^^If the 1972 NYT piece on the Hellfire club is behind a paywall, here’s the entire text for those interested.
WEST WYCOMBE, England —West Wycombe House is a Palladian‐style mansion standing above a swan‐shaped lake in splendid park dotted with Greek and Roman temples in this Buckinghamshire village about 30 miles west of London. Now completely restored and open to the public, the house looks just as It did when Benjamin Franklin stayed in it prior to the American Revolution. Franklin, incidentally, praised not only the house but the host, “who,” he said, “having kept the best company in the world, is himself the best existing.”
The host, Sir Francis Dashwood, had credentials enough—he was first Chancellor of the Exchequer, then Postmaster General, and he and Franklin, as Postmaster General of the American Colonies, drew up a plan of reconciliation to avert the impending war—a plan that was eventually undone by intransigents on both sides. But, all, Sir Francis’s friends — “the best company in the world” to whom Franklin alluded—they were the 45 or so Knights of St. Francis of Wycombe, better known as the HellFire Club, whose debauches at Medmenham Abbey a few miles away were notorious even in the relaxed moral atmosphere of the mid‐18th century.
Work and Pleasure
Statesman and merchant venturer, theologian and roue, landowner and dilettante, Sir Francis managed to combine public service with private pleasure in a manner which no other politician has since been able to emulate, or even contemplate. To protect their reputations, members of the Hell‐Fire Club assumed noms de debauelte, but it is clear from those whose identities were later established that some of the leading figures of the day joined Sir Francis in his recreational endeavors. Among them were the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty; George Bubb Doddington (Lord Melcombe Regis), friend of the Prince of Wales; Thomas Potter, Paymaster General and unfrocked priest; John Wilkes, Member of Parliament and Lord Mayor of London; William Hogarth, the painter, and at least four other prominent Members of Parliament.
The steward of the Hell‐Fire Club from its inception in 1746 was Paul Whitehead, a minor poet and major carouser.
The objects of the club were wine, women and profane song—plus, it was
DONALD GODDARD is a London‐based freelance writer and the author of “Blimey! Another Book About London,” to be published in the spring. said, the rites of black magic. Members wore monklike robes and were each allowed to introduce one lady “of a cheerful, lively disposition” who, under the rules, was dressed up as a nun and obliged to wear a mask. The man serving as Abbot (the office was held in rotation) organized the feasting and revels and had first choice of women.
The club, not unnaturally, flourished, but its members were often divided by political dissension. In 1763 this dissension led to an open breach, although the immediate cause was a practical joke. John Wilkes dressed a baboon as the Devil and hid it in a box. During a “service” at Medmenham Abbey, he opened the box and the terrified animal jumped on the back of Lord Sandwich, who ran from the chapel shouting, “Spare me, gracious Devil. I am as yet but half a sinner. I have never been as wicked as I intended.”
Sandwich never forgave Wilkes, whose prank marked the last time the HellFire Club met at the abbey. Thereafter the ‘monks” pursued their devotions, singly and collectively, in the Hell‐Fire Caves. They are carved out of the chalk hill that stands on the north side of West Wycombe village, a few hundred yards from Sir Francis’s house. Like the house, the caves, too, are open to the public, for in 1952 they were repaired and made safe by the present Sir Francis Dashwood (the 11th baronet; Franklin’s contemporary was the second) in order to help pay for the restoration of the West Wycombe estate. The caves date in their present configuration, more or less, from 1748 to 1752, when Sir Francis—the one Franklin knew—had them mined for chalk to build a new main road from High Wycombe to the village. (This is now a stretch of Route A40, which was the main road from London to Oxford until 1969, when a section of the new M40 motorway was opened, diverting through traffic to the south, much to the relief of the villagers, whose charming Elizabethan and Georgian houses were being shaken to bits by the vibration of passing trucks.)
