Anecdotal Architecture

Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill

Rypke Sierksma

Published in The Architecture Annual 2000-2001

TUDelft

It will look, I fear, a little like arrogance in a

private Man to give a printed Description of his
Ville and Collection, in which almost everything is
diminutive. It is not, however, intended for public
sale, and originally was meant only to assist
those who should visit the place.1

Walpole, 1974

1 A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole Earl of Orford at

Strawberry Hill near Twickenham, Middlesex with an inventory etcetera, MDCC/LXXXIV, new edition: 1964.

1
Horace Walpole - author of Anecdotes of Painting in England as
well as a letter-writing enthusiast, if there ever was one.2 The
emphasis on the small dimensions in the first sentence of the
Anecdotes – my motto - is to the point. Twice he makes a pun
on this subject, one on his entire house, one on the staircase,
both as he claims small enough "to send by letter". A true 'Goth'
- of this he was certain - will observe that the rooms are the
product of Walpole's imagination rather than of mere imitation.
In the 1755 interview with his prospective engraver Müntz,
he did not only ask if he had the skills to work with perspective,
but if he was also able to depict 'holy horror'. In this study of
Strawberry Hill, converted by the bricoleur Walpole from what
had been a villa into something like a castle, imagination is the
keyword. He did certainly not want to expatiate on the
justification for his modest house built as a whim, as he put it.
He built it merely to amuse himself and to make dreams come
true, to a point.
Originally a member of the landed gentry, he did not intend
to Gothicize his house to the extent of making it

2Anecdotes of Painting in England with some account of the principal artists; and incidental notes on other arts.
Also, a Catalogue of engravers who have been born or resided in England. Collected by the late George Vertue;
digested and published from his original Mss. by Horace Walpole, (new edition with 'additions' by Dallaway and
new notes by Wornum, in three parts 1862; original edition 1762 and 1780).

2
uncomfortable.3 On one of Müntz' engravings, he is depicted in
his mock-Gothic book preserve. In a comfortable, and by the
way non-Gothic chair, his spirit in the past or in a future, the
buttocks in an unequivocally comfortable present.

In the anonymous first edition of his horror story The Castle of

Otranto (1764), Walpole wrote in a fictitious preface that "the
scene is undoubtedly laid in some real castle. Without design,
the author seems frequently to describe particular parts".4 This
castle, of course, is Strawberry Hill, and its construction was at

3 For the quotations: Clark, The Gothic Revival, 1950, revised/enlarged ed., original from 1928, 81; Fothergill,

The Strawberry Hill Set, 1983, 15.

4 Otranto, in: Three Gothic Novels, 1968, 42

3
that moment making good progress. He wrote to his friend and
assistant Chute, that in his library he would spend his mornings
in the thirteenth century; his evenings and nights, though, in the
century to come. In the morning he would be in the company of
heavy volumes stuffed with engravings, at night he was working
on his endless correspondence.

Gothic Growth
Walpole's Description of his Villa was intended to serve as a
guide for visitors. Its main subjects are the works of art in his
possession and masterpieces of Gothic architecture, derived
from examples in cathedrals and chapel tombs. It shows how
they can be applied to mantelpieces, ceilings, windows,
banisters and loggias. Walpole's fondness for English Gothic
originated in Italy, where he realized that Roman architecture
was unsuitable for the English situation. His knowledge of
archaeological details developed during the long-term
Gothicization of his house.
The first phase of the reconstruction of the villa comprised
doors, windows, mantelpieces, a hall, the staircase, an armoury

4
and a library.5 Between 1750 and 1753 the Holbein chamber
was created; in 1760-61 the round tower; from 1763 a chapel, a
study and the large cloister; in 1770 the large northern
bedroom, with the Beauclerc tower in 1776 as a provisional
completion. In 1761-62 Chute's design for the Long Gallery was
implemented, the largest room in the castle. Eventually in 1771,
a Gothic chapel was built in the garden.6

5 A Description, 2; Middleton/Watkin, Neoclassical and 19th century architecture, 1980, 316.

6On other additions to the villa, see: Miller, Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole und die Ästhetik der schönen
Unregelmässigkeit, 1986, 354,347.

