Horace Walpole: A memoir / With an appendix of books printed at the Strawberry Hill Press

by Austin Dobson

A Round Drawing Room.
B Cabinet or Tribune.
C Great North Bedchamber.
D Gallery.
E Holbein Chamber.
F Library.
G Beauclerk Closet or Cabinet.
H Armoury.
I China Closets.
K Back Stairs.
L Passage.
M Star Chamber.
N Red Bedchamber.
O Blue Bedchamber.
P Breakfast Room.
Q Green Closet.
Strawberry Hill: Principal Floor—1781.

Concerning the Red Bedchamber, the Star Chamber, and the Holbein Chamber, which intervened between the rest of the first floor and the latest additions, there is little to say. In the Red Bedchamber, the most memorable things (after the chintz bed on which Lord Orford died) were some pencil sketches of Pope and his parents by Cooper and the elder Richardson. In the Holbein Chamber, so called from a number of copies on oil-paper by Vertue from the drawings of Holbein in Queen Catherine's Closet at Kensington, were two of those 'curiosities' which represent the Don Saltero, or Madame Tussaud, side of Strawberry, viz., a tortoise-shell comb studded with silver hearts and roses which was said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and (later) the red hat of Cardinal Wolsey. The pedigree of the hat, it must, however, be admitted, was unimpeachable. It had been found in the great wardrobe by Bishop Burnet when Clerk of the Closet. From him it passed to his son the Judge (author of that curious squib on Harley known as the History of Robert Powel the Puppet-Show-Man), and thence to the Countess Dowager of Albemarle, who gave it to Walpole. A carpet in this room was worked by Mrs. Clive, who seems to have been a most industrious decorator of her friend's mansion museum.[140] The Star Chamber was but an ante-room powdered with gold stars in mosaic, the chief glory of which was a stone bust of Henry VII. by Torregiano.

With these three rooms, the first floor of Strawberry, as it existed previous to the erection of the additions mentioned in the beginning of this chapter,—namely, the Gallery, the Round Tower, the Tribune, and the Great North Bedchamber,—came to an end. But it was in these newer parts of the house that some of its rarest objects of art were assembled. The Gallery, which was entered from a gloomy little passage in front of the Holbein Chamber, was a really spacious room, fifty-six feet by thirteen, and lighted from the south by five high windows. Between these were tables laden with busts, bronzes, and urns; on the opposite side, fronting the windows, were recesses, finished with gold network over looking-glass, between which stood couch-seats, covered, like the rest of the room, with crimson Norwich damask. The ceiling was copied from one of the side aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel; the great door at the western end, which led into the Round Tower, was taken from the north door of St. Albans. A long carpet, made at Moorfields, traversed the room from end to end. In one of the recesses—that to the left of the chimney-piece, which was designed by Mr. Chute and Mr. Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc,—stood one of the finest surviving pieces of Greek sculpture, the Boccapadugli eagle, found in the precinct of the Baths of Caracalla,—a chef-d'œuvre from which Gray is said to have borrowed the 'ruffled plumes, and flagging wing' of the Progress of Poesy; to the right was a noble bust in basalt of Vespasian, which had been purchased from the Ottoboni collection. Of the pictures it is impossible to speak at large; but two of the most notable were Sir George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham, and Mabuse's Marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York. Of Walpole's own relatives, there were portraits by Ramsay of his nieces, Mrs. Keppel (the Bishop's wife) and Lady Dysart, and of the Duchess of Gloucester (then Lady Waldegrave) by Reynolds. There were also portraits of Henry Fox, Lord Holland, of George Montagu, of Lord Waldegrave, and of Horace's uncle, Lord Walpole of Wolterton.[141]

Issuing through the great door of the Gallery, and passing on the left a glazed closet containing a quantity of china which had once belonged to Walpole's mother, a couple of steps brought you into the pleasant Drawing Room in the Round Tower, the bow window of which, already mentioned, looked to the south-west. Like the Gallery, this room was hung with Norwich damask. Its chief glory was the picture of Bianca Capello, of which Walpole had written to Mann. To the left of this room, at the back of the Gallery, and consequently in the front of the house, was the Cabinet, or Tribune, a curious square chamber with semicircular recesses, in two of which, to the north and west, were stained windows. In the roof, which was modelled on the chapter house at York, was a star of yellow glass throwing a soft golden glow over all the room. Here Walpole had amassed his choicest treasures, miniatures by Oliver and Cooper, enamels by Petitot and Zincke,[142] bronzes from Italy, ivory bas-reliefs, seal-rings and reliquaries, caskets and cameos and filigree work. Here, with Madame du Deffand's letter inside it,[143] was the 'round white snuff-box' with Madame de Sévigné's portrait; here, carven with masks and flies and grasshoppers, was Cellini's silver bell from the Leonati Collection, at Parma, a masterpiece against which he had exchanged all his collection of Roman coins with the Marquis of Rockingham. A bronze bust of Caligula with silver eyes; a missal with reputed miniatures by Raphael; a dagger of Henry VIII.,[144] and a mourning ring given at the burial of Charles I.,—were among the other show objects of the Tribune, the riches of which occupy more space in their owner's Catalogue than any other part of his collections.

