Through the Looking Glasses - Journal VI

Castle Howard. Brideshead. In either guise the house is known around the world, and the collection amassed by successive generations of the Howard family has been much studied, exhibited, or broadcast. However, one aspect has - somewhat ironically - been overlooked; the looking glasses.

These looking glasses (and here I do feel it appropriate to adhere to Nancy Mitford’s ‘U’ terminology) offer a reflection of Castle Howard itself.

Fuelled by heredity and ambition, in 1699 Charles Howard, 3^rd Earl of Carlisle set out to build ‘both a castle and a pallace conjoyn’d’, and commissioned Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor to do so. Though set amongst the Yorkshire moors, the house lay in the wake of Versailles; architectural admiration of Louis Quatorze had prompted even the Whigs to ‘excuse all ye Crimes we English lay to his charge’. Though contemporaries likened him to the Sun King of Yorkshire, a Hall of Mirrors was beyond Carlisle’s reach. He did, however, spend a great deal on glass to create a comparable spectacle in the two principal apartments.

These were not simply furnishings. In a letter to the earl of July 1706, Hawksmoor enclosed drawings of overmantel mirrors and prescribed the height at which they should be hung. The key consideration was ‘the height of Your Lordship’ [5’1’’], and the earl’s eye-line, or ‘point of sight’, is carefully delineated by a small sketch of an eye. The rooms were also populated by vast pier glasses between the windows of the long south façade, the effect of which, an alternating rhythm of window and looking glass, must have been dazzling. It was not Versailles, but it was not intended to disappoint.

Carlisle’s accounts for furnishing Castle Howard between 1704 – 1712 reveal many familiar names from the London luxury trades. Among them appears John Gumley, the cabinetmaker, glass manufacturer, and favourite of the great and good. He first appeared in an entry which detailed ‘Removing a glass to Gumley’s’ in February 1712, and thereafter the earl appears to have become rather fond of his work and proceeded to spend substantial sums with him. It seems likely that many of the looking glasses are by Gumley’s hand.

The glasses display a wide prism of styles and sizes. There are a pair of pier glasses with red verre eglomise marginal panels ornamented with arabesques after Bérain. There is a jappaned example which likely formed a pier set with accompanying table and gueridons. Others have engraved plates bound by bevelled glass and gilded cresting. One is crowned by an earl’s coronet. A black verre eglomise bordered overmantle mirror has bevelled side plates that match Hawksmoor’s squiggled designs, whilst another is plainer and likely from a lesser room.

There were more. One doesn’t have to look too far into Castle Howard’s history to find a tale of architectural and artistic tragedy. On the morning of 9^th November 1940, the schoolgirls evacuated to Castle Howard awoke to find the building on fire and joined the efforts to rescue what they could. One later recalled going to the Garden Hall to ‘try to rescue the priceless mirrors which hung there. On opening the door, however, we discovered that the fire had already claimed them’. A document compiled in the immediate aftermath reported the losses with brevity: ‘some good furniture was burnt. All the Little Gallery, Dining Room, & Garden Hall mirrors are gone’.

Fortunately, that was not the fate of all the glasses. When the family decamped to the Gatehouse for the duration of the war they took ‘the best pair of mirrors’ – with their red verre eglomise decoration – along, too. Others were saved from the fire, with varying degrees of injury, and others escaped the flames altogether.

Today they are dispersed around the house. Baroque overmantles find themselves above Regency chimneypieces in the West Wing. A pair of pier mirrors occupy the piers of the recently restored Tapestry Drawing Room. The red eglomise pier glasses hang in the East Wing Hall, where their arabesque designs chime with Morris’ stencilled ceilings.

For over three hundred years these looking glasses have reflected architects and earls, schoolgirls and firemen. If Castle Howard itself may be read as a monument to ambition, taste, and endurance, its looking glasses provide one of the clearest reflections of the story – even though the glass is now slightly foxed. Words: Matthew Wood, Curator at Castle Howard