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The floor plans show this would-be organicity, as it were an
imitation of the evolution of Gothic cathedrals, as they gradually
developed under various master builders into their present
form.
Why neo-Gothic? At the beginning of Walpole s eighteenth
century, an unfavourable disposition towards Gothic was
fashionable. In 1712 Addison considered the multiplication of
ornaments to be the cause of narrow-mindedness.7 Like
Shaftesbury, he thought that architecture must have Palladian
regularity.8 Burke, Walpole's contemporary, felt that variation
and angularity were unsuitable for buildings of grandeur. Hume
shared this anti-Gothic feeling.9 Hence at mid-century, Gothic
architecture did not enjoy great sympathy. Around 1775
however, this type of architecture gradually became regarded
as 'picturesque'. Some decades later, by the time Strawberry Hill
was completed, Alison described the Gothic architectural style
as 'sublime'.10

7 Monk, The sublime, 1935, 58, 66f; Beardsley, Aesthetics, from classical Greece to the present, 1966, 184.

8 Pevsner, An outline of European architecture, 1963 ed., 346f.

9Burke, A philosophical enquiry into the origins of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, 1775, part II, viii;
Hume, quoted in: Barzun, Classic, romantic, modern, 1975 ed., 60.

10 Clark, o.c., 90; Monk, o.c., 152.

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In this change of taste, Walpole as an influence assumed a
special position. Although neo-Gothic had existed prior to 1750,
the Gothic whims of Kent, Wren and Jones were much closer to
Baroque. Walpole, on the contrary, was especially interested in
faithful copies, even if their miniaturization and the collage of
various pieces in the same space sprang from his imagination. In
the history of taste, Clark rightly asserts, uncultivated and
uncritical enthusiasm tends to precede true understanding of an
as yet unknown style.11 Although the first phase of Strawberry
Hill had all the looks of it, Walpole was not looking for travesty.
Why not call it Gothic Rococo!
However, it is the archaeological passion that makes his
enterprise so special. In Anecdotes he fiercely lashes out at
Battey Langley, who did not like authentic copies. "All that his
books achieved, has been to teach carpenters to massacre that
venerable species", his time-honoured Gothic, "and to give
occasion to those who know nothing of the matter, and who
mistake his clumsy efforts for real imitations, to censure the
productions of our ancestors."12

11 Clark, o.c., 23f, 66n, 73f.

12 Anecdotes, 770, with Walpole s critique of, amongst others, Battey Langley's book Gothic architecture

improved by rules and proportions in many grand designs, 1742. The suggestion, as if Battey Langley wanted to
gi e ules to Gothi is i o e t; he as t i g to dis o e those ules, as the de eloped in the Middle Ages.

7
Walpole's passion was not merely archaeological or stylistic, as
will be shown. What makes Strawberry Hill unique in
comparison with other Gothic houses from the second half of
the eighteenth century, is his search for atmosphere. The
architect Wyatt, whom Walpole valued as the creator of Lee
Priory and the colossal Fonthill Abbey, considered Gothic as just
one style amongst many, subject to the preference of the
contracting party. Walpole, by contrast, was a 'strict Goth'.13
Only Gothic was able to achieve what he had in mind. With its
mechanics, its arches, tombs and stain glass windows, with its
'horror' and perspectives, it provides us with a wealth of varied
impressions. We get an intense feeling of devotion.
Appreciation of Greek beauty requires good taste; Gothic
requires passion.
Walpole has explicitly denied that he was looking for
religious effects. His preference for the gloomy and for
effectively applied darkness in the bleak, rough and rocky
landscapes of Salvator Rosa was clear. According to him, the
serene sunshine of Claude Lorraine had nothing to do with

13Clark, o.c., 107f; Middleton/Watkin, o.c., 317; Miller, Space and imagination of the observer, in Daidalos, 93;
Middleton and Watkin, o.c., 316 are wrong, when they claim that the Gothic in Strawberry Hill was 'merely a
matter of taste . W att as particularly known for his Neogothic contribution, from 1797 on, to the enormous
Fonthill Abbey done for Beckford.

8
pleasure, all the more with its intense impact.14 He wanted
intensity of effect, certainly not any intrinsic associations of a
religious kind. Walpole's own cabinet was laid out as a chapel;
thus, an almost blaspheme metamorphosis of the sacred into
the profane.

His castle was meant to relax him in his exertion, to inspire him
while writing Otranto or his other work of 'horror', The
Mysterious Mother, filled with incest and family murders.
Religion therefore had no part to play. As far back as 1762, he
praised England because "at this time, there is so total an
extinction of party animosity, both in religion and politics".

14 Anecdotes, 117f, 119, 120n, xiii. Clark, o.c. 83. In Otranto, , Walpole e uses' hi self fo supe stitio a s
his stress on the 'supernatural'.

