Strawberry Hill Forever...

Let me take you down.... 

Let me take you down, 

Cause I'm going to,

Strawberry Hill.....

But first I have to get there, crossing London, walking, touching the void, and....

Nothing is real

At the bottom of Green Park, at the end of the Mall, the statue of Winged Victory on the Victoria Memorial stands solemnly quiet.  There is no traffic.  There are no crowds.  There are police persons, many of them moustachioed, some bearded, some of one gender, others of another.  I have to weave my way around tapes and bollards, impatient to get past, and not understanding why today is unlike any other....

A quiet residential corner of London

I ask a policeman if I am going the right way to Vauxhall Bridge. He points down the Mall saying, The river is that way. 

It used to be, when I were brought up, that if you had any doubts at all, you would ask a policeman. 

How times change.....

Big Brother is watching you

Anyway, despite police advice, I do make it to Vauxhall, passing Terry Farrell's 1994 homage to Art Deco (with a few security gizmos) in the MI6/Secret Intelligence Service building [by coincidence Military Intelligence section six can trace its origins back to Sir Francis Walsingham in 1569, and, though this is of no consequence or public interest, I shall be in Walsingham in a day or two..... pardon the aside....]

I note that now, on the other side of the bridge, blocks of flats have arisen to mimic the colours and design of the headquarters of British espionage..... (but probably not quite so bullet proof)

How green are my glasses?

I also notice that even the Thames cannot be trusted, as some kind of security patrol is being carried out below me.

Time and tide wait for no man

Anyway, contrary to what TfL has to say, I get a direct train from Vauxhall to Strawberry Hill, where it seems that:

Living is easy with eyes closed

Misunderstanding all you see

Strawberry Hill House is the original creation of Horace Walpole, the third son [Perhaps? his mother may have known otherwise: Ed] of Sir Robert Walpole, England's first Prime Minister and creator of Houghton Hall, near here in Norfolk (where us locals enjoy a touch of sculpture....)

Anyway, Horace may well have understood the words of Mr Lennon:

It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out

It doesn't matter much to me....

As his story is one of wandering about Europe and then making his mark in Twickenham by building what some might call a folly, but which was a significant part of the mid 18th century Georgian Gothic Revival.

Horatio (Horace) Walpole (1717 - 1797) was the author of The Castle of Otranto, which he wrote in 1764 while MP for King's Lynn (I cannot imagine a member of parliament these days being able to devote time to any secondary employment..... I mean, you need to be at meetings - eg COBRA - or there for debates and voting, etc.....)

The book is generally regarded as being the first Gothic novel, a genre which led to, among others, works by Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson.  It was, apparently, inspired by a nightmare Walpole (under the ingenious pseudonym of Onuphrio Muralto - Muralto meaning Tall Wall) experienced whilst at Strawberry Hill House.

Walpole - a pole is approximately five metres long, so Tall Wall.... - [You said this, sort of: Ed] was a great collector, as well as an aesthete, a writer and a socialite. He stuffed his Gothic Castle with art and artefacts and beautified the walls and windows, delighting in that which was enjoyable without conspicuous practical use [Interesting to compare this building with Houghton Hall? Ed].

He held lavish parties here, with music and dancing [Strictly Dancing?  Ed] in the Great Hall:

With a neat, circular, withdrawing room leading off it, for retiring to..... without issue......

But he didn't marry, and died childless, so the house went first to his cousin, but then into the Waldegrave family, which included two brothers, John and George, who squandered much on drunken gambling and sold off nigh all the collection, though after George's death, his widow, Frances, took it upon herself to restore the house from the wreck her man had brung it to (sic).  It later passed to a banker, and then, in 1923, it was acquired by what became St Mary's University, Twickenham.

In recent years, it has been studiously restored and some of the missing art works, from different owners, have been exhibited here, including this portrait, below, of the Waldegrave sisters, by Joshua Reynolds, [And, Ed, there is no need for any of your facetious comments here.  Yes there are three sisters - Chekhov?  I don't think so.  Four chairs?  So?  Pictures of five women.... and only four chairs?  For God's sake, Ed, let them be.....]

So, anyway.....

Let me take you down

'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Hill

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about

Strawberry Hill forever

John Lennon wasn't much like Horace Walpole, I'm sure, but they may both have been dreamers, and sometimes there's something refreshing in uncertainty.....

Always know sometimes think it's me

But you know I know when it's a dream

I think a no will mean a yes, but it's all wrong

That is I think I disagree.....

For me, Strawberry Hill House is, in some ways, a memorial to the imagination.  It is a symbol, if you like, of the ability of an individual being to assert that individuality.  I don't excuse the excess of richesse that enables this, or any other such extravagance, but I also don't wish to suggest restriction on our desire to dream. Dreams can be elusive; hope and delusion can interweave, but shying away from dreaming is to give in to those who claim more confidence than we can muster at a certain moment. 

As Horace Walpole said:

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel....

Pero.....

Finché c’è vita c’è speranza

Cicero

No one I think is in my tree

I mean it must be high or low

That is you can't, you know tune in but it's all right

That is I think it's not too bad

John Lennon

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