Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1913 — CLIVEDEN Seat of WALDORF ASTOR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CLIVEDEN Seat of WALDORF ASTOR

I WENT to Clifden, that stupendous natural rock, wood and prospect, of the duke of Buckingham’s building—of extraordinary expanse. The grotts in the chalky rock areFpretty—lt is a romantic object, and * the place altogether answers the most poetical description that can be made of solitude, precipice, prospect or whatever can contribute to a thing so very like their imaginations. The stand is something like Frascati as to its front, and on the platform is a circular view to the utmost verge,of the horizon, which, with the serpenting of the Thames, is admirable. The staircase is for its materials singular, and the cloisters, descents, gardens and avenue through the wood august and stately, but the land all about barren and producing nothing but feme. Indeed, as I told his majesty that evening (asking me how I liked Clifden) without flattery, that it did not please me so well as Windsor for the prospect and park, there being but only one opening, and that narrow, which led one to any variety.” John Evelyn made this entry in his diary more than two centuries ago, but the impression made on the modern” visitor is no less rich and striking. Nothing of the duke’s house remains except the great under-building of the magnificent terrace, 400 feet long and 25 feet wide, but even this has been much altered, especially in the disposition of the stairways. The gardens have been changed and the prospect of the neighboring country is no longer bare, but cultivated and smiling. Checkered History. Although Evelyn was right in claiming for the royal castle a great and unconfined outlook, the view from the terrace at .Windsor overlooking Eton college and the meadows scarcely surpasses the splendid picture which meets the eye from the terrace at Cliveden, with the Thames winding like a silver thread through the gaps in a foreground of trees. The house has had an unusually checkered history. There does not seem to have been any building on the site until it bought by George Villiers; second duke of Buckingham, some time after the restoration. The architect was Captain Wynn©, or Winde, a native of Holland and a . pupil of Sir Balthazar Gerbler. He was a man of considerable ability, and is, perhaps, best remembered now for his design of Newcastle house, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which remains, though somewhat altered. Very little is known of Wynne. He must have been a friend of Samuel Pepys, for he received a twenty-shilling mourning ring at his funeral in 1703, but there is no mention of him in the diary. We have no space here to attempt a sketch of so vivid and contradictory a character as George Villiers. Like Charles 11., he dabbled in the arts and sciences, and as Bryan Fairfax wrote of him, spent much on building “in that sore of architecture which Cicero calls insanae substructiones." Unfortunately, Fairfax, the author of the only contemporary biography of ( the duke, gives no details of his architectural employments. The work at Cliveden was begun about 1666, and among the state papers there is a significant warrant dated June 21, 1677. The duke was then a prisoner in the tower and had permission to go to Cliveden, "attended by Sir John Robinson, to take order about carrying on sojp.e buildings of his there, and to remain tilt the 23d and then return to the tower." In 1735 more building was done at Cliveden. Giacoda Leoni, the Italian, who was architect df Clandon designed the small octagonal temple which stands southwest of the main building. Stately Structure. The year 1795 proved disastrous for Cliveden, for on May 20 it was almost wholly consumed by fire, with the exception, we may well suppose, of the ‘‘insane substructiones.” In 1824 the estate was bought by Sir George Warrender, who rebuilt the house. In 18.49 it again changed hands, and became the property of the duke of Sutherland. Within six months it was again burnt down, but straightway rebuilt in the form In which we see it

now, to the designs of Sir Charles Barry. His executed design Is reminiscent of those stately structures, and his accomplished skill is shown by the fine effect of the garden front, where perfection of scale gives extraordinary value to dimensions by no means large. Standing over the great terrace of 400 feet in length, his palazzo is only 150 feet in extent, reduced in the main mass to 100 feet by 65 feet in depth. Parallel with the terrace front is a superb stone balustrafling with a filling of thin bricks between the piers and stone seats at regular intervals. The ends are widened out and treated as fountains. This is the original work which for a long time decorated the gardens of the Borghese Villa at Rome. The carving of the stonework is admirably done, and represents the rich Italian work of the seventeenth century at its best. It is at once rich and refined, showing a brilliant fancy at yet unspoilt by rococo extravagances. The masks spouting freshness into the curved basins, the moldings of the top of the parapet, and the reliefs on the pedestals are alike worthy of the superb gardens for which they were conceived. Recent pictures of that great garden still show the balustrades, but they are copies. It should be added that the statues which stand on the piers at Cliveden are not the original figures. Cliveden was given by Mr. W. W. Astor to his son, Mr. Waldorf Astor, on the marriage of the latter in 1906.

THE, GARDEN FRONT