In an age when any conversations about empire and colonialism can be triggering, I’ve always been quite surprised that the John Williamson Papers don’t seem to have attracted a lot of political attacks. I’m surprised rather than pleased, because there is no doubt that controversy sells books and also I suspect that there would be more controversy about the John Williamson series if more people had actually read it.
In Cawnpore, I refer to the events of 1857 as the Indian Mutiny. The book is written from the point of view of a Victorian Englishman and “Indian Mutiny” is what Victorian Englishmen called it. Nowadays, though, what to call that uprising is an intensely political decision. To many Indians and Pakistanis the war was the First War of Indian Independence or the Freedom Struggle of 1857. (Wikipedia hedges its bets with ‘Indian Rebellion’.)
Leaving aside political considerations, part of the confusion as to what to call it is down to the fact that several conflicts coalesced into a single rebellion. There seems little doubt that the actual fighting started with a mutiny. That is, soldiers disobeyed a direct order and, when some were imprisoned, their comrades rose up to release them, murdered some of their officers and broke camp. Whether the soldiers were encouraged to mutiny by political activists seeking independence from the British is uncertain. Some Europeans were convinced that the whole thing was a calculated plot, but it is the nature of the political class always to claim that acts of rebellion were incited by “outside agitators” and there is no clear evidence on this either way. What is certain is that the first troops to mutiny decided to march to Delhi and put themselves at the service of the Mogul emperor.
With mutineers claiming to be acting in the cause of the deposed rulers, the conflict quickly began to take on a wider political complexion. Other rulers, like Nana Sahib, saw the opportunity to re-establish their power while the British, deprived of the support of their native troops, were weakened. The situation was further confused because these rulers did not all act in concert. For example, as mentioned in my novel, the troops who mutinied at Cawnpore first marched towards Delhi to put themselves at the service of the Mogul emperor, before being persuaded to return to Cawnpore to serve the Peshwa, Nana Sahib. Although the various leaders of the Indian forces made common cause against the British, their failure to act effectively as a single political or military force counted against them.
One of the first acts of the rebels in many places (including Cawnpore) was to open the jails. So beside the mutinying troops and the various forces of the native rulers, many of those who joined in the fighting were local convicts who simply saw an opportunity to profit from the general unrest. Thus natives who were associated with the British (such as Christians or other Eurasians) were often attacked and murdered, less to achieve a military or political goal than because their attackers could then loot their property. With an almost complete breakdown of law and order and mass conflict spreading across huge areas of the country, there was an opportunity for many old scores to be settled.
Many Indian troops attached to the British forces and many local rulers supported the British, giving some of the conflict the character of a civil war. This picture (by George Francklin Atkinson in 1859) claims to show Troops of the Native Allies.
There are clear modern parallels. In Iraq the fighting following the American-led occupation was blamed on elements of the Army (essentially mutineers), forces loyal to the old regime, criminal elements and those settling scores between different religious groups. In Britain, at least, commentators struggled for ages to find a term which encompassed all these different elements before they settled on “insurgency”. Perhaps that is how we should refer to the events of 1857. But, whatever the best term should be, for the British involved, and for most British historians, even today, the bloodshed and horror of that year are simply summed up as the Indian Mutiny.
The events at Cawnpore (now Kanpur) are seen through the eyes of an Englishman who, disillusioned with many aspects of British rule, finds his loyalties torn between the Europeans he despises and the Indians he loves. How can he be true to himself and still survive the massacre that will follow the fall of Cawnpore?
Williamson’s story takes us to the heart of the Indian Mutiny, a crucial point in British history. The massacre at Cawnpore shocked the world and its repercussions shaped the future of India.
It’s real history, but not the way you learned it at school.
(This is an edited version of a piece last posted in 2021)
Last week I wrote about Marble Hill House, the beautiful Palladian villa built for Henrietta Howard in the first half of the 18th century. After her death, it passed to her nephew and then her great-niece before being rented out to a succession of tenants (including Mrs Fitzherbert, the mistress of George IV). I’m very pleased to be able to give you Penelope Williams’ (no relation) account of what happened after that.
