The Shepherds Monument has been the centre of confusion and mystery for two hundred and fifty years. The mystery of the monument lies both in its history and in the meaning of its undeciphered inscription.
David Watkin, in his 'Athenian Stuart' calles it 'one of the most romantic of English garden buildings', and it unites in one place the romantic and classical aspects of 18th century art.
The monument has been dated by various writers to almost any year between 1748 to 1767. The true dating of the monument is absolutely critical for any understanding of its meaning, and may affect our understanding of Shugborough’s significance as a whole.
The greatest source of confusion is an article in a 1954 Country Life by Christopher Hussey in which the author states that the poet Anna Seward wrote a poem inspired by the Shepherds Monument which includes the phrases:
“Let not the muse inquisitive presume
With rash interpretation to disclose
The mystic ciphers that conceal her name.”
Christopher Hussey confused (inexplicably) a letter from Lady Anson which does indeed enclose a poem by Anna Seward with another long anonymous poem about Shugborough in the Staffordshire Records Office. The long poem describes the estate in detail and is cleared dated 1767, seven years after Lady Anson’s death. This long poem may, indeed, be by Anna Seward, but there is no firm evidence for the authorship.
Even the current Shugborough guidebook still quotes this poem as by Anna Seward, based on the error in the 1954 article.
The monument is an almost insoluble historical puzzle, but the story may begin to make sense if the complicated evidence is looked at clearly.
THE EVIDENCE
There are no 18thc century pictures of the monument. It is the only one of the monuments with no visual record. The earliest reference to its existence is the letter to Thomas Anson from Elizabeth, Lady Anson which includes Anna Seward’s poem.
There is no date on the letter, but it is catalogued as possibly 1756 or 1758. The date may be later, but no later than 1760, the year Lady Anson died.
Lady Anson writes to Thomas that she had been going through Lichfield, returning to London from Shugborough, when “Mr Seward, with a smiling bow, stopped the coach and civilly excused himself for not having made a visit to Shugborough since the races.”
Seward presented Lady Anson with a packet containing some verses. “Imagining it to be a copy of those I had been before favoured with a sight of I was in no great haste to open it.” When Lady Anson did read the verse she took them to be in the writing of Dr Seward’s daughter, Anna, who was 16 in 1758, though she wonders if they are actually by her or her father.
The short poem is headed:
“On an Emblematical Basso Relievo after a famous picture of Nicholas Poussin Representing Shepherds pointing to the following Inscription on a Monument in Arcadia:
Et in Arcadia Ego” (1)
'The silent Monk, in lonely cell immured,
From every folly, vice, and care secured,
Should inward turn calm Meditations Eye,
And Life imploy in studying how to Die. '
The very dull poem is a meditation on death and has no particular connection with the Poussin picture. Lady Anson writes that the performance must be “greatly inferior to its subject, as that requites a much more masterly hand to do it justice.”
This letter does not mention the cipher inscription. It does prove that the monument was standing in 1759 and that visitors, such as Anna Seward, had seen it including the relief, carved by Peter Scheemakers, of the Poussin painting.
There is a reference to the Poussin relief, and its artist, in a letter from Philip Yorke, Lady Anson’s brother, in August 1763:
“I shd not omit to mention the Bas Relief from Poussin’s Arcadian Picture, the most elegant Piece of modern sculpture I ever beheld & does great honour to Scheemaker’s chisel…” (9)
This same letter mentions the foundations of the Green House, or Orangery, proving it was not built or rebuilt any earlier than 1763.
In 1972 Eileen Harris published a series of articles in Country Life about Thomas Wright, and later published a catalogue of his architectural work, in which she deduced that Wright, who was tutor to Lady Anson’s Sister-in-law at Wrest park, Bedfordshire, had worked at Shugborough in 1748-9, laying out the grounds and adding the library and dining room (then the drawing room) to the house. The rooms were certainly built in 1748 to prepare the house for the newly married Lord and Lady Anson.
Wright is the likely designer of the Mithraic Altar and Root House (for the priest of Mithras) built at the same time as he was working at Shugborough. It may be more than a coincidence that the altar also has a cryptic inscription.
