Back in the day, after untying the ties that bound us to our former ‘mother country’ of England, when George Washington refused to become the first King of the United States, choosing rather to be the first President of a democratic republic, he unwittingly left a void that has been hard to fill: namely, that of an American Monarchy.
As a result, failing to have a King George I and Queen Martha with whom to kowtow to, it was only rational in the cradle of capitalism that this void would be eventually filled by wealthy capitalists, at least if not them personally, more to the point, their daughters. With no creative monarchs to inspire us; or no dysfunctional royal family to entertain us, America created its own army of ‘public princesses!’ Thus was born, what we affectionately call, the ‘American Heiress!’
Collectively, they are as attractive and entertaining as the world's best and each decade produces one of its own. However, in my esoteric opinion, the heiresses of today, pale greatly in comparison to those of the past.
Although I prefer the late 19th and early 20th century when the ‘Transatlantic Bride’ craze was at its height, personally, my cut-off date is the late 1960’s at the very latest. Grace Kelly, Peggy Bancroft and Martha Sharp Crawford (Sunny von Bulow) even stretching back to Barbara Hutton are the most memorable blonde specimens of this classic American archetype. Each is representative of their generation in ways no Hollywood movie star ever can or ever will be, although Grace Kelly did dabble in the ‘arts’ prior to becoming Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco.
American heiresses to a certain extent stand for lineage; much like the more ancient caste system of Europe, yet in an entirely different way. In the fast culture of a brand spanking new society, after all we still fall short of 300 years; that values rags-to-riches stories of reinvention over self-perpetuating social elites, American heiresses have and had an important role to play. They were and to a certain extent, still are the unofficial ambassadors of American culture and our differing values or lack thereof pertaining to the old and the traditional.
American heiresses typically hybrid by nature, combining strong capitalist impulses with more traditional female role! They have and still continue to mesmerize the world with their public displays of independence and gender rebellion, some more political than others, while articulating on a world stage the global appeal of unrepressed American individualism.
In focusing on the late 19th century, Consuelo Vanderbilt, Helena Zimmerman and May Goelet, were the greatest prizes of all when it came to capturing wealthy heiresses in bartering for ancient titles. These ladies by monetary default tended to land titles that were the highest of the pecking order.
What is interesting in retrospect is that there were almost 200 of these so called ‘international marriages’, and only a handful of the most well-known of these ladies are discussed when the topic of cash for coronets is broached today. However, there were many that have been lost in the mists of time, women who were equally as interesting and in some cases infinitely more so when fully analyzed.
Where the modern day esoteric is not best served is the fact that many of these ‘shadow heiresses’ only come to life in various footnotes, or faded headlines to old newspaper articles. Since their ‘cheque books’ were smaller in balance, they were not as highly sought, and were often relegated to marrying lesser titles of the aristocracy, predominately that of the English.
One heiress who fits this ‘heiress on the fringe’ prototype is Adele Grant, second wife of the Earl of Essex. Essex, although vested with a magnificent, if heavily mortgaged ancestral seat in Hertfordshire, and a house in London; was not a wealthy man. Adele had been down this road once before. Almost a decade before marrying Lord Essex, she was on the brink of walking down the aisle with another English lord, but was saved just in time from making a bad match with this errant ne’er do well!
As Lady Essex, Adele embarked upon making a subtle name for herself in the final days of the Marlborough House Set, and the ensuing reign of King Edward VII, as the King found her extremely charming. A characteristic that was not uncommon amongst many of the American peeresses by proxy, a trait much loved by the King!
In spite of leading an active social life at the very core of upper aristocratic and royal society, there was a rumor that implied Lady Essex owned and ran a laundry in the seedier environs of the capital. Whether fact or fiction, it was a rumor that stayed strong and constant.
For many of you, this might be the first introduction that you have had with Lady Essex, for those of you becoming reacquainted; I trust you will learn something new about her Ladyship.
‘A Lady in White’
The Countess of Essex, whose wedding, in 1893 was the social sensation of the year, is a tall, graceful woman with soft eyes and dark hair, and what someone happily called a ‘magnolia tinted’ complexion.