9
Anybody could think and say whatever pleased him. Somewhat
an aesthetic provocateur, Walpole was "persuaded that what
we call Gothic architecture, was [in its time] confined solely to
religious buildings, and never entered into the decoration of
private houses".15 He was the first person in history who did
exactly this: an outright attack on the 'good taste' of his own
noble and ultra-conventional milieu. Knowing his lifelong fear of
being ridiculed, this is all the more striking.16

Invention
The growth of Strawberry Hill is marked by a caesura. Although
the illusion of organic growth has been persistently suggested,
Walpole's attitude towards Gothic changed during these
decades. Up to 1765, he played a game with miniaturization and
scale; subsequently the villa becomes more of a monument to
pleasing irregularity. The relatively random anti-aesthetics of
the early Committee of Taste, consisting of Walpole and his
friends Bentley and Chute, was now supplemented with plans

15 Anecdotes, ; Dalla a is su p ised at Walpole s feig ed la k of k o ledge o e i g the O fo d

colleges. However, these are no religious buildings, even if they are surely public – which is the essence of his
critique.

16 Fothergill, for a quote, o.c., 20.

10
for entire interiors in accordance with a single design concept,
this time drawn by professional architects like Adams, Essex and
Wyatt.

Ada s’ a telpiece

In the beginning, Walpole was taken by "charming venerable

Gothic", while he especially valued "the whimsical air of
novelty" which Gothic motifs give to contemporary buildings.17
Later, however, he described Gothic as "that false, yet
venerable style, with its airy embroidery and pensile vaults",
which only Holbein had been able to make sober according to
classical measures. The input those by professionals had
something to do with this new qualification.
As, at a later stage, the Gothic style for private houses
became bon ton, the more exclusive, earliest architectural

17 See quotes in: Pevsner, o.c., 358.

11
phase of Strawberry Hill is the most interesting. After all, while
at the start it was a real invention, its neo-Gothic interior
became less and less unique. Ancient examples were also used
in the later phases and played with. Much of Adams' designs was
also a contribution to a private house, the reason why many of
his copies were miniaturised.

When full-scale, like the copy of the originally vertical rosette of

the old St Paul's, its function changed, because it has been
projected on the ceiling of a relatively small room.18 The collage
technique was also used later on. These, then, were Walpole's

18Miller, Strawberry Hill, o.c., 337. However, Adams' app oa h is ot stricter Gothi that the o e of The
Committee; though, it can be said to more aus einem Guss, not more Gothic. Mediaeval Gothic always has a
symbolical program, by which the believer who walks through the church is moving through history. Walpole's
building is more a pot-pourrie.

12
inventions, which have less to do with the design's professional
quality, all the more with his ideas nourishing the design.

Material Deceit
"My writings, like my buildings, are of paper", Walpole wrote in
1761. Perhaps he was referring to the copied engravings of
buildings in the weighty tomes in his library. However, the
remark is also ironic, this in view of the use of materials in
Strawberry Hill. At the age of fifty, he had already worn out
three sets of crenulations. The plasterwork used for this was
intended to suggest solid stone, then considered typically
middle-class; however, in Strawberry Hill it would collapse time
and again.19 Especially inside the house, he liked imitation
materials; after all, he was building for himself and his friends,
not for posterity. He even praised the accursed Battey Langley
for his invention of artificial stone.20
In a letter of 1753 to Horace Mann he calls his staircase the
most charming part of the castle, with its most unique
properties. The walls were covered in wallpaper, painted in

19 Fothergill, o.c., 19, 56; Middleton/Watkin, o.c., 316f.

20 Anecdotes, 770.

13
perspective to look like genuine tracery. The small hall was
wallpapered with stone-coloured paper.

This is where Jackson's Venetian engravings were hung, which

he had disliked at first, as they had were given the pretext of
having been made after Titian . However, once he had found an
opportunity to suddenly ascribe the airs of a barbarian bas-relief
to these very same engravings, he suddenly considered them
wonderful. At first sight, nobody could escape the impression
that they represented the history of Attila or Tottila and
originated from that time.21 To look like stone tracery, the
arches were made of plaster lime and painted wood.
Conversely, the wallpaper in the dining hall was an imitation of

21 Miller, 'Space and imagination', 87f.

14
plasterwork. The facade of the garden chapel was made of
genuine fine Portland limestone, the building at the back,
however, was of brick.22
Walpole perhaps had no idea of authentic Gothic
construction; he certainly did not use the mediaeval techniques.
The above-mentioned materials tended to make his copies
unrecognizable, so in fact feudal craftsmanship became
redundant. The use of artificial stone also meant that he could
order the details wholesale.23 These fakes are striking, because
on the whole, as an art historian and a connoisseur he attached
great value to authenticity and traditional method, as witness
his own description of his collection.

