WHAT CAN THE Chatsworth Cavendishes tell us about the literary and political culture of seventeenth-century England? As Mark Girouard puts it, the dynastic house and land were part of the “pursuit of pleasure and power” in a race to maintain position. That in the case of the Chatsworth Cavendishes the family’s seventeenth-century history and later significance are bound together is shown in almost any item of modern Chatsworth marketing or souvenir. For example, many Chatsworth souvenirs take the form of tableware—and, like the serving bowl shown (Figure 21.1), how they present Chatsworth is suggestive with regard to past and present. This bowl shows us a view of William Talman’s 1687–1688 remodelling of the house. Designed for fruit-serving, the bowl utilizes spooning depth to offer a close-up symmetrical view of the façade and a synoptic iconography of the house. It excerpts for the purchaser the key takeaway details of a Chatsworth visit, showing a seat of power: hill landscape in the distance shaped by the presence of the house, colonnaded façade, designed gardens, statuary, river. However, this peaceful scene of aristocratic dominance may be compared with another seventeenth-century vignette of Chatsworth from a distance that takes in the landscape around it. Published in English in the year Talman completed his remodelling but written earlier, a poem describes seeing Chatsworth in a different context:

So Thomas Hobbes interpreted the lead-mining geography in which Chatsworth sat, a geography the heritage dish has cleansed not only of mines but, notably, of the people who made it.