Her portrait, under the title of ‘A Lady in White’ was probably the ‘picture of the year’ when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy
THE NEW COUNTESS CAIRNS
Bruce Herald
June 4, 1886
Almost as much talk has been caused by the engagement of Miss Adele Grant, of New York Ireland
THE NEXT AMERICAN COUNTESS
Miss Adele Grant Betrothed
To The Earl Of Essex
November 19, 1893
Another ‘International Wedding’ is on the carpet. The bride of this one is to be Miss Adele Grant, an American girl more celebrated for her beauty than her wealth, who will be married before Christmas to the Earl of Essex. Miss Grant is a daughter of the late David Beach Grant, and created a sensation when she made her debut in New York Pennsylvania
Miss Grant’s features are familiar to many Europeans and Americans through Hubert Herkomer’s famous portrait of her, which took a prize at Munich England
The announcement of her approaching marriage has recalled recollections of Miss Grant’s engagement several years ago to the Earl Cairns and the unpleasant notoriety caused by the disgraceful conduct of that titled cad, who not only had a shameful entanglement with a pretty actress, Miss Fortescue, but permitted his jewelers to send to Miss Grant’s family their bill for his wedding present. The invitations for the wedding were out, but they were recalled, and Miss Grant’s during the following London Season appeared in society in the gowns prepared for her trousseau.
The Earl of Essex, who is a strikingly attractive man, is 36 years old and a widower. His family is not connected with Essex of Elizabeth’s time, but is of considerable antiquity, having been founded by Sir William Capel, Lord Mayor of London England London
HANDS ACROSS THE SEA
Southland Times
January 10, 1894
Writing on December 15, a London correspondent says that the wedding of the winter season has taken place this week and London has been full of the ladies of fashion, many of whom came up to town especially for the occasion. It was at St. Margaret’s, Westminster 35 Great Cumberland Place, W. Essex left amidst a shower of rice.
Some years ago I had the pleasure of being entertained at Cassiobury Park , the beautiful seat of the Earl of Essex at Watford where the first part of the honeymoon will be spent. The mansion stands on level ground fronting the west and rises four square around a grassy plot. To the south is a suite of stately reception rooms, and four libraries fill the south-west corner. The private rooms, furnished with the utmost luxury, are on the east side, looking on the lawn, and the north side holds the kitchen and servants’ rooms. There are cool, long cloisters to the west and south, like the inner quadrangle of Hampton Court Palace
AMERICAN GIRLS WHO MARRIED TITLES
The Pittsburgh
February 21, 1915
The Countess of Essex, who previous to her marriage was Miss Adele Grant of New York , has always occupied a high position in London
At the time of the wedding the Earl was 36 years of age and his wife was more than 10 years his junior. The Earldom of Essex has nothing whatever to do with that of the famous lover of Queen Elizabeth. The family name of the latter was Devereux, whereas the patronymic of the present Earl of Essex is Capell. The founder of this family was a country gentleman, who stood by King Charles I, and was beheaded in consequence by the followers of Oliver Cromwell.
The Earl is an extensive land owner, and the family residence where the American Countess resides, Cassiobury Park , Watford, is one of the finest in the neighborhood of London
The marriage of the Earl of Essex and Miss Grant took place in London at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster
There were seven bridesmaids, Miss Edythe Grant, Miss Alberta Paget, Miss Mary Coolebrooke, Miss Diana Stuart, Hon. Eustice Daunay, Hon. Leilia Daunay and Miss Gwenfra Williams. They wore satin dresses draped in white folds and bordered with mink and velvet toques trimmed with fur. Each of them carried a long Louis XV stick with a gold top, the gift of the Earl of Essex.
The Earl’s best man was Baron Tuylk and the bride was given away by her uncle, Suydam Grant. A beautiful musical service was in charge of the eminent composer, Sir Arthur Sullivan, who presided at the organ. After the wedding ceremony a reception was held at the residence of Mrs. Grant, 35 Great Cumberland Place , London
The romance connected with the wedding on the part of the bride was that just seven years and a half previous to the Essex wedding Miss Grant was preparing to be married to Earl Cairns. A splendid trousseau had been in Paris , a house taken in Grosvenor Square London and New York
But one morning, just before Miss Grant was to have secured a place in the English peerage, the world of fashion woke up to learn that all the further preparations for the wedding were indefinitely postponed, for the reason that Lord Cairns was so hopelessly involved, and was in such deep financial complications that Miss Grant’s relatives did not think it worth while to extricate him for the sake of his coronet and title.
Miss Grant was then obliged to perform the disagreeable duty of returning all her presents, and her trousseau was worn at the regular social functions of the remainder of the London
Miss Grant made her debut in New York
The present Earl of Essex at the time of his marriage was a widower with one child. His father was Lord Maiden. He is the seventh Earl of his line, and served for a time in the Grenadier Guards. His son is Lord Maiden, who is an officer in the Seventh Hussar regiment.