Amusement
Hume, who was a contemporary philosopher and an
acquaintance of Walpole, has analysed our 'soul'. According to
his investigation, man has no fixed identity and is continuously
running the risk of disappearing into momentary, unrelated

22A Description, 3, 81; Quennell, L'Angleterre romantique, 15. Only after 15000 did the use of wall-paper enter
Europe by way of China; it was obviously a-Gothic. Winkler Prins, 7e impr. Vol. 3, 389.

23 Fothergill, o.c., 61; Clark, o.c., 79, 85f.

15
sensory impressions. Only habits provide us with some kind of
stability and with the illusion of an identity; only the experience
of resistance retains our strength and enables the soul to
elevate itself.24 Without it, that soul does not really exist. We
tend to be overtaken by ennui, only to be combated by
excursions into sublime nature, or by stimulating our passions
and amusing ourselves.25 An ideology of noblemen, then, who
at the time felt that a feminized, domestic and middle-class life
was boring, and who reacted against its ascendancy.26 And yet,
the eighteenth-century English gentleman was not alienated
from society's rules, which for all social layers were still self-
evident.
The reasonable individual, operating on markets of both
money and power, was yet a physical reality; fantasy, on the

24 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739/40), book I, part IV, section vi. Burke, 135f, for an identical
concept of 'exercise' and 'overcoming difficulties' as an antithesis of melancholy and ennui: 'exercise of the
finer organs is a mode of terror'. In Hu e s aestheti s, universal hu a atu e is used as an argument for the
existence of a universally valid 'standard of taste', even though at the same time it was often held that 'beauty
is in the eye of the beholder'. It is, once again, an example of the 18thcentury notion that society, considered as
a constellation of historical incidents and situations, is interfering with the workings of that universal human
nature. Compare Hume, Of the standard of taste, in: Essays and treatises on several subjects, volume One, part
One, 250f, 256. Also: Poenicke, o.c., 76. Even concerning the happenings inside our body, Burke thinks in terms
of subject and object! Completely different: Payne Knight; beginning of the 19th century, he blamed these 18th-
e tu p opo e ts of the otio of the pi tu es ue – at that time akin to the notion of the sublime – that
the e e seeki g diffe e es espe iall i e te io o je ts, hi h afte all o l e ist i the a e s a d
habits used to observe the . Quoted in Dallaway, Anecdotes, 833.

25 Starobinski, L'Invention de la liberté, 1964, 10

26 Praz, Introductory essay, o.c., 9; Luhmann, Liebe als Passion, 1982, 165ff.

16
other hand, though precious, was still only imaginary.27
Eighteenth-century people's fantasies were private, their
expression however was public and theatrical. They used to be
'sentimental', full of passionate feelings, however without any
social implications. In France, in novels by Prevost and
Rousseau, protagonists would cry their hearts out, just as in
imitation the normal people, their readers would do, for these
authors set an example, writing the script for the everyday life
stage.28
In England, though, it was little different. Boswell, who in
1765 had visited Rousseau, wrote a letter to Voltaire that is
rather informative. "What I gave you was natural. It was neither
spice nor perfume. It was fresh from the dairy. It was curds and
cream".29 In a letter to Madame Denis he wrote: "I had assumed
the characters of others whom I admired, but I found them by
much too heavy for me, [] unable to move with freedom". Thus,
he chose not to play their role any longer, but "to speak with
that honest frankness with which I declare my sentiments on

27Burke, o.c., 43f; and Hume, quoted in Hayek: Legal and political philosophy of David Hume, in: Hume, ed.
Chappell, 1968, 346.

28Prévost, Histoire de Manon Lescaut (1730, bibliothèque Lattés 1990). Page after page, people are crying –
even men, face to face.

