Overlooked Britain
Lucinda Lambton
There are few places as exquisitely rare in the country as the hallway of 4 Maids of Honour Row at Richmond. March me forth to find another hall so fine and I will surely fail.
With its painted panels of Mediterranean scenes, framed by flamboyant scroll work (considered to be by Gainsborough, no less) and en grisaille cartouches of the seasons and the arts in faded gold, it is a unique survival in England of a grand rococo room in miniature. Hurray for such elaborate splendours squeezed into such a modest spot.
Maids of Honour Row consists of four elegantly proportioned, pretty-as-apicture houses of the 1720s. Built of red brick, with ‘rubbed’ brick dressings around all the white window frames and door cases, its sheer and simple countenance quite stirs your soul.
It was built between 1724 and 1726 for the ladies-in-waiting to Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales, after the Prince bought the Duke of Ormond’s house nearby as his summer residence.
Number 4’s most colourful owner was John James Heidegger. He was the hero responsible for the hall’s decoration, when, between 1744 and 1749, he commissioned Antonio Joli, a stage painter throughout Europe and the founder of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. Joli also specialised in the painting of capricci (architectural fantasies) and vedute (architectural landscapes). So it was that he conjured up these beauties.
According to the Chambers Dictionary of 1812, Heidegger was ‘a singular adventurer… of sprightly, engaging conversation’. The son of a Zurich clergyman, he was to become London’s leading impresario of masquerades in the early 18th century. He was the Master of the Revels – overseeing royal festivities – when he became known as the Surintendant des Plaisirs d’angleterre.
He also created masquerade balls at the Haymarket Theatre – filled with ‘women of pleasure’ and rife with immoral influences, which were roundly condemned. His critics were legion. His management of the Opera House gained such notoriety that a Royal Proclamation was issued to suppress his events. Nor was that all. According to the great paper artist Mrs Delany, Heidegger was ‘the ugliest man that was ever formed’. Hogarth depicted his hideousness with relish. Fielding described him as ‘Count Ugli’ and Alexander Pope wrote his physical misfortunes into The Dunciad with the lines ‘And lo! Her bird a monster of a fowl/ something between a Heidegger and owl’.
Heidegger admitted his grotesque appearance with cheerful zest, even taking on a bet with Lord Chesterfield that no more fearsome face could be found. A formidably hideous female rival was produced but, on Heidegger donning her headdress, his wager was won.
The paintings were discovered in the early 1930s by Edward Croft-murray, later to become the distinguished keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum. When he bought the house, all the walls were covered with brown paint and carriage varnish, with antlers screwed into dark, Tudorised panels and with hefty settles, tables and chairs crammed around the fireplace.
This had been the all-but-ruinous taste of Charles Garvice, author of dozens of shocker romances with such tempting tiles as Diana and Destiny, In Cupid’s Chains, A Coronet of Shame Love’s Altar.
and On Arnold Bennett provocatively declared him to be ‘the most successful novelist in England’. He did sell more than seven million books worldwide. At one point, he regularly turned over £1.75 million a year.
Many months were spent in 1935 restoring the hall, with Croft-murray tracing the origins of the paintings to three books of prints; Zeiller’s and Merian’s Topographia Helvetiae of 1642 and Topographia Italiae of 1688 and J B Fischer von Erlach’s Entwurf Einer Historischen Architektur of 1721. To the left of the fireplace, the Rhine flows past the cathedral at Basel, then over the falls at Schaffhausen. An unidentified Mediterranean port is painted above the cartouche of corn over the fireplace. To the right, Vesuvius smokes during the eruption of 1631. In the original print, refugees flee over the Ponte della Nunciata; here, aesthetes on the grand tour survey the sight. Most enchanting of all, looming over the Rhine, is a proppedup tree next to Basel Cathedral. By way of exotica, there is a Chinese scene, resplendent with pagodas.
The first clue as to who had painted
the panels came with the discovery of the score of an aria, Per pietà, bell’idol mio, which is entwined with a golden rose over the door. This was composed by the infamous Comte de St Germain for his opera L’inconstanza Delusa which was staged by Heideggger in 1745 – when his scene painter was known to be our old friend Antonio Joli. The Comte was a fanciful fraud of a man, who, as a musician, alchemist and magician, was the toast of the royal court of France. He was an intimate of Madame de Pompadour, prancing attendance on her while dressed in black velvet and dripping in diamonds, topped off with a sky-blue peruke. Horace Walpole described him as ‘odd… he sings and plays the violin wonderfully, is mad and not very sensible’.
In 1727, in celebration of George II’S coronation, he provided the spectacle of lighting 1,800 candles in under three minutes in Westminster Hall. Trains of flax had been set alight and flames raced from candle to candle. According to the poet Thomas Gray, the ladies were in ‘no small terror’ at the sight.
What a cast of characters they were, who, in one way or another, were responsible for this exceptionally charming hallway.