The fifth Earl of Essex married the famous ballad singer Kitty Stephens, and her beautiful memorial in the church at Watford, where most of the Earls and Countesses of Essex are entombed, is familiar to many American tourists, the following inscriptions being a tribute to the sweetness of her voice: ‘Rest undisturbed within this peaceful shrine. Till angels wake thee with a note like thine.’
Through the American girl’s marriage to the Earl of Essex she became related to a number of the most prominent members of the English nobility, including Lady Brassey and Countess of Eglington and Winton. Another relative, Lady Meux, was an interesting character. It will be remembered when she was frustrated in her efforts to purchase the obelisk at Heliopolis, the only one that still stands at its original site, she atoned for her defeat by acquiring the old arch and gates of Temple Bar that formerly constituted the main entrance to the city of London, and which now form the entrance to the family estate, Theobald’s Park, Waltham.
Cassiobury, the residence of the Essexes ’, has been the home of the Capels since the reign of King Charles I. It has always been a residence of the great of the land, and not only figures as such in Doomsday Book, but is known to have been the home of Cassiolanus in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar.
The Capels were originally London merchants and the first one of any note was Sir William Capel, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1503, while his son, Sir Giles Capel, distinguished himself so greatly at the Battle of the Spurs, that he was knighted then and there by King Henry VIII.
LADY ESSEX TALKS OF ENGLISHWOMEN AND WAR
No Matter Their Class, All Have War Duties, Says the Countess
Who Was Miss Adela Grant Of New York
Sacrifices For The Cause
The New York Times
January 2, 1916
January 2, 1916
Lady Essex, who describes the sacrifices of the women of England , rich and poor alike, to the God of War, in the following interview, was formerly Miss Adela Grant of New York
It is as if the women of England had gathered together all their crinkly five-pound notes, carried them to an altar and set fire to them – an offering to their country, and with no thought of immediate answer to the prayers. That was what I kept feeling in the hour that Lady Essex gave me.
I had been asking myself for several days why London
‘A stranger might easily be deceived by the outward appearance of London
‘Take the motors. At the beginning of the war the Automobile Club was immediately offered 2,000 motors for war service. Since then many more have been quietly given; and those private individuals who have any left do not keep them for their own pleasure. We have committee meetings in town, committee meetings in the country; we are inspecting factories and planning recreation halls; some of us are teaching the soldiers. We may be told, after a while, that the use of motors must be cut down on account of petrol. Just now the feeling is that we should all undertake whatever we can cram into the twenty-four hours; if, later, we must give up our motors altogether, I am sure we shall do it willingly – and take trains. As in everything else, we are only waiting for a lead from the Government.’
‘Another luxury that may seem strange; the theatre. No one dreamed of going to a theatre at first. We hadn’t the heart to do anything. In the beginning, it was probably the upper classes, so called, who felt the war more deeply than anyone else, because here it has been the custom of the eldest sons of the better families to make the army their profession. These eldest son set out with that first expeditionary force. There is not a family I know but has suffered terrible losses; we dare not think of our own griefs. Later, the actors came out and said they were starving. Then the children returned from school for their holidays, and we felt we must exert ourselves to make things a little cheerful for them. We took them to the theatres. Gradually we ourselves got to going again. Now there are the convalescent soldiers who need entertainment, and their relatives, and the soldiers on leave – there must be relief.’
‘There is no longer any such thing as dinner parties,’ Lady Essex added. ‘We’ve quite put them out of our minds. Eight or ten people meet, perhaps several times a week, and happen to dine together; but there is no thought of dress and little of the dinner – except to keep it simple and sufficient. A dinner used to begin with soup and fish, there was an entrée – but now! Now it is soup or fish, there is a meat course and a sweet; that is all!’
‘As for dressing, one simply hasn’t the time to be bothered with dress. One feels one must wear something dark, and generally, at dinner, one is wearing the same gown and over everywhere until it is almost a joke. On the street, too, we wear about the same clothes, generally black or dark blue serge. I would not say that we are shabby; that would not be true; but we give no time and no money to clothes, and there is hardly such a thing as fashion. If one goes out to lunch, which probably means eggs and something cold, one goes as she is, straight from work. Everybody is working, and is more or less ‘grubby’ in the middle of the day. For myself, I just slip off my big apron and the white cuffs I wear over my sleeves and go as I am.’
‘Do you have any routine work?’ I asked.
‘Every morning,’ said Lady Essex, ‘I go to St. James Palace
‘A good many other things fall to our care. This morning, for instance, 100 bales of towels arrive from the country. Dressing gowns, shirts, underwear, all sorts of things come to us, as we ask for them. We sort these, repack and send them, in the required quantities, to their destinations. You may recall the War Office asking for 3,000,000 pairs of socks about Christmas time a year ago. There were sent to us from everywhere, many of them incorrectly marked or not marked at all as to sizes. We had to measure every pair, label them, and put them in packets of ten. That task alone meant six weeks’ continuous work.’