29 J. Boswell, in: On the Grand Tour. Germany and Switzerland (1764, edition 1953, ed. F.A. Pottle), p.319.

17
great and on small occasions."30 Pe haps, speaki g of s all
o asio s s eak Bos ell had his judging the quality of a simple
tart and her payment in mind; he kept a special secret little diary
to not these sins, which in his official diary he abhors. Note
especially the paradoxical quality of this particularly British
sentimentalism: the affectation of naturalness which also
characterized Walpole's enterprise and behaviour.
The eighteenth-century sense of one's own individual
superficiality was pregnant. Read Casanova about himself as "un
capitaine de la circonstance, du hasard et de l'habitude à saisir
promptement les rapports et les oppositions des hommes et des
choses".31 Walpole's attention to a miniature on which is to be
seen the image of his very old friend, Madame de Sévigné, is
also salient. In his arid Description he suddenly quotes her letter.

Je connois votre folle passion pour moi. [] Ne vous plaignez point que
ce ne soit qu'en peinture; c'est la seule existence qui puissent avoir le
ombres. J'ai été maitresse de choisir l’âge ou je voulois reparoitre;
j'ai pris celuy de vingt cinque ans pour m'assurer d'être toujours pour
Vous un objet agréable. Ne craignez aucun changement; c'est le
singulier avantage des ombres; quoique legères, elles sont

30Letter to Mme Denis, 1764, in Ibidem, p.283. Sentimentalism realized on a grand scale. Following Socrates'
dictum "Speak, so that I can see you", p.43 plus footnote 1.

31 Sollers, Casanova l'admirable (1998), 221/2. A captain of chance and vicissitudes, of the habit to promptly

grasp the relations and oppositions between men and things.

18
 immuables. J'ai pris la plus petite figure qu'il m'a été possible pour
n'être jamais séparée de Vous.32

This will to exist, I think, has driven Walpole to his amusing

architectural escapades and to the conversion of Strawberry Hill
into a 'monument' castle.
However, such frivolity only existed in his private life, not in
the fulfilment of public office. With Chambers and Laugier at the
back of his mind, he wrote ironically about the ancient hut
whose inventor discovered "architecture, that stupendous
science" (1762). If only its maker had been sensible enough to
document that primal building in "a faithful genealogy of all its
descendants". Then, having made his priceless discovery, he
sighed with relief: "Such a curiosity would destroy much greater
treasures, it would annihilate all fables, researches, conjectures,
hypotheses, disputes, blunders, and dissertations - that library
of human impertinence".33 This is his epitaph for Strawberry, an
homage to Understatement, which must have originated in that
same eighteenth century! Self-mockery was an intrinsic aspect

32Description, 65f. "I k o of ou foolish passio fo e […] Do ot o plai that is o l a pai ti g; afte all,
that is the only existence of shadows. I was the mistress over my choice of the age in which I want to appear
for you; I chose twenty-five years, to be sure that I will remain an agreeable object to You for ever. Don't fear
for any change; that is the singular advantage of shadows; however light they are, they are immutable. I have
chosen for the smallest size, in order never to be separated from You".

33 Anecdotes, 114f.

19
of all this, that awareness of one's own transience and
limitations. Walpole noted that the Anecdotes only rework the
work of others, that his analysis of art merely represents his own
opinion. He does not wish to be an 'arbiter of taste'.34
My comments on the amusement value of Strawberry Hill
should be read in this context. Understatement as such is
ambiguous, directed against self-importance; however, it also
refers to something treasured, something really touching the
speaker, that is: something significant to him – not necessarily
significant in itself.
Being aware of the transience of the moment gave all this
amusement something compulsive. You simply had to have
fun. Walpole's plea for 'human impertinence' justifies his
architectural Spielerei. Nature is not perfect; therefore, God
shall not condemn anything that is not in accordance with
nature. Walpole considered everything private to be
amusement, for the reason that if he were to take a thing
seriously, according to his own code he would have to despise it
(1766). It was for a good reason that he called his stories and his
castle "trifles".35

34 Idem, ix/x, xii, 119n.

35 Anecdotes, xiii; also, the quotes in Fothergill, o.c., 27, 30, 43; Miller, Strawberry Hill, o.c., 328.

20
Just like Hume, he emphasized his belief that our habits are
inevitably capricious. Not only Strawberry's collage architecture
is amusing, so is the colourful collection the villa accommodates.
Walpole simply had to work anecdotes into his very dull
catalogue raisonné. He copies, to given an example, the
complete text which he found "in a cartouche on the frame of a
painting", described as a true horror story, which then of course
reminds him of his own Otranto.36

Stimuli
Walpole did not particularly like French Enlightened society,
which in its turn did not spend all too much time on Walpole and
his neo-Gothicism. By that time, France had turned man into a
machine. Hume and Smith analysed the relationship between
organism and environment in yet more frivolous terms of
stimulus and response. These philosophical terms were soon to
be used in everyday language. Boswell, in his diary, described a
building "which suggested to me a variety of pleasing ideas",
which in turn resulted in an "association of ideas".37

36 A Description, 54.

37Boswell, On the Grand Tour, 302.

