CHAPTER XXIX

UFTON COURT

One of the most striking buildings in the beautiful county of Berkshire often visited by Miss Mitford is Ufton Court, a stately manor-house of considerable extent “that stands on the summit of a steep acclivity looking over a rich and fertile valley to a range of wooded hills.”

The court is approached by a double avenue of oaks, on emerging from which the fine old Elizabethan mansion is seen rising beyond its smooth-spreading lawns and shady trees. It is surmounted “by more gable ends than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny day,” and by tall clustered chimneys. Its long façade is flanked by two projecting wings, and in the centre is a large porch, forming the letter E in the true Elizabethan style. The entrance door of solid oak studded with great nails might well have resisted an ancient battering-ram.

[Illustration: THE PORCH]

In the northern wing of Ufton Court we come once more upon associations with the name of Arabella Fermor—the “fair Belinda” of the “Rape of the Lock.” Here it was that she came to live upon her marriage in 1715 with Mr. Francis Perkins, a member of an ancient Roman Catholic family. Mr. Perkins in honour of his bride had the rooms in this wing newly decorated in the elegant style of the early eighteenth century. The ceiling of the larger room, which is still called Belinda’s Parlour, is adorned with mouldings of graceful design, while the small panelling on the walls was replaced by the tall decorated panels then just come into fashion. In the same way a lofty window was introduced to shed light upon the whole.

[Illustration: ARABELLA FERMOR (MRS. PERKINS)

_By W. Sykes_]

[Illustration: FRANCIS PERKINS

_By W. Sykes_]

We learn from an old list of the furniture of Ufton Court that in a small room near to Belinda’s Parlour there stood formerly a harpsichord and an ombre table, the latter singularly suggestive of the heroine of the “Rape of the Lock.”[12]

[Footnote 12: See _The History of Ufton Court_, by H. Mary Sharp.]

Two fine portraits exist of Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, which probably hung in Belinda’s room. They are both signed with the name of W. Sykes, an artist who flourished in the early part of the eighteenth century. That of Mrs. Perkins must have been painted before her marriage, as her maiden name is inscribed upon the picture, together with two lines from the “Rape of the Lock,” thus:—

_Mrs. Arabella Fermor_

“_On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,_ _Which Jews might kiss and Infidels adore._”

The lady’s dress is of a soft greenish blue colour so often seen in portraits of that period.

The only engravings which exist of these portraits were taken from copies of them made by Gardner, but they are not satisfactory, and it is to the kindness of the present owner of the original pictures that we are indebted for permission to reproduce them in this work.

Mary Russell Mitford has written much of Ufton Court. She delighted in wandering about the old rambling mansion. “It retained strong marks of former stateliness,” she writes, “in the fine proportion of the lofty and spacious apartments, the rich mouldings of the ceilings, the carved chimney-pieces and panelled walls; while the fragments of stained glass in the windows of the great gallery, the relics of mouldering tapestry that fluttered against the walls, and above all the secret chamber constructed for a priest’s hiding-place in the days of Protestant persecution conspired to give Mrs. Radcliffe-like Castle of Udolpho sort of romance to the manor-house.”

[Illustration: BELINDA’S PARLOUR]

“The priest’s hiding-place,” she continues, “was discovered early in the nineteenth century. A narrow ladder led down into this gloomy resort, and at the bottom was found a crucifix. As many as a dozen carefully masked openings into dark hiding-places have been discovered in this storey; no doubt they were connected one with the other, although the clue to the labyrinth is wanting.”

A broad terrace walk lies behind the Court, and from this terrace a flight of stone steps of quaint construction leads down to a beautiful walled garden. Here we can imagine Belinda and her friends enjoying the delights of a summer evening and surveying the wide view which lies beyond the garden of sloping fields to a wooded valley watered by a rushing stream.

A pathway of the softest turf leads from the foot of the steps across the garden to the pillars of a former gateway surmounted by stone balls and flanked by two ancient gnarled yews, which stand like sentinels to guard the entrance. In the centre of the garden the turf widens to a circular piece of lawn, upon which stands an old sundial. It is surrounded by gay flowers of all sorts, and is partly enclosed by a rustic fence, forming a fairy garden as it were within the great garden.

[Illustration: THE GARDEN STEPS]

Beyond the main boundary wall the greensward slopes down abruptly to a chain of fish ponds. These must have been kept neat and trim when fish, so much needed for a Roman Catholic household, was difficult to obtain beyond the precincts of the Court. But the ponds are beautiful in their neglected condition, with their luxuriant growth of water plants, their surrounding trees, whose branches are reflected below, and the occasional glimpse of a moorhen skimming past.

Miss Mitford speaks of there being “on the lawn in front of the mansion some magnificent elms, splendid both in size and form, and one gigantic broad-browed oak—the real oak of the English forest—that must have seen many centuries.” Its upper boughs have now gone, but its huge trunk and lower foliage still remain.

It is of this oak that a poetess of the day wrote:—

“Triumphant o’er the tooth of time And o’er the woodman’s blade, Yon oak still rears its head sublime And spreads its ample shade.”

À propos of Ufton Court, with its ingeniously contrived hiding-places for unhappy refugees, Miss Mitford writes: “I am indebted to my friend Mrs. Hughes for the account of another hiding-place in which the interest is ensured by that charm of charms—an unsolved and insoluble mystery.”

On some alterations being projected in a large mansion in Scotland belonging to the late Sir George Warrender, the architect, after examining and, so to say, studying the house, declared that there was a space in the centre for which there was no accounting, and that there must certainly be a concealed chamber. Neither master nor servants had ever heard of such a thing, and the assertion was treated with some scorn. The architect, however, persisted, and at last proved by the sure test of measurement ... that the space he had spoken of did exist, and as no entrance of any sort could be discovered from the surrounding rooms it was resolved to make an incision in the wall. A large and lofty apartment was disclosed, richly and completely furnished as a bed-chamber; a large four-post bed, spread with blankets, counterpanes, and the finest sheets was prepared for instant occupation. The very wax lights in the candlesticks stood ready for lighting. The room was heavily hung and carpeted as if to deaden sound, and was of course perfectly dark. No token was found to indicate the intended occupant, for it did not appear to have been used, and the general conjecture was that the refuge had been prepared for some unfortunate Jacobite in the ‘15, who had either fallen into the hands of the Government or had escaped from the kingdom.