We are to visit Houghton Hall in the fairly near future to see some of the pictures which Prime Minister Walpole's profligate son had to sell to Catherine the Great to cover his gambling debts. An exhibition in the wilds of Norfolk and which appears to be more or less sold out (see http://www.houghtonrevisited.com/). Are all the Shearings' coaches within a hundred miles beating a path to the door? Will the exhibition be packed with people much older than me, fitting the exhibition in between comfort breaks?
But for some reason, last night I had a mild anxiety dream about our forthcoming visit. There was no doubt that it was Houghton Hall that I was visiting in spirit, although the location had been changed to somewhere near Gower Street - perhaps reflecting my current predilection for cycling around central London - and the building had been changed to a very large but entirely imagined part of the University of London. At least it was not a building that I remember visiting in dreamtime before and I do not recognise any features on waking up. I was also my myself, which is not the plan at all.
Start off badly, arriving rather later than I intended. The trusty at the door makes me and a couple of other people wait, but then goes off somewhere leaving the door open. We nip in to find ourselves in a tatty & narrow corridor, painted in pink. Go down the corridor expecting to find myself in the exhibition and it all seems wrong. The right sort of space but the wrong sort of contents. I start to get worried that the exhibition will close for the night before I have found it.
Bustle about and the scene shifts to the roof. I need to climb up a short tubular steel ladder to the ridge from where I can get back into the building. I have some difficulty with the ladder, the steps being in the wrong places for me, and have to apologise to the two boys coming up behind me. The ladder pulls away from its fixings but I manage to get onto the ridge. Back down into the building where I find myself in some administrative part of the university. Lots of smart young women busy at something. [Editor's note: you used to get smart young women working behind the university scenes in my day. I wonder if you still do?] Work my through them without anything of interest happening and find myself in the student bar, a large darkish space, the walls of which are decorated with murals. Paintings, but the wrong ones and not very good ones. Busy with young people - too young for me to feel much connection with them - but not crowded.
Two young men standing next to rather than on a small stage doing a rather odd rendering of Peter Sarstedt's hit from 1969. [Editor's note: I remembered the tune alright but it took a few minutes with Wikipedia this morning to recover his name.]
Scene shifts again and I find myself outside in the dark in a courtyard. I can see lots of large rooms in the building rising up around me but none of them look like the exhibition. And I am pretty sure that by now the exhibition has closed, even to the valued holders of timed tickets.
Eventually I find that one side of the courtyard is large windows onto a very large & ornate room, somewhere between the Festival Hall and the Albert Hall in size, but a banqueting hall rather than a concert hall. Rather unimpressive; I had thought a 17th century oligarch would have done rather better for himself. Perhaps a mock-up done on the cheap. But, at last, I have found the pictures I have come to see - the only remaining problem being that I cannot get very close to them. No door in sight and the place is being got ready for a banquet. Experience a banquet like Walpole would have laid on for his friends and relations at £75 a head plus postage and packing. Lots of tables and soft lights. Some customers already taking their seats. Some young musicians done up as page boys practising something medieval at the dais at the right. Pictures not very impressive at all.
Head for a Northern Line tube station, in the dark and in the rain.
Wake up.
Must try to read Plumb on Walpole again before we go. The product, I think, of the Oxfam shop in Kingston.
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