SEE: THOMAS WRIGHT, THE DRUIDS AND THE SOPHISTICATED LADIES
Wright published a book of designs for arbours and grottoes in “Universal Architecture” in 1755 and one of these is very like the shape of the rough stone arch in which the relief is placed. There is also a similar drawing of an arbour in his 1750 designs for a garden at Badminton.
There are no references to the monument before Lady Anson’s letter of 1758/9, though a letter from 1750 from Elizabeth to Thomas addresses him as “Gentil Berger” and begins French, imitating Honore D’Urfe’s novel “L’Astree”, praising “ces Vallons Fleuris, ces Collines ombrageuzes, ces Eux claires et andoyantes, et sur tout ces Bergers et Bergeres so courtois et aimable qu’un le trouve.”
This poetic and fanciful language sees the inhabitants of Shugborough as Shepherds and Shepherdesses amongst the flowery valleys and shady hills. This does suggest that the Arcadian theme was in their minds in 1750 and this, though not hard evidence, does seem to support the idea that the original Shepherds Monument may date from this period.
Mysteriously there is a copy of Hudson’s portrait of Lady Anson (from 1748 or 1750/1) in which she is holding a drawing of Poussin’s earlier version of the Shepherds of Arcadia (at Chatsworth).
For more details on Lady Anson's interest in Poussin -
SEE : SHEPHERDS, SHEPHERDESSES and THE GOLDEN AGE
The rustic columns and “Doric entablature” are certainly the work of James “Athenian” Stuart . There is an undated drawing by Stuart in the British Museum which exactly matches these very unusual columns which are meant to look unfinished. (4)
One explanation that has been suggested is that the original simple monument, just a rough stone alcove, was originally attached to the wall of the kitchen garden, which was removed when Stuart built the spectacular Orangery (usually called the Green House in the 18th century), in 1763-4, based on a building from 1748-50 by Wright(2). This would only be possible if the columns by Stuart were added as late as 1764 and would therefore not have been there when Anna Seward visited in1758/9.
The earliest of the monuments designed by Stuart from his drawings in “The Antiquities of Athens” is the Arch of Hadrian, originally planned in 1761, but his involvement with Shugborough began at least a year earlier and his friendship with Thomas Anson (it was closer than a business relationship) went back at least as far as 1758, and may have begun much earlier than that.
The Doric Temple at Hagley Park, designed in 1758 but built in 1759, is said to be the first building in correct Greek Doric style and marks the start of the Greek Revival. Stuart had been introduced to Hagley by Thomas Anson in 1758, so he may have been working at Shugborough already by this date. (See THOMAS ANSON & THE GREEK REVIVAL)
The small, almost identical, Doric temple at Shugborough was probably built as the entrance to the kitchen garden (3) which, therefore, was still in place when Anna Seward visited.
On 24th June 1760 Lady Anson wrote to Thomas “Mr. Stewart desires to be informed of the number & size of your Dorick columns; having made the Drawing of your Portico, which he wants to make the Scale to before he sends it.” (1, quoted in Watkin, note 17 p58)
If this refers to the Doric Temple it gives a date for its design in 1760, but mysteriously implies that the columns already existed. Why should Thomas Anson already have Doric columns in store, which were clearly not Stuart’s work, as he needed to know their dimensions?
One possible explanation is that Wright intended to add a portico to the house, perhaps on a smaller scale to the one added by Wyatt in the 1790s. Wright rebuilt Horton Hall, near Northampton, which has some features in common with Shugborough, and does have a portico. Could the columns have been supplied but not used for a modest portico? The use of correct Doric columns is critical in the origins of Greek Revival. Did Thomas Anson already possess a set?
Ingrid Roscoe, who has studied Scheemakers and Stuart in depth, in her article about Peter Scheemakers in the new Dictionary of National Biography writes that Scheemakers carved the relief “at the instigation of Stuart” in 1759.
Scheemakers was active much earlier than this, having carved the Shakespeare memorial in Westminster Abbey in 1740 and having worked for Dr. Richard Meade, a friend of the Wrest Park set and for William Kent, amongst others. He may have carved the Poussin relief in 1748-50 though there is no documentary evidence of the Shepherds Monument existence before Lady Anson’s letter of 1756 or 8.
