class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[5]"/> collection (judging from the pieces still remaining at Hampton) must be classed. Mary was probably the first English queen to intimately concern herself with furniture. We have it on the authority of the Duchess of Marlborough that on the Queen's first visit to the palace she engaged herself "looking into every closet and conveniency, and turning up the quilts upon the beds, as people do when they come into an inn, and with no other concern in her appearance but such as they express."

We find in this period lavishly painted ceilings, woodwork carved by Grinling Gibbon and his school, fine needlework, upholstered bedsteads, and marble mantelpieces with diminishing shelves for the display of Delft and Chinese ware. The standard of domestic convenience, in one respect, could not, however, have been very high, if one may judge from the Queen's bathing-closet of this period at Hampton Court Palace. The bath is of marble and recessed into the wall, but it is more like a fountain than a bath, and its use in the latter connection must have been attended by inconveniences which modern women of much humbler station would decline to face.[1]

Good specimens of the wood-carving of Grinling Gibbon (born 1648, died 1721) are to be seen at Hampton Court, to which Palace William III. appointed the artist Master Carver. He generally worked in soft woods, such as lime, pear and pine, but sometimes in oak. His subjects were very varied—fruit and foliage, wheat-ears and flowers, cupids and dead game, and even musical instruments—and were fashioned with amazing skill, resource, and ingenuity. He invented that school of English carving which is associated with his name. His fancy is lavish and his finish in this particular work has never been surpassed in this country; but it is doubtful whether his work is not overdone, and as such may not appeal to the purer taste. Often his masses of flowers and foliage too much suggest the unpleasant term which is usually applied to them, viz. "swags." Frequently nothing is left to the imagination in the boldness of his realism. Fig. 1 shows a very happy example of his work over a mantelpiece in one of the smaller rooms in Hampton Court Palace, which is reproduced by the courtesy of the Lord Chamberlain, the copyright being the property of H.M. the King. Upon the shelf are pieces of china belonging to Queen Mary, but the portrait inset is of Queen Caroline, consort of George IV. In the grate is an antique fire-back, and on either side of the fire is a chair of the period of William and Mary.

The Court bedsteads (and probably on a smaller scale the bedsteads of the upper classes generally) continued to be at once elaborate and unhygienic, and were fitted with canopies and hangings of velvet and other rich stuffs. King William's bedstead was a great four-poster, hung with crimson velvet and surmounted at each corner with an enormous plume, which was much the same fashion of bedstead as at the beginning of the century. Fig. 2 is an interesting photograph (reproduced by permission of the Lord Chamberlain) of three Royal bedsteads at Hampton Court, viz. those of William, Mary, and George II. The chairs and stools in front are of the period of William and Mary. The table is of later date. Most of the old furniture at Hampton Court, however, has been dispersed amongst the other Royal palaces.

An excellent idea of the appearance of a London dwelling-room of this period is shown in Fig. 3. It was removed from No. 3 Clifford's Inn, and is now to be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The owner, John Penhallow, must have been well-to-do, as the fine carving about the mantelpiece and doors was expensive even in those days. The festoons of fruit and flowers of the school of Grinling Gibbon around the mantelpiece, in the centre of which are the arms of the owner, and the broken pediments over the doors surmounting the cherubs' heads, are characteristic of the time. The table with the marquetry top and "tied" stretcher is of the period. The chairs retained for a time that rigid resistance to the lines of the human form which marks the Stuart chairs; but very soon adapted themselves in a physiological sense.

What is termed the Queen Anne period of furniture may be said to date from the reigns of William and Mary (1689-1702), and Queen Anne (1702-1714), to that of George I. (1714-1727). The Dutch influence of William and Mary became Anglicised during the reign of Anne and the first George, and the influence remains to this day. Mahogany was introduced about 1720, and thenceforward the influence of Chippendale and his school came into force.

The Queen Anne style has probably been over-praised, a little misunderstood, and possibly a trifle harshly treated. Mr. Ernest Law, whose studies of this period we have already mentioned, describes it as "nothing better than an imitation of the bastard classic of Louis XIV., as distinguished from the so-called 'Queen Anne style' which never had any existence at all except in the brains of modern æsthetes and china maniacs," and as a case in point refers to Queen Anne's drawing-room at Hampton Court Palace. This verdict is no doubt a true one as regards the schemes of interior decoration, with their sprawling deities and the gaudy and discordant groupings of classical figures of Verrio and his school, to be seen at Hampton Court and other great houses. Verrio, as Macaulay wrote, "covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and Muses, Nymphs and Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing nectar, and laurelled princes riding in triumph"—a decorative scheme which certainly does not err on the side of parsimony. The taste of a Court, however, is by no means a criterion of taste in domestic furniture. There can be no doubt that to this period we are indebted for the introduction of various articles of furniture of great utility and unquestionable taste. The chairs and tables in particular, depending as they do for charm upon simple lines and the transverse grain of the wood, for neatness of design and good workmanship are unsurpassed. Amongst other pieces the bureaux and long-cased clocks made their appearance; also double chests of drawers or tallboys, mirrors for toilet-tables and wall decoration; and washstands came into general use, as well as articles like card-tables, powdering-tables, &c.

The houses of the wealthy were furnished with great magnificence and luxuriousness in a gaudy and ultra-decorative fashion. Restraint is the last quality to be found. Judging however from the many simple and charming specimens of walnut furniture surviving, the standard of comfort and good taste amongst the middle classes was high. Table glass was now manufactured in England; carpets were made at Kidderminster; chairs grew to be comfortably shaped; domestic conveniences in the way of chests of drawers, writing bureaux, and mirrors were all in general use in many middle-class houses. Mr. Pollen, whose handbook on the Victoria and Albert collection is so much appreciated, writes of the Queen Anne furniture as being of a "genuine English style marked by great purity and beauty."

Anne, the second daughter of