The Libraries at Calke Abbey by Mark Purcell and Nicola Thwaite Family Tree Richard Harpur = Jane Findern (D.1573) (D.1597)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Libraries at Calke Abbey by Mark Purcell and Nicola Thwaite Family Tree Richard Harpur = Jane Findern (d.1573) (d.1597) Sir John Harpur = Isabella Sir Richard Harpur of Littleover of Swarkestone Pierrepont (d.1635) (d.1622) line ends 1754 Sir Richard Harpur of Hemington John Harpur of Breadsall Sir Henry Harpur 1st Bt = Barbara Faunt (1580/1–1649) (c.1579–1639) line ends 1622 John Harpur (d.1679) line ends 1679 buys Calke 1622 Sir John Harpur 2nd Bt (1616–69) Henry William (1619–95) Elizabeth Jane Dorothy Isabel Barbara Catherine = Susan West m. c.1640 m.1647 = Alice Coke (1621–73) Sir John Harpur 3rd Bt Henry Richard Charles Edward Barbara Elizabeth Jane Suzanna Dorothy = John (c.1645–81) of Calke, (d. after 1680) m. 1684 (d.1713) Swarkestone and Breadsall = Anne Willoughby (b.1652) m.1674 Sir John Harpur 4th Bt Anne (1680–1741) rebuilds Calke Abbey 1701–4 = Borlase Warren of Stapleford = Catherine Crewe (1682–1745) m.1702 (1) Sir Henry Harpur 5th Bt = Lady Caroline John Edward Crewe Anne Jemima Catherine Mary (1708–48) rebuilds m.1734 Manners (d.1769) (d.1780) (1713–61) (d.1724) m.1718 (d.1740) = Sir Lester Holt = (2) Sir Robert = Sir Thomas Palmer = Sir Henry Gough, Bt Burdett (1716–97) m.1753 John Caroline Lucy Sir Henry (Harry) Harpur 6th Bt (1739–89) Charles (d. young) = Archibald Stewart = Lady Frances Greville (1741–70) (1744–1825) m.1762 Sir Henry Harpur 7th Bt = Nanette Hawkins (1765/6–1827) The ‘isolated baronet’ (1763–1819) adds portico 1806–8, changes surname to Crewe 1808 Frances Henry Louisa Sir George Crewe Selina (d.1838) Henrietta Charlotte Henry Robert Edmund Lewis Charles (b.1791) (d. at birth) Matilda 8th Bt (1795–1844) = William Stanhope (1799–1819) (1801–65) (1803–74) Hugh = Jane Whittaker Lovell (d.1859) = Frances Jenny = Caroline Need (1805–74) (1799–1881) m.1819 (d.1865) Sir John Harpur = Georgiana Henrietta Isabel Jane George Evelyn Mary Richard Georgina Crewe 9th Bt Stanhope Lovell Frances (1830–1909) (1831–8) (1832–77) Adeline (1836–96) Frances (1824–86) m.1845 (1824–1910) (d.1829) (1834–1930) (1839–52) Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe 10th Bt (1846–1924) m.1876 Alice Georgiana Hugo = Isabel Adderley (1852–1932) (1847–1920) (1858–1905) Hilda Ethelfreda (1877–1949) Winifred Isabel Richard Fynderne Airmyne Frances Caroline Julia (1887–1960) = Col. Godfrey Mosley (1863–1945) (b.1879) (1880–1921) Catherine = Arthur William Jenney (1866–1934) = Arthur Senior (1882–1958) Charles Jenney, later Harpur-Crewe Airmyne Henry Jenney later Harpur-Crewe (1921–91) (1917–81) (1919–99) transfers Calke to the National Trust 1985 The Libraries at Calke Abbey by Mark Purcell and Nicola Thwaite Contents 2 Note on Names 3 Preface 6 The Harpur-Crewes and their Library Introduction The Harpur-Crewes at Calke ‘Well-Stocked With Books in Every Department of Literature’ The Eighteenth Century Decline and Fall The End Might Have Beens The Books I 36 The Gardner Wilkinson Library Sir John Gardner Wilkinson and Egypt Later Career Sir John Gardner Wilkinson and Wales The Library The Books II 46 Suggestions for Further Reading 48 National Trust Libraries: Access and Issues South-east view of Calke Abbey, English School, late nineteenth century Note on Names Calke was built – or at least rebuilt – for Sir John Harpur, 4th Baronet (1680–1741), when the family name was simply Harpur. In 1808 his descendant the 7th Bt, hoping to be elevated to the peerage (and wanting to emphasise his family’s distant connection with the dormant barony of Crewe of Steane), adopted the surname ‘Crewe’. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Calke’s owners continued to use the surname Crewe, often in conjunction with their original surname, though without a hyphen: for example, Sir John Harpur Crewe, 9th Bt (1824–86) and Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe 10th Bt (1846–1924). On Vauncey’s death the baronetcy became extinct and the estates passed to his elder daughter Hilda Mosley (1877–1949) and her husband Col. Godfrey Mosley. Only in 1961 did Hilda’s nephew Charles Jenney (1917–81), who had succeeded 12 years previously, adopt the surname ‘Harpur-Crewe’ (with a hyphen), which was also used by his younger brother, Calke’s last private owner, Henry Harpur-Crewe (1921–91). In the text that follows, we have used the form of name which individuals themselves used, but when referring to the family, for sake of simplicity, we Sir John Harpur, 4th Bt, Abbey Calke at Libraries The have used the name ‘Harpur-Crewe’. attributed to Charles Agar (1699–1723) 2 Sir George Crewe, 8th Bt, and his son John, 9th Bt, 1828, Sir Henry Harpur Crewe, 7th Bt, aged 21, by Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775–1862) by Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) Preface The National Trust took over at Calke in 1985. In the A decade earlier the Victoria & Albert