Benton Fletcher
Major George Henry Benton Fletcher was a collector of early keyboard instruments including virginals, clavichords, harpsichords, spinets and early pianos. His collection is currently housed and kept in playing condition by the National Trust in Fenton House, a late 17th century merchant's house in Hampstead, North London.
Career
He was involved in social work in London slums from 1889 to 1899 with Octavia Hill and her Cadet Battalion, in a model social housing scheme in Red Cross Cottages, Southwark. During the Second Boer War and the First World War he served as a railway transport officer. He assisted Professor Flinders Petrie on excavations in Egypt and Palestine by drawing archaeological finds. He became an artist, a book illustrator, a writer and a traveller, drawing King Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, who had invited him to Arabia in 1921, and made several expeditions to the Libyan, Hejaz and Sahara deserts. In 1934 he found an elegant but dilapidated Charles II town house called Old Devonshire House in Holborn. He bought, restored and furnished it with antiques and his growing collection of early keyboard instruments as a music centre for amateurs, students and professionals. He gave this and other houses and his collection of instruments to the National Trust in 1938. He became something of a social and press celebrity and raconteur giving talks on the BBC National Programme radio service in 1938-9 and early television broadcasts from Alexandra Palace featuring his stories and keyboard instruments in 1937-8. His art exhibitions, early musical instrument concerts and furniture collection were patronised by royalty, military and society figures.Although he was called "the luckiest collector in the world", he was unlucky that Old Devonshire House was totally destroyed in a Luftwaffe bombing raid on Holborn, London in May 1941. However he had had the foresight to move most of his keyboard instruments, in January 1941, to Bourton-on-the-Hill in Gloucestershire for safe-keeping during the war and these survived with minimal damage.
The Early Keyboard Collection
The keyboard instruments collected by Benton Fletcher include six English harpsichords from the second half of the eighteenth century. Two are from Burkat Shudi's workshop in Soho. One is a single manual model dated 1761 and the other is a double manual harpsichord, naming both Burkat Shudi and John Broadwood as makers, dated 1770. The later instrument is faced with amboyna burl wood and is among the most elaborate of late English harpsichords, featuring the Venetian swell patented by Shudi in the same year, a machine stop, six hand-stops and a pedal action, with five notes below FF. Three instruments from Kirckman in London include a single manual harpsichord by Jacob Kirckman of 1752, a simple instrument with only 2 sets of 8' strings, a double manual harpsichord by Jacob Kirckman of 1762 with "book-matched" walnut veneer panels, and a double manual instrument by Jacob and Abraham Kirckman of 1777. A Longman and Broderip, a single manual harpsichord, made by Thomas Culliford dated 1783, which was the first harpsichord acquired by Benton Fletcher, includes a buff stop and a pedal machine stop.An anonymous Italian harpsichord of about 1590 with original jacks and keyboard is unusual having only one string per note. It has two split accidentals allowing either chromatic or selected lower bass notes to be played with the front or back component of the "same" key. The interior of the lid features a painting of Moses and Aaron in an Italianate landscape.
There are two bentside spinets. One, by John Hancock, London, is of late eighteenth century origin, with a single curve to the bentside. The other is unsigned, appears to be English and may have been made in 1742. It features a wing-shaped bent-side with a double curve as well as elegant ebony accidentals with a central ivory strip.
Three of the four virginals in his collection are Italian. The oldest and lightest, dated 1540 is by Marcus Siculus of Sicily. It includes a well preserved parchment rose of extravagant tracery, and is decorated with bone studs and symmetrical floral decoration. A more robustly made virginals attributed to Vincentius Pratensis was made in the late 16th or early 17th century. An unusual virginals attributed to Giovanni Celestini, Venice, also of late 16th or early 17th century construction has two rather than one string per note and a false inner-outer case, which is the custom of some Italian makers to make a case that looks as if a delicate inner instrument is lying within a protective outer case when in fact it is all one. Benton Fletcher said that he found this instrument in a cellar in Florence where it was being used as a carpenter's workbench. A late example of virginals by Robert Hatley, London, 1664, opens to reveal an inside lid and drop-down front painted with figures in 17th century dress in landscape, with applied gilt papers. There is an anonymous triple fretted German clavichord of late 17th or early 18th Century origin.
A grand piano inscribed Americus Backers, London, of the late 1770s is possibly an 18th-century "fake"; the instrument is genuine but it was probably not made by Backers. There is also a square piano of eighteenth origin by Christopher Ganer, London.
Instruments collected by Benton Fletcher and probably lost during the Luftwaffe raid on Holborn in 1941 include an early 16th-century Italian painted clavichord, and two grand pianos, one by Matthew and William Stodart of 1791 and the second by Kirckman of 1803. A 16th-century portable pipe organ and a larger pipe organ of 1754 by Merlin were also lost. A third spinet is described by Edgar Hunt. If it was in the collection, it may have been lost then as well.
In Fenton House there are four keyboard instruments acquired after the death of Benton Fletcher in 1944, which are now considered as part of the collection. There is an Ioannes Ruckers harpsichord of 1612 from Antwerp enlarged in England in the 18th century belonging to the Royal Collection, formerly housed in Windsor Castle, a square piano by John Broadwood of 1774, a grand piano by John Broadwood & Son, London, of 1805 and a clavichord by Arnold Dolmetsch, Haslemere, of 1925.