Perhaps to put club members in suitably irreverent frame of mind, Sir Francis designed the entrance to the caves to look like a ruined church. If this was the intention, the effect was decidedly weakened by today’s Sir Francis when he built a soda fountain in the courtyard to cater to the somewhat milder tastes of current visitors, who last year numbered 79,000. (The caves are open at the following times: March 19 to July 17, 2 to 6 P.M. Monday through Saturday, 11 A.M. to 7 P.M. Sunday; from July 18 to Sept. 16, 11 A.M. to 7 P.M. daily, and from Sept. 17‐30, 2 to 6 P.M. Monday through Saturday, 11 A.M. to 7 P.M. Sunday. Admission is about 60 cents for adults, 25 cents for children.) Once you get inside, however, neither the modern lighting nor the comfortable assurance of the Mary Poppins‐style commentary written and recorded by Sir Francis can altogether dispel a sense of brooding disquiet.
Fiberglas Steward
The main tunnel is about a quarter of a mile long, with alcoves and halls leading off it. The first of these is called the robing room, now occupied by Fiberglas figure of Paul Whitehead, the steward, examining the Hell‐Fire Club’s regalia. Beyond. the tunnel slopes steadily downward and deeper into the hill to enter a maze of smaller passages. A little farther on are figures that depict the second baronet showing Franklin around—a tour of inspection which certainly took place in 1773. although the nature of the entertainment provided is not recorded.
The main passage now reaches the Banqueting Hall, a large chamber some 40 feet square and about 60 feet high, where the club met and dined before joining the “nuns.” Because the ceiling of the hall became unsafe, a new tunnel was dug ,around it in 1954 to rejoin the passage on the other side. From here, it leads down ever more steeply to the Buttery, where the wine was probably kept, and on again to the River StyN. an eerie subterranean pool beyond which lies the Inner Temple, scene of the illus.,. dell nation of \Vest Wycombe wenches. This chamber, on the same level as the floor of the valley in which the mansion stands, lies at the heart of the hill under some 300 feet of chalk.
The top of the hill, however, is no less remarkable than its core, being crowned by an elegant church, which Sir Francis rebuilt between 1751 and 1763, and, just to the cast, by a magnificent, roofless, hexagonal mausoleum. Taken together, West Wycombe House, the surrounding park, the church and the mausoleum are one of the happiest marriages of architecture and landscape engineering in England.
Not unexpectedly, the richly decorated interior of the church is rather more secular than ecclesiastical in feeling, but quite the most astonishing feature is the great golden ball, some 20 feet in circumference, with which Sir Francis topped the church tower. Made of wood and covered with gold leaf on canvas, it holds seats for eight people. Sir Francis and his friends used to sit up there, 646 feet above sea level, drinking punch and signaling by heliograph to CamberIey, 30 miles away.
The mausoleum, artfully juxtaposed with the church for the sake of the view from the house, is built of local flint. The friezes are supported by Tuscan columns and surmounted by three large urns at each corner. Inside is joint memorial to the second and third of Sir Francis’s wives and, in the middle, a memorial to his fourth. The heart of Paul Whitehead was also installed there in a silver casket and with full military honors, but the casket was stolen by a tourist in 1835.
West Wycombe House itself, along with the park, was taken over by England’s National Trust in 1944, but remains under the custodianship of the present Sir Francis. (The house is open to visitors for only about 100 days year—Tuesdays and Wednesdays in June and every day except Mondays in July and August from 2:15 P.M. to 6 P.M. Admission is 75 cents for adults, 35 cents for children. The gardens are open 2 to 6 P.M. in June and 11 A.M. to P.M. in July and August. Admission is 25 cents.) There are no ropes or other hints of a museum about the mansion. not even in the grandeur of the public rooms. There are flowers in the vases, family photographs on the mantelpieces and dogs underfoot — the house is lived in.
In its present form, it dates from 1745 to 1771, although work was still going on in the park in 1731. Imposing though the exterior is, it is but a prelude to even greater splendors within. The Great Hall is mainly of marble, with columns and frescoes, a richly inlaid staircase and a ceiling influenced by mosaic designs found in the ruins at Palmyra. There is a ballroom worthy of a royal palace and two noble drawing rooms—both with painted ceilings of great elegance. There are few finer interiors of their kind in all England, and certainly none more handsomely preserved.
