Middlesex, Charles Sackville, Earl of
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- Title
- Middlesex, Charles Sackville, Earl of
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(1711 - 69), e. s. of 1st D. of Dorset; sty. Ld. Buckhurst - 1720, E. of Middlesex 1720 - 65 when suc. fa. as 2nd D.; educ. Westminster and Ch.Ch. Oxf. 1728; MP 1734 - 54, 1761 - 5; m. 1744 Hon. Grace Boyle, dau. of 2nd Vct. Shannon.
1731 - 3 Turin (22 - 7 Oct. 1731), Milan (30 Oct. - 6 Nov.), Verona (8 - 12 Nov.), Padua (13 - 15 Nov.), Venice (15 Nov. 1731 - late Feb./3 Mar. 1732), Ferrara (4 - 5 Mar.), Bologna (6 Mar.), Rome (13 - 16 Mar.), Naples (17 - 27 Mar.), Rome (30 Mar. - 30 Jun.), Siena (2 - 3 Jul.), Leghorn (4 - 7 Jul.), Lucca (8 - 9 Jul.), Florence (11 Jul. 1732 - Apr. 1733), Bologna, Modena (9 May), Parma (10 - 11 May), Piacenza (12 May), Genoa (13 May) [England 9 Jul.]
1736 - 8 Florence (by 17 Dec. 1736 - May 1737), Lucca, Venice (mid-May), Florence (Aug. - ), Turin (Apr. 1738), Venice ( - Jul.), Florence (5 Jul. - 26 Nov.)
In 1731 Lord Middlesex, a lively and sensitive young man, went to Italy accompanied by a tutor-companion whom he had met at Oxford, Joseph Spence. Spence, the classicist and antiquary, described their travels in a series of notebooks and letters, which also convey a cheerful relationship with his pupil.1 From January to May 1731 they were in Dijon and they reached Italy in October. Coming by boat to Venice along the Brenta (15 Nov. 1731) with Lord Robert Montagu and Sewallis Shirley on a perfect day 'we ate and drank with a particular good appetite and were all merry as fiddlers'.
They heard Faustina sing in Venice, where they had stayed 'just by' the best opera house. It was probably on this first visit to Venice that Middlesex sat to Rosalba Carriera (two pastels at Knole); he wrote her an undated letter (in French) revealing that she was acting as a go-between in an affaire.2 Though they were to spend three months in Rome, their most eventful time was the nine months in Florence, from July 1732 to April 1733. Within three weeks of their arrival Middlesex was Master of a Masonic Lodge; in 1733 he appeared on a medal struck by Natter as Magister Florentiae. The Lodge soon boasted some sixty members, not only British tourists but intellectual residents, including Dr Cocchi and Baron Stosch.3 Middlesex also discovered his passion for the Italian opera; he met Vaneschi, the improvvisatore (and freemason), whom he later asked to England as a librettist. Less seriously, Middlesex commissioned Italian verses describing Spence ('un fido Sanco ed un buon Asinello') and Spence wrote of Middlesex ('Free was his soul; and warm'd with generous fire: / Bold to engage; and prudent to retire').
Lord Middlesex returned to Italy in 1736. He appears to have spent most of his time in Florence and Venice. He was in Florence on 17 December 1736.4 During the Carnival in March 1737 he staged a masque, with Lord Barrington and Lord Raymond, in which he played a Roman consul returning on horseback to a Triumph5 ('le tout r?ussissoit fort bien et a fait parler toute l'Italie').6 In this production, and in an opera the same three produced at Lucca, Vaneschi (see above) cheated them, according to Horace Mann.5 Knapton's portrait of Middlesex in the Dilettanti, painted in London in 1741, shows him as a Roman consul and is inscribed Florentiae in festis saturnalitis anno 1738, and another portrait by Ferdinand Richter at Knole also shows Middlesex as a Roman consul. In May 1737 Middlesex arrived in Venice from Florence with William Ponsonby and Denys Wright.7 He was back in Florence by August, when he witnessed the death in a drunken brawl of Wright ('homme de peu de reputation, depuis long tems en Italie et depuis un an toujours avec Lord Middlesex')8 and composed a 'celebrated' elegy, Arno's Vale, on the passing of the House of Medici.9 In April 1738 he was seen in Turin.(10) On 5 July 1738 with Lord Raymond he arrived in Florence from Venice,11 and he finally left Florence for England on 26 November 1738.(12) In January 1739 a waiter in Piacenza asked Crisp 'if we had met Lord Middlesex in our Road, with 3 Italian ladies whom he is conducting to England for his own private use';13 it is also possible that these were three singers, for Middlesex was to spend great sums on his return promoting the Italian opera in London.14
In 1743 Walpole described the Dilettanti to Mann as 'a club, for which the nominal qualification is having been in Italy and the real one, being drunk: the two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis Dashwood, who were seldom sober the whole time they were in Italy'.15
1. Spence Letters, 29 - 162. 2. Sani 1985, 508 (his letter cannot be of 1730 as is there proposed). 3. See S. Klima in Spence Letters, 6 - 7. Lepper 1950. 4. HMC Denbigh 5:207. 5. Wal.Corr., 17:216n14. 6. HMC Denbigh, 5:212 (W.B., 10 Mar. 1737). 7. SP 99/63, f.350 (Brown, 29 May 1737). 8. HMC Denbigh, 5:221 (W.B., 4 Sep. 1737). 9. Corke Letters, 1:add. notes. 10. Sinclair jnl.mss (24 Apr. 1738). 11. SP 98/40 (Florence Newsletter, 8 Jul. 1738). 12. Wal .Corr., 20:416n10. SP 98/40 (Florence Newsletter, 1 Dec. 1738). 13. Macnaghten, 1. 14. See C. Taylor, Music and Letters, Jan. 1987, 1 - 25. 15. Wal.Corr., 18:211 (14 Apr. 1743).