Queen's House (7 page)

Two wings enclosed the courtyard, which joined the house by corridors supported on Ionic pillars. These wings were for kitchens and storehouses with rooms above for servants. ‘On top of all a leaden cistern holding fifty tuns of water, driven up by an engine from the Thames, supplies all the waterworks in the courts and gardens, which lie quite round the house …' The roof of the house, ‘which being covered with smooth mill'd lead, and defended by a parapet of ballusters … entertains the eye with a far distant prospect of hills and dales, and a near one of parks and gardens'.

It was this rural site that Dryden had praised and that so attracted the King. The gardens at the rear were as the Duke had left them: formal in the French manner, with avenues and arbors and a long canal bordered by limes. At the rear of the garden was a terrace,

400 paces long, with a large Semicircle in the middle, from whence are beheld the Queen's two parks, and a great part of Surry; then going down a few steps you walk on the banks of a canal 600 yards long and 17 broad, with two rows of Limes on each side.

On one side of this Terrace a Wall covered with Roses and Jassemines [sic] is made low to admit the view of a meadow full of cattle just under it, (no disagreeable object in the midst of a great city) and at each end a descent into parterres with fountains and water-works.

Inside all was magnificence. From the courtyard, as the Duke of Buckingham had written,

we mount to a Terrace in the front of a large Hall, paved with square white stones mixed with dark-coloured marble, the walls thereof covered with a sett of pictures done in the school of Raphael. Out of this, on the right hand, we go into a parlour 33 foot by 39, with a niche 15 foot broad for a Buvette, paved with white marble, and placed within an arch, with pilasters of divers colours, the upper part of which as high as the ceiling is painted by Ricci.

From hence we pass through a suite of large rooms, into a bedchamber of 34 foot by 27, within it a large closet which opens out into a green-house.

The King was to take the ground floor for himself, giving Queen Charlotte the whole of the first floor. As the Duke described, it was reached by

eight and forty steps, ten foot broad, each step of one entire Portland stone. These stairs, by the help of two resting places are so very easy there is no need of leaning on the iron balluster. The walls are painted with the story of Dido.

The roof of this staircase, which is 55 foot from the ground, is of 40 foot by 36, filled with the figures of Gods and Goddesses. In the midst is Juno, condescending to beg assistance from Venus, to bring about a marriage which the Fates intended should be the ruin of her own darling Queen and People …

From a wide landing place on the stair head, great double doors opened into a succession of rooms, some overlooking the gardens at the rear with a distant view of Chelsea fields, others with a splendid view from the front of St James's Park, the Banqueting House and West-minster Abbey.

The first room on this floor has within it a closet of original pictures [the Duke of Buckingham's], which as yet are not so entertaining as the delightful prospect from the window. Out of the second room a pair of great doors give entrance into the Saloon, which is 35 foot high, 36 broad and 45 long. In the midst of its roof a round picture by Gentileschi, 18 foot in diameter, represents the Muses playing in concert to Apollo, lying along a cloud to hear them. The rest of the room is adorned with paintings relating to the Arts and Sciences; and underneath divers original pictures hang all in good lights, by the help of an upper row of windows which drown the glaring.

Above were rooms for children and servants, ‘the floors so contrived', wrote the Duke, ‘as to prevent all noise over my wife's head'.
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The King had chosen well. The site alone was well worth the £28,000 he had paid and was to be one of the main attractions of Buckingham Palace in years to come. Though George III was to alter and rebuild, the core of Buckingham Palace today is the Duke of Buckingham's house.

Unfortunately Buckingham House had never been designed for a large family, each with a household of its own – as Queen Victoria would later discover. Year after year, Queen Charlotte produced another prince or princess with astonishing ease, and before long she and the King would go further afield for their country air, to Kew and Richmond and later to Windsor.

