Hampton Court/Preface
PREFACE
A word, with all apologies for its egoism, as to how this book came to be. It is the record of travel over familiar ground. It tells again what has, perhaps often, been better told before. It originates in what schoolmasters used to call a 'holiday task.' College Dons, unlike the popular idea of them, are busy folk, who are constantly at work, teaching or preparing to teach, examining or writing, and each of these things as part of their professional obligation. But even Dons must have a holiday sometimes, and much more so must undergraduates.
Years ago, when I lived in the suburbs, I spent many days out of Oxford vacations in the gardens and galleries of Hampton Court. Week by week I was there, and was never tired of the delightful prospect and its memories. This year I have found the fascination still as strong as it was a decade ago; and I have had the delight of wandering about with Mr. Railton, and of trying, under his guidance, to see the familiar scenes with something of his artistic inspiration. Curious nooks, quaint byways, courts in which a stranger's footfall rarely sounds, here a solitary turret, there a garden that Henry VIII. may have planned just as it now lies, have appealed with a new force as I saw how they had been, or could be, the subjects of the artist's most delicate draughtsmanship. With the kind help of the Chaplain of the Palace, I have penetrated to many a place which I had never seen before. Each hour the impression has deepened, and at last I have sat down to put together a few memorials of some happy vacation days.
This book has no ambitious claim. It attempts only to say, in a series of sketches not always closely connected with each other, something about what the writer has enjoyed and what he has learnt.
To wander about the gardens, to study the architecture and the pictures, with the records of the great men of past ages who planned and built and lived there, is the first and best way to know Hampton Court and its history. The stately Palace has had its historian. It is not too much to say that our pleasure in and our knowledge of Hampton Court is increased tenfold by the work of Mr. Ernest Law. At every step he has been before us. There is not a source of information which he has not studied, there is no memory which he has not appreciated and preserved. The recognition which Her Majesty the Queen has bestowed upon his labours of love, the most graceful and appropriate that could be found, is the fit expression of the gratitude which Her Majesty's subjects feel to him who has done so much to enhance the pleasure with which the public receives the privileges which the sovereign has so generously bestowed.
Not only has Mr. Law studied the Palace and its history with the minute care of a scholar and antiquary: he has also continued most successfully the work of Mr. Jesse and Sir Henry Cole in popularising the knowledge which can alone enable visitors to rightly enjoy the beauties which they witness.
Those who wish to study the records of the Palace will find at every turn that Mr. Law has been before them. I have searched the State Papers for references to the events that happened at Hampton Court from the days of Wolsey onward, but hardly ever have I come across information which Mr. Law has not discovered and utilised. It is the same with the classical literature of England, and with the books in which foreign travellers have set down their impressions. All I can do, then, is to express most cordially my gratitude to Mr. Law for his catalogue and his guide-book, and for the three noble volumes in which he has told the history of the Palace from its earliest days to the present time, and to say that, though much that is in my book is also in his, and I have learnt, as has every one who has been in Hampton Court, from him, yet I hope it will appear that the aim and style of my book does not bring it into any comparison or competition with his.
That is the first and foremost of my obligations. Next to it I must place the kind and generous help of the Rev. A. G. Ingram, Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty, whose courtesy and patience on the day I troubled him I acknowledge with most sincere thanks. Nor am I ungrateful to those whose kindness has permitted me to visit their apartments, and to see much of great interest which is not open to the public at large: especially my thanks are due to Lady Cecil Gordon for the courtesy with which she showed me her rooms and explained their interest. In Mr. William Brown, the most efficient caretaker of the picture gallery, I was pleased to discover a fellow-countryman, doubly anxious from old associations to assist me.
Among Oxford friends I have to thank Miss Florence Freeman for most valuable help, and Mr. Gordon McNeil Rushforth, to whose taste and wide knowledge of art I am greatly indebted.
To chronicle my obligations to other books besides those of Mr. Ernest Law would be a tedious task. I have tried to mention most of them as they occur, but I cannot forbear to particularise Mr. Claude Phillips's charming account of "The Picture Gallery of Charles I." (Portfolio, January 1896), and the wholly admirable "Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court" (Kyrle Pamphlets, No. 2), by 'Mary Logan.'
The Great House,
Burford, Oxon.,
August 1896.