The village of West Wycombe is very old and very pretty. It's also home to West Wycombe Park - seat of the Dashwood family, who still live there to this day.
Their house is used in a lot of films and TV series, as are the gardens and the lake. Opposite the estate rises West Wycombe Hill, on top of which you'll find the curious six-sided Dashwood family mausoleum and the church of St Lawrence with its tower-top golden ball.
The first Hellfire Club was created in 1718 by Lord Wharton, a prominent politician known both as a man of letters and as 'a drunkard, a rioter, an infidel and a rake'. The club was based in London and was, supposedly, a club for people with an interest in poetry, philosophy and politics. However, behind the scenes, it was known to ridicule religion and even claimed that their president was the Devil himself. Their activities included mock religious ceremonies and banquets featuring dishes like Holy Ghost Pie, Breast of Venus, and Devil's Loin. Thomas De Quincey records one story concerning an unnamed lord who tied a man to a spit and roasted him just for laughs.
The Club - which unusually admitted men and women as equals - was abruptly disbanded in 1721 when George I, under the influence of Wharton's political enemies, put forward a Bill against 'horrid impieties' (immorality). This was used as a lever to remove Wharton from Parliament. After his Club was disbanded, Wharton became a Freemason and, in 1722, he became the Grand Master of England.
Read into that what you will ...
The baton was then picked up by Sir Francis Dashwood of West Wycombe. Dashwood became very rich at a young age and, after embarking on the Grand Tour of Europe - as pretty much all young aristocrats did - he had his house re-modelled in an Italian style with marble walls and floors, classic columns and plenty of statues of naked people. He also had some saucy murals painted on his walls and had various grottoes and follies built in the grounds for the purpose of arranging naughty assignations.
Then, in 1746, he created a private members' club for his gentlemen friends called the Order of the Knights of St Francis. Later, after moving their meetings from London to Buckinghamshire, they adopted the name of the Monks of Medmenham. In 1751 Dashwood leased the ruined Medmenham Abbey, beautifully set beside the River Thames, as their new hangout. The club motto Fais ce que tu voudras ('Do what thou wilt') was placed above a doorway in stained glass and William Hogarth may have executed murals for the walls. However, if he did, none survive today.
Medmenham House today. The abbey ruins are at right. Most of the rest of the building was added in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Then, in 1752, Dashwood had a tunnel and a series of caves excavated in the side of West Wycombe Hill. He did this for three reasons: (1) to provide work for poor local labourers after a bad harvest, (2) to use the spoil to create a straight new road between West Wycombe and High Wycombe, and (3) as a new secretive meeting place for his club.
The entrance to the caves is marked with an ornate gate. Once inside you walk along a passage decorated with mythological themes, phallic symbols and other items of a sexual nature, until you come to what has been described as the largest man-made chalk cave in the world. It is approximately 40 ft in diameter and 50 ft high. In the ceiling is a hook from which to hang a central lamp and there are alcoves set into the walls for 'private meetings'. In the middle of the chamber is a pool of water surrounded by stalactites and stalagmites (and awful coloured lighting). Dashwood named it 'The Styx,’ after the river that was used to ferry the souls of the dead to the Underworld. It was here in this Inner Temple, a quarter of a mile from the entrance, that the meetings of this very secretive society took place.
No one knows for sure what club members got up to during their meetings - all we have are fragments from letters and personal diaries that describe 'obscene parodies of religious rites' and, according to Horace Walpole, practices that were 'rigorously pagan'. Great gluttonous feasts were organised and 'entertainments' by female guests, known as 'Nuns' were provided.
The club members referred to themselves as 'Brothers' and their leader, which changed regularly, was known as the 'Abbot'. During meetings Brothers wore white trousers, jacket and cap, while the Abbot wore a red ensemble of the same style. I imagine Dashwood would have made a real effort to dress up. We can get a sense of the man's style in this amazing portrait of him by Adrien Carpentiers that hangs in the house.
The membership of Sir Francis's club was initially limited to twelve but soon grew to include many prominent politicians, aristocrats and even royalty. There were also a few 'commoners' such as the artist William Hogarth and foreign politicians like Benjamin Franklin. It's impossible to create a complete list as the only records were burned in 1774.
The club's demise began with a prank. The reformer John Wilkes somehow got hold of a baboon and dressed it up to look like the devil and hid it in a box. He then released the animal during a mock Black Mass. The baboon, clearly terrified, leaped on to the back of Lord Sandwich who ran away shouting, 'Spare me, gracious Devil, thou knowest I was only fooling!'
Sandwich never forgave Wilkes and was undoubtedly upset with Dashwood too for allowing the prank to go ahead (Dashwood would have loved it - he was a notorious prankster). He became bent on revenge.
As it happens, Dashwood created his own fall from grace without any help. In 1762, the Earl of Bute appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer, despite him being widely held to be 'incapable of understanding a bar bill of five figures'. Dashwood was forced to resign from the post the next year, having raised a tax on cider which caused near-riots. This seriously affected his popularity and his standing among his peers.
Meanwhile Sandwich pursued John Wilkes. He began gathering evidence to prove that Wilkes was guilty of libel against the King and, while executing a search warrant, discovered that a pamphlet called The Essay on Woman was being printed by a firm that Wilkes also used. The work was almost certainly written by Thomas Potter - a Hellfire Club member - and was full of scurrilous, blasphemous, libellous, and bawdy content. This made Wilkes guilty by association and Sandwich used it to drive Wilkes into exile. Then, between 1760 and 1765, a book called Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea by the Irish author Charles Johnstone was published. It contained stories easily identified with the activities of the club, including the story of how Lord Sandwich was ridiculed as having mistaken a monkey for the Devil. This book cemented the association between the Medmenham Monks, Dashwood and the 'Hellfire Club', as it had come to be known as. It was the final nail in the coffin for the club and it was disbanded.
These days you can visit the caves and West Wycombe Park as they are managed by the National Trust. And if you go and look at the church on top of the hill you'll see that the golden ball on top of the tower - which is covered in real gold leaf - is perhaps larger than you thought. It's another of Dashwood's follies and it resembles nothing so much as a diving bell. Inside there are comfy leather seats and portholes through which the Hellfire Club members could impress their 'nun' guests with the view.
So, there you go. The story of the real Hellfire Club.
It's left its mark on popular culture. It's mentioned in episodes of Blackadder and in Marvel's X Men comics, in books by Robert Graves, Ian Fleming, Jerome K Jerome and Frank Herbert and, most recently, of course, in Stranger Things.
And it's commemorated in the name of Wycombe's own comedy club venue, based at the Swan Theatre. Many famous acts have played there but its greatest claim to fame is that it's where Noel Fielding met Julian Barratt. They went on to create The Mighty Boosh.
So, in a very roundabout way, we have to thank an 18th century politician for the career of one of the co-hosts of The Great British Bake-Off.
Funny old world, isn't it?
Here's the website for the Hellfire Caves.
And the website for West Wycombe Park.
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