Thomas Anson of Shugborough

Thomas Anson of Shugborough and The Greek Revival Andrew Baker October 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My interest in Thomas Anson began in 1982, when I found myself living in a cottage which had formerly been occupied by a seamstress on the Shugborough estate. In those days very little was known about him, just enough to suggest he was a person worth investigating, and little enough material available to give plenty of space for fantasy. In the early days, I was given a great deal of information about the background to 18th- century England by the late Michael Baigent, and encouragement by his friend and colleague Henry Lincoln (whose 1974 film for BBC’s “Chronicle” series, The Priest the Painter and the Devil introduced me to Shugborough) and the late Richard Leigh. I was grateful to Patrick, Earl of Lichfield, and Leonora, Countess of Lichfield, for their enthusiastic support. I presented my early researches at a “Holy Blood and Holy Grail” weekend at Shugborough. Patrick Lichfield’s step-grandmother, Margaret, Countess of Lichfield, provided comments on a particularly puzzling red-herring. Over the next twenty years the fantasies were deflated, but Thomas Anson remained an intriguing figure. I have Dr Kerry Bristol of Leeds University to thank for revealing that Thomas really was a kind of “eminence grise”, an influential figure behind the scenes of the 18th-century Greek Revival. Her 2006 conference at Shugborough was the turning point. The time was ripe for new discoveries. I wish to thank several researchers in different fields who provided important revelations along the way: Paul Smith, for the English translation from Chris Lovegrove, (former editor of the Journal of the Pendragon Society) of the first portion of Lady Anson’s letter referring to Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral novel L’Astrée, written in French. Also for permission to quote from the personal letter he received from Margaret, Countess of Lichfield, in May 1987. The late Michaela Freemanova, who knew about Thomas Anson’s relationship with composer Antonin Kammell before anyone else in Staffordshire, or possibly in England. The Wedgwood Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, for sending me a copy of a letter dated 3rd December 1772 by Josiah Wedgwood, in April 2006. Sebouh Aslanian, in 2007 of Columbia University, for translating a letter from Armenian. iii Rosemary Burrows, for suggesting I obtain the complete text of a letter by Elizabeth Harris from the Hampshire Record Office. Gemma Roberts, House and Collections Manager for the National Trust at Shugborough, for drawing my attention to Edward Jones, harper, and for identifying a bust at Sudbury as a copy of that which I argue is of Thomas Anson at Shugborough. Also, to Andrew King for pointing out the seat shown on a late 18th-century map, which could be the “Ladies seat”. My grateful thanks to the archivists at the Staffordshire County Record Office, William Salt Library, and Bedfordshire Archives, for their tireless and patient help and useful suggestions. And finally, much appreciation to Roma Harding for her painstaking editing of my text, checking of facts and sources, and for contributing a huge amount of additional information, enabling what has been an organic growth over many years to become a book. Andrew Baker October 2019 iv CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii Contents v CHAPTER 1 Thomas Anson and Shugborough 7 2 Anson in Italy 23 3 Nature’s Laws 30 4 The Society of Dilettanti 40 5 Sailing to Tenedos 47 6 Expanding the Estate 54 7 The Death of Lord Scarbrough 60 8 The Lure of the Exotic 70 9 Thomas the Spy? 84 10 The Case for Wright 105 11 Shugborough Transformed 125 12 The Shepherd’s Monument 146 13 Hidden Meanings 159 14 Romantic Landscapes 183 15 Count St Germain and the Great Secret 196 16 James “Athenian” Stuart 206 17 That Universal Strain 222 18 Elegant Entertainments 241 19 Science and Industry 261 20 Lost and Found 270 Epilogue 289 APPENDIX The 1767 Anonymous Poem 291 Resources 301 Bibliography 303 v Chapter 1 Thomas Anson and Shugborough homas Anson was the elder brother of Admiral, Lord Anson, circumnavigator, naval Treformer and, thanks to the capture of a Spanish ship carrying treasure from South America, a man of unexpected wealth. Thomas has remained in the shadow of his famous brother George, but in more recent years he has begun to emerge as an intriguing character, a collector and patron of the arts, and also a traveller. Even though new discoveries about his life have been made, he remains a man of mystery. In 1720, Thomas inherited the modest country estate of Shugborough Manor, as it was originally known, from their father, William Anson, a lawyer who had important political connections. Shugborough, the house and its