46
EPPING FOREST
chamber I entered he offered me four marble
tables that lay in cases about the room. I com-
pounded, after forty refusals of everything I com-
mended, to bring away only a haunch of venison.
I believe he has not had so cheap a visit a good
while. I commend myself as I ought; for, to be
sure, there were twenty ebony chairs and a couch
and a table and a glass that would have tried the
virtue of a philosopher of double my size." In
1775 Harrison visited the house and thus describes
it:—" Before the front of the house is a long vista
that reaches to the great road at Leighton Stone ;
and from the back front facing the gardens is an
easy descent that leads to the terrace, and affords
a most beautiful prospect of the river, which is
formed into canals ; and beyond it the walks and
wildernesses extend to a great distance, rising up
a hill, on the top of which the sight is lost by the
woods, and the whole country, as far as the eye
can reach, appears one continued garden. What
a pity it is so fine an edifice, in so beautiful a
situation, should be discarded by its possessor!
and that a building calculated for the residence
of the greatest subject in Britain should be in-.
habited only by a few servants."
The Earls Tylney were Hereditary Lords-
Warden of the Forest, a dignity which descended
to their successors in estate until the Epping
Forest Act, 1878, deprived them of it. In 1784
the last Earl Tylney died, and Wanstead came to
the Tylney Longs, whose heiress married the
Hon. Wellesley Pole, immortalised . by the well-
known line in Rejected Addresses—
Long may Long Tylney Wellesley Long Pole live !
In the neighbourhood of Wanstead, however,
Mr. Wellesley does not need Rejected Addresses
to keep alive the memory of his extraordinary
career. Such was his reckless prodigality that,
having acquired by his marriage a rent-roll in
Essex alone, raised under the influence of war
prices to £70,000 per annum, he was within ten
years of that time obliged to escape down the