Information
While staying with a friend at Denton, near Folkestone, in June 1766, Gray visited the Thanet coastal towns but was at pains to record that ‘I did not go to Kingsgate, because it belonged to my Ld. Holland’. It is reasonable to suppose that it was on the occasion of a subsequent visit to the area in June 1768 that he wrote his verses ‘On Lord Holland’s Seat’. Gray’s disapproval of Lord Holland was shared by the general public by whom he was widely regarded as a high-ranking robber for having amassed a vast personal fortune during his time as Paymaster General of the Forces. Having decided to retire to the fishing hamlet of Kingsgate he spared no expense in building a grandiose residence for himself, Holland House, modelled on Cicero’s villa on the Appian way, and in ornamenting its grounds with sham ruins to which Gray mockingly refers in his verses. The ensemble must have looked grotesquely at odds with the windswept Thanet coast.
Quotations
Old and abandon’d by each venal friend
Here H. took the pious resolution
To smuggle some few years and strive to mend
A broken character and constitution.
On this congenial spot he fix’d his choice,
Earl Godwin trembled for his neighbouring sand,
Here Seagulls scream and cormorants rejoice,
And Mariners tho’ shipwreckt dread to land,
Here reign the blustring north and blighting east,
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing,
Yet nature cannot furnish out the feast,
Art he invokes new horrors still to bring.
Now mouldring fanes and battlements arise,
Arches and turrets nodding to their fall,
Unpeopled palaces delude his eyes,
And mimick desolation covers all.
Place | Extract |
| Kingsgate | Having decided to retire to the fishing hamlet of Kingsgate he spared no expense in building a grandiose residence for himself, Holland House, modelled on Cicero’s villa on the Appian way, and in ornamenting its grounds with sham ruins to which Gray mockingly refers in his verses... |
| Margate | Staying with a friend at Denton, halfway between Canterbury and Folkestone, he visited Margate in June 1766 but was not impressed... |
