Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    L30/12/34/13
  • Title
    Sent from Wrest Park:
  • Date free text
    31 Aug 1780
  • Production date
    From: 1780 To: 1780
  • Scope and Content
    Sad about operation. Politics. Returned from Lord Bute's at 4. [In 1780 the Marchioness Grey of Wrest Park and her family visited the newly-erected Luton Hoo. Her daughter wrote an account of it as follows]: I was very valiant this morning, and did not feel foolish with my drive, though it was as hot a one as need to be taken. Will you have some idea of the house? Imprimis, there is a huge saloon opposite to the odd little portico, only plain green paper with white ornaments and pictures, with two of Mr Adam's screens of pillars that support nothing, but the ceiling and all the ornaments pretty and simple. Most of the pictures more old and curious than beautiful, but I except a Cupid begging his bow from Venus by Guido, and a fine Doge of Venice by Velasquez. On the left hand, a vestibule with pictures, many old; and beyond, the drawingroom, pictures mostly dated?, the room rather more ornamented with showy frames to the glasses, and four niches with a sort of candelabrums brought from Italy, and they tell you designed by Michael Angelo. On the right of the saloon, another vestibule with pictures, amongst them a beautiful head by Guido, which I think represents a pretty gipsy. Beyond, answering the drawingroom, two rooms with presses, models, pictures etc., which Lord Bute uses as his own. Next you enter into the library wing, five divisions, and the two end ones are distinct rooms; an immense collection of books and pictures over them; one that you would have liked is a collection of grapes, figs etc. with a pretty boy who has scrambled up a seat, is laying his hand on the grapes, and his mother pulls him back - supposed to be Ruben's wife and child. The books are locked up and seen through wires - think how I was tantalised! Above stairs over the body of the house are three bedchambers with double dressingrooms, and over the library two bedchambers and three dressingrooms, two of them very large. But they are all filled with such an immense collection of small Flemish pictures that I believe a burgomaster in Holland could hardly fatigue his company with walking them through a larger. There I will not fatigue you with them, but only add that there are also good attics; but the diningroom is in the old house; and the mixture of an unfinished palace and ruinous-looking offices is odd. There is no damask, little gilding, and nothing extraordinary in the marble chimneypiece, but the ornaments are in a purer style than is usual with Adam.
  • Level of description
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