1813
William always maintained that while his wife had brought money to the marriage, his contribution was even more valuable – he supplied the style. With the huge quantities of money at his disposal he had become even more elegant and dazzling. In the early nineteenth century the British fashion industry was booming. Fashion had been revolutionised by William’s friend Beau Brummell, who became a prominent member of London society after inheriting £30,000 in 1799. Around this time, tailoring was growing popular among the wealthy due to an increasing desire to project a sense of identity through individualist styling. Menswear shops and boutiques sprang up around the area of St James’s to cater to the new trends. Frequenting tailors such as Schweitzer and Davidson on Cork Street, Brummell experimented with new designs and cloths, choosing finely woven wool for his coats and introducing ‘fish darts’.1 The three-seam kite back created the shape of the idealized classical torso, widest at the shoulders and tapering to the waist. Working closely with the tailor Jonathan Meyer on Conduit Street, Brummell replaced his knee-length breeches with full-length trousers, worn with a loop that hooked under the heel to keep the line straight and neat.2 Made from figure-hugging material such as doeskin or chamois leather, his trousers accentuated the male crotch, again evoking the classical nudity that influenced the era. With such cutting-edge fashions, Brummell is credited with creating the definitive style of the English gentleman – the tailored suit, a look that has endured worldwide for generations.
By 1813, thirty-five-year-old Brummell was in decline, having grown jowly and paunchy. Gone were the days when he was the chief exponent of his own fashion ideals and he increasingly relied on a coterie of dandy followers to exhibit his style. Of these, William was the most glorious. He had the ideal physique to model the tapering, cut-away jackets that emphasized his broad shoulders and trim waist. Lightweight, skin-tight trousers flaunted his muscular thighs and shapely calves, while revealing precisely why he was nicknamed Mr Long Pole. Whenever William was in the company of an attractive female, his appreciation was evident! One society hostess later lamented the passing of this fashion because ‘one could always tell what a young man was thinking’.3
Delectable and daring, William’s celebrity status had made him a sex symbol and women would continue to swoon in his presence for many years to come. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the fastidious Mr Darcy in the recently published Pride and Prejudice, William epitomized male desirability. The many assemblies held at Wanstead became a venue where young debutantes arrived eager to catch a glimpse of him, and he did not disappoint. Watching him waltz in tantalizingly tight breeches that left little to the imagination, women marvelled at his performance in the ballroom while pondering his renowned talents in the bedroom.
Needless to say, William’s bespoke Savile Row suits were extremely burdensome on the pocket. But his clothes were a relatively minor expense compared to the amounts he was about to lavish at Wanstead.
Previous owners had left their mark at Wanstead. Having secured a male heir to maintain the family line, William felt it was time he put his stamp on the house by transforming the interiors with his exceptional sense of style. Spending copiously on refurbishments was very much the trend of the time. By the end of the eighteenth century, Georgian London had emerged as the first truly modern metropolis, obsessed with commodities, fashion, mass media and celebrity. Consumerism had been booming for decades. Affluence had encouraged men like the bachelor Earl Tylney to purchase simply for the joy of it: household furnishings, carriages, clothes, wines, books and paintings. Exotic silks were imported from the Far East, exquisite hand-painted china from Dresden and the latest fashions from Paris. The upsurge in disposable income extended to the middle classes, the factory owners and merchants, the artisans and tenant farmers, who were keen to emulate their social superiors. Unprecedented amounts were spent, stimulating a new economy that was not just materialistic but also included intellectual pursuits and leisure activities. The explosion in print culture played an important role in this new consumerism, with retailers such as Chippendale using illustrated brochures to promote their products, while advertising columns in newspapers enticed people to buy a wide range of goods and services.
One of the greatest spendthrifts of his time, William intended to lavish enormous amounts on Wanstead House. In the hundred years that had elapsed since the mansion was first built, the profound architectural significance of Wanstead House had become apparent. Preliminary plans had been drawn up in 1713, and these designs took prominence in Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus, first published in 1715. By this time, the shell of Wanstead House was already standing, within close proximity of London, and people flocked there in droves to view the property.4 It was the new model for gracious modern living, providing comfortable family accommodation on the ground floor, with splendid staterooms above. The magnificently understated Wanstead House was the ideal advertisement for Palladian architecture, inspiring similar designs at Chiswick House, Wentworth Woodhouse and Houghton Hall. Most notably, it influenced the design of the White House in Washington DC, where an exact copy of the portico at Wanstead was reproduced for the official residence of the president of the United States.