‘The Apollo of the Arts'

Now, though, with great enthusiasm, the King began furnishing and rebuilding his new house. Though he was young, he had been unusually well prepared for this work. His parents had encouraged his love of the arts. His father, the much-maligned Frederick, Prince of Wales, had been a discriminating collector. His mother, Augusta, Princess of Wales, an intelligent and cultured woman, had helped to create the pleasure gardens at Kew, and had supervised the rebuilding of Carlton House, which stood on the Mall on the site now occupied by the Athenaeum Club, the Institute of Directors and the road between them, and which Prince Frederick had bought in 1732.

As tutor Lord Bute was to have a profound effect on George III and a lasting effect on Buckingham Palace itself. Introduced to Prince Frederick in 1747, Bute, a dedicated botanist, was appointed to supervise the gardens at Kew; later he was to encourage Queen Charlotte in her serious botanical studies. As tutor to Prince George from 1755, he gave him a lasting love not only of the arts, music and literature but also of science. He made sure that Prince George was prepared for kingship,
inspiring him with a high idealism. Bute has often been criticized for his lack of political judgement, and his profound influence on the intelligent King has been underestimated.

Bute brought to George III men of talent whose influence would be lasting. Many of them were Scots, such as Thomas Coutts, the banker of Coutts & Co., who are still the royal bankers; and Allan Ramsay, who became the King's official artist. Robert Adam was to be one of the two architects appointed to rebuild the Queen's House. Sir William Chambers, the other appointment, was even more important: some of his work can still be seen today in Buckingham Palace.

William Chambers was born in Sweden to parents of Scottish descent who, like many seventeenth-century Scots, had emigrated to Sweden. After his education at Ripon in England, he began a career in the Swedish East India Company. On their behalf he visited India, journeyed to China several times and developed a profound interest in Chinese culture and gardens, and particularly in their art and architecture. This inspired him to change his career. He studied architecture in Paris, and spent some years in Italy, meeting Robert Adam in Rome. He was not impressed by the cocky young Scot: he found his work superficial and too pretty for his own strongly classical taste. When he returned to England his unusual knowledge of Chinese architecture and gardening brought him to the attention of Lord Bute. In 1757, Princess Augusta appointed Chambers as tutor in architecture to George, who, after the death of his father in 1751, had become Prince of Wales.

An inspiring tutor and a congenial companion, Chambers shared Prince George's taste for classical simplicity. He taught him for three mornings a week and gave him a lifelong love of architecture, which was to be his favourite hobby. In later years his disturbed mind was often quietened by the discipline of making architectural drawings or planning castles in the air.

When Prince George became King he appointed Chambers as his architect for work on the Queen's House, with Robert Adam as his colleague. In the event, Adam made little contribution to the Palace, although Queen Charlotte chose him to design her spectacular garden party for the King's birthday. He also designed the chimneypiece for
the Saloon and a ceiling for her Crimson Drawing Room. Neither Chambers nor the King appreciated Adam's delicate arabesques. As the King later said, his work ‘had too much gilding which puts one in mind of gingerbread'.

Chambers was now the architect in charge, but the King kept a close eye on the alterations, offering his own drawings for doorcases and windows. The King liked simplicity, so Buckingham's ornate railings were taken down and plain ones now enclosed the courtyard. The east façade was simplified, giving the house a more restrained classical outline.

The King's greatest pride was in his libraries. George II, who had no taste for books or art, had, in 1757, given the old royal library of some 65,000 books to the newly founded British Museum. George III planned to add to his own considerable collection.

Between 1762 and 1772 a series of library rooms were built on to the south-west corner, as well as a new bedroom for the King, which linked the library to the main block of the house. In 1767 Sir William Chambers's superb Octagon Library was completed with a great octagonal table in the middle. It was characteristic of the King's generosity that he allowed scholars to use his library, and he instructed his agents never to bid against a scholar, a professor or any person of moderate means who desired a book for his own use.

John Adams, first American minister to Britain, admired the King's library in 1783. ‘The books were in perfect order … chosen with perfect taste and judgment, every book that a King ought always to have close at hand.'
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We hear of Dr Johnson, in February 1767, absorbed reading by the fire, surprised by the silent entrance of the King, who had instructed his librarian to let him know when the Doctor visited; of the famous voice, undiminished by awe of royalty, booming through the building; and of the old Tory, who usually had no good word for the Hanoverians, going away delighted with his conversation with a literate King.