Last Private Owners
The last private owners of the house were General Jonathan Peel and his wife Lady Alice Peel. They lived there for 62 years – longer than anyone else. General Jonathan Peel was the brother of Sir Robert Peel, a Prime Minister, and today famous as the founder of the Metropolitan Police Force.
General Jonathan Peel was also a politician and was MP for Norwich and Huntingdonshire. He served as a secretary of state in the war office and was famous for breeding race horses. His horse Orlando won the Derby in 1844.1
The coach house built by General Peel
Failure to Sell the House and Plans for Redevelopment
When his widow Lady Alice died in 1887 her heirs were unable to sell the house and it was left empty for more than 14 years. When the house could not be sold to a private individual it was marketed as a development opportunity.
Why did no-one want to buy the house as a private home? There were many reasons. The house may have been seen as at risk from flooding and the building up the embankment would have been a considerable expense. The size of the house was also a problem. It was too big for an ordinary family and too small for a grand house. The landed gentry were gradually becoming poorer. Agriculture which had supported the large country house was in decline because of competition from the United States. Taxes were increasing. Death duties were first introduced in 1894 along with other legislation.
The house is on higher ground than it seems but the grounds still flood
Country Life Illustrated contained an article in July 1900 lamenting Marble Hill’s dilapidated air: –
“The gardens and groves are a very tangle, as the house has stood untenanted since the stable clock stopped one morning at half past nine, 14 years ago.”2
Unbeknown to them the house had actually been sold two years before in 1898 to William Cunard, a member of the famous shipping family, and his three sons for redevelopment.1
In June 1901 the Wigan Observer and District Advertiser reported that: –
“Marble Hill at Twickenham is soon to pass to the hands of the builders, and the home of Pope’s Chloe will become a street of suburban villas.”3 [Chloe was Pope’s name for Henrietta Howard.]
By the summer of 1901 infrastructure works had begun. Machinery and building materials were on site and roads and sewers under construction.
This was a time of rapid urbanisation particularly in London. St Margarets station was opened in 1876 and that meant substantial building in the area near Marble Hill, which was developing as a commuter suburb. Many estates were being bought up for housing. The Cunard family had also purchased Lebanon House and Orleans House to the west of Marble Hill. The nearby Cambridge Estate had recently been built upon.
The view from Richmond Hill
There were however a lot of objections to the redevelopment proposals, both locally and nationally. This was partly because Marble Hill was a key part of the famous view from Richmond Hill.4 Richmond at the time was a place where many Londoners would to go for day trips and excursions on the river. Marble Hill would have been well known as the home of Henrietta Howard, Lady Suffolk who also had a role in Sir Walter Scott’s popular novel – The Heart of Midlothian. He describes the splendid avenue of trees leading to the river walk. 5
The view from the top of Richmond Hill had been much admired for many years and had been an inspiration to many well-known writers and artists: artists such as JWM Turner who had lived nearby in Sandycoombe Road and Joshua Reynolds who had lived in Wick House at the top of the hill in 1788.7
There is a memorable description by Sir Walter Scott in The Heart of Midlothian and a well-known sonnet by Wordsworth written in praise of the nightingales which used to sing there. This is from Sir Walter Scott.
“A huge sea of verdure with crossing and interesting promontories of massive and tufted groves, tenanted by numberless flocks and herds, which seem to wander unrestrained, and unbounded, through rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were accessories, and bore on his bosom a hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the whole.”
There are three pictures of the view in the house today – in the Tetrastyle Hall and the Breakfast Parlour.
A View from Richmond Hill by Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777–1843) hanging in the Tetrasyle Hall
Although the house itself was no longer visible from the top of the hill, the woodlands on the estate were a key feature situated as they were on the bend of the river. The debates were centred on protecting the Middlesex side of the river as Lord Dysart, of Ham House, had agreed to protect the property on the Surrey bank in return for an agreement on use of Lammas lands at Ham.5
After a long campaign, Parliament in 1902 passed the Richmond, Petersham and Ham Open Spaces Act. 9 This still protects the view to this day.