21
Walpole's amusement consists of passionate 'sensations',
evoked by a stimulating environment. In 1739 he described his
journey through the French Alps. Amongst these impressive
mountains, he felt himself the lonely master of magnificent,
desolate views. He realized that those who have not seen the
landscape will find his description bombastic, too "romantic".
On the other hand, those who actually have been there, will
automatically think of his every description as too bleak.38
The Anecdotes describe the effect of Gothic in quantitative
terms: "The noblest Grecian temple conveys half so many
impressions to the mind as a cathedral does". 39 According to
Boswell, "sentiments firmly impressed, have much more power
that arguments proved up to the hilt; and it is to sentiments that
I always return".40 Like Walpole, this young Reformed Church
Scottish laird even managed to value the glory of a Roman mass.
The mood of the century, no doubt.
The empiricist will look for external stimulation in
'amusement'. The opening of Otranto determines its whole
atmosphere. "The horror of the spectacle" and "above all, the

38 In: Monk, o.c. 210f, and: Fothergill, o.c., 57.

39 Anecdotes, 117f, 119, 120f.

40 Boswell, o.c. 45.

22
tremendous phenomenon", combined with "ignorance of all
around", dominate each scene. It is all about terrifying
apparitions, understood as "objects that have prepossessed
one's affections". And never is "the reader's attention
relaxed".41 Thus, an amused Walpole was escaping from daily
reasonableness. Privately you were allowed to be 'impertinent'
and might add to an exquisite stained-glass window a
"ridiculous window"; you could write nonsensical fairy tales as
well as serious pieces; you might prefer a Rocaille show-case full
of capriccio stuff, and yet describe its contents in a strait-laced
catalogue raisonné.
Perhaps, then, there is a link between all this picturesque,
miniature Gothic, and the "serendipity principle" which Walpole
himself invented, cherished and christened. While for instance
reading and looking for something in particular in your
encyclopaedia, you surrender to chance, not feeling any qualms
about being distracted by other information than what you
were looking for, which may subsequently become even more
important than this. Thus, more generally, in this perspective
chance impressions guide the subject, a precursor, if you like, of
the “u ealist s objet trouvé and automatic reading.

41 Otranto 53, 119.

23
According to the critic Payne Knight, in his Inquiry into the
Sublime and Beautiful, a book "despised and ridiculed by any
man of learning", Edmund Burke had:

…deduced many strange principles of taste, against which his

feelings often seem to revolt; but those of his followers have been
less scrupulous; as abundantly appears from the works of many
modern painters, poets and romantic writers; which teem with all
sorts of terrific and horrific monsters and hobgoblins.42

This statement also applies to Walpole, and to the first phase of

Strawberry Hill, with its "horrifying" armoury and the "horror"
of its staircase. He wrote about his desire to live backwards, to
have nothing to do with the present. "I am a relic from the
past"43, sentiments intimated in 1766 and 1774 respectively.
However, as we saw, prior to this he already longed for the
"human impertinence" of fantasy and escapades.
His 'monument to pleasing irregularity' served to entertain
the many visitors and himself. In his own eyes, taking himself
seriously would have been going too far. Strawberry was his
own little theatre. When there were guests within the safe
enclosure of his neo-Gothic walls, Walpole would sometimes

42 Payne Knight, An analytical inquiry into the principles of taste (4th impr. 1808), 384.

43Miller, Idem o.c., 59; and: Fothergill, o.c. 33:

24
get oddly excited and play the clown - despite his fear of looking
ridiculous.44 He took Gothic seriously, in its pleasing irregularity
in his eyes the most stimulating and amusing of styles.

Exoticism
Walpole was no obscurantist. A rather cold deist, he chose his
religion for the same reasons as he did his architecture, that is
for reasons of comfort. Atheism, he asserted, is too
uncomfortable, too unnatural and too irrational. You have to be
"credulous not to believe in God". How could such fine creation,
this lustrous heaven, be the result of matter and
happenstance!45 A comfortable religion, however, does not go
as far as to accept papist nonsense. The imagination which
amused the eighteenth-century Brit, did not serve the Walpoles
of this world as a gate to higher mysteries. Unfortunately,
according, to their taste such imagination had been too much
confined in the first half of that century, a time when realism
prevailed in everyday life. Consequently, human impertinence
must now have its chance.

