Strawberry Hill House
The Original Home of the Gothic (The Bus 4.8)
Welcome aboard The Bus!
The Stop
Strawberry Hill House is the Gothic Revival home built by Horace Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford (1717-1797). Located along the River Thames in Twickenham, England, Walpole originally purchased the house as a cottage in 1747 and over several years ‘gradually transformed it into a medieval-style mansion that suggested in its atmosphere the setting of his famous Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1765).’ In designing the house, Walpole worked to create an atmosphere of ‘gloomth’ - his term for the state of dim, obscure or gloomy partial darkness which suited his collection of unusual antiquarian objects. The resulting property became the prototype of the ‘Strawberry Hill Gothic’ style of architecture, prefiguring the Gothic Revival of the 19th century.1
By all accounts, Walpole was quite a character. The son of Sir Robert Walpole, the first British Prime Minister,2 he attended Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. Leaving university without a degree, Walpole and his close friend from his Etonian days, Thomas Gray, embarked on a Grand Tour of France and Italy. A disagreement3 led to the two friends falling out and going their separate ways. Returning to England, Walpole entered parliament as a Whig politician and though he served in this capacity for twenty years, at best his political career was ‘undistinguished.’
A writer, art historian and antiquarian by nature, Walpole's true interests lay in literature and the arts, and he was an ‘assiduous’ letter writer.4 He was a ‘passionate’ collector of books, paintings, and other works of art, and over the years, he slowly rebuilt the Twickenham villa into a ‘pseudo-Gothic showplace,’ adding ‘cloisters, turrets, and battlements, fill[ing] the interior with pictures and curios, and amass[ing] a valuable library.’ He was known for throwing lavish parties for his friends and acquaintances - parts of the house were designed to produce a specific effect on his guests5 - and in his own lifetime opened the house to tourists.6 He even set up a ‘private press’ in the grounds of the house (the first of its kind in the country) which he used to publish his own works and that of his friends, most notably Gray’s Odes (1757).7
In 1764, Walpole anonymously published The Castle of Otranto. The novel - inspired by a nightmare of a ghost and a ‘gigantic hand in armour’ he’d had at Strawberry Hill House - proved enormously popular and its unique combination of fantastic situations with ‘real’ people acting in a ‘natural’ manner sparked a ‘new and distinct style of literary fiction, which has frequently been cited as a template for all subsequent gothic novels.’ The novel had a major effect on Europe’s reading public, and Gray commented to Walpole that it made ‘some of us cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o’nights.’
The novel only increased interest in Strawberry Hill House, and its popularity made it a ‘key contributing factor in the emergence of Gothic Revival architecture that grew throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries.’ Walpole never married, so when he died in 1797, the house passed down through his cousin’s family, eventually ending up in the hands of his great-niece’s grandson, George, the Seventh Earl of Waldegrave, where it ‘nearly met its demise.’ George had been imprisoned for six months following ‘riotous behaviour,’8 and as such was tired of living in Twickenham. He decided to move, so in 1842 he arranged the ‘Great Sale’ of Walpole’s collection - most of which was sold in a single week. The house fell into disrepair until the early 2000s when restoration work began to return the 25 show rooms to their appearance at the time of Walpole’s death. Strawberry Hill House is now once again popular with visitors, though more than four can visit in a day - and children are no longer forbidden.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to ‘The Michelangelo of Microsoft Excel’, a brief documentary (2:28) from Great Big Story about the self-taught Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi. When he retired, Horiuchi wanted to become an artist, but instead of spending money and time on lessons, canvas, paint and brushes, he decided to use Microsoft Excel. The result is the creation of ‘remarkably intricate digital masterpieces of the Japanese landscape, all on the free graphing software.’ Worth a watch - even with the annoying ad at the beginning.
The Michelangelo of Microsoft Excel
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation is Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979). A collection of short fiction, the stories are thematically related in that they are based on fairy tales or folk tales. However, they are not - as is often assumed - a ‘group of traditional fairy tales given a subversive feminist twist. In fact these are new stories, not retellings.’ The book itself - and in particular the titular novella based on the French folktale ‘Bluebeard’ - is a brilliant example of Gothic literature, embodying Carter’s deep interest in creating ‘Gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious.’ I think it’s fantastic, but then I do like my literature dark.9
From the back: From familiar fairy tales and legends - Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves - Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.’
The Bloody Chamber is available from new and used bookstores, on occasion from charity shops if you’re lucky and - of course - you can always check it out from the library.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks with connections to strawberries (though with the exception of the Franz Ferdinand one, I don’t think the fruit ever appears - and even in that case, it’s metaphoric): ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (The Beatles, 1967), ‘Incense and Peppermints’ (The Strawberry Alarm Clock, 1967), ‘Strawberry’ (Everclear, 1995), ‘Fresh Strawberries’ (Franz Ferdinand, 2013) and ‘Strawberry Swing’ (Frank Ocean, 2011). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from Horace Walpole (though I think his proportion for the ones you like is a bit generous):
‘Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
I was fortunate to visit Strawberry Hill House last week on a field trip as part of our Year 8 (7th Grade) ‘Gothic Literature’ unit. Sources for today’s Stop include Strawberry Hill House, Horace Walpole (Britannica), and The Castle of Otranto (British Library).
Robert Walpole (1676-1745) was not only the first, but also the longest-serving Prime Minister. Though there is some scholarly debate about the dates, it is generally considered he held the position from 1721-1742 during the reigns of George I and George II. For more information, see: Sir Robert Walpole (Historic UK).
Essentially, Walpole was more interested in the Tour’s life of endless parties and light-hearted societal diversions, whereas Gray preferred museums, ruins and absorbing the culture. They eventually reconciled their differences, but their friendship would never be as intimate as it had been before the argument.
His published correspondence (over 7,000 letters) fills 48 volumes.
One example is the Trunk Ceiled Passage - an enclosed, windowless arched hallway designed to create the impression that the person walking through it was sealed in a trunk. It works.
He allowed four visitors a day, with tours conducted by his house keeper. He also published rules for his visitors, including a blanket prohibition of children.
Gray, a precursor to the Romantic movement, is considered a master of English lyric poetry and one of the dominant poets of the 18th century - a status he attained despite only publishing 13 poems in his life. He is most famous for ‘An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard’, which can be found here: 'Elegy'. For more about Gray (though he will be a future Stop), see: Thomas Gray (Britannica).
He’d drunkenly assaulted a police officer.
For more about Angela Carter, see The Bus 2.38, ‘Angela Carter’.