There is no visible evidence in the monument itself to suggest it was ever attached to a wall, or that it was made in two separate stages.
The two most obvious solutions seem to be:
1) It was originally built as a simple alcove, with the Poussin relief, in 1749-50 and that the rustic arches were added by Stuart in the 1760s – in 1764 if it was attached to the wall and rebuilt when the Green House or Orangery was built.
There is no visible evidence in the monument itself to suggest it was ever attached to a wall, or that it was made in two separate stages, but the Kitchen Garden was nearby and it is likely that Wright built an earlier Green House within it. The Monument, wall and original Green House may all have been built together.
2) The monument is entirely the work of Stuart from 1759/60 and is the earliest work by Stuart at Shugborough. Stuart was certainly involved with Anson at Hagley Park in 1759.
The present writer is convinced that the first explanation is correct and has seen no evidence to contradict it. Though the article on Scheemakers in the DNB by Ingrid Roscoe implies that the carving was 1759 there is nothing to support this theory in her catalogue of Scheemakers work.
The full story may never be told, but judging by the architectural style and the similarity to other Wright designs, the monument as we know it is, in most likely some way the work of Wright, Stuart and Scheemakers. Whoever built it, or whenever it was built, it is Thomas Anson’s monument. He would have been responsible for the concept. Most importantly Thomas Anson is emerging as the key mover in promoting the Greek Revival, not a shadowy background figure, and the Shepherds Monument is at the very heart of this artistic and philosophical movement – whatever its secret and personal inspiration might be.
Most importantly, whether or not the monument itself comes from 1748, Shugborough was already absorbed in the myth of Arcadia, in 1748, the year Stuart and Revett announced their intention of going to Greece. The Greek Revival had already begun at Shugborough and the Shepherds Monument lies at the core of both Greek Revival and Romantic revolutions.
POETIC REFERENCES
The anonymous poem which describes Shugborough at its height, with most of its monuments and long vanished features, is dated July 7th 1767. The author introduces to the poem to Thomas Anson as “fantastical Inventory of certain of your goods and chattels”. The anonymous author firmly insists that he objects to “anything of his composition appearing in print”.
There is no evidence to associate this poem with Anna Seward or any of the Lichfield set. There is no evidence that Thomas was particularly closely involved with Lichfield society. It may be by Seward (it is very flowery) and the references to Adonis and Tammuz in the footnotes, as vegetation gods, is reminiscent of Erasmus Darwin's Botanical Garden. Thomas was involved with Darwin at this time in the Trent and Mersey canal project.
SEE - THOMAS ANSON & THE GREEK REVIVAL
This poem assumes that the monument, or at least the Poussin relief, is a memorial to a lost love, and calls it “The Arcadian Shepherdess’s Tomb.” This may not be what Thomas Anson called it, but the poem does have a very detailed knowledge of the monuments and of mythology.
“And the dim ilex spreads her dusky arms
To shade th’Arcadian Shepherdesses tomb:
Of Parian stone the pile:of modern hands
The work, but emulous of ancient praise.
Let not the muse inquisitive presume
With rash interpretation to disclose
The mystic ciphers that conceal her name:
Whate’er her country, or however call’d
Peace to her gentle shade. The muse shall oft
Frequent her honour’d shrine, with solemn song
Lyric or elegiac: of when eve
Gives respite from the long day’s weary task
And dewy Hesper brightens in the west;
Here shall the constant hind & plighted maid
Meet, & exchange their token & their vows
Of faith & love. Here weeping Spring shall shed
Her first pale snowdrops, bluebells, violets,
And Summer’s earliest roses blossom here.” (6)
(The full text is available at: http://priory-of-sion.com/psp/id16.html )
A poem dated “Blithfield April 25 1772”, probaly by Sir William Bagot, also mentions the monument:
“O co’d you see how Nature pours
Profuse her verdure & her flowers
Her earliest freshest bloom,
Embroid’ring all the hallow’d ground
With blue-bells, daisies, violets, round
Your Shepherdesses tomb!”
