Chapter III

Country houses—Letter from Lord Beaconsfield—Political influence
of landowners—Guests down with the fish—Longleat—
Hinchingbrooke—Goodwood—Old-time country visitors—Colonel
Nelthorpe and “Wulliam”—the Norfolk Militia in the ’fifties—My
father and Casanova—A good-natured giant—Old Lady Suffield—
Lord George Bentinck—Admiral Rous—George Payne and Lord
Alexander Lennox—Religion of the former—The Duchess of
Cleveland and Battle Abbey—Anecdotes—Duke William of Normandy.

The country houses in England may be said to be a unique national possession, for in no other land does the same sort of mansion exist—that is to say, a more or less commodious dwelling for the most part of considerable antiquity, surrounded by an estate which affords, or rather did afford, the owner sufficient and congenial occupation in the form of sport. France has her historic châteaux, and before the Revolution had a certain number of country houses with parks approximating somewhat to those existing in the England of to-day; but few have survived the great upheaval of 1789, and little land remains attached to most of those that have.

The old houses and stately mansions of England form a valuable artistic possession, and many of them have been utilised as the scene of their work by our authors and novelists. Who can forget Brambletye House and the Mistletoe Bough of Harrison Ainsworth? Thackeray also drew his picture of the palace of the Marquis of Carabas from some stately, though it must be admitted, cheerless country mansion; whilst, as the following letter shows, the grounds of Bulstrode furnished Lord Beaconsfield with his description of Armine in _Henrietta Temple_:—

HUGHENDEN MANOR, _April 17, 1865_.

DEAR DOROTHY—We came down here with our own horses; the first
time for many years. How delightful after railroads! We baited
at Gerrard’s Cross, twenty miles from town, and then strolled
into Bulstrode Park to see the new house the Duke of Somerset is
building in that long-neglected but enchanting spot. There,
though they told us we should find nobody but the clerk of the
works, we found the Duke and Duchess, who had come down for a
couple of hours by rail from Slough, and so they lionised us
over all their new creation, which is a happy and successful
one—a Tudor pile, very seemly and convenient, and built amid
the old pleasance which I described thirty years ago in
_Henrietta Temple_; for Bulstrode, then mansionless and
deserted, was the origin of Armine. Excuse this egotism, the
characteristic of scribblers even when they had left off work.
Adieu, dear Dorothy.