‘My other duties are really too numerous to remember offhand. Let me see: At Watford – Watford is a town of 40,000 inhabitants in Hertfordshire, where we have a country place – I am on the Executive Committee of the Urban Council For War Relief; that is, for the relief of civilians. I am President of the Soldiers and Sailor’s Families’ Association, which supplements, when necessary, the war allowances given to wives and families. We have voluntary helpers, who take different districts, visit, write letters, find out if the families are getting their allowances, and give privately additional help where it is needed. Often a woman wants to attend some function of her husband’s regiment and lacks proper clothes; or, as an instance, a wife had word that her husband was wounded and in hospital at Plymouth. She had no means of her own to go to see him, and these had to be privately supplied her. There is the Rescue Home in which I am interested and where, by the way, the proportion of illegitimacy is barely higher since the outbreak of the war.’
‘But that is all in Watford. Here in London there are so many things. I am on the committee of the Women’s Emergency Corps, which was organized, largely through Miss Lena Ashwell, at the beginning of the war, and is mostly composed of suffragettes and actresses, who offered to do whatever they could for anybody. In other words, they have taken all the loose ends, tied them together – and then found more loose ends. At first it was the Belgians, then the women out of work. Now regular organizations have arisen to take care of the Belgians, and there are no women out of work. We did not ask for subscriptions to the Women’s Emergency Corps, yet at meetings we have collected as much as ₤400 or ₤500 at a time. The headquarters in Baker Street, formerly Bedford College, has always been a veritable hive of bees. I was particularly interested in the toy industry, and we got girls out of work – they are now making munitions – to work at wooden and stuffed toys to replace the German toys. The big factories bought these over.’
‘There is so much to do, and so much that women can do. We have installed recreation halls near barracks and the big mention factories where proper food and non-alcoholic drinks can be obtained. We have an idea that if good food is supplied in attractive places we can wean the men away from the public houses, where they get merely alcoholic stimulants. Women, therefore, go to the different factories, investigate the conditions and report them. In every large centre they attempt to establish these recreation halls, where they supple games, paper and pens, magazines, newspapers, and arrange entertainments and boxing matches. Not the least important feature of this enterprise is that the canteens are being established both for the soldiers in training and for the civilians who are working for the Government.’
‘There is a very valuable work that a lot of my friends are doing here in London. It is a canteen at the different big railway stations, staffed and supplied entirely by ladies, for the soldiers who pass through, whether home on leave or from the various camps in the country. These canteens are open till 11 o’clock at night and ladies take different shifts of five hours each. The men often like to pay something. They are given tea, sandwiches, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, and, since their establishment, the public houses have suffered considerably and the men gained proportionately. It is very good work, involving a good deal of time, as some of the stations, like London Bridge, are far away, and, after the ladies have washed up, it is nearly 12 o’clock midnight.’
‘There are, of course, countless charity entertainments and establishments which have to be organized. A friend of mine has a shop in her house to supply officers who are not well to do, and who may have lost their kit, or are being sent as convalescents to someone’s country place. She has clothes of all sorts, uniforms, saddler, anything in the way of equipment that they may require. Her supplies are mostly kept up by bereaved families, who have lost relatives in the war and are only too glad to dispose of their effects in a way that will benefit the living in memory of the dead.’
‘When ladies have given up most of their houses to convalescent soldiers,’ I asked, ‘do they themselves have to do with the nursing?’
‘Oh, dear no! That is one of the things that has been strictly forbidden. No one, except nurses with training, has to do with the nursing even of convalescents. My daughter of 20 has just finished a course of training and was not accepted for service until it was completed.’
‘As for servants, in houses where there have been as many as fourteen gardeners, only five will now be left, the others having enlisted, and the five will be old men.’
‘But the most amazing thing, even to the British, is the amount of money that is constantly pouring in. We collect and collect and collect until you would think there could be nothing left. Each time our own charities and the charities of all our Allies receive the most splendid and uncomplaining generosity.’
‘We are giving, giving, giving, and only too gladly. What will happen in the end I do not know. No one thinks beyond the needs of the moment. Not of my friends has made a plan ahead; we are just living from day to day and putting our whole souls into what must be done now.’
‘The people are going ahead of the Government. If the Government would only come out and lay down drastic rules, and tell us what we must do, it would make things a lot easier. We are all so anxious to be told.’
