Whatever he thought of the state of the gardens, Paxton could not have failed to have been dazzled by the gilding on the windows of the south and west aspects of the house. While the story of his scaling of the kitchen garden walls has been mythologised and succinctly demonstrates his extraordinary vitality and thoroughness, an interesting note in an unpublished diary suggests that in fact he particularly felt his own youth on this morning and understood the importance of an impressive start: ‘instead of going to bed, walked round grounds and so set men to work at 6 – being young this gave him the authority which he wanted’.
This done, the housekeeper, Mrs Hannah Gregory, and her niece, Sarah Bown, were waiting to meet him in the kitchen. Sarah was the third of a family of four daughters from Matlock, where her father owned a small mill turning parts for the cotton-weaving industry. She was three and a half years older than Paxton, with a generous private fortune of £5,000. Only one hasty sketch by William Henry Hunt exists to show her as a young woman – slender and perhaps rather plain. She was, by all accounts, educated, determined and reserved, and she was on the shelf. Her aunt, running the house and answerable only to the steward, was earning £20 a year against Paxton’s £65. As the housekeeper, Hannah benefited from living in the house with her full board. As head of the gardens, however, Paxton was one of the highest paid members of the estate, answerable only to the Chatsworth steward, Thomas Knowlton, who earned £150 a year.
As Paxton describes, he and Sarah fell in love at first sight. The earliest of his letters to have been preserved is, appropriately, addressed to her, written during 1826. She is his ‘lovely endearing angel … the adorable object of my heart. To say I love and adore thee my dear is but trifling – you are the very idol of soul … rest assured while I draw breath it will be my study to make myself more dear … I am and shall ever be yours till Death.’ She had apparently asked for him to send her a copy of the lines of a popular verse called ‘Fare You Well’, but she could not have known the irony implicit in this leave-taking almost from the moment they first met.
Sarah and Paxton were married on 20 February 1827 and moved into the cottage on the edge of the kitchen garden, the broad river to their right, the steep hills and woods to their left and with the windows of the great house flashing on the slope to the front.
* On the Duke’s suggestion, Wyatt remodelled the Royal Lodge at Windsor, and then, starting in 1824, Windsor Castle for George IV. This got him his knighthood in 1828 and the rather grander name of Wyatville by which he is now most often described.
† The Picturesque as a landscape theory was first described by Sir Uvedale Price in the 1790s. Repton took up the idea in his own landscapes to create the sense of embellished neatness’ where the art of horticulture prevailed over nature.
There were regulations in force in the gardens and it is likely that Paxton reviewed these when he arrived, fresh from the strict environment of Chiswick. The men were encouraged to keep diaries for their own improvement – noting new plants, weather fluctuations and daily activities. Above all else, there was to be prompt attendance, good order and sobriety, and contravention of these key rules could mean instant dismissal. The hours were 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the summer with a half-hour for breakfast and one hour for lunch; in the winter, working hours were decided according to the weather. Sunday hours were from 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. between November and March and from 7 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. for the rest of the year. Fines were imposed: sixpence for anyone arriving later than ten minutes after the lodge bell had rung, two shillings for anyone absent without permission – a rule applied to Christmas Day like any other. Sixpence would also be levied on any man found lounging or wasting time in the gardens, failing to clean and stack the tools allocated for his personal use, or if any panes of glass were broken through his inattention. The gathering of fruit, vegetables, flowers or plants without permission attracted the serious fine of five shillings, and dismissal on the second occurrence. All fines were deducted fortnightly from wages and, according to James White, one of the under gardeners, ‘if anyone feales himself greaved or aney ways unfairly dealt with in the administeration of these rules I desire to have the matter explained’.
Paxton had soon roused the men to a flurry of activity. Despite the mess created by the building work, principal paths had to be maintained and smartly gravelled; there was trenching, digging of beds, raking of leaves and clearing of cuttings to be done, and pots had to be washed and stacked ready for the needs of constant transplanting. In the summer, the more tender plants were carted from their shelter and planted out into beds; hedges and grass-edges had to be clipped, trees tied back, soil or dung carted to where it was needed. Everything had to be managed carefully, lest the Duke should decide to arrive at any moment.
He did indeed return to Chatsworth from Russia in early December and he noted in his daily journal: ‘Chatsworth, che gioya! I found great progress.’ The next day, having looked over his property, he noted, ‘I am enchanted … My new gardener too, Paxton, has made a great change.’
Throughout 1827 the Duke was preoccupied with his duties as Lord Chamberlain to the Royal Household – duties he cared little for but could not happily decline – and by his place in the House of Lords, where great electoral reform was being debated as a result of the wars in Europe and the growing, predominantly urban unrest at home. Socially, Devonshire House and Chiswick occupied his attention in all but the shooting season when he returned to Chatsworth, and was again delighted by the progress he saw.
That year the Duke appointed Benjamin Currey as his London solicitor and auditor with direct responsibility for all his affairs and accounts. This was indicative not only of the aristocrat’s lethargy when it came to accountable expenditure, but also an increasing movement towards professionalism in the running of large estates. Currey was not a landowner himself as had always been the case in the past, but a member of the professional upper middle class. All the agents on the Duke’s various estates reported to Currey.
Quietly, Paxton worked away in the gardens. Gradually all the fountains were repaired and improved, iron pipes replacing lead. In the west garden, an ornamental wall was constructed, drains were repaired or replaced and parts of the garden newly laid out, with new walks added to the pleasure grounds. With his own eye for structural detail, Paxton began to work with Wyatt to amend the architect’s orangery designs. The Duke, in his own words now ‘bit by gardening’, conceived it as a conservatory to join the sculpture gallery to the new wing. He wanted it quickly and he purchased orange trees from the Empress Josephine’s collection at Malmaison, an expensive Rhododendron arboreum from Knight’s exotic plant nursery in the King’s Road, and an Altingia excelsa which came to be particularly admired. Paxton must have been thrilled with the Duke’s growing interest in plants and in the changes he was hurrying forth.
The following year, Paxton’s attention turned to the kitchen garden. A new orchard was added to it and the wire fence around the flower garden was removed. On a modest scale, he turned his attention to glass. A number of famous glass buildings had recently been constructed in England including those at Syon House in Brentford, Hungerford Market in London, the upper terrace garden of Covent Garden Market and a surprising conical glasshouse at Bretton Hall designed by Loudon and Baileys. At Chatsworth, Paxton repaired the existing pineapple and peach houses and then started to build and experiment with the design of a number of new greenhouses and stoves in which to cultivate and force all manner of fruit and vegetables.
When later asked to describe the process of design and construction of the Crystal Palace, built for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851, Paxton was at pains to emphasise a process of years of experimentation with glass buildings, a logical development which had led him to that point. In his first reading of a paper in public, he noted that ‘in 1828 … I first turned my attention to the building and improvement of glass structures’. He found the various forcing houses at Chatsworth were made from coarse, thick glass and heavy woodwork, which rendered the roofs dark, gloomy and ill-suited for the purpose for which they were built. So he bevelled off the sides