John Vanbrugh

Sir John Vanbrugh (January 24, 1664? – March 26, 1726) was an English architect and dramatist, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy.

Early life{{ref|1}}

Vanbrugh was born in London and grew up in Chester, where the family had been driven by the major outbreak of the plague in London in 1665. Downes is sceptical of earlier historians' claims of a lower middle-class background, and shows that an 18th-century suggestion that his father Giles Vanbrugh "may have been a sugar-baker" has been misunderstood. Sugar-baker implies wealth, as the term refers not to a maker of sweets but to an owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw sugar from the Barbados. Sugar refining would normally be combined with sugar trading, which was a lucrative business. Downes' example of one sugar baker's house in Liverpool being estimated to bring in £40,000 a year in trade from the Barbados throws a different light on Vanbrugh's social background than the picture of a backstreet Chester sweetshop which is painted by Leigh Hunt in 1840 and reflected in many later accounts.

Related Topics:
London - Chester - Plague - 1665 - Middle-class - Maker of sweets - Sugar - Barbados - Liverpool - £ - Leigh Hunt

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How Vanbrugh spent the years from age 18 to 22 (after leaving school) is something of a mystery. There are no records of him between 1682 and 1686, or any shred of evidence for the persistent story that he was studying (sometimes specifically architecture) in France (stated as fact in the Dictionary of National Biography). As Laurence Whistler pointed out more than 60 years ago, there would have been no need for a young man of talent to go to France from England to study architecture. Moreover, the early drawings for Castle Howard show that he still drew like a novice in 1700, while the first thing he would have learned in a French architect's office would have been to set out a drawing properly.

Related Topics:
1682 - 1686 - France - Castle Howard - 1700

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The picture of a well-connected youth is reinforced by the fact that Vanbrugh in 1686 took up an officer's commission in his distant relative the Earl of Huntingdon's regiment. Since commissions were in the gift of the commanding officer, Vanbrugh's entry as an officer shows that he did have the kind of upscale family network that was then essential to a young man starting out in life.

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It is worth noting, however, that in spite of the distant noble relatives and the sugar trade, Vanbrugh never in later life possessed any capital of his own for business ventures such as the Haymarket Theatre, but always had to rely on loans and backers. The fact that Giles Vanbrugh had twelve children to support and set up in life may go some way towards explaining the debts which were to plague John all his life.

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