The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-08-22 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARb.

THE SALE AT STOWE.

(From the Times.)
This magnificent seat of the Duke of Buckingham is
being dismantled of all its beauties. Last week the auc-
tioneer was at work. Under the lofty arch which crowns
the long avenue from Buckingham, and opens the first
view of the splendid Palladian façade, has lately passed a
daily cavalcade which, except in its utter absence of style,
might remind one of the road to Epsom on a Derby day.
Barouches, flys, stage-coaches, " busses" pressed from
the metropolitan service, and every gradation of " trap"
down to the carrier's cart hastily emptied of groceries,
dragged to Wolverton, and filled with the unfortunate
holders of return tickets to town, constituted a dreary
antithesis to the cortege which so lately brought Royalty
to Stowe. An elaborately circuitous road conducted the
impatient visitors to the park front, before which, in the
vast amphitheatre formed by its side colonnades, so often
the scene Of rural festivities, the enemy encamped. One
might imagine that a great county picnic mad suddenly
gathered at Stowe. Even stalls were there. From the
branch of a noble beech hung a huge pair of scales on
which venison was weighed. An advertisement posted on
the front door particularized the very moderate prices at
which a buck, a half, or a quarter might be obtained. In
the distance were fallen trees, timber waggons, and ex-
tempore sawpits. The extensive edifice was a human
hive. . . . . .

The house was well set out for the distinguished visi-
tors. Neither Louis XVIII., nor the Duke of Orleans,
nor Queen Victoria, nor any of the great ones of the
earth, whose visits are recorded with pillars and with
trees planted by their own hands, saw Stowe so nobly
arrayed as the British public have seen it this week. The
bride was dressed for the altar, the victim for the sacri-
fice. No thrifty coverings, no ghostly brown holland, no
neat patterned chintzes were there. King Mob had it all
of the best,—the richest damask furniture and the newest
state hangings ; only, as that personage rode literally
roughshod through the palace, and brought with him
cahloads of gravel, there was just an attempt to save the
carpets from excessive trituration. In the state dining-
room were set out 60,000 oz. of gold and silver plate ;
one was involuntarily reminded of the weight, for the
scales were at work there also, and men were weighing
and noting down lot after lot. On a table 20 yards long
and on a dozen sideboards stood forests of vases, cande-•
hbra, epergnes, groups, goblets, tankards, and every
other form and variety of plate, from the elaborate de-
signs of Italian artists to the simple elegance of the Old
English school, and the pretentious richness of the last
generation. Among fifty other pieces of historic value,
the gifts of Royal personages and distinguished men,
stood a vase. formed from snuffboxes presented by the
cities and corporations in Ireland in 1779; the mace of
the old corporation of Buckingham, purchased by the
Buckingham Conservatives and presented to the Duke as
an everlasting possession ; and the Chandos Testimonial,
for which the gentry and yeomanry of the county lately
subscribed, we believe, £1,500.

The galleries of family po'rtraits and collections of family
memorials seem to connect all the great men and all the
great achievements of modern Europe with the names of
Chandos, Temple, Cobham, Nugent, and Grenville.
But, beyond the somewhat extensive circle of family
affection, the original portraits of famous men and women
here assembled are of the greatest interest and value.
Here, too, is the victor's portion in the spoil of celebrated
sieges, the memento of historical friendships, and the
favourite gem of Royalty or beauty. In the Manuscript-
room is the most extensive and valuable collection of Irish
documents anywhere to be found. For the pictures,
marbles, bronzes, antiques, articles of vertu, curiosities,
china, glass, and wines, we leave them to the auctioneer,
and his catalogue of 5,000 items.
And everything is to be sold. The frtal ticket is every-
where seen. The portrait of Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk, the first founder of the family, by Holbein, is
now lot 51, in the 21st day's sale. That every other an-
cestor should go the hammer, whether by Van Dyk, or
Lely, or Kneller, or Gainsborough, or Reynolds, follows
of course. But there is one item of which no preparation
can remove the shock. The Chandos family is descended
from Francis Brandon, eldest daughter of the above
Charles Brandon, by Mary, daughter of Henry VII., and
Queen Dowager of France. Some time since certain
savages or dillettanti at Bury exhumed that Mary Bran-
don from her grave and took from her head a lock of
silken hair, which thus constitutes a visible link between
the present Duke of Buckingham and the throne of these
realms, to ;which he has a reversionary interest. That
lock of silken hair, in its glass case, is now to be sold to
the highest bidder. Can we say more to show the extent
of the devastation ? After this it is idle to mention that
the Temple of Friendship is rifled of its illustrious
tenants, and they are all to be sold. We repeat that
everything goes. In two month's time there will not
remain in that vast house one pewter spoon, one cracked
cup, or spoutless tea-pot, to give a last vestige of hospi-
tality to the last vestige of the ducal interest in Bucking-
hamshire.

The Morning Post states the general circumstances
that have led to the sale :—" The bona fide debts of the
duke are variously estimated, but I believe about one mil-
lion and a half sterling is within the mark, and may be
considered approximating to the true amount. The cre-
ditors for this enormous sum are, as I understand, with
scarcely an exception, amply secured on mortgages, which
extending over every acre of land on the family estate,
(with the single exception of the Chandos property,)
amounting to about £17,000 per annum, as well as on the
mansion of Stowe itself." The Post represents the Mar-
quis of Chandos, a young man of five-and-twenty, as urg-
ing his father to the most ample sacrifice of the entailed
property, the most direct courses, and the most manly
openness. During the past week Stowe was thronged
with visitors of every degree, from the ducal carriage-
rider to the suburban butcher in his taxed cart. On Mon-
day rough .measures were required to exclude several per-
sons who had got in without authority. The articles sold
on the first days have been principally china ware and
objects of vertu. From the terms of the advertise-
ment, it appears that the sale is expected to last, at least,
till after the 25th of September. The Spectator says :
" Our contemporaries do not deal with the cause to which
the disaster is popularly assigned, an inordinate greed af-
ter land, inherited by the present duke from his father, a
desire to grasp at every purchaseable acre, in order to ac-
quire for the ducal demesnes a princely extent of terri-
tory. According to report, it is not through munificence,
but through a species of covetous grasping, that the
princely dignity of Stoweis handed over to the bailiff,
and its rural felicity' ends in the squalidest of town mi-
series, a sale by auction.