To rhyme or not to rhyme

On the eve of World Poetry Day (21 March), the Longleat archives reveal a poem written to settle a breakfast table argument over the ease of writing rhyming verse.

“With tardy steps my lingering feet, Turn from thy portals, fair Longleat…” is the opening couplet in the six verse poem by Lady Morley, who wrote the poem on her way from the Wiltshire estate to neighbouring Bath.

She was also an acquaintance of legendary author Jane Austen, whose birth 250 years ago this year is being celebrated throughout 2025 and suggests a further connection with the author for Longleat.

Emma Challinor, archivist, said: “Frances Talbot, Countess of Morley, was a published novelist and talented amateur artist.  She was acquainted with Jane Austen and her letter to Austen, in support of her new novel Emma in 1815, is one of only five letters to Austen known to have survived.

“However, this poem results from an argument at breakfast in Longleat House in around 1820 when she argued with the other guests that there was nothing easier than writing rhyming verse, and to prove it on her journey back to Bath she wrote a poem in which every other line rhymed with ‘Longleat’.

“She managed to work in thirty-two words all rhyming with ‘Longleat’ in that verse and a contemporary hand-written copy survives in our archives. The poem was later published in: The casket, a miscellany of unpublished poems 1829.”

Longleat has a renowned book collection with around 44,000 on the shelves of seven libraries and this also includes the works of a 17th century poet with strong connections to the estate Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1661-1720).

She was related to the family by marriage. Anne married Heneage Finch, the brother of Frances Finch who was wife of the first Viscount Weymouth of Longleat. Anne wrote several poems referencing the family, Longleat and its collections.

Following the recent discovery that Austen’s nephew, the Rev JE Austen, who later wrote the first major biography of her life, A Memoir of Jane Austen, had visited Longleat, Emma and colleagues are planning an exhibition in Longleat House this summer called Genteel tourists: Georgian visitors to Longleat.

Emma says: “We were excited to find her nephew’s signature in the 1836 visitor book. It is certainly possible Jane visited Longleat and her books do feature practices in place at the estate.’

“In Pride and Prejudice she describes the fashionable Regency pursuit of visiting a grand country house and its grounds when Elizabeth Bennet, and her aunt and uncle, tour Pemberley, Mr Darcy’s home, as sightseers.

“The exhibition will explore how similar visits took place at Longleat, where the 2nd Marquess of Bath was one of the first owners of a grand house to open his park gates, and hall door, to such interested parties.”

Highlights of the exhibition from 2 July to 2 November will also include Humphry Repton’s 1804 ‘Red Book’ for Longleat, which features a watercolour of day trippers picnicking in Longleat Park, a scene reminiscent of the famous picnic on Box Hill depicted by Austen in Emma.