44 Fothergill, o.c., 31.

45 Idem, 27

25
Fantasy did not take the edge off everyday reality, the plain life
instead served as the background against which its banality
could be reconfirmed. "Visions were always my meadows".
Those who exchange reality for a dream, he felt, were
prodigiously wise, roaming in daydreams, in centuries that will
never disappoint as does the reality here and now. The
eighteenth century permitted one to relocate to 'other spaces'
through fantasy. Exoticism and myth provided the dreamer with
an alibi. When the new industry began to affect the English
landscape, Kent and Chambers responded with their landscape
garden, an asylum in which things were preserved and saved,
and exoticism could acclimatize.46 Europe's elite considered
itself the superior centre of the world, with respect to which
everything else was considered to be exotic.47 For Walpole,
though, Engla d s o Gothic roots were exotic too.
Copied Gothic could bring the exotic into his own house,
contrasting with the common sense of those days. He was
interested not in its religious connotations, but in its amusing,
stimulating powers. Dialectically, in the new context of his castle
these miniaturized copies become even 'stranger'. Strawberry

46 Cf. also Starobinski o.c., 195, 188, 55f; and: Clark o.c., 62.

47Barzun, o.c. 91, 53, 68f.

26
Hill, after all, consisted mainly of interior decoration, thus a
sentimentalism which cultivated one's feeling without public
implications. In those days, sobbing became an occupation all
by itself, the sentimentalist' being overactive in his private life.
In his own theatre, Walpole could act the hero in a well-
organized play, provoking himself as well as his guests. He would
reproach his contemporaries for erecting a hermitage in their
public gardens. Is it not almost comical, he asked, to reserve a
quarter of one's garden for melancholy? A house may suffice; it
serves far better to ward off o e s melancholy.48

Privacy
The historic provocation of Strawberry Hill, then, lay in the
private use of Gothic. Walpole considered the predominant
Palladianism of country houses to be un-English. The generally
necessary downscaling of their Italian's models soon assumed
the character of a parody. The aristocratic pretence of upstarts
- merchants who had only just come into the nobility - was the
main reason for their Palladian preference. Walpole was very
much opposed to all this. His contribution to the history of

48 Fothergill o.c., 45.

27
architecture is less the popularizing, than the gentrification or
nobilization of the neo-Gothic style. He gave it standing.49
Recent excavations in Herculaneum, between 1735 and
1759, had revealed private villas that, to the surprise of the
antiquarians, completely lacked the heavy regularity of Roman
public buildings. A light, fantastic architecture came to light,
"with an excellent taste for ornaments, [and] of a very Indian
air".

For Walpole this counted as an argument; the time seemed right

for introducing the playful Gothic into the private realm.
Architecture, he claimed, "has in a manner two sexes; its
masculine dignity can only exert its muscles in public works and
at public expense; its softer beauties come better within the

49 Walpole, On modern gardening (1770), in: Anecdotes, 783ff.

28
compass of private residence and enjoyment."50 In its heyday,
mediaeval Gothic may have been a public style, but Walpole by
contrast, being critical of Burlington's and Adams's private
houses, praised these same men precisely for the classical style
of their public buildings.
This explicit distinction between public and private
buildings did not develop until the eighteenth century and was
initially typically British. Privacy was rooted in its common law,
expressed in the proverb A man's house is his castle. Around
1700 this distinction between private and public spheres was
associated with the equally sharp contrast between fantasy and
reality, which had been present as early as Shakespeare's day.51
This entanglement of fantasy and privacy had to do with the
individualization that followed the penetration of the capitalist
market into feudal society. Intimate, inner life was initially at
odds with the public code: in the seventeenth century, passion
was considered disruptive, self-control was the motto. Now
however, in Walpole's epoch, this very passion was valued as

50Anecdotes, 773, 776, 779, 201, 778, xvii; in 1780 Walpole showed Wyatt Piranesi's powerful Roman etchings,
to fu tio as a tidote fo W att s efi ed o a e tals. See also Norbert Elias: Ueber den Prozess der
Zivilisation, 2 Vol.; pertinent to the analysis of the development of privacy in Western society.