COUNTESS OF ESSEX
DIES IN HER BATH
Former Adele Grant Of New York
Stricken With Heart Attack
After Dinner Party
Tried To Summon Help
Dowager, Once Famous Beauty
Was Model For Herkomer’s
‘A Lady In White’
The New York Times
July 29, 1922
LONDON, July 28 – Dowager Countess of Essex, who was the daughter of the late Beach Grant of New York and the second wife of the Seventh Earl of Essex, was found dead in her bath today at her home, 72 Brook Street, by one of her maids.
Lady Essex attended last night a dinner party given by the Hon. Mrs. Rupert Beckett and appeared in the best of spirits. She was driven home by Mrs. Asquith, with whom she was to have lunched today. Apparently she took her bath before going to bed and had the seizure. She seemed to have endeavored to get help as the hanging electric bell push had been pulled into the bath. The tragedy was not discovered until this morning when Lady Essex’s maid found her bed and had not been slept in.
The bathroom door was locked and the electric lights were full on. When the door was forced Lady Essex was found dead. She had suffered for years from a weak heart and it is presumed that she had the seizure when she could not help herself.
In her prime, Lady Essex was famed for her beauty, being tall and graceful, with soft eyes and dark hair. Indeed she belonged to the group that was playfully christened ‘Lovely Five’ and included; Lady Warwick, Lady Lytton, Lady Westmorland and the Duchess of Sutherland. She was the model for Herkomer’s famous picture, ‘A Lady In White.’
A coroner’s inquest into Lady Essex’s death will be held on Monday.
Adele Grant, daughter of the late Beach Grant of this city, was married to the Seventh Earl of Essex in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster London
Her husband was a widower when she married him. The present Earl, a son of his father’s first marriage, did not have sufficient income to keep up the magnificent ancestral estate of Cassiobury Park
An anecdote of the family reveals the firmness of the Countess is that of her refusal of the tempting offers repeatedly made to her by Lady Meux, widow of Sir Henry Meux, the wealthy brewer. The story has it that Lady Meux, originally a ‘Queen of Burlesque’ and aunt by marriage of the Earl of Essex, offered to make the Earl her heir if only the Countess would introduce her to society. But the Countess did not allow her thorough disapproval of the brewer’s widow to be overcome by the bribe.
Before her marriage, Adele Grant had been engaged to the late Earl Cairns, the unfortunate man who acquired the nickname of ‘Gumboil,’ thanks to his courtesy title of Lord Garmoyle. She broke off the match on the eve of the wedding owing to the prospective bridegroom’s extortionate demands for a settlement. And, in 1920, after the death of her husband, she was reported, not on the highest authority, however, to be engaged to the Duke of Connaught, brother of Edward VII. The affair progressed no further than the circulation of the report.
During the World War, the Countess did much relief work, serving with Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild, on the Urban Executive Committee of the Urban Council For War Relief, and also as President of the Soldiers and Sailors Families Association.
Cassiobury was perhaps not the most architecturally beautiful house but it was an important example of a long-held family seat, close to London
The Capel family owned the estate from the early 16th-century until the 20th. Arthur Capel inherited the estate via his wife, Elizabeth, the only surviving child of Sir Charles Morison, in 1628. However the Capels were already established at their Suffolk Tower of London
With Arthur's death, the Cassiobury estate was sequestered and Elizabeth Capel lived at Hadham until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. The estates were restored to the family and Arthur, the eldest son and heir was awarded the titles, Viscount Malden and Earl of Essex. In 1668 Arthur moved the family from Hadham Hall to Cassiobury whilst he developed his political career which included a spell as Ambassador to Denmark
Relatively little is actually known about the original house which had been built by Sir Richard Morison soon after he had been granted the lands by Henry VIII in the late 1540s. It was described as;
‘...a fair and large house, situated upon a dry hill, not far from a pleasant river in a fair park...’
However, no images of this house exist but the original form of the house can be seen in later engravings showing Hugh May's later additions. The North-West wing is in a markedly different Tudor or Elizabethan style with bay windows, gables and high chimneys. An inventory of 1599 describes a house of fifty-six rooms and outbuildings which gives a good indication of the size and status of the house. The Capels interest in art can already be seen in that the same inventory pictures are listed in eight rooms, totaling thirty-four in all. Although this sounds small, by comparison, even the richest collectors such as Elizabeth I's favourite, Lord Leicester, or the immensely wealthy Earl of Suffolk, had collections of only around 200 pictures, usually split between their London
Whilst Arthur Capel was pursuing his political career abroad he had engaged the well-known architect Hugh May (b.1621 - d.1684) - described in Samuel Pepys' Diary as 'a very ingenious man' - to create a new house, incorporating the old between c1674-80. The layout of Cassiobury owed less to internal convenience and more to external show which resulted in a more spread-out plan in contrast to May's other work at Eltham Lodge or Moor Park which were 'triple-' and 'double-pile' respectively. Work was slow with May regularly requesting money from Capel, who was then in Ireland
May kept the one wing of the Morison house but added a central wing with pediment to which he then added a second wing to create an 'H'. Retaining part of the old house was regarded as a mistake, even by contemporaries, as it created an awkward plan which was never really resolved. This Cassiobury was an elegant Palladian design, though it might be argued a little plain with the only relief being four Corinthian pilasters for the pediment. However, although perhaps unremarkable from the outside, the interior was well adorned in his typical 'mature, baroque style'.