With the Great North Bedchamber, which adjoined the Tribune, and filled the remaining space at the back of the Gallery, the account of Strawberry Hill, as it existed in 1774, comes to an end; for the Green Chamber in the Round Tower over the Drawing Room, and 'Mr. Walpole's Bedchamber, two pair of stairs' (which contained the Warrant for beheading King Charles I., inscribed 'Major Charta,' so often referred to by Walpole's biographers),[145] may be dismissed without further notice. The Beauclerk Closet, a later addition, will be described in its proper place. Over the chimney-piece in the Great North Bedchamber was a large picture of Henry VIII. and his children, a recent purchase, afterwards remanded to the staircase to make room for a portrait of Catherine of Braganza, sent from Portugal previous to her marriage with Charles II. Fronting the bed was a head of Niobe, by Guido, which in its turn subsequently made way for la belle Jennings.[146] Among the pictures on the north or window side of the room was the original sketch by Hogarth of the Beggar's Opera, which Walpole had purchased at the sale of Rich, the fortunate manager who produced Gay's masterpiece at Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was exhibited at Manchester in 1857, being then the property of Mr. Willett, who had bought it at the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842. Another curious oil painting in this room was the Rehearsal of an Opera by the Riccis, which included caricature portraits of Nicolini (of Spectator celebrity), of the famous Mrs. Catherine Tofts, and of Margherita de l'Epine. In a nook by the window there was a glazed china closet, with a number of minor curiosities, among which were conspicuous the speculum of cannel coal with which Dr. Dee was in the habit of gulling his votaries,[147] and an agate puncheon with Gray's arms which his executors had presented to Walpole.

A few external objects claim a word. In the Great Cloister under the Gallery was the blue and white china tub in which had taken place that tragedy of the 'pensive Selima' referred to at p. [135] as having prompted the muse of Gray.[148] The Chapel in the Garden has already been sufficiently described.[149] In the Flower Garden across the road was a cottage which Walpole had erected upon the site of the building once occupied by Francklin the printer, and which he used as a place of refuge when the tide of sight-seers became overpowering. It included a Tea Room, containing a fair collection of china, and hung with green paper and engravings, and a little white and green Library, of which the principal ornament was a half-length portrait of Milton.[150] A portrait of Lady Hervey, by Allan Ramsay, was afterwards added to its decorations.[151]

Many objects of interest, as must be obvious, have remained undescribed in the foregoing account, and those who seek for further information concerning what its owner called his 'paper fabric and assemblage of curious trifles' must consult either the Catalogue of 1774 itself, or that later and definitive version of it which is reprinted in Volume II. of the Works (pp. 393-516). The intention in the main has here been to lay stress upon those articles which bear most directly upon Walpole's biography. It will also be observed that, during the prolonged progress of the house towards completion, his experience and his views considerably enlarged, and the pettiness and artificiality of his first improvements disappeared. The house never lost, and never could lose, its invertebrate character; but the Gallery, the Round Tower, and the North Bedchamber were certainly conceived in a more serious and even spacious spirit of Gothicism than any of the early additions. That it must, still, have been confined and needlessly gloomy, may be allowed; but as a set-off to some of those accounts which insist so pertinaciously upon its 'paltriness,' its 'architectural solecisms,' and its lack of beauty and sublimity, it is only fair to recall a few sentences from the preface which its owner prefixed to the Description of 1784. It was designed, he says of the Catalogue, to exhibit 'specimens of Gothic architecture, as collected from standards in cathedrals and chapel-tombs,' and to show 'how they may be applied to chimney-pieces, ceilings, windows, balustrades, loggias, etc.' Elsewhere he characterizes the building itself as candidly as any of its critics. He admits its diminutive scale and its unsubstantial character (he calls it himself, as we have seen, a 'paper fabric'), and he confesses to the incongruities arising from an antique design and modern decorations. 'In truth,' he concludes, 'I did not mean to make my house so Gothic as to exclude convenience, and modern refinements in luxury.... It was built to please my own taste, and in some degree to realize my own visions. I have specified what it contains; could I describe the gay but tranquil scene where it stands, and add the beauty of the landscape to the romantic cast of the mansion, it would raise more pleasing sensations than a dry list of curiosities can excite,—at least the prospect would recall the good humour of those who might be disposed to condemn the fantastic fabric, and to think it a very proper habitation of, as it was the scene that inspired, the author of the Castle of Otranto.'[152] As one of his censors has remarked, this tone disarms criticism; and it is needless to accumulate proofs of peculiarities which are not denied by the person most concerned.

In spite of its charming situation, Strawberry Hill was emphatically a summer residence; and there is more than one account in Walpole's letters of the sudden floods which, when Thames flowed with a fuller tide than now, occasionally surprised the inhabitants of the pleasant-looking villas along its banks. It was decidedly damp, and its gouty owner had sometimes to quit it precipitately for Arlington Street, where, he says, 'after an hour,' he revives, 'like a member of parliament's wife.' His best editor, Mr. Peter Cunningham, whose knowledge as an antiquary was unrivalled,—for was he not the author of the Handbook of London?—has amused himself, in an odd corner of one of his prefaces, by retracing the route taken in these townward flights. The extract is so packed with suggestive memories that no excuse is needed for reproducing it (with a few now necessary notes) as the tail-piece of the present chapter.