Undoubtedly, the first Earl Tylney had been tremendously astute in commissioning the first privately owned house in this style. Wanstead House was an architecturally significant building that had led the way in the Palladian revival in Britain. It appealed to the changing taste for elegant simplicity and, during the ensuing property boom, large swathes of London were constructed in Palladian design. Wanstead House had helped to revolutionize Georgian architecture, transforming the landscape of eighteenth-century Britain by inspiring the elegant squares and sweeping terraces that came to epitomize the era.5
In terms of style, the house could not have been in better hands than those of William Long Wellesley. Still decorated in the fashion of one hundred years earlier, the house required complete renovation and William set about the task sympathetically and lovingly. As usual, gossip columns were quick to report: ‘Mr Wellesley Long Pole, they say, is fitting up Wanstead House in a style of magnificence exceeding even Carlton House.’6 By comparing Wanstead to Carlton House, newspapers subtly suggested that he was furnishing his home like a palace, a slight jibe at William’s excessive lifestyle.
A floor plan of the principal state floor showed how the assembly rooms at Wanstead were perfectly proportioned and laid out in an interconnecting circuit, forming one huge space for entertainment.7 The Great Hall led into the Salon, and then on to the Drawing Room, Music Room, Ante Room, Ballroom, Billiard Room, Reading Room and Library. Earl Tylney’s ambition had been to create a pleasure palace and with this in mind Wanstead House boasted the first ballroom in any private house in England. Unique in design, the Ballroom extended the full length of the building with tall windows along three walls, providing panoramic views of the gardens. Although this idea had been copied many times since it was first built, William was in his element, gratified to have a seventy-foot ballroom along with eight other rooms set aside specifically for amusement. Thanks to Colen Campbell’s wonderful architectural design, William did not need to make any structural changes to the harmonious conformity.
When William first arrived at Wanstead House, he found crates of treasures shipped from the continent by the bachelor Earl Tylney, who had often purchased items indiscriminately on a whim. As he had lived abroad in the latter decades of his life, nobody had lavished any time on arrangement and the exquisite furniture was scattered about the house at random. Superb serpent-shaped card tables stood next to oriental ebony cabinets or beside rare Persian ottomans. There was already an abundance of furniture, but William could not resist purchasing some exquisite pieces of French buhl, available in the aftermath of the French Revolution.8 His particular favourite was a splendid rosewood and buhl library table, which he commandeered for his own private rooms.
William set about the task of reorganizing and rearranging, giving each room a theme. The Great Hall was the showpiece of the house, with classical bronze statues posing proudly on plinths, while Kent’s painted ceiling was illuminated by two massive cut-glass chandeliers with gilded spread eagles as their centrepiece. The Salon had an exotic oriental flavour, with ebony-framed sofas and chairs inlaid with ivory, plus a colourful six-leaf Japanese screen hand-painted with landscapes. Parisian clocks ticked in the Grand Drawing Room, which was filled with William’s prized antique French buhl. Mahogany and gilt prevailed in the Grand Dining Room, with its thirty-foot-long dining table plus two circular extensions for each end.9
Although the furniture was magnificent, William was not satisfied with the results. The curtains and carpets were old, and some of the sofas were covered in mismatched materials. He decided that the only way to create a stylish uniform effect would be to reupholster all the soft furnishing in matching fabrics. William chose a rich colour scheme of crimson and gold for the principal floor. This meant that when all the interconnecting doors were open, there would be no clash of colour from one room to the next. Newspapers approved of his choice, commenting, ‘The whole of the interior will present one uniform blaze of crimson and burnished gold.’10 The only exception to this scheme were the rooms at the front, which required sober masculine hues. The Library, Reading Room and Billiard Room would have green Genoa velvet.
A team of decorators arrived to hang silk wall coverings in all the staterooms. At least 500 yards of velvet were required to make around forty pairs of curtains, all bordered with three rows of gold lace and finished with Turkish silk tassels. Axminster provided over a thousand square feet of bespoke silk carpets, bordered with gold and woven with the Long Wellesley family crest at the corners.11 Dozens of plush Grecian-scroll back and end sofas were regilded and reupholstered in matching crimson fabric complete with gold trimmings. In the Ballroom alone, nine sofas were restored, as were the many stools and chairs.
Intrigued newspapers speculated about the costs:
The furniture is of surprising magnificence, the carpets and hangings alone having cost £60,000. The family arms of Tylney and Wellesley are embroidered on all the carpets, the material of which is silk. The walls, as well as the windows, are hung with the richest Genoa velvet, with three borders of gold lace, at three guineas and a half per yard.12
The £60,000 (six million pounds) spent on soft furnishings seems exorbitant, but it was probably a fair estimate taking into account the quality of the materials. Spun with real gold, the trimmings were so intricate it would have taken a lace-maker four hours to produce one square inch. At least three thousand yards of this lace was needed for edging the curtains, plus whatever was required for the sofas and chairs. William was a perfectionist, insisting on three rows of gold lace on the curtains to match the three rows of gilding around the door frames. In total harmony with the architecture, the burnished gold threads on borders accentuated the intricate gilt mouldings that adorned the staterooms.
Just like his predecessors, William put his own mark on the house. As he promised, Wanstead House was made even grander by virtue of his superb sense of style. Both the public and high society were intrigued and on tenterhooks for their first glimpse of the Long Wellesley palace.