Encounters with John Vanbrugh and Bill Nighy
April 2026 Bulletin
Well, the Vanbrugh 300 celebrations got off to a terrific start last month.
I enjoyed the Blueprints of Power exhibition at Blenheim Palace (which has incidentally been extended until May 31st). I’m not sure if you can still go up on the roof, but we were able to - it was an unforgettable experience viewing the Corinthian capitals and the Marlborough coat of arms up close.
In the tapestry room there’s an AI conversation between Vanbrugh and the Duchess of Marlborough (pictured above) which I was not too sure about - not because I don’t think it worked as a concept, but because the conversation between them had been re-written in modern English. I suspect it presented the Duchess in a much rosier light than might otherwise have been the case - but then again, I would say that (you can read an account of their argument over Blenheim here).
I also had a lot of fun interviewing Charles Saumarez Smith about his excellent new bioography (John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture) at the Lichfield Literature Festival (pictured below). The follwing week I gave a paper at Vanbrugh, from Stage to Stone at Downing College, Cambridge, on the subject of Vanbrugh as translator and adaptor (you can see my slides here).
I also managed to fit in visits to a Vanbrugh exhibtion at the Sir John Soane Museum (more on that presently) and the Turner & Constable exibition at Tate Britain, where I unwittingly booked the same time slot as Bill Nighy. I was chuffed about that, not least because I recently discovered his brilliant podcast Ill Advised by Bill Nighy (reaching out for sponsorship, Bill).
So, anyway, it’s been busy. Below is a piece I wrote for the Vanbrugh300 newsletter about Van’s translation of a French farce (La Maison Rustique by Dancourt).
John Vanbrugh’s farce ‘The Country House’
When people think of John Vanbrugh the playwright, they tend to recall his original works: The Relapse and The Provok’d Wife. However, the bulk of his stage career was actually spent translating and adapting French comedies for the London stage.
The Country House was an early translation of Vanbrugh’s, from a farce by the French dramatist Florent Carton (aka Dancourt). The plot is simple. Mr Barnard has bought a country house, but finds himself swamped by visitors, all of whom expect to be given lodgings and dinner. This has become expensive (‘Since I bought this damned country house, I spend more in a summer than would maintain me seven year’). In Mr Barnard’s opinion, the main culprit is his sociable wife, who keeps inviting all her friends over for card parties. What can be done? Mr Barnard’s brother thinks the best remedy is to set fire to the building, but – as Barnard points out – ‘That’s doing myself an injury, not them’.
In addition to the marital disharmony main plot (a common feature of Vanbrugh’s comedies) there’s a flimsy subplot concerning Mr Barnard’s daughter, Mariane, and her lover, Erast, whose relationship is kept secret from her miserly father.
Eventually, Mr Barnard hits upon a solution: he’ll transform his abode into an inn called the Sword Royal. He and his brother duly attire themselves like innkeepers, much to the horror of Barnard’s pretentious son, Dorant. However, there’s a sudden plot twist: one of the Sword Royal’s guests happens to be the ranger of the king’s forests and – because a royal stag has been killed on Barnard’s land earlier in the plot (a capital offence at the time) – he faces ruin. Cue the entrance of Erast, who saves the day by offering to buy the house and marry his daughter.1
The date of The Country House’s premiere is not recorded, although The London Stage has evidence of a performance in January 1698 which may have been its first. Unusually, Vanbrugh set his adaptation in Normandy instead of moving it to England and largely kept the French names. This lack of ‘Englishing’ may have been a deliberate attempt to avoid satirising the Earl of Carlisle, who was considering hiring the playwright to design his country house in Yorkshire.
Although a domestic form of architecture, English country houses were enjoying a dramatic makeover in the late 17th century, largely due to the architect William Talman, who had set a trend with Chatsworth in Derbyshire. In fact, Lord Carlisle had initially considered Talman to design Castle Howard, but, due to the latter’s rudeness and demands for money, had shifted his attention to Vanbrugh and his associate, Nicholas Hawksmoor.
We know from Vanbrugh’s letter to Lord Manchester, written in December 1699, that shortly after the appearance of The Country House, the playwright was touring the properties of the north and showing ‘my Ld Carlisle’s designs’ to the owner of Chatsworth. According to Kerry Downes, Carlisle officially hired Hawksmoor in May 1700 – by which time Vanbrugh was presumably onboard and Talman had been supplanted.
Vanbrugh did not write any other plays about houses, and it can be no coincidence that this one came at a time when he was turning to architecture. While it’s true that it would have general appeal, Vanbrugh always wrote for aristocratic audiences and used his plays to win friends and influence people. One of the biggest mysteries is how Vanbrugh made the transition from playwright to fully-fledged architect, and, although The Country House does not answer this question, it gives us a clue about his methods of persuasion.
The denouement comes from Dancourt’s original, but the detail of the ‘ranger of the king’s forests’ was Vanbrugh’s own. Was he thinking of his mother’s relative, the 7th Earl of Huntingdon, who was warden and chief justice of the royal forests south of the Trent?