Again, with similar references to early flowers, the monument is called a Shepherdess’s Tomb. A cataloguer of Shugborough manuscripts has noted that this poem is “almost certainly by Sir William Bagot of Blithfield”. This poem is written in expectation of a party at Shugborough, hoping that Anson will “be there in time”, recovered from illness, and mentioning others to be there including “Attic Stuart” and “Indian Orme” (Robert Orme, historian of the East India Company and close friend of Sir William Jones, son of the mathematician , poet and authority on Asian culture) as well as Sneyds, Wolseleys, Chetwynds and Bagots, and a musician Kemmell, whose identity was a mystery to me until after these pages were written - see the details of Thomas Anson's death and funeral on THOMAS ANSON AND THE GREEK REVIVAL.
A memorial poem to Lord Anson, at his death in 1762, also seems to allude to the monument:
'E'en in Arcadia's bless'd Elysian plains,
Amidst the laughing nymphs and sportive swains,
See festal joy subside, with melting grace,
.....Where now the dance, the lute, the nuptial feast,
The passion throbbing in the lover's breast,
Life's emblem here, in youth and vernal bloom,
But reason's finger pointing to the tomb!' (11)
As with all the references this is a conventional reference to the Arcadian tomb as a symbol of death being present 'even in Arcadia'.
Thomas Pennant, who knew Thomas Anson, describes the monument after Thomas Anson’s death:
“The beautiful monument at the lower end of the garden does honor to the present age. It was the work of Mr Schemecher, under the direction of the late Mr Anson. The scene is laid in Arcadia. Two lovers, expressed in elegant pastoral figures, appear attentive to an antient shepherd who reads to them an inscription on a tomb,
Et in ARCADIA ego!
The moral resulting from this seems to be, that there are no situations of life so delicious, but which death must at length snatch us from. It was placed here by the amiable owner, as a memento of that event. Perhaps, also, as a secret memorial of some loss of a tender nature in his early days; for he was wont often to hang over it on affectionate and firm meditation.”
Pennant writes as someone who knew Anson and this is the only description we have by someone who knew Thomas. It is interesting that he writes that the work was at “the direction of Mr Anson”. There is no reason to doubt that Thomas was responsible for the overall concept of the monument and he may have been the only person to know the meaning of the inscription:
O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V
D. M.
The Poussin painting was extremely famous as a philosophical meditation on death. It is the classic image of Arcadia, and already, in 1640, has the elements that characterise the 18th century Greek Revival.It literally combines 'geometry and wilderness' as J Mordaunt Crook says of the mix of classical and romantic, as well as the eery mood of melancholy.
There is nothing mysterious about the fact the Shugborough relief is mirror image, as prints of pictures often were reversed, printed from copper engravings which, themselves, were drawn the right way round but reversed when printed. (See SHEPHERDS, SHEPHERDESSES AND THE GOLDEN AGE) The sculptor has added an urn to the tomb itself. Poussin’s tomb is so plain and square it would not be clear what it was in the medium of white marble. There is not necessarily any significance in the alterations to the picture, which is also shown “portrait” rather than “landscape” shape to fit the monument.
The letters “D. M.” are common Roman inscriptions, short for “Diis Manibus”, dedicated to the shades. This appears on many Roman monuments. The most logical explanation is that this is what they mean here.
Over two hundred and fifty years there has been no convincing explanation. The monument has a historical place in the Greek Revival with its air of poetic mystery, regardless of its private meaning.
It was assumed to be the memorial of a lost love by the contemporary observers and there is no evidence at all to support more esoteric explanations. Thomas Anson’s world was not the shady world of early eighteenth century occultism but a new, forward looking, world inspired by Greek ideals.
Oliver Morchard Bishop catalogued the Anson papers in the 1950s for Margaret Countess of Lichfield. She had a very mysterious explanation of her own, “Out Your Own Sweet Vale, Alicia, Vanishes Vanity. Twixt Deity and Man Thou, Shepherdess, The Way.” This phrase simply came to her memory, or imagination, one day. She claimed it referred to a shepherdess on one of the hills of Rome who had converted pagans to Christianity. A curate in Westmoreland had told her the story in her childhood. Unfortunately no such story has ever been traced.(7)
Morchard Bishop, in a letter to the Countess in 1951, suggested a credible Latin phrase:
Optimae Uxoris Optimae Sororis Viduus Amantissimus Vovit Virtutibus
'Best of wives, Best of sisters, a most devoted Widower dedicates (this) to your virtues”
(This is the version suggested by Morchard Bishop - it has recently been slightly misquoted)
This would make sense as a dedication to the Anson’s mother, Isabella Carrier, whose sister had become the Countess of Macclesfield. The family connection made by the two sisters was the critical factor in the fortunes of the Ansons, and Thomas, Lord Parker, was named as joint heir in Willaim Anson's will in 1720, referred to as William' s 'brother', in fact brother-in-law.
