Strawberry Hill forever

Lucy Inglis takes you down to the V&A’s beautiful clutter of Horace Walpole’s collection

‘It will look, I fear, a little like arrogance in a private man to give a description of his villa and collection,’ wrote Horace Walpole (1717-97) in the preface of his account of his collection, Strawberry Hill. The youngest son of Britain’s first prime minister was raised as his mother’s darling in Arlington Street: spoilt, delicate and possessed of a tongue and pen at once both blunt and cutting. He acquired the lease of Strawberry Hill from Huguenot widow and famous toy-shop owner Mrs Chenevix, and declared, ‘It is a little plaything that I got out of Mrs Chevenix’s shop and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw.’   A good income from various political golden handshakes allowed him to buy the freehold of the property the following year and set about creating his little Gothic castle.

Walpole was conscious that he would never marry, stating in his original catalogue of Strawberry Hill’s contents that he had chosen to exhibit his home not out of ‘self-love’, but ‘the following account of pictures and rarities is given with a view to their future dispersion’.  But the denial of self-love rings hollow, as there is a great deal of vanity in Strawberry Hill; only a man so obsessed with his own vision could have created such a confection, a ‘paper-house’ designed to amuse Walpole during his lifetime.  He collected with a haste compounded by the sense of his own fleeting mortality.  

The dispersal of Walpole’s collection finally came about due to financial pressures on those who inherited his legacy, and in 1842 an auction lasting 32 days ended the fairytale that was Strawberry Hill.  Such was his fame that people flocked on steamers to view the sale.  This was largely due to the lasting fame of his novel, The Castle of Otranto, quite possibly the poorest example of the Gothick canon with its floating fists and plumed helmets.  Buyers snapped up everything from gold to pine boxes, japanning to gesso and of the huge collection only the whereabout of 300 items are known (mainly in  The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale). Many have been rounded up for this exhibition on Strawberry Hill which has just opened at the Victorian and Albert Museum in London.

With no one but himself to please, Walpole was an indiscriminate collector.  The exhibition shows clearly the emphasis he put on his friendships with gentleman-artists such as John Chute, Johann Muntz and Richard Bentley, but also amateurs like the talented Lady Diana Spencer.  Prints of the interior show that the graceful cohesion he applied to the house was not a criteria for the objects within: from works by artists such as Hilliard and Lely, to ‘Two Old Men, an Italian sketch,’ and ‘A greyhound, in bronze, to keep down papers’, the house was simply crammed with stuff. 

Surprisingly, the early part of the exhibition is given to a bank of portraits remarkable only for their uniformly poor quality, including the famous painting by Reynolds of Horace.  The eclecticism of the rest of the collection is at once a revelation in the rich abundance of fabulous works available to 18th century collectors, and a pointed exercise in the old lesson ‘money does not buy taste’.

A red theme runs through the exhibition: from damask bordering the portraits, to Cardinal Wolsey’s hat, from the disastrous modern upholstery on the Vile & Cobb settee, to Walpole’s own explanations of the items in red ink beside the museum’s black.  A nice touch.  Curator Michael Snodin describes Walpole as a modern and inspirational collector, driven not by taste or fashion, but by his own imagination.  Away from Strawberry Hill, these items are beautiful and in some cases priceless clutter, but this exhibition does much to recreate the myth, and is essential viewing for any lover of 18th century interiors.

Lucy Inglis is a historian. She runs www.georgianlondon.com
Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill is at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London SW7 (020 7942 2000), until 4 July. www.vam.ac.uk