View from Richmond Hill
On 19 July 1901 a conference was organised to discuss what could be done about the Marble Hill Estate. The conference was attended by representatives of local authorities and preservation societies including London, Surrey and Middlesex councils, the Richmond Corporation, the Teddington Urban District Council and other charities and individuals. Following the conference these organisations got together a total sum of £72,000 to buy the estate from the Cunard family. The Cunards would have made more money if they had developed the estate but the huge public opposition would have influenced their decision to sell. The London County Council put up half the money and agreed to take on the future care and maintenance of the estate.10
Marble Hill Park opens in 1903
The park was first opened to the public in 1903. Before the opening, the LCC carried out some remedial works to the grounds and cleared away all signs of the infrastructure works. But the house remained closed, apart from the ground floor where there was a tea room. You can still see signs of the original counter on the floor in the Tetrastyle Hall. The housekeeper’s room which is now the entrance and shop was used as a changing room for the teams playing cricket or football in the park. It was approached from the outside by way of the toilet block. A service wing including Henrietta’s china room was demolished in 1909 as it was in poor repair.
The first floor was turned into a flat for the Park Superintendent. The dressing room and Miss Hotham’s bedchamber were partitioned creating an extra bedroom and a bathroom leading off the kitchen which occupied the ante chamber. 1
In 1916 during the first world war Marble Hill was a recruiting station.
Sheep were grazed on the lawn until the 1930s.
The opening ceremony took place during a prolonged thunderstorm according to the Surrey Comet and had to be delayed by an hour and half.11
House first opens to the Public 1966
The whole house was not opened to the general public until 1966. This was as a historic house museum opened by the GLC which replaced the LCC in 1965.12 Why was it not open to the public before?
When the house came into the ownership of the council in the early Twentieth Century there was very little interest in historic houses. A wave of destruction began in the early 1900s but most people were not that concerned at the losses because many saw the houses merely as a symbol of the old order which was then in decline. During the first half of the 20th century many historic houses were lost. It was not until later, after the second world war, that more people began to recognise their value.13 Evelyn Waugh, whose Brideshead Revisited has been seen as a lament for the lost age of the country house, writing in his introduction to the 1959 second edition of the novel said:
“It was impossible to foresee in the Spring of 1944 the present cult of the English Country House. It seemed then that the ancestral seats which were our chief national artistic achievement were doomed to decay and despoliation like the monasteries in the Sixteenth Century. So, I piled it on rather with passionate sincerity. Brideshead today would be open to trippers, its treasures re-arranged by expert hands and the fabric better maintained than it was by Lord Marchmain.”
The National Trust was formed in 1898 as a charity primarily for the preservation of landscapes of outstanding beauty or interest. It was only later that this included historic houses. After the war many country house owners were struggling. The Marquess of Bath had a big success when, in 1947, he became one of the first to open up his house at Longleat to the public. He did this to help pay death duties on his estate. The resurgence in interest could have led the GLC to decide to open up Marble Hill.14
The Daily Telegraph Architectural Correspondent writing in the Daily Telegraph on the day of the house opening 14 July 1966 stated that “The survival of the house at that time probably a result more of chance than policy.” 12
The very first guide to the house was put together by the newly formed Georgian Group in 1939, just before the second world war. Then they recommended:
“submitting it to a thorough and careful restoration so as to render every part of it available for the use, enjoyment and instruction both of the general public, and of the student of architecture and interior decoration”.
In 1951 the whole of the second floor had to be gutted because of dry rot. Some of the architectural features were moved to the lower floors at that time.
When the GLC first took over, they carried out a major restoration with the aim of bringing the house back to the original Eighteenth century design. The most significant alterations to the appearance of the house outside were to the South Front including reducing the length of the windows back to their original on the first floor and removing the cast iron balconies, which were thought to have been put in sometime early in the Nineteenth century. The restoration took two years and cost £48,830. The aim at this time was that the house would be used for lectures and meetings of cultural societies. Appropriate antique furnishings and paintings were acquired. The first exhibition was entitled The Countess of Suffolk and Friends, an exhibition of paintings.