It looks like a credible Latin inscription. “Optimae uxoris” is a phrase used in Latin texts (I found two examples including a letter of St Augustine on a Google search), “best wife” and “Optimae Sororis” (Best of sisters) suggests itself as a an appropriate epithet for one of a pair of sisters.
There is no record anywhere of the date of Mrs Anson’s death. She was still alive in 1720, according to William Anson's will but had died by 1739 according to a lease for a property which had been in the Carrier family in Ryber, Matlock and later in the hands of Richard Arkwright. (8) Thomas succeeded to the estate when his father died in 1720. When did his mother die? Is there no other memorial?
Bishop, having invented this, immediately dismisses it because, he says, Thomas Anson was not a widower.
In fact there is no mention in any of the sources of Thomas Anson’s marital status.
A search on familysearch.org will find a marriage record of a “Thomas Ansin” and Anne Ridell at St James, Westminster, on 8th July 1728. “Ansin” is a misreading, the name appears nowhere else. It may be a coincidence that the church is a stone’s throw from Thomas’s London house of thirty five yeas later and is the church in which a later Thomas Anson, Viscount Anson, married in 1819. There are no further details, but this could, just, be the marriage of Thomas Anson, at the age of 37 to a woman who might have died very soon afterwards.
If so, Morchard Bishop’s guess would make more sense.
Another, more straightforward explanation is that the letters stand for:
'Orator ut omnia sunt vanitas ait vanitas vanitatem'.
This is a translation back to Latin of the familiar biblical 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity.
The Latin Bible gives: 'Vanitas vanitatum, dixit Ecclesiasies, et omnia sunt vanitas.'
If someone at Shugborough wanted this very suitable phrase in Latin they may not have had access to the Latin (vulgate) bible and translated from English to Latin in their own words. (13). Of all the explanations this is has the simplest meaning and matches the message of the Poussin picture perfectly. The landscape at Shugborough was the result of unexpected wealth, and this would be a very sobre reminder. The Poussin picture already had importance for Lady Anson. (See SHEPHERDS, SHEPHERDESSES AND THE GOLDEN AGE).
The meaning of the monument would be perfectly clear and logical, but the monument itself has great importance in the way it brings ideas, images and architecture together at the very beginning of the Greek Revival.
In 1974 Henry Lincoln suggested a connection between Shugborough and the complex mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Priory of Sion. The full details of this story are available on Paul Smith’s incredibly detailed http://priory-of-sion.com/
1) Staffordshire Record Office
2) David Watkin: Athenian Stuart, George Allen & Unwin 1982
3) Shugborough, National Trust
4) (BM/MSAdd 22-153), illustrated in Dora Wieberson: Sources of Greek Reviva Architecture, Zwemmer, 1969 and in Watkin: Athenian Stuart
5) Kerry Bristol: The Society of Dilettanti, James Athenian Stuart and the Anson Family, Apollo 2000Vol 152 (461) pp 46-54
6) Staffordshire Records Office D615/P(S)/2/5
7) Private correspondence,Margaret, Countess of Lichfield to Andrew Baker
8) The Woolley Manuscripts http://www.andrewspages.dial.pipex.com/matlock/wolley/69.htm
9) Ingrid Roscoe: James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and the Scheemakers family, Apollo, 1999. Vol. CXXVI September pp178-184
10) Illustrated in “The Tomb of God” by Andrews and Schellenberg, but with no source. I suspect (13/4/06) the original is at Wimpole Hall.
(11) Erdeswicke: History of Staffordshire. I have read the complete poem on the 'National POetry Database'
(12) Clive T Probyn: The sociable humanist, the life and work of James Harris 1709-1780, OUP 1991
(13)www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/ 2004/06/06/build/local/35-kemmick.inc