Museum had same year the great book historian D.F. McKenzie staged a blockbuster exhibition, ‘The Destruction (1931–99) gave the very first Panizzi Lecture at of the Country House’. Fronted by the V&A’s the British Library, named in honour of the great Director Roy Strong, the other driving forces behind Victorian librarian Sir Anthony Panizzi (1797–1879). the exhibition were two architectural historians: Though no-one knew it at the time, the books at Marcus Binney (a key figure in the rescue of Calke Calke in fact included a copy of a now very rare in the 1980s) and John Harris, a self-taught scholar pamphlet published in 1857, in which Panizzi had who had acquired a youthful passion for snooping outlined his proposals for a new reading room for around derelict country houses with his Uncle Sid, the British Museum Library – none other than at a time when English country houses were being the iconic Round Reading Room where Oscar demolished almost every week. ‘The Destruction Wilde, Lenin and Karl Marx would all work. But the of the Country House’ was a sell-out, and was connection with Calke goes further. Don McKenzie’s deliberately designed to tug on the heart strings. lecture, subsequently published as Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, has acquired a near-cult 1 (London: John status: almost everything written about books British Museum: New Reading-Room and Libraries Murray, 1857); D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts and libraries since then has been influenced by it. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.11. His central thesis was that librarians and literary scholars needed to go beyond the traditional tasks of cataloguing books and editing their texts, and should start to think about them in a much broader context: in short to embark on a full-scale ‘historical study of the making and use of books’.1 The Libraries at Calke Abbey Calke at Libraries The 3 Walking through the ‘Hall of Destruction’ influential architectural historian, Mark Girouard, with its broken classical columns and ghostly had published an even more groundbreaking photographs of dynamited mansions, many book, Life in the English Country House, which visitors wept at the enormity of what had been found itself catapulted into the bestseller lists lost. In retrospect the exhibition came to be seen and has remained one of the most widely read as a turning point, and within a decade ‘Heritage’ books about country houses ever printed.4 was back in fashion with a vengeance. One of The rescue of Calke was ultimately possible the high points of the ´80s heritage boom was because the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the National Trust’s acquisition of Calke Abbey, Nigel Lawson, was persuaded to make a one-off a once great house and estate seemingly poised payment to the National Heritage Memorial Fund on the threshold of complete dissolution.2 in his first budget in March 1984 (the fact that he But other forces were at work. From the early was also the MP for the nearby constituency of 1970s the National Trust’s Merlin Waterson and its Blabys wa probably helpful as well). But despite new architectural historian Gervase Jackson-Stops the public clamour to save the house ‘where time (1947–95) were increasingly preoccupied with the had stopped’, not everyone was entirely convinced, future of Erddig, an equally decayed eighteenth- and one sceptic even wrote to The Times to say, century country house in north-east Wales. When in effect, that Calke was full of junk and was not the Trust had taken over country houses in the worth preserving.5 This provoked a sharp rejoinder 1940s and 1950s, its officials and their staff were from H.M. Colvin, the brilliant Oxford architectural often quite interventionist in their approach. At historian and editor of The King’s Works, who had Springhill, a seventeenth-century house in Northern been working on the Harpur-Crewe archive for Ireland, many of the house’s nineteenth-century some years.6 And certainly Trust officials responsible contents were ruthlessly clearly out in the late for Calke became ever more conscious of its value as ´50s. All evidence of gentry life in mid-Victorian a social document, a house where every matchbox, Ireland was eliminated and the principal rooms every broken china pig, and every worn-out chintz handed over to a Chelsea interior designer who chair cover told the story of the decline and fall of was instructed to do up the house to make it look the country house in the nineteenth and twentieth as if people were still living in it. At Petworth, in centuries. But one immediately striking thing on Sussex, the great picture collection had already reading the files is that despite all the attention been completely reorganised by the art historian given to textiles, stuffed birds, pictures and (and closet Soviet spy) Anthony Blunt, in a way decaying furniture, almost no-one seems to have which was much admired at the time, but which paused to think about the books.