By the November following her marriage, her collecting had gathered pace, expanding to include the decorative and fine arts as well as natural history. (She was already heiress to the
Arundel collection.) Her home in Buckinghamshire,
Bulstrode Hall, provided space to house the results, and her independent fortune meant that cost was no object (on her mother's death in 1755 she also inherited the estates of Welbeck in Nottinghamshire). Bulstrode was known in court circles as "The Hive" for the intense work done there on the collections by the Duchess and her team of
botanists,
entomologists and
ornithologists, headed by herself,
Daniel Solander (1736–82, specialising in seashells and insects) and The Revd
John Lightfoot (1735–88, her librarian and chaplain, and an expert botanist). Her collection was, unlike many similar contemporary ones, well-curated. In 1766, the
Genevan Romantic and
philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau met Bentinck, admired her knowledge of botany, despite his opinion that women could not be scientific, and offered his services as her "herborist" (plant collector). She corresponded with Rousseau until she sent him a copy of
Georg Rumpf's
Herbarium amboinense, a botany of
Amboyna in what is now Indonesia, as he felt this opposed his ideal of free nature. The Portland Museum at
Bulstrode was open to visitors, along with its zoo, aviary and vast botanic garden. Many came: scholars, philosophers, scientists and even royalty, and the collection became a
cause célèbre. Her fellow collector
Horace Walpole commented on it: or, in the words of
Mrs Delany (a botanical artist and longtime friend): Her collecting was also encouraged by her creative milieu: the Duchess and
Mary Delany were both members of The
Bluestockings, a group of aristocratic women seeking increased intellectual opportunities for members of their sex. Her natural collection was the largest and most famous of its time, with few geographical bounds; it included objects from both Lapland and the South Seas (she patronised
James Cook and bought shells from his second voyage through dealers). She drew and recorded its specimens, sorting them innovatively in type species and displaying them alongside ancient remains such as the
Portland Vase, which she bought from
Sir William Hamilton. Lightfoot later wrote in the introduction to the 1786 auction catalogue that it was her "intention to have had every unknown species in the three kingdoms of nature described and published to the world", but this was thwarted by Solander's death in 1783 and her own two years later. On her death, with her children uninterested in the collection, her son's political career to finance and her creditors' demands to be paid, it was her will that it be sold. The collection was entirely dissolved at an auction of over 4,000 lots at her Whitehall residence from 24 April to 3 July 1786. Hundreds of people attended, although some fine and decorative arts were bought back by her family at the auction, including the
Portland Vase and pieces from a silver-gilt dessert service the Duchess had designed herself, crawling with exquisitely modelled insects. However, the vast majority went, including the whole natural history collection; Walpole records that only eight days included items other than "shells, ores, fossils, birds' eggs and natural history." Only fragments of the Portland Museum's building survive too, since Bulstrode was demolished in the 19th century. The department of
Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham holds some of the personal papers and correspondence of the Duchess of Portland (Pw E), as part of the Portland (Welbeck) Collection.
The Harley Gallery's Treasury Museum shows changing displays of objects from the Portland Collection. == Foundling Hospital ==