LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES

Documents Biography Criticism

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Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries

Uvedale Price to Samuel Rogers, 26 July 1824

INTRODUCTION & INDEXES

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

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Preface

Vol. I Contents

Chapter I. 1803-1805.

Chapter II. 1805-1809.

Chapter III. 1810-1812.

Chapter IV. 1813-1814.

Chapter V. 1814-1815.

Chapter VI. 1815-1816.

Chapter VII. 1816-1818.

Chapter VIII. 1818-19.

Chapter IX. 1820-1821.

Chapter X. 1822-24.

Chapter XI. 1825-1827.

Vol. II Contents

Chapter I. 1828-1830.

Chapter II. 1831-34.

Chapter III. 1834-1837.

Chapter IV. 1838-41.

Chapter V. 1842-44.

Chapter VI. 1845-46.

Chapter VII. 1847-50.

Chapter VIII. 1850

Chapter IX. 1851.

Chapter X. 1852-55.

Index

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Produced by CATH

‘Dear Rogers,—. . . We were detained at Cashiobury two days longer than we intended. . . . With me these were by no means idle days; I was most busily employed on a part of the place that is known, and that perhaps you may know, by the name of the Horse-shoe

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Dell: it is a little amphitheatre, a hollow, nearly flat in the middle, and surrounded on every side by gently rising ground. Many years ago cedars of Lebanon, red cedars, laurels, laburnums, cockspur thorns, &c.—these last the largest and the most picturesque I have ever seen—were planted there, and most judiciously (for it can hardly have been mere accident) placed on the top and the sides of the swelling ground, the bottom being left unplanted; in short, exactly as I could have wished such ground to be planted. Many of the trees, however, though by no means crowded, had from then-luxuriant growth begun to injure one another, and the arena, which had so properly been left unplanted, was choked up with chance seedlings, chiefly ash, which concealed the varied form of the banks, and would soon have concealed even the trees upon them. Lord Essex gave me carte blanche, and though in the midst of the hay, gave me several workmen. I began by clearing the arena; and, after cutting out a quantity of dead boughs from the beautiful plants they disfigured, cautiously gave room to the principal trees, and those of the best forms, by pruning the others from them. I then made some paths and openings where none appear to have ever been made, so as to enter this little sanctum in the best directions. I wish you had been with me: I should have liked to show you the status ante and post bellum, and I think you would have been amused in seeing the progress of the work; it is, however, only sbuzzato, for I had only two days, those very hot, and I not very stout, though “very eager.” My principal operator in pruning, &c. was a common labourer, but sufficiently intelligent, and who

DR. GRETTON, DEAN OF HEREFORD

381

took to it all very kindly: his name is John Elliman, and if you should happen to light upon him at your next trip to Cashiobury, he will be a much better cicerone than the Bostanghi Pacha, Dominusve terræ fastidiosus: but this quite between ourselves. It must be owned that I am not a little unconscionable, first to try your patience with a long account of all I have been doing and then to propose your looking it all over with such a cicerone! but we are mighty fond of our own little performances in every way. So ends the history of the last days at Cashiobury.

‘Postera lux oritur multo gratissima,

for I never passed a pleasanter day in all respects than that at Dropmore. I delight in Lord Grenville, so we do all, and in his creation; and wish I had happened to see the spot before he began the work, and while the alehouse was standing. This was my case in regard to London. I left it with Swallow Street, &c., in all their dirt and meanness: Waterloo Bridge and all the grand openings from Carlton House to the Regent’s Park were made during my ten years’ rustication; and the impression was, I am sure, in proportion. I never heard of anyone who regretted Swallow Street, and of one only who was angry at anything Lord Grenville had done at Dropmore; that one, as Peploe told me yesterday, was our late Dean of Hereford, Dr. Gretton. It seems that Lord Grenville had been sacrilegious enough to pull down a house where he had kept a school, and he talked of it with as much indignation as an ancient Greek would have done if the Academy where Plato taught had been

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destroyed. This Dean of ours—begging Lord Ashburnham’s pardon, who has been his pupil—was the arrantest pedagogue that ever wielded a rod; his head, face, wig, and his whole person seemed cut out of wood, and, as some one said, there was syntax in every line of his countenance.

