There is yet another view of the question which is entitled to consideration. While I yield to nobody in my admiration for eighteenth-century design in furniture, I cannot help admitting that it is open to the objection of lack of comfort, such as we nowadays expect. We have not, like our great-grandparents, been so carefully trained as to sit bolt upright in a chair, or to use a sofa solely as an article of furniture intended to seat more persons than one. Until, therefore, critics themselves are willing to forego the comforts of a modern arm-chair, it is scarcely fair to expect other people to do without them from a high sense of individual responsibility for purity of design.

As will be seen by reference to the illustrations, more than a mere attempt has been made by the proprietors of Claydon House to refurnish as far as possible in an older style. It is by no means the least interesting fact in connexion with the house that, while other families all over Britain were discarding fine specimens of the furniture designed by Adam, Chippendale, and others of the period, the Verneys took advantage of their want of taste by purchasing the despised style.

It would scarcely be possible even with unlimited means to furnish such a house in pure Adam design. Adam's furniture, though copied to a very large extent by contemporaneous makers, was designed piece by piece for particular customers, and it is a noticeable fact that in his published designs, which were all that were open to the trade for copying purposes, there is not a single chair. The furniture therefore which was bought for Claydon House could not all be rigidly correct as regards design, though much of it, as a matter of fact, is so. The two white-andgold chairs reproduced, which, though of French style, are probably of English workmanship, were a peculiarly happy

8 Page 21.

Claydon House, Bucks

choice, as Adam designed several similar chairs for his clients. Of these there is a large set, which at present are divided between the saloon and the library.

Many of the other pieces are of widely differing styles and periods, interspersed here and there with a few pieces of genuine Adam design, such as plain, though beautifully carved, examples of the pedestal and vase, dating from Adam's earlier period.

For reasons which have already been stated at sufficient length, the Chinese room9 is of peculiar interest as bearing on the question whether or not everything in the house was actually of Adam's designing; but it is also well worth studying as being perhaps the finest, though by no means the purest, outcome of the Chinese craze.

The large central canopy, which seems to have been intended to take the place of the dome on the four-post bed of the period, is known as the Temple of Asia.' It is covered with carving of a kind certainly not borrowed from China, and in the front there are three niches which were probably originally intended to contain Chinese deities. In general shape it bears some affinity to Chinese work, but, except for that, and the innumerable carved bells which are suspended from every available point, there is nothing eastern about it, such incongruities being introduced as the earl's coronet and crest, realistically represented. 10

ΙΟ

If still more proof were wanting of its Chippendale origin, I think that a single glance at the chimney-pieces, by anyone conversant with Chippendale's Chinese, would scarcely leave any doubt on the matter. The curious mixture between Louis Quinze and Chinese, of which he was the originator, is peculiarly striking.

Even in these chimney-pieces the earl could not bring himself to forego his beloved marble, which is perhaps even a worse mistake than any mixture of styles. Its introduction in this instance, combined as it

is with the typically French line, gives an almost ludicrous resemblance to a gigantic time-piece.

Beside the chimney-piece is placed a 'china cabinet' enclosing a casket of Chinese manufacture,10 which was one of the numerous contributions of Claydon House to the Bethnal Green exhibition, where, like most other things possible and impossible, it was attributed to Chippendale. This is by no means likely, as its style is considerably purer than that affected by the great Thomas, and it is much more likely to have owed its origin to Mayhew. This piece, of course, was not originally a part of the furniture of the room, but has, like the bamboo chairs and tables, been added afterwards. Scattered through the room and on the walls are several specimens of real Chinese furniture and curios. A japanned chest, shown in the illustration," is in particular worthy of more than a passing glance.

The carved central table, the casket resting on it, the coloured figures at present

10 See illustration on page 31. 11 Page 29.

occupying the niches, and several wellchosen examples of the potter's art from the celestial kingdom, are among the other objects of interest which add an air of reality to the fundamental conception.

A cornice from Adam's point of view was a thing almost as necessary to a room as doors and windows; but, having nothing to guide him in its design, he broke frankly away from any attempt at the style. Whatever may be said or thought of the authorship of much of the interior decoration of Claydon House, it is evident that Adam not only controlled but designed each cornice, which makes the discrepancy between this particular specimen and the rest of the room even more marked.

This, on the other hand, does not apply either to the doors or architraves, which, though composed throughout the house of solid carved wood, are undoubtedly by Adam in every other case, except, possibly, that of the pink parlour. Here, as a glance at the illustration12 will show, the work on the doors is ultra-Chippendale.

12 Page 31