George III's new library rooms were much needed; he was to accumulate a collection of 67,000 volumes. He sent his librarian, Richard Dalton, to Italy in search of books, Old Master drawings, medals and
coins for his collection. His favourite cabinetmakers, William Vile and John Bradburn, made exquisite bookcases and cabinets for the coins and he took a close personal interest in the work. His love of books is illustrated by his establishment of a fine Royal Bindery in 1786.

The King had inherited a collection of paintings, many of which were lying neglected in Windsor Castle. He now brought pictures for the Queen's House from his other palaces, and bought paintings and commissioned contemporary artists. Bute, an enthusiastic collector himself, must have assisted the King with great pleasure.

The King's greatest purchase was the collection of Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice. Bute's younger brother, James Stuart Mackenzie, British envoy to Turin, negotiated the sale in 1762 for £20,000.

The collection included Italian drawings, and seventeenth-and eighteenth-century paintings, among them charming Italian villa scenes by Sebastiano and Marco Ricci. There were some Flemish and Dutch works, including the luminous
A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman
by Jan Vermeer, but the prize of the collection was the fifty paintings and one hundred and forty drawings by Canaletto. Smith had been for many years the patron of the artist.

At the same time the King's agent, the architect James Adam, bought on the King's behalf from Cardinal Albani a collection of 300 drawings, including some by Domenichino, Maratta and Nicolas Poussin. These had belonged to Pope Clement XI.

The King's haul landed early in 1763. Dalton and Mackenzie supervised the loading of the consignment from Livorno, Italy, in February 1763. The excitement of the King and Queen Charlotte can be imagined as the sun-lit Canaletto landscapes were unpacked in the cold spring London light. The King supervised every detail of the hang of the pictures, drawing plans of their proposed positions, undoubtedly guided by Chambers, who worked on the alterations of the Queen's House until 1773.

There would be changes over the years, but from drawings and a 1792 inventory it is possible to get an idea of the hang of the pictures in the King's rooms on the ground floor and in the Queen's rooms on the floor
above. The entrance hall was illumined by Canalettos and Zuccarellis from the Smith collection. The hall led in to an enfilade of rooms looking on to the garden. To the right, at the end, was the King's Dressing Room, on three walls of which were Canaletto landscapes; the fourth, the window wall, looked on to the garden. It was a landscape room of a kind becoming popular in the eighteenth century. Next to it the King's Warm Room was vibrant with seven historical paintings by one of the King's favourite painters, Benjamin West. There were paintings by van Dyck, Rubens and Titian in the next rooms, the Passage Room and Drawing Room. In the King's Closet twenty-four pictures were closely hung. Next came the King's Bedchamber, adorned by twelve canvases by Luca Giordano, representing the story of Cupid and Psyche. In the Great Octagon Library more Venetian pictures were hung above the bookcases.

Some of the greatest pictures were in the Queen's rooms on the first floor. The famous Raphael cartoons were brought from St James's Palace in 1763 and hung in her Saloon against wall coverings of green damask. The Queen's Breakfast Room was dominated by the two superb van Dycks –
Charles I with Monsieur de St Antoine
and
Charles I and Henrietta Maria and with Their Eldest Two Children.
George III was fascinated by the Stuarts and this painting would have been a constant reminder that, though he was a Hanoverian, he was also descended from Charles I's sister, and of the heavy price of kingly pride.

This seems to have been a favourite room, which Queen Charlotte used for music. The Queen shared many of the King's interests. She was not a ‘dim girl', as she has been called. Over the years she was to study botany conscientiously and, though one must make allowances for flattery of royalty, she was acclaimed by leading botanists. The vivid exotic flower
Strelitzia reginae,
brought from the Cape of Good Hope in 1773, was named after her. Serious academics also dedicated their works to her.