This 158-page volume is described in its preface as comprising “sad, gay, serious, light-hearted, learned and naive combinations of the alphabet by observers of the Hertfordshire scene, from Julius Caesar to an anonymous airman of the Great War, from Poet to Peasant, and all walks of life between, illustrated by the ‘decorative devices’ of David Baker.”
It includes many extracts from diaries, letters, magazines and books referring to Hertfordshire, its towns and villages, as well as twelve appropriate poems and ten (all amusing) epitaphs.
Apart from the pages Beatrix Potter wrote about Essendon, Hatfield is not well represented in this anthology – not when compared to Hitchin, which boasts nine references; St Albans with six (including a two-page poem claiming to “mention the name of each pub in town”); and Welwyn, with four, including a four-page poem entitled “Welwyn Boundaries”. Hatfield makes only two appearances.
First there is the quatrain dating from 1610, when Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, earned such unpopularity by enclosing Hatfield Great Wood. The second mention of Hatfield is from John Byng’s Torrington Diaries. Byng writes that, in 1789, when he reached Hatfield Park Gates, a storm caused him to pull up by the Grey Hound [sic] Inn (near the Wooodside Gate of Hatfield Park – now “St Michael’s” house). He continues:
“The Hostler was eager to tell me of a poor Mr T–––t’s being confined there, from a sad overturn in a Stage Coach ... I ascended to his Bed Room; and found him recovering from an accident he was happy to relate, and at which I cou’d scarcely refrain from Laughter.... The Coach was broken down near this Inn-Door, and Mr T. fell under 5 female Passengers ... When the Roof breaking in sent an upper Cargo upon Him, which added to his former Load, bruis’d him, and cut his Head so much as to confine him here for several Days.”
The earls of Salisbury receive two further mentions in A Sampler. In 1606, the last year when the Salisbury family lived at Theobalds, in Cheshunt, before being obliged by James I to exchange that residence for Hatfield House, according to a letter from Sir John Harington, Kings James I of England and Christian IV of Denmark were entertained at Theobalds, and:
“One day a great feast was held; and after dinner the representation of Solomon his Temple and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was made or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made, before their majesties, by Device of the Earl of Salisbury and others. But alas! ...”
Alas, indeed – it all went sadly wrong: a farcically disastrous performance.
The same Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, slandered above, was that discomforted host. Later, the Sampler features The Hertford and Ware Patriot, a polemical journal that crusaded for reform. In reporting an inquest held at Watton-at-Stone in 1833, on a labourer killed in a fight with a policeman, the editor “virulently attacked the Tory party, its members and all its works, including the local aristocracy and squirearchy, ... and the new police force; reserving particular venom for James, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury, as the local Tory despot, wittily nicknamed by The Patriot “Jerry Sneak”.
Truly, Hatfield and its aristocratic family cannot be said to appear to advantage in this archival anthology. ( )