The Daily Telegraph architectural correspondent writing about the opening compared the restoration to that of the Grand Trianon at Versailles. But the correspondent in the Glasgow Herald 15 wrote that the only drawback was the difficulty of imagining Lady Suffolk’s daily life there – while praising the restoration of the Great Room on the first floor “all white and gold with its cube of 24 feet lamented the cool blank rooms which resisted habitation”.
In 1986, with the abolition of the GLC, the house passed into the ownership of English Heritage, who look after it today. Over time the house has been filled with eighteenth century paintings and furniture so that today we can really imagine Henrietta Howard living here and entertaining her wide literary, political and social circle in its rooms.
References
1 Marble Hill House and Its Owners – Marie Draper and WA Eden
2 Country Life Illustrated – 24 February 1900
3 Wigan Observer and District Advertiser – 19 June 1901
4 Gentlewoman – Saturday 9 August 1890
5 Marble Hill – The Heart of the View from Marble Hill – Julius Bryant
6 London Evening Standard – Monday 1 June 1903
7 Richmond Hill and Marble Hill – DS Macoll – The Architectural Review 1901-07 Volume 10
Issue 56
8 The Architectural Review Volume 34 (July – December 1913)
9 Hansard – Richmond, Petersham and Ham and Open Spaces Act 1902
10 Opening of Marble Hill Twickenham – 30 May 1903 – London County Council
11 Surrey Comet – 3 June 1903
12 Daily Telegraph – Peter Fleetwood- Hesketh -17 July 1966
13 Wikipedia – Destruction of Country Houses in Twentieth Century Britain
14 How to Fund Stately Homes in the Twenty-first Century – CNN Style
I’ve just realised that I’ve hardly ever written about Marble Hill House. I’ve written a lot about the park, but hardly anything about the house itself. This is a peculiar omission, especially as I’ve started doing some volunteer work over there so I’ll be spending a lot of time in the house and may well want to write about it in the future. So here’s an instant introduction to the place.
Marble Hill House sits by the river at Twickenham – a stretch known in the 18th century as ‘the Arcadian Thames’ where a string of great houses were built along the water highway from Westminster to Hampton Court. Most are now gone, but the wonderful Jacobean Ham House on the Surrey bank still faces Marble Hill and the one remaining wing of the once splendid Orleans House is a few hundred yards further along the river on the Middlesex side.
Marble Hill House was started in 1724. It was built for Henrietta Howard, the mistress of George II. She was no passing floozy, but a professional courtier who was a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Caroline and was highly regarded by many of those at court as a discreet and intelligent member of the innermost royal circle.
Henrietta Howard
Although she had made a successful career as a courtier, she did not particularly enjoy the life and planned to retire to Marble Hill and live quietly there. For years she was intimately involved with the design of the house and gardens.
The building is small. She did not intend to keep a large household and wanted to live in a very different style from the splendours of the Georgian court. In any case, she was short of money and building work was frequently delayed while she raised funds.
The house was built in the Palladian style, which was just becoming fashionable. Although it is small, it is exquisitely proportioned.
Building was completed in 1729 but Henrietta was not able to leave the court until 1734.
One factor that had kept her in the security of court life was her determination to avoid the attentions of her husband. She had married very young to a man who had abused and beaten her and she had sometimes had to rely on the king and queen to protect her from him. In 1733, though, he died and by 1735, free from both her husband and her royal lover, she married George Berkely, the youngest son of the Earl of Berkely and MP for Hedon in Yorkshire. She was too old to have children by then, but the couple were devoted to each other and she moved nieces and nephews into Marble Hill where they lived very happily as a family (albeit it one with a degree of coming and going among the younger family members).
George Berkely died in 1746 but Henrietta continued to live at Marble Hill until her own death in 1767. She had not only been involved in court and political life, but was the centre of an intellectual circle that included the playwright, Gay; the poet, Pope; and the novelist, Swift. Her private memoirs are regarded as one of the best guides to life in the early Georgian courts and the house at Marble Hill (the designing of which had been one of her main pleasures in her later years at court) still stands as one of the finest Palladian villas in England. (A quick Google search suggests several other contenders for this title but it is certainly a fine example.)
From 20 June, Amazon are increasing the print costs on their paperbacks. Inevitably this means their authors have to review what they are charging for the books.