It was really the interiors where May excelled at Cassiobury - with the help of one of the finest wood carvers ever to work in England
Cassiobury was not to remain untouched though by later fashions. With the arrival of the 5th Earl in 1799 he immediately engaged the famous architect James Wyatt (b.1746 - d.1813) to remodel the house. Wyatt was widely criticized by contemporary and later antiquarians for his destructive remodeling of cathedrals which involved removing anything later than a certain date. However, he was also widely admired for his confident handling of Gothic details which reached it's zenith in his work for William Beckford and the vast Fonthill Abbey. The work was probably completed by 1804 when it's recorded that Prime Minister Pitt had visited Lord Essex there. Around the same time, Humphrey Repton was employed to landscape the park, introducing his distinctive style and features such as the lake and canal.
Although with Wyatt's reputation it might have seemed likely that he would have kept little, Wyatt actually only removed two front wings and then enclosed the courtyard. Inside, he retained 10 of May's reception rooms and Gibbon's woodcarvings. However, the exterior was regarded as unsuccessful - an unsatisfying neo-Gothic compromised by the proportions of the existing building.
It was certainly for the interiors which Country Life magazine featured the house in 1910. At that time Cassiobury was still a rural retreat described as;
'...set in great and delightful grounds and surrounded by a grandly timbered park. Therein is peace and quiet; the aloofness of the old-country home far from the haunts of men reigns there still, and Watford and its rows of villas and its busy streets is forgotten as soon as the lodge gates are passed'.
It was this relentless urban growth which eventually was to overrun the gate lodges. The 7th Earl died in 1916 after being hit by a taxi, and just six years later the estate was put up for sale by his widow and his son, the 8th Earl. The age of the large country house was facing its first period of crisis and the opportunity offered by selling the parkland for housing to cater for the expansion of Watford was very attractive.
The contents sale in June 1922 was a grand affair lasting over ten days - unsurprising really considering the huge range of items including four separate libraries to be sold. The Capels had long been collectors of art, with their galleries containing works by Turner, Lely, Landseer, Wilkie, and much furniture, particularly French. Cassiobury House with 485-acres was also offered but didn't sell until August when a group of local businessmen bought it for the development potential. The house was then stripped, with the Gibbons carvings being split between many museums and private collectors, and the remaining materials sold for re-use - some even making their way to America Watford 's suburbs expanding until today the site of the house is a residential estate with no sign of its former glory or grand associations.
HISTORIC PARK FOR BUILDING
Earl Of Essex Selling Off Cassiobury, His Country Seat
Needs Money
The New York Times
May 17, 1908
Special Cable To The New York Times
LONDON, May 16 – Cassiobury Park
It has long been an open secret that the Earl’s financial resources are far from superabundant, and the various methods by which he has attempted to improve his position have not always turned out to be successful, particularly when of a highly speculative order.
Lady Essex, who was Miss Grant, daughter of Beach Grant of New York, did not bring her husband a large fortune, as American fortunes go, and although she has done everything in her power to save Cassiobury Park, where she has at times entertained the King and other members of the royal family, she has had to bow to the inevitable.
In this case the inevitable has begun with the sale of 180 acres of the park at substantial prices – about $200 an acre. The land is to be split up into building plots, and, in consideration of the local authorities constructing and maintaining roads and sewerage, the Earl has agreed to transfer to the Watford Urban Council free of charge another sixty acres, to be applied to such purposes as that body may think fit.
WILL SELL CASSIOBURY
Countess Of Essex Also To Disperse
The Famous Collection There
The New York Times
October 17, 1921
Cassiobury has about eight hundred and fifty acres, and the fine red brick mansion was built in 1677 by the sixth Earl of Essex on the site of an older house begun by his wife’s ancestor, Richard Morrison, in the time of Henry VIII. Some of the finest work of Grinling Gibbons is seen in the carving of the staircase and over the mantels. The furniture represents various epochs, from Daniel Marot to Hepplewhite and Chippendale.
