into which a greater genius fell, of building a romance in stone and lime. "A new building," he said, "is like a new church; when once it is set up you must maintain it in all the forms, and with all the inconveniences; then cease the pleasant luminous days of inspiration, and there is an end of miracles at once!" The limited extent of his grounds, and their level uniformity, equally protected him from Shenstone's error of wasting his fortune on hill and dale, lawn and thicket. He had no blue hills, or gleaming lakes, or tumbling waterfalls. His little domain was easily cultivated, yet it became, under his hands, like Shenstone's Leasowes, "the envy of the great, and the admiration of the skilful." The Twickenham mansion is described as consisting of a small "body," with a small hall, paved with stone, and two small parlours on each side; the upper story being disposed on the same plan. The wings at the sides, which figure in most of the engravings, and which contained handsome rooms, with bay-windows, were added after Pope's death, by his successor in the villa, Sir William Stanhope, brother of the Earl of Chesterfield.28 It was in planting and laying out his grounds, in its neighbourhood, close to the river; and an epigram on the poet's commentator, Warburton, says: "Close to the grotto of the Twickenham bard— Too close-adjoins a tanner's yard. So verse and prose are to each other tied, So Warburton and Pope allied." 28 Sir William likewise added four acres to the pleasure-grounds. Nine acres were then, according to Mr. Bowles (1806), kept "levelled with the scythe," and having "eternal serpentine walks, interspersed with, here and there, an urn and some fine cedars." From Sir William Stanhope the villa descended to his son-in-law, Wellebore Ellis, Lord Mendip, who died in 1802. It was entailed by Sir William Stanhope on whoever should be Earl of Chesterfield. The earl who obtained it had little poetry or wanted money, and he sold it by auction. In 1807 it came by purchase into the possession of the Baroness Howe-a lady who married Mr. Phipps, the oculist, afterwards Sir Wathen Waller-and the Pope mansion was razed to the ground, Lady Howe constructing another house about a hundred yards from the site of Pope's residence. This Vandalism gave rise to some bitter epigrams which might have soothed the insulted shade of Pope. Mr. Rogers, the poet, we believe, had an intention of purchasing the villa, but was deterred by a report that, from its classic associations, it was sure to fetch a very large sum. In reality, the villa did not produce one-half of what was expected. Who but must regret that the poetical mansion, which, in the IMPROVEMENT OF THE HOUSE AND GROUNDS. 169 and in the construction and decoration of his grotto and miniature embellishments, that the poet exercised his ingenuity, and carried out his principles of landscape gardening. This had long been a favourite study with him. In 1713 he wrote an essay on the subject for the Guardian, in which he happily ridiculed the modern practice of substituting fantastical operations of art for the simplicity and variety of nature. "A citizen," he said, "is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews, but he entertains the thought of erecting them into giants, hands of Mr. Rogers, would have continued a temple of the Muses, and thrown open its door to every pilgrim of taste and refinement, was doomed to early and complete destruction? One instance of veneration for the poet's memory in connexion with this villa is mentioned by Mr. Bowles. Sir William Stanhope sent cuttings of his willow (which fell to the ground about 1801) into various parts of Europe, and in particular to the Empress of Russia, in 1789. The Twickenham willow was said to be the original of all the weeping willows in our gardens, having been brought from the Euphrates by Mr. Vernon, a Turkey merchant. In the Hortus Kewensis, however, the weeping willow is stated to have been cultivated at Hampton Court in 1692. (See Loudon's Arboretum.) Pope's grotto still exists, though divested of the glittering spars and mirrors with which he had decorated it. The spring for which the poet desired a guardian nymph in sculpture had for years disappeared, when about 1842 it was discovered and made to flow into a stone cistern. Two lofty cedars raise their proud tops in the Northern garden, doubtless remains of his wilderness. (Gent. Mag. 1842.) Mr. William Howitt also mentions the existence of many of those trees which Pope planted for posterity-Spanish chesnuts, elms, and cedars, which still ornament the grounds, though the walks and shrubberies have been broken up. Indeed, the alterations made by Sir William Stanhope, before the work of ruthless spoliation commenced, destroyed in a great measure the interest and character of Pope's villa. So early as 1760 we find Horace Walpole lamenting what he calls "the private woe" in his neighbourhood. "Sir William Stanhope," he says, "bought Pope's house and garden. The former was so small and bad, one could not avoid pardoning his hollowing out that fragment of the rock Parnassus into habitable chambers-but would you believe it, he has cut down the sacred groves themselves! In short, it was a little bit of ground of five acres, enclosed with three lanes; and seeing nothing. Pope had twisted and twirled, and rhymed and harmonised this, till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick, impenetrable woods. Sir William, by advice of his son-in-law, Mr. Ellis, has hacked and hewed these groves, wriggled a winding gravel walk through them with an edging of shrubs, in what they call the modern taste, and, in short, has desired the three lanes to walk in again-and now is forced to shut them out again by a wall, for there was not a Muse could walk there but she was spied by every country fellow that went by with a pipe in his mouth."-Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, June 20, 1760. like those of Guildhall. I know an eminent cook who beautified his country-seat with a coronation dinner in greens, where you see the champion flourishing on horseback at one end of the table, and the queen in perpetual youth at the other." In the manner of Addison, he gave a humorous catalogue of these monstrosities-such as Adam and Eve in yew, Noah's Ark in holly, St. George in box, the Black Prince in cypress, &c. Even where such ridiculous violations of taste and propriety were not attempted, the stiff and formal style of the French, Dutch, and Italian gardeners was generally adopted; and Pope was among the first to perceive and point out its defects. The rules of ornamental gardening he has expressed in one of his terse couplets: "He gains all ends, who pleasingly confounds, Clumps of trees he compared to groups in pictures. Distance was given by darkening them, and by narrowing the plantation towards the end, as is done in painting; and this study of picturesqueness gradually gained ground. Bridgman had commenced his improvements in Stowe Gardens, and Kent succeeded Bridgman, with his effects of perspective, light, and shade. "Groups of trees broke too uniform or too extensive a lawn; evergreens and woods were opposed to the glare of the champaign; and, where the view was less fortunate, or so much exposed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out some parts by thick shades, to divide it into variety, or to make the richest scene more enchanting by reserving it for a further advance of the spectator." This description, by Walpole, of the principles on which Kent worked though he often failed in realising them-harmonised exactly with the views of Pope. The scene of the poet's operations was indeed small, not much larger than his favourite model, the garden of Alcinous, which comprised four acres; but Pope and Kent were at least a match for Homer in ornamental gardening, and the Twickenham five acres ultimately boasted, amidst their winding walks and recesses, a shell temple, a large mount (the work of Kent), a vineyard, two small mounts, a bowling-green, a wilderness, a grove, an orangery, a gardenhouse, and kitchen-garden. Amidst these the poet loved to plant and replant, pull down and build up, assisted some times by his distinguished visitors, including the gallant Peterborough. “And he whose lightning pierced th' Iberian lines, Imit. of Hor. Sat. i. The grotto was in some measure a work of necessity. His grounds were divided by the public highway leading from Hampton Court to London; and to obviate the necessity and unpleasantness of crossing the road to reach the larger portion of his ornamental grounds, the poet constructed what honest John Searle, his gardener, in his plan, calls "The Under-ground Passage," but which his poetical master dignified with the name of "The Grotto." The best description of this highly-prized work of art (on which Martha Blount says he expended above 1000l.; while Searle, as reported by Curll, says the poet spent on his gardens and other improvements about 50007.) is contained in one of Pope's letters to Edward Blount. The daughters of his friend had been visiting in Twickenham, and were often in the poet's garden, teaching him how he could best run up and down his mount and thread his walks: "Twick'nam, June 2, 1725. "Let the young ladies be assured I make nothing new in my gardens without wishing to see the print of their fairy steps in every part of them. I have put the last hand to my works of this kind, in happily finishing the subterraneous way and grotto. I there found a spring of the clearest water, which falls in a perpetual rill, that echoes thro' the cavern day and night. From the river Thames, you see thro' my arch up a walk of the wilderness, to a kind of open temple, wholly compos'd of shells in the rustic manner; and from that distance under the temple you look down thro' a sloping arcade of trees, and see the sails on the river passing suddenly and vanishing, as thro' a perspective glass. When you shut the doors of this grotto, it becomes on the instant, from a luminous room, a camera obscura; on the walls of which all objects of the river, hills, woods, and boats, are forming a moving picture in their visible radiations; and when you have a mind to light it up, it affords you a very different scene. It is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of looking-glass in angular forms; and in the ceiling is a star of the same material, at which, when a lamp (of an orbicular figure of thin alabaster) is hung in the middle, a thousand pointed rays glitter, and are reflected over the place. "There are connected to this grotto, by a narrower passage, two porches: one towards the river, of smooth stones full of light, and open; the other toward the garden, shadowed with trees, rough with shells, flints, and iron ore. The bottom is paved with simple pebble, as is also the adjoining walk up the wilderness to the temple, in the natural taste, agreeing not ill with the little dripping murmur, and the aquatic idea of the whole place. It wants nothing to complete it but a good statue, with an inscription, like that beautiful antique one which you know I am so fond of. "Hujus Nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis, Dormio, dum blande sentio murmur aquæ. Parce meum, quisquis tangis cava marmora, somnum "Nymph of the grot, these sacred springs I keep, "You'll think I have been very poetical in this description, but it is pretty near the truth. I wish you were here to bear testimony how little it owes to art, either the place itself, or the image I give of it."" There appears an excess of decoration here-shells, spars, pieces of looking-glass, star ceiling, camera obscura, &c.which must have made the grotto appear out of keeping with the chaster style of the garden and ornamental grounds. The general effect, however, may have been pleasing, and some degree of embellishment was necessary to relieve the gloom and blankness of a subterranean passage. The kindness of friends may also have added more than the poet desired, but could not well reject. One of his most liberal contributors was the Dowager Duchess of Cleveland, of Raby Castle, who sent clumps of amethyst and pieces of spar. Dr. Borlase, the Cornish antiquary, contributed largely of his native diamonds, ores, and various-coloured mundic; Lyttelton procured red spar from lead mines; Spence gave pieces of lava brought from Mount Vesuvius, and a fragment of marble from the grotto of Egeria; Gilbert "Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, 1737. |
