tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Chairs And Tables

BIBLIOGRAPHY

It is with pleasure we acknowledge our obligations to the following authorities:

Percy Macquoid: "The Age of Walnut."

(The standard work on the furniture of this period.)

J. H. Pollen: "Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork."

An admirable little handbook and guide to the furniture and woodwork collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.

F. J. Britten: "Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers."

(Exhaustive in its treatment, and fully illustrated. The standard book. A new edition has recently been published.)

John Stalker: "Japanning and Varnishing."

(The earliest English book on this subject. Published in 1688 during the craze for japanned furniture.)

Law: "History of Hampton Court," vol. iii.

Ashton: "Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne."

Evelyn: "Diary."

Macaulay: "History of England."

CHAPTER I: THE QUEEN ANNE PERIOD

WILLIAM AND MARY, 1689-1702

ANNE, 1702-1714

GEORGE I., 1714-1727

William the Third was a Dutchman and, although he was for thirteen years King of England, he remained a Dutchman until his death. His English was bad, his accent was rough, and his vocabulary limited. He had a Dutch guard, the friends whom he trusted were Dutch, and they were always about him, filling many of the offices of the Royal Household. He came to England as a foreigner and it remained to him a foreign country. His advent to the throne brought about certain changes in the style of furniture which are generally described as "the Dutch influence," which, however, had its origin at least as far back as the reign of Charles II.

Both William and Mary were greatly interested in furnishing and furniture. They took up their residence at Hampton Court Palace soon after their coronation, and the place suited William so well and pleased him so much that it was very difficult to get him away from it. William was a great soldier and a great statesman, but he was more at his pleasure in the business of a country house than in the festivities and scandals of a court life, both of which he perhaps equally disliked. The Queen also cordially liked country life, and no less cordially disliked scandal. Mr. Law, in his interesting book on Hampton Court, mentions the story that Mary would check any person attempting to retail scandal by asking whether they had read her favourite sermon—Archbishop Tillotson on Evil Speaking.

With the assistance of Sir Christopher Wren as Architect and Grinling Gibbon as Master Sculptor, great changes were made in the Palace at Hampton Court. The fogs and street smells of Whitehall drove William to the pure air of the country, and there was the additional attraction that the country around the palace reminded him in its flatness of his beloved Holland. When one of his Ministers ventured to remonstrate with him on his prolonged absences from London, he answered: "Do you wish to see me dead?" William, perhaps naturally, cared nothing for English tradition: he destroyed the state rooms of Henry VIII. and entrusted to Wren the task of rebuilding the Palace. The architect appears to have had a difficult task, as the King constantly altered the plans as they proceeded, and, it is said, did a good deal towards spoiling the great architect's scheme. In William's favour it must be admitted that he took the blame for the deficiencies and gave Wren the credit for the successes of the building. The result—the attachment of a Renaissance building to a Tudor palace—is more successful than might have been expected. The King's relations with Wren seem to have been of a very friendly sort. Mr. Law mentions the fact that Wren was at this time Grand Master of Freemasons; that he initiated the King into the mysteries of the craft; and that William himself reached the chair and presided over a lodge at Hampton Court Palace whilst it was being completed, which is, in the circumstances, an interesting example of the working rather than the speculative masonry.

Mary was herself a model housewife, and filled her Court with wonder that she should labour so many hours each day at her needlework as if for her living. She covered the backs of chairs and couches with her work, which was described as "extremely neat and very well shadowed," although all trace of it has long since disappeared. It is appropriate to observe, as being related to decorative schemes and furnishing, that the taste for Chinese porcelain, which is so general at this day, was first introduced into England by Mary. Evelyn mentions in his diary (June 13, 1693) that he "saw the Queen's rare cabinets and collection of china which was wonderfully rich and plentiful." Macaulay expresses his opinion with his usual frankness. He writes: "Mary had acquired at The Hague a taste for the porcelain of China, and amused herself by forming at Hampton a vast collection of hideous images, and vases upon which houses, trees, bridges, and mandarins were depicted in outrageous defiance of all the laws of perspective. The fashion—a frivolous and inelegant fashion, it must be owned—which was thus set by the amiable Queen spread fast and wide. In a few years almost every great house in the kingdom contained a museum of these grotesque baubles. Even statesmen and generals were not ashamed to be renowned as judges of teapots and dragons; and satirists long continued to repeat that a fine lady valued her mottled green pottery quite as much as she valued her monkey and much more than she valued her husband." It is strange to consider in these days how greatly Macaulay, in this opinion, was out of his reckoning. There is, perhaps, no example of art or handicraft upon which the opinion of cultured taste in all countries is so unanimous as in its admiration for good Chinese porcelain, amongst which the Queen's