Among the pictures to be sold are family portraits attributed to Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Joshua Reynolds.
$1,600 FOR QUEEN ANNE CUP
And Major La Touche, $45,873
The New York Times
December 17, 1922
Fine old early American, English and Irish silver, Sheffield plate, & from the collections of the late Countess of Essex, Cassiobury Park, Watford, Herts, England, and the late Major La Touche, Delgany, County Wicklow, Ireland, sold at the Anderson Galleries yesterday, the total of 466 numbers being $45,873. An exceptionally fine, pieced George II, Silver Cake Basket, No. 370, was bought by Mrs. H. Walter for $410 and to the same buyer went No. 371, an early George III, Cake Basket for the same price. The first was made by Edward Wood and the second by the celebrated silversmith, Edward Plumer.
A rare old Irish Silver Basin
What is said to be the rarest piece of Irish Silver known, a Queen Anne Loving Cup with Cover, made by Thomas Bolton, Dublin
A STAIRCASE BY GRINLING GIBBONS
By James Paker
Assistant Curator Of Post-Renaissance Art
‘On the north of Rickmansworth Road is Cassiobury Park, formerly the seat of the Earls of Essex……The estate comprises five hundred acres, a part of which is occupied by the West Herts Golf Club. The remainder is being developed as a residential quarter.’
These low-keyed remarks from a London guidebook of a 1951 catalogue the undoing of the great English country house that contained the staircase shown on the opposite page, acquired by the Museum twenty-five years ago and recently set-up in the gallery of English furniture next to the Kirtlington Park Room. The house which served as setting for this superlative woodwork had a long and remarkable history.
A tribe of ancient Britons called the Cassii used the acreage, now in the suburbs of London Saint Albans , and its history in private ownership only began at the Dissolution. In 1541 a grant land of then seventeen miles outside of London
Cassiobury was taken in hand by the first Earl with the purpose of making good the disrepair and losses to the estate during the time of civil disturbance. Retaining one wing of the Elizabethan house, he built a pedimented central wing and crossed it with a lateral wing, to give the plan of the house the form of an H.
Building projects of Cassiobury were incidental to the earl’s other undertakings, for he held important posts abroad during this time, first as Ambassador Extraordinary to Denmark, then as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1672 to 1677. Letters from Dublin Castle Ireland
Three years later the house was complete. In an entry for April 18, 1680, the diarist John Evelyn gives a full-length description of the house and gardens: ‘On the earnest invitation of the Earl of Essex, I went with him to his house at Cassiobury, in Hertfordshire. . . .The house is new, a plain fabric, built by my friend, Mr. Hugh May. There are divers fair and good rooms, and excellent carving by Gibbons. . . .Some of the chimney mantels are of Irish marble, brought by my Lord from Ireland, when he was Lord Lieutenant, and not much inferior to Italian. . . .The libray is large and very nobly furnished.’
The first Earl had only a short remnant of life for enjoying his new house. Serving the state and his conscience with slow-blooded method among the disorderly combinations of Restoration politics, he moved away from the preserve of safety into a zone of great personal danger. Put at the head of the treasury in 1679. He resigned on a scruple, as reported in an account of that time: ‘The niceness of touching French money is the reason that makes my Lord Essex’s squeazy stomach that it can be longer digest his employment of first commissioner of the treasury.’ Out of office and disillusioned by Charles, who accepted French money to pay mistresses, Essex found much to dislike in James, Duke of York, the heir presumptive, who promised to revive the wars of religion and place the nation under tribute to Rome. He voted for the Exclusion Bill to debar James from the succession, and, when this motion failed, joined a party of extremists, among whom were the Duke of Monmouth, and Lord John Russell. Though he must have sought to appease the fanatics of this splinter group, he was named by an associate and charged with complicity in the regicide Rye House Plot. Taken from Cassiobury to the Tower of London
Hugh May, the architect of seventeenth century Cassiobury, was a kinsman of the Earl of Essex, who addressed him as ‘cousin’ in a letter from Ireland Windsor Castle Windsor
In the interiors of Cassiobury and Windsor, May was assisted by the wood carver Grinling Gibbons. The carved wainscot which survives from these two commissions is Gibbon’s earliest identified work, although his association with May began earlier. Their meeting must have been a consequence of the familiar ‘discovery’ incident reported in Evelyn’s Diary for January 18, 1671: walking in a field near his seat of Sayes Court, Deptford, Evelyn chanced to look in at the windows of an isolated cottage where Gibbons was carving a wooden copy of a Venetian Crucifixion by Tintoretto, ‘such a work as for the curiosity of handling, drawing and studious exactness. I never had before seen in all my travels.’ Gibbons, born in Holland
Having steered him into his employment, Evelyn followed Gibbon’s later successes in his Diary with interest and balanced pleasure. Gibbon’s chisel gained him the title of Master Carver in Wood to the Crown. Though he continued to work on the interiors of country houses, perhaps his best known wood carving was executed between 1695 and 1697 for the choir of Saint Paul Blenheim Palace
The carved woodwork at Cassiobury may be uniquely from the hand of Gibbons, since he would have been likely to execute early commissions without assistants, and Evelyn mentions in the account of his visit, ‘the excellent carving by Gibbons.’ The total coverage of his carving will never be known, for the wing that contained the Earl’s private apartments was knocked down about 1800 when some of the other rooms suffered remodeling. At this time the fifth Earl submitted to the mania for overbuilding which destroyed much clean and self-contained English architecture of earlier date. It is perhaps true that Cassiobury looked out of trim after a hundred years. The house is slighted in the Ambulator, a guidebook of 1782: ‘The front and one side are of brick. . . the other side very old; but was the house rebuilt in the modern taste, it would be one of the most agreeable seats near London.’
