Sir Robert Walpole by J. H. Plumb, late of the Elizabeth Gaskell Library, Manchester Polytechnic Library and Elephant & Castle (see 6th March 2007 in the other place). Substantial and readable tome in 2 volumes. The first mentioned place presumably unloading it as it now caters for Health Care Studies, Psychology, Speech Pathology and Physiotherapy rather than History, particularly of this rather old fashioned variety. As far as I can see there is no mention whatsoever of the working & living conditions of the staff in service at Walpole's houses, never mind those of his many tenants, in any of its 700 or so pages.
Houghton Revisited, ex Waterstones King's Lynn. Fat picture book, more or less the same sort of book as one would get from a special art exhibition in London.
Bob of Lynn, written and published by Chris Boxall, ex Houghton Hall, Houghton. An author who is tactful enough to place the plum at the head of his list of further reading.
Britain's Lost Treasures Returned, talking beard on BBC4, tomorrow. Unfortunately clashing with a favourite episode of Marple. Not yet clear whether I will make it.
The whole venture has been triggered by an advertisement somewhere for the temporary reinstatement of a large chunk of Walpole's art collection in Houghton Hall, much of it having started life in No. 10 and presently in the care of the Hermitage. A reinstatement which has been very shrewdly puffed, comes with timed tickets just like any other proper exhibition and is more or less sold out for its six months run, despite being located in the wilds of north west Norfolk, maybe three hours away by train and taxi from Central London. And which in our case was the trigger for our second visit to north Norfolk in as many years.
We were promised masterpieces from Rubens, Velasquez (not the one featured at http://www.mmamania.com/), Murillo, Rembrandt and Frans Hals, and there was indeed at least one painting from each. There were also a lot more paintings from other painters, mainly of the 17th century, of mixed quality. A lot of rather good Knellers. We were told that of the 200 or so paintings sold by Walpole's dissolute son George to Catherine the Great, some 70 have been loaned back to make up the present exhibition, but the book of the exhibition is a bit coy about which 70. At least I have not found any discussion of the matter, so I wonder whether there are a lot more masterpieces among the 130 left out than the 70 pulled in? Or was it that even as avid & rich a collector as Walpole was not going to get many masterpieces of the front rank, many of them still being in their founding churches?
But that is to carp. It was fascinating to see the pictures hung as they would have been in the glory days of Houghton Hall. Crammed in all over the place, as was the custom of the time, rather than tastefully & spaciously hung with natural overhead lighting, as in the better London galleries. Very few labels, presumably also the custom of the time, apart from one bilingual label on a Maratta. See the discussion of 25th April on this point.The trustees were pleasant and well briefed. The place was quite crowded, but not unpleasantly so; the system of timed tickets worked. They were not too strict about the one way system which was nice.
For the first time I saw the point of tapestries, some of those at Houghton being in unusually good condition. Hitherto they have been so threadbare and lacklustre that I could not see why one would chose to decorate one's rooms with them - but now I can.
Unlike in Plumb, the servants were visible, at least in their invisibility (Palladio did not care for servants to be seen in his houses). So we had a servants' access well intruded discretely between two of the state bedrooms, thus reducing the chance of meeting a mere servant in one of the real corridors. And there were similarly discreet arrangements for the delivery of food to the dining room.
All fed by a fake Greek temple for a water tower, rather short and stumpy. Not a patch on our Epsom Hospital water towers which are much taller, gothic and brick.
Excellent gardens. Started off with the walled garden to the south of the hall itself (down below the A in the illustration taken from Google Maps), a walled garden which included a very striking tower of flame and water, one of the modern sculptures (or perhaps performances) dotted about. Lots of impressive pleached limes, some of which reminded me of those at NIAB (http://www.niab.com/) which I used to pass on the way to school every day. Lots of impressive mature and not so mature trees, noticing that mature pines were fenced against deer while mature broad leaves were not. Perhaps the deer like pine bark better. I really liked the 'Skyspace' sculpture, visible as the small white square with a hole to the north east of the A. Part of its setting were rotundly sculpted box hedges on either side of the approach path - wonderful things. Some of the other sculptures did not work so well, but a terrific effort: the best outdoor sculpture in the best settings that I have seen, putting Hyde Park to shame. Maybe they could borrow a few Moore's; it would be a jolly good place for them.
Thinking of money, I wondered how they managed at Houghton Hall. Nearer home, we have Polesden Lacey brought up to scratch by the proceeds of selling McEwan's Heavy. Royal Holloway College was built by those of selling patent medicines. And I read in Plumb that Guy's Hospital was built by one of the winner's in the affair of the South Sea Bubble. But all is revealed by Boxall: Houghton Hall, having been rather quiet and neglected through most of the 19th century, was brought back to its original & present splendour in the 20th century with the injection of a Rothschild heiress into the line. Nice clean money, made out of money, rather than the stuff made from trade.
PS: one of our fellow visitors was an electrician and he was much more interested in how such a place would be wired up than in the pictures. He was unlucky, as the previous Sunday the electrician who had done all the restoration work in the 70’s had brought his grandchildren for a visit and he could have taken my chap into conference.
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