Such was the man who, restored to office and lately created an earl by

the title of Chatham, lay ill at Bath in the spring of '67. The passage

of time, the course of events, the ravages of gout, in a degree the

acceptance of a title, had robbed his popularity of its first gloss. But

his name was still a name to conjure with in England. He was still the

idol of the City. Crowds still ran to see him where he passed. His gaunt

figure racked with gout, his eagle nose, his piercing eyes, were still

England's picture of a minister. His curricle, his troop of servants,

the very state he kept, the ceremony with which he travelled, all

pleased the popular fancy. When it was known that he was well enough to

leave Bath, and would lie a night at the Castle Inn at Marlborough, his

suite requiring twenty rooms, even that great hostelry, then reputed one

of the best, as it was certainly the most splendid in England, and

capable, it was said, of serving a dinner of twenty-four covers on

silver, was in an uproar. The landlord, who knew the tastes of half the

peerage, and which bin Lord Sandwich preferred, and which Mr. Rigby, in

which rooms the Duchess or Lady Betty liked to lie, what Mr. Walpole

took with his supper, and which shades the Princess Amelia preferred for

her card-table--even he, who had taken his glass of wine with a score of

dukes, from Cumberland the Great to Bedford the Little, was put to it;

the notice being short, and the house somewhat full.

Fortunately the Castle Inn, on the road between London and the west,

was a place of call, not of residence. Formerly a favourite residence of

the Seymour family, and built, if tradition does not lie, by a pupil of

Inigo Jones, it stood--and for the house, still stands--in a snug fold

of the downs, at the end of the long High Street of Marlborough; at the

precise point where the route to Salisbury debouches from the Old Bath

Road. A long-fronted, stately mansion of brick, bosomed in trees, and

jealous of its historic past--it had sheltered William of Orange--it

presented to the north and the road, from which it was distant some

hundred yards, a grand pillared portico flanked by projecting wings. At

that portico, and before those long rows of shapely windows, forty

coaches, we are told, changed horses every day. Beside the western wing

of the house a green sugarloaf mound, reputed to be of Druidical origin,

rose above the trees; it was accessible by a steep winding path, and

crowned at the date of this story by a curious summer-house. Travellers

from the west who merely passed on the coach, caught, if they looked

back as they entered the town, a glimpse of groves and lawns laid out by

the best taste of the day, between the southern front and the river. To

these a doorway and a flight of stone steps, corresponding in position

with the portico in the middle of the north front, conducted the

visitor, who, if a man of feeling, was equally surprised and charmed to

find in these shady retreats, stretching to the banks of the Kennet, a

silence and beauty excelled in few noblemen's gardens. In a word, while

the north front of the house hummed with the revolving wheels, and

echoed the chatter of half the fashionable world bound for the Bath or

the great western port of Bristol, the south front reflected the taste

of that Lady Hertford who had made these glades and trim walks her

principal hobby.




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