The size of the house must have seemed modest to the fifth Earl, who had inherited other estates, with their revenues, and was prepared to bring Cassiobury up to the mark. He demolished the two front wings of the old H –shaped house and added a congeries of rooms to make an uneven brick barrack, built around a quadrangle. A mutation of the neo-Gothic architecture, from designs by James Wyatt, was fixed on to this building and completely obliterated the first Earl’s Dutch Palladian facades.
While the house was proliferating in plan and running up into a crenellated attic, square battlements, and Gothic pinnacles, some of the interior wainscot was modified. In the early nineteenth century the main block was shortened by one room, the round-bayed wing at ring angles to it was demolished, and the names and uses of nine remaining rooms containing the Gibbon’s carvings were changed.
When the house was massively reoriented in the early 1800’s, the four staircases of the house were altered. The principal staircase of the old house was put in a position adjoining the Great Cloister, where a subsidiary staircase was also placed. Though removed from one part of the house and set up in another, the stairs are composed of elements carved by Grinling Gibbons between 1677 and 1680 for the house of that period. These elements are a unique example of Gibbon’s staircase carving, for no other staircases by the master carver survive in English houses.
The finely detailed wood carving is now exhibited in Gallery 19 on the first floor. Since the original aspect of the stairs could not be recovered, the object of setting them up has been to display Gibbon’s handiwork to best advantage without departing from seventeenth century architectural principles, give the static wall and ceiling limits of a Museum gallery. The stairs rise in three flights to a balustrade landing above. As they are now installed they conform in appearance to other seventeenth century staircases, such as those at Thorpe Hall, dating about 1655, and at Sudbury
The sharpness of Gibbon’s cutting was not originally overlaid with paint or varnish. Twenty years after he had worked there Celia Fiennes described in her journal the appearance of his wood carved at Windsor; ‘There is also the most exactest workmanship in the wood caring, which is (as the painting) the pattern and masterpiece of all such work both in figures, fruitages, beasts, birds, flowers all sorts, so thin the wood and all white natural wood without varnish.’ Before the Museum acquired the staircase a later covering of stain and varnish had been removed, so that the wood surface accords with Miss Fiennes’s description and Gibbons’ intention. Three principal woods were use: pine for the handrail and oak-leaf and acorn string, solid ash for the scrollwork balustrade and pine-cone finials, and oak for the risers, treads, and landings. In this naturalistic carvings of flower and fruit formations and dead-game arrangements Gibbons attempted to reproduce in wood the feats of the Dutch still-life painters. For the acanthus flowers and foliation, the bursting seed pods of the staircase balustrade, he may have turned to plates of French ornamental designs, such as the foliage friezes engraved by Jean Lepautre. The oak leaves and acorns, as displayed on the string, were a royalist device alluding to the twenty-four hours which Charles II spent hidden in the Boscobel ‘Royal Oak’ during the Civil War.
The nineteenth century brought further augment to the stores of Cassiobury. Paintings by Turner, Landseer, and Wilkie were added to walls already crowded with family portraits. French furniture and decorative objects procured by the fifth Earl, and four separate libraries were filled with books. Backstairs seventeen maid’s rooms were equipped and put in order. After the First World War, the tax structure bore hard upon holders of property near London Victoria and Albert Museum , London Cleveland Museum
Three paintings from the house reached the Metropolitan Museum
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