

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Handbook for Travellers in Northamptonshire and Rutland. With map (London: John Murray, 1878)

Guide to Burghley House, Stamford.

The Seat of the Most Noble the Marquess of Exeter (Stamford: Dolby Brothers Ltd, 1946)

LR: 036 (41) MUR

Murray’s county guides became popular from the 1850s onwards and included descriptions of many country houses. However, they were not detailed treatments of individual houses, but were aimed at a more general interest. As one contemporary wrote, they were intended “to serve and instruct travellers of education and a general and intelligent curiosity”.10 Murray’s description of Burghley had many points in common with country-house guides, offering practical information for tourists including advice on how much to tip the attendants. Unlike the country-house guide however, where the author knew the house well and usually had a personal relationship with its owners, this is an edited compilation of previous commentaries on the house. In his description of Burghley, the editor was largely reliant on previous descriptions of the house taken from Gustav Waagen’s Works of Art and Artists in England (see No. 4)

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LR: 094 BUR (PAMPHLET)

From the collection of Sir Oliver Millar.

This copy belonged to the art historian and curator Sir Oliver Millar, whose diary recorded a visit to Burghley in July 1952. Millar, who was at that point Deputy Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, was an expert on seventeenth-century British painting, publishing important books on William Dobson (1951), Van Dyck (1960 and 1982), and Peter Lely (1978). Millar’s annotations reveal his use of the guidebook as an aidememoire to record his thoughts and interests, here commenting on previous attributions of pictures.

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Guide to Burghley House Stamford. The Seat of the Most Hon. The Marquess of Exeter, K.C.M.G., LL.D. (Stamford: J. E. C. Potter & Son Ltd, n.d.)

LR: 728 BUR (PAMPHLET)

Front cover of item 16

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Small Flat Display Case

Knole House Although Knole was far from unknown in the late eighteenth century, it had a much later evolution as a site for tourists than many of those big classical houses which had long been standbys of the eighteenth-century circuit. As a fashion for historical and romantic associations developed, Knole’s interior, with its unsurpassed collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean furnishings, unchanged since 1608, grew in popularity.11 In the early 1800s, Knole was visited by over 500 people a year; by the 1860s, this number was around 5,000.12 As Knole took its place on the tourist circuit, guidebooks dedicated to the history of the house and its collections followed suit, with An historical and topographical sketch of Knole published in 1817.

Unlike other houses which did not have historical associations, Knole remained popular throughout the Victorian period and beyond. It was one of a handful of houses for which guidebooks were reissued throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

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John H. Brady, The Visitor’s Guide to Knole, In the County of Kent, with Catalogues of the Pictures Contained in the Mansion. And Biographical Notices of the Principal Persons whose Portraits Form Part of the Collection (Sevenoaks: James Payne, 1839) LR: 094 BRA

Only the second guidebook to Knole, the first part of Brady’s Guide was dedicated to a history of its “possessors”, notably the Sackville family, emphasizing the continuity of this relationship, a factor which appealed to a nineteenth-century public drawn to Knole’s historical associations. The remainder of the book was devoted to descriptions of the rooms “shewn to visitors”, with lists of the picture collection and commentary on it.

The Grand staircase, Knole, photographed by Howard M King for item 18

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Lionel Sackville West, Knole House: Its State Rooms, Pictures and Antiquities (Sevenoaks: J. Salmon, 1906)

V. Sackville-West, Knole and the Sackvilles (London: Lindsay Drummond Ltd, 1947; first published 1922)

LR: 728.83 KNO

LR: 728.83 KNO

A later edition of Samuel Mackie’s 1858 guide, this edition was more lavish, containing both photographs of the interiors as well as copies of original watercolour drawings by the artist Charles Essenhigh Corke (1852–1922). These watercolours tended to reinforce the idealized representation of Knole’s romantic and historical associations in the text, with visual representations of ivy-clad exteriors and figures in historicized dress.

From the collection of Peter and Renate Nahum.

Described as “no mere guidebook”, Vita Sackville-West’s first publication on the subject of Knole did, however, draw on previous histories of the house, such as Brady’s Guide from 1839 (No. 17). The book was published the same year as Vita’s novel The Heir, in which she vented her frustrations about not being able to inherit Knole, the house where she had spent her childhood.

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V. Sackville-West, English Country Houses (London: Prion Books Ltd, 1996; first published 1941)

V. Sackville-West, Knole: Kent (Sevenoaks: Caxton & Holmesdale Press, 1964; first published 1948)

LR: 728.82 (41) SAC

LR: 728 KNO (PAMPHLET)

First published in 1941 as one of series of titles collectively called “Britain in Pictures”, Sackville-West’s publication can be seen as part of a wider patriotic response to the Second World War. In keeping with a broader shift in taste amongst guidebookwriters, Sackville-West found Vanbrugh’s houses such as Blenheim lacking in “grace and charm”, whilst she celebrated a chain of houses with historical and romantic associations including Haddon, Penshurst, Hatfield, and Knole.

From the collection of Sir Oliver Millar.

Vita Sackville-West’s first guidebook to Knole was published in 1948, the year after the house’s purchase by the National Trust. It was reprinted in six editions up until 1986. The frequency of these editions was indicative both of the sustained interest in Knole as a tourist site, but also of the high public profile achieved by Sackville-West’s literary persona.

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Guide to Knole: Its State Rooms, Pictures and Antiquities, with a short account of the possessors and park of Knole (London: Waterlow & Sons. Ltd, 1930)

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Gervase Jackson-Stops, Knole: Kent (London, The National Trust, 1993; first published 1978) LR: P728 KNO (PAMPHLET)

LR: 728 KNO (PAMPHLET)

A compressed version of previous guides, with a slightly modified text.

The continuing production of new guidebooks to Knole, including this book, was indicative of the appeal of the fictional past it represented.

Here, exterior photographs of the house depict the medieval palace, whilst interior photographs display the art and furniture of the Jacobean interiors.

Front cover of item 21

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Notes 1. Thomas Martyn, The English Connoisseur: Containing an Account of Whatever is Curious in Painting, Sculpture, &C. In the Palaces and Seats of the Nobility and Principal Gentry of England, Both in Town and Country, 2 vols. (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1766), 1: viii.

2. My interest in this subject has been piqued

by Jocelyn Anderson’s research, and her work has informed this text. See Anderson, “Remaking the Country House: CountryHouse Guidebooks in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2013).

3. Anderson, “Remaking the Country House”, 18.

4. For a consideration of country-house visitors, see Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997).

5. This is discussed in Mandler, The Fall and Rise, 193–224.

6. Mandler, The Fall and Rise, 86.

7. Anderson, “Remaking the Country House”, 96.

8. William Mavor, New Description of Blenheim, The Seat of His Grace The Duke of Marlborough: Containing a full and accurate Account of the Paintings, Tapestry and Furniture; A Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Park; And a General Description of the China Gallery, &C. with a Preliminary Essay on Landscape Gardening (1789; London: J. Crowder, 1800), 11.

9. Anon., “Art. 67” [Review of A History or Description, General and Circumstantial, of Burghley House . . . .], The Monthly Review 24 (1797): 235–36.

10. D. W. F., “Obituary: John Murray”, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography 14, no. 5 (May 1892): 334–35. http://www.jstor. org/stable/ 1801553, accessed 11 July 2016.

11. Mandler, Fall and Rise, 55.

12. Mandler, Fall and Rise, 87.

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Aerial view of Knole, photographed by Aerofilms & Aero Pictorial Ltd for item 22

Acknowledgements Text written by Jessica Feather, Allen Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre 21

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