All my Burke books are currently £8.99 which I judged as being roughly the “going rate” for this sort of paperback. To provide some context, the Sharpe series of Napoleonic war stories are £9.99 each.
At the moment, I make more money on sales of my Kindle e-books than I do on the paperbacks. You could argue that I should not bother with paperbacks at all. They’re more hassle to format, the covers (which I pay for) are more expensive and I pay for ISBN numbers for them. And, after all that, I don’t sell that many. But all writers, I think, want to see their books available in paperback. There is something about seeing the physical product of your work that is immensely satisfying and it’s lovely to have them siting there on my bookshelf or being able to inflict copies on my friends. ‘Look, Mom, I’m a real author!’
So I’m going to carry on with the paperbacks. But I am no longer going to effectively cross-subsidise them from the Kindle sales. From now on, they have to pay their way. So from 20 June, my Burke books will all cost £9.50 each.
£9.50, in these straitened times, may seem a lot but at London prices that’s three cappuccinos. (Price at Pret.) Very little of that goes to me. I get a higher proportion of the £3.99 you pay for a Kindle copy, which is why the Kindle version makes me more money (though obviously less than £3.99).
I could go on about how long it takes to write a book (particularly historical fiction), but I’m not going to. I don’t have to write them. If I wanted to make money, I could join Pret and sell you those cappuccinos. I’m just pointing out that selling my paperbacks for under £9.50 doesn’t make economic sense, even in the mad world that is publishing.
So what can you do if you do want to read a paperback copy of one of my books but you don’t want to pay £9.50 for it?
Here are some possibilities:
Order it from your local library. They can buy a copy (they may get a discounted price) and I still get paid but you read for free.
Put in a bulk order. If your book club wants to read any of my books (not just the James Burke ones), contact me (tom@tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk) and I can arrange a bulk order at a discounted price.
Buy directly from me. I can now take credit/debit card payments. I’ve tried putting a button on my landing page offering to post ‘Burke in the Land of Silver’ for £7.99 but so far I’ve had no takers. This is partly because I’ve not really promoted this offer. It’s by way of an experiment to see if the technology works and by the time I’ve paid postage, I’m not even sure that it will make me any money. But I’d love someone to try it. Failing that, email me with your credit card number and your address and I’ll send you any of the Burke books for £8.50. I’ll even sign them if you want.
And remember that all my Burke books are available on Kindle for £3.99 (or free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited).
On Sunday we dropped in for a quick visit to Apsley House on our way to dance at the Argentine Ambassador’s Residence (as you do). Someone at English Heritage had said that we had to see the Duke’s robes, which were on display there and which had been worn at the coronation of Charles III.
I always do what I’m told, so we duly went in to gawp. Apsley House doesn’t allow photography but they have an excellent picture on their website:
The robes are interesting to me, not because they were worn by the current duke, but because they were worn by the Iron Duke at the coronation of George IV in 1821.
The robes say something about the whole ceremony of crowning the new monarch, which was true then and now. The robes worn in 1821 were not some traditional costume handed down through the centuries, but had been specially designed for the occasion. Say what you like about the Georgians, but they knew how to put on a spectacle. In this case, they decided that the robes should be designed in the style of Tudor and early Stuart dress to create an impression that these were ancient finery and that the ceremony was a continuation of a rich tradition. It was a “tradition” that the Georgians were anxious to emphasise as, in fact, their claim to the throne hung by a slender thread. (When you are next told that the king traces his ancestry back to Alfred, you might reasonably ask why his family is German.) It is a similar perceived need to appeal to ancient traditions that saw these early 19th century robes taken out of mothballs for a 2023 ceremony. In fact, we were repeatedly assured by the BBC that this ceremony was essentially unchanged in a thousand years. I wonder what people would have made of it had it been conducted in Norman French and Latin.
What did the first Duke of Wellington (a man famously thrown out of his club for wearing trousers instead of breeches) make of this fancy dress? He is on record as having said he thought it was ridiculous but seeing how the spectacle was received by the thousands of spectators he admitted that the magnificence of the display achieved the required effect.
Two hundred years later, it seems that this aspect the ceremony, at least, is following an established tradition.
