Where there's a will there's a wife
Hugh Massingberd
MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE: GREAT LADIES AND GRAND HOUSES, 1670-1830 by Rosemary Baird Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 320, ISBN 0297830783
he survival of historic houses,' my revered mentor Commander Michael Saunders Watson of Rockingham Castle, Northamptonshire, nimblest of Heritage lobbyists, liked to point out, 'depends on the two Ws — the Will and the Wife.' And if the wife is not keen on the place, then the will tends to disintegrate. From this eye-opening and immensely enjoyable study, we learn how much not just the survival but the actual creation, decoration and intricate workings of great country houses owed to their chatelaines.
Fortunately Rosemary Baird, who is curator of the collection at Goodwood House, Sussex, seat of the Dukes of Richmond, is not pursuing some formulaic feminist political agenda, nor does she follow the fashionable 'downstairs' path. As she says in her preface, this book 'goes against the current trend in historic house visitor interest by investigating the drawing-room rather than the kitchen, the gilded interiors rather than the nursery'. As Terry-Thomas used to say, 'Good show.'
The chief pleasure of the book lies in the way Baird brings the personalities of the chatelaines to life. She has drawn skilfully on family archives and deploys a dry wit to pleasing effect. For example, when discussing the correspondence of the 5th Duke of Rutland and his Duchess, the former Elizabeth Howard, who rebuilt Belvoir Castle, the author observes of the Duke, 'He was, like most men, not very interested in moans and complaints.' The Duchess 'had been taught by her mother that men only liked happy women and that whingeing was unattractive'. For all her scholarship. Baird has a refreshing taste for the demotic. Thus she has fun with 'the celebrity culture of the 18th century', refers to 18th-century Sloane Rangers and calls Louise de Keroualle, Charles II's mistress who became Duchess of Portsmouth, 'the ultimate material girl'.
Louise, the matriarch of the Lennox dynasty, is one of the ten chatelaines treated to a separate chapter, each of them a model of sympathy and sound sense. Baird defends Louise (Tubs', as Charles called her) from the taunts of Nell Gwyn and feels that she 'should be regarded with admiration for tenacity in making the best of a difficult situation, and with compassion: single motherhood was never easy, especially in a foreign country'. Louise's great-granddaughter, Caroline, Lady Holland (I didn't care for the continental style of `Baroness'), is another of the home-makers featured; the decoration of Holland House in what is now Holland Park, Kensington, essentially expressed her love of family. The descriptions of the rococo interiors of Norfolk House in St James's Square as done up by Mary Blount, Duchess of Norfolk, make one all the angrier that this Georgian gem was destroyed in the 1930s by Rudolph Palumbo. Happily, Mary's annotation of her over-ambitious plans for Worksop Manor in 'the Dukeries' provided some light relief: She would still add one more room to it, wherein she might be confined as a mad woman.'
The jolly Duchess of Northumberland (`Betty' or 'Carrots', who once wrote a poem about a butter muffin) makes for an especially entertaining chapter, but while it was easy for wags like Horace Walpole to poke fun at 'the Duchess of Charing Cross', her achievements at both Syon and Alnwick were admirable. Elizabeth Montagu of Montagu House, Portman Square, was nicknamed 'Queen of the Blues' by Dr Johnson, an allusion to her bluestocking reputation — though it is instructive to learn that the phrase was originally coined by herself and with reference to a man, a blundering botanist by the name of Benjamin Stillingfleet, who (shades of Widmerpool) wore the wrong kind of stockings to a smart gathering.
Perhaps the most charming chatelaine described is Theresa Robinson, Mrs John Parker of Saltram, praised by Sir Joshua Reynolds for 'her amiable disposition, her softness amd her gentleness of manners'. The most colourful is undoubtedly the fiery Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon ('Loud is her accent and her phrase obscene' as one wit put it), founder of the Northern Meeting and champion of tartan, whose childhood delight in Auld Reekie was riding along the streets of the old town on the back of a pig.
In her understated, subtle way, Rosemary Baird deftly overturns conventional views about the slow, steady progress of freedom for women. In the 18th century, she argues, 'many married aristocratic women gained extraordinary freedom, socially and financially', whereas, in terms of women's lives, 'the Victorians took a step backwards'. Indeed, she concludes, 'With their vibrant physical and intellectual energy, the great chatelaines of ther 18th century have much more in common with their modern counterparts than either has with the aristocratic wives of the Victorian era.'
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