‘To return from this digression, we got to Dropmore in time enough for a short walk before dinner, which, instead of that absurd fashionable hour of seven, which cuts off the most delightful part of the whole day, was at five, and after coffee, the weather being exactly what one could wish it, set out on our walk. To me, who am not less fond of highly ornamented than of wild picturesque scenery, the whole garden was extremely interesting, and my pleasure was enhanced (many a time have I found it otherwise) by looking it over with the proprietors. Lady Grenville seems as fond of everything as her lord, and from the observations she occasionally made appeared to me to have very just feeling and discrimination. There is an amusing contrast in their manners: his remarkably placid and calm, though far from cold; hers as strikingly eager. I have seldom seen any rock-work in gardens that had not rather a trifling paltry appearance: that of Lord Grenville’s is on a scale which alone would preserve it from such epithets; and he has managed to give it—the blocks themselves being large and massy—a sort of architectural grandeur, and when the various plants and creepers begin to shoot luxuriantly as they promise to do, the effect will be excellent. He has, I think, been no less successful in a no less difficult and risky operation with other materials—that of placing large bodies of trees, many of them singularly bent, so as to form arches at various directions at the foot [of]

A HAPPY DAY AT DROPMORE

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an artificial mound he has raised so as to command a view of the distant country; and on the edge of the mound by way of foreground to the distance (I don’t know what has possessed me to describe to you what you know better than I do) he has placed large stumps and roots of trees. I had heard of all this, and thought it rather a hazardous undertaking: and the whole at present, being but just done and not quite finished, has, of course, a crude appearance, but it is so well designed that I have no doubt of the effect when the plants and climbers begin to answer the purpose for which they were intended, that of a disguise and an ornament. Methinks I hear you crying out in a lamentable tone, Ohe! jam satis est! and in truth, I am rather ashamed of having given you, and for the second time in the same letter, such a plat de mon métier, but I was so full of what I had been doing and seeing, that I must have burst if I had not given it vent; and you are the victim. Nothing could be more nattering than the wish both Lord and Lady Grenville expressed that we would prolong our stay. We were well inclined to do so, had it been possible, for the style of living is remarkably easy, and everything, without any parade, full of comfort; we shall have no scruple in accepting their invitation for another year, when I hope you will meet us, and share and add to our enjoyments.

‘After this one day at Dropmore, but, in Homer’s language, πάντων αξιον ημαρ, we went to St. Anne’s with the full intention of going from thence to Asburnham, although the two additional days at Cashiobury had thrown us very late; when I, in my turn, was disabled from travelling by the most disabling of all complaints

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. . . and thus, after all the suspense in which we had been keeping Lord and Lady Ashburnham, after their extreme kindness and indulgence, we were most reluctantly obliged to give up entirely what we had so much set our hearts upon. His answer in some degree comforted us: they could have received us on the day we proposed, and have allowed us to stay the whole of the next, but must have sent us away on the following one. The whole day would have been another αξιον ημαρ, and well worth the journey, yet after all, however amiable, we must have been very troublesome guests at the eve of such a departure. Four quiet days at St. Anne’s restored me a good deal; but as my complaint and also my daughter’s were not unlikely to return, we thought it both safest and best to give up our intended tour, and get to Foxley pian piano by easy journeys; and here we are, feeling the delights and comforts of home, and looking forward with great pleasure to the time when you and your sister will arrive. We depend on your promise, and shall be grievously disappointed if anything should prevent your coming. I am busily employed with my two squirrels, well provided with high ladders and various cutting implements, in retouching my pictures, and clearing away the random foliage, as Mason calls it, that begins to disturb my compositions, and hide some of the distances; and all àvotre intention; so you must have a black heart if you fail me. With our best regards to you and Miss Rogers, and wishing you a pleasant journey into Herefordshire, believe me,