HERMIT'S TREASURES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1084, 24 March 1911, Page 6

HERMIT'S TREASURES.

r ROMANCE OF A COUNTRY MANSION. A DOUBLE LIFE. A wonderful story of the double life of a wealthy and eccentric country gentleman has come to light since the death a few .weeks ago of Mr. Dering, of Lockley, Welwyn, Herts., in his eightieth year (says "the "Daily Mail"), lie lived as a bachelor and a rccluse and left property wcrth over a quarter of a million pounds, including a veritable museum at_ LockIcy, a large part of the village of Welwyn, and threo houses at Brighton. It, is now knov.-n that Mr. Dering was married more than fifty years ago at Brighton under another name. His wifo lived in one of liis houses there, and ho stayed there periodically until she died in 1891. His daughter married in Brighton and lived there with her husband, and was visited from time to timo by her father. Although tho valuation of his property is not yet complete, nor that of the collection of books, furniture, pictures, statuary, and other possessions, of whoso extent no one but himself was aware, Mr. Dering left estate worth over .£250,000, the greater part of which goes to his daughter. Living in the magnificent Georgian mansion of Lockley, at Welwyn, in the middle of a well-wooded park of a thousand acres, which came to him from Sir George Slice, his mother's father, 111'. Dering was a very clevcr mechanic and inventor, and very eccentric. Though he had five carriages in his stables,' ho kept no horses for tho last iliftv years, but he still had a coachman until ten years ago. In the coachhouse to-day aro'two travelling coaches of early Victorian days, swung on leather, one painted bright yellow, with tho coat of arms and family crest upon it. Inside, thick with dust, are the leather upholstery and gold braid and brocade exactly as they were when last they woro used more than half a century ago. For the last ten years Mr. Dering s household consisted of his butler and the butler's wife. Inside tho house pictures are slacked three and four deep, faco to the wall. Among them aro an undoubted Holbein, and an uncertain Fra Bartolommco, and what else no one knows yet. ; The large rooms are filled with marble stafuarv, mostly originals from the great Paris Exhibition of 1862. Among them is a large symbolic group called "The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream of Joy." bv Monti, for which Mr. Dering paid i'2ooo at tho exhibition. There is a" delightful figure of a girl about to dive, "The Bather," and there aro also Dresden va=cs and gold and enamel clocks. Evervthing-picturos, pottery, statues, furniture-is covcred with tho dust of years. . In his early vears Mr. Dering used to exercise great hospitality. Blondin, tho ti<*ht-rope walker, was one of his friends, and taught him his art. When Mr. Dering entertained the villagers and his tenants he once had a rope stretched abovo the water in front of the house, and walked across it, and wheeled across in a barrow the more venturesome of his t'erlv, however, he grew to dislike all connection with the outer world. He would not have sheep or cattle in the nark for fear that he might hear (he Wealing and lowing of the animals. He objected to the church having a chime of bells lest ho should hear them. Filially he diverted the main road, which ran near his house, and built a new one. making a cutting thirty feet deep and throe hundred yards long through a hill, so that the road was effectually hidden from the house. This undertaking cost .t'n.nno. The house i« now to bo reopened and refitted for Mr. Dering's daughter and her husband to live in.