estate, sits in its own vale in Staffordshire, at the conflu- ence of the rivers Trent and Sow. It is a “locus amoenus”, one of those comfortable places which are somehow separated from the larger world. Thomas has been remembered as the “improver” of this landscape, turning it into an Arcadian paradise and enhancing it with a variety of follies and monuments. The most important of these, as far as architec- tural history goes, is a series of buildings designed by James “Athenian” Stuart – who created a veritable “shop window” for the new Greek Revival style of the period. Thomas is usually seen as a man of taste and culture, which he was, and, very unfairly, as an “armchair collector”, buying classical sculpture from Italy to decorate his house, as if he were an effete old aesthete, escaping into a world of private fantasy. He certainly acquired much of his sculpture collection as an older man, after inheriting his widowed brother’s wealth in 1762, but the Thomas who has been rediscovered nearly two hundred and fifty years after his death was as much of an adventurer as his brother. There is no better description of the place, as it was in the 18th century, than by Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), in his Journey to Chester, published in 1811. Pennant was a close friend of Thomas Anson in his later years and a nephew of Anson’s close friend, James Mytton. Pennant, as he says himself, used Shugborough as a base from which to explore the wide variety of natural and historic features in the area. He describes Thomas Anson’s house and park, in its setting: 7 THOMAS ANSON OF SHUGBOROUGH From the middle is a view, of very uncommon beauty, of a small vale, varied with almost every thing that nature or art could give to render it delicious; rich meadows, watered by the Trent and Sow. The first, animated with milk-white cattle, emulating those of Tinian; the last with numerous swans. The boundary on one side, is a culti- vated slope; on the other, the lofty front of Cannock Wood, clothed with heath, or shaded with old oaks, scattered over its glowing bloom by the free hand of nature. It is more difficult to enumerate the works of art dispersed over this Elysium; they epitomize those of so many places. The old church of Colwich; the mansion of the ancient English baron, at Wolsely Hall; the great-windowed mode of building in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in the house of Ingestre; the modern seat in Oak-edge; and the lively improved front of Shugborough; are embellishments proper to our own country. Amidst these arise the genuine architecture of China, in all its extravagance; the dawning of the Grecian, in the mixed gothic gateway at Tixall; and the chaste buildings of Athens, exemplified by Mr. Stuart, in the counterparts of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates’, and the octagon tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes. From the same hand arose, by command of a grateful brother, the arch of Adrian of Athens, embellished with naval trophies, in honor of Lord Anson, a glory to the British fleet; and who still survives in the gallant train of officers who remember and emulate his actions.1 Shugborough and its buildings are set in this Elysium, this sweet vale, where also lie, beyond the confines of the estate itself, a range of historic houses which add richness to the landscape. Thomas Pennant obviously loved the place and saw it as it was surely meant to be seen – a world in miniature, a microcosm of culture and nature. Later in the 18th century, the place was extended into a moderate-sized stately home. The core of the house is still the villa of a studious patron of the arts and sciences. The twin hearts of the house in Thomas Anson’s day would have been its Drawing Room, a place for conversation and music, and its Library for study and contemplation. When I first became intrigued by Thomas Anson (1695-1773), in the 1980s, hardly any- thing was known about his life, but the few facts that were available gave the impression that there was something unusual about him. Throughout his life he seemed to have had some connection with the most advanced of ideas. In 1730 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and, a few year later, a member of the artistically influential Society of Dilettanti. At the very end of his life, in the early 1770s, Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood, both at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, each contributed in different ways to Shugborough. 8 THOMAS ANSON AND SHUGBOROUGH From this early interest, I had an idea that the silent and invisible Thomas – there was no certain portrait of him – might have been a kind of “éminence grise”, a quietly influential patron of the arts and sciences, over many years.

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