51 Van Dam c.s., 'Inleiding' of Cervantes, Don Quichot (trsl. 1967), 13.

29
the source of creativity; quite suddenly, interest and passion
became linked.
The individual was considered egoistic and social at the
same time. Hume and Smith proceeded from the axioma of an
instinctive sympathy for other persons.52 For the first time in
European history, moral sentiment was at the basis of an
intimate family life. Social life was aestheticized. The idea was,
that people will become equal when they rid themselves of
prejudice and behave 'graciously'. No longer reason, but
imagination was now the bearer of a good society. Burke wrote:
"Manners are more important than laws", stylish behaviour was
thought to produce cohesion.53 The private realm therefore no
longer copied the political order. Politics, as a mainly legal public
realm, was considered a 'failure of the imagination'. True 'civil
society', by contrast, must be rooted in that same faculty.54
Public and private spheres would from then on be both regarded
as 'unreasonable', the difference being that, on an economic
and political level, unreasonable interest would yield a dull, if
organized world. In his niche of private unreasonable fantasy by

52 Bertels, Wisseling van de sociale paradigma's, Vol. 2 (syllabus SIL, Leiden 1985), 35.

53Compare his great essay in humanism: Reflections on the Revolution in France, first published in 1790. Also:
Winkler Prins, Vol. 15, 701; Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests (1977), 42f, 47; idem, Interests, 161;
Luhmann, Liebe, 18, 25ff 38f, 198, 165ff; Olsen, De stad als kunstwerk (1991), 137/9.

54 Eagleton, The ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), 37, 40ff, 51.

30
contrast, the eighteenth-century Brit, now and then, would
playfully distance himself from all this, Walpole being the
master at this game.

Naughty Boys
In Otranto each social layer responds to 'horror' in its own way.
"My rule was nature. However grave, important, or even
melancholy, the sensations of princes and heroes may be, they
do not stamp the same affections on their domestics who do not
or should not express their passions in the same dignified tone".
Domestics are "simple and naïve", the feelings of the nobility,
on the other hand, are "sublime and pathetic."55 Nobility
naturally, or perhaps even by nature, has good taste. In the
writings of Hume, Burke and others at the time, the nobility
together with the upper bourgeoisie was serving as the model
for 'human nature'.56 Although around mid-century many of the
landed gentry lived the life of a capitalist agrarian, they were not
yet completely controlled by profit and were still inclined to

55 Otranto, 44.

56 In Prevost's Manon Lescaut the "common folk are only sensitive to five or six passions in whatever circle
their life is enacted. But people of afar nobler character are moved maybe in a thousand ways". Obviously, this
is related to partially inbred qualities. 'You immediately recognize someone of birth and breeding'. Histoire de
Manon Lescaut, 14, 97/8. In England the 'nobility' plays a role, even though any citizen could change into
'landed gentry' overnight. In France, the chasm between an aristocrat and trade remained; pecunia did
certainly olet.

31
consume luxury luxuriously.57 In those days, as Lytton Strachey
maintains, coarse, sturdy fathers were succeeded by refined
and sentimental sons, if not by naughty boys.
In Great Britain, the fine houses of the squires constituted
hundreds of small, private centres of good taste. Such people
were living a sheltered life. Artists in those days were not yet
rebellious Romanticists; handicraft was highly valued. This is
evident from Walpole's preference for exquisite trinkets which
curiously and flamboyantly contrasted with his love of fake.
Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews, painted around 1750,
makes this clear.

In all their eccentric ugliness, the spouses look straight at us,

surrounded by a country estate freely extending towards the
horizon. As if they are at the centre of an entire world,

57 Eagleton o.c., 31f; cf. also the postscript in Johnson s De Geschiedenis van Rasselas (vert. 1983), 126.

32
unaffected by how they are regarded beyond that horizon – in
London that is.

This is how Walpole might look through the window of his

library across the landscape of the Thames, depicted on Müntz'
engraving, if only he would turn around. As if it were his river.
Strawberry Hill was not a huge country estate like that of the
Andrews; the draughtsman is sure to give a different
impression.
Walpole's enthusiasm for the invention of a fosse around a
property was related to this naturalization of the view. These so-
called Ha-ha's, invented by Kent, had a fence built into the ditch,
lowered so that it could not be seen by walker on the grounds.
33
This system gave people "a surprise at finding a sudden and
unperceived check to their walk", where only a second before
this they must have had the impression of wandering through
ide ope spa es, ei g as it e e th o i to the o ld .58 On
my analysis, the Ha-ha also reinforced that urge to actually own
all the world, if only by way of this landscaped trompe-l'oeil.
Walpole s weighty criticism of the costly "pomp" and the
"sumptuous and selfish solitude" of walled-in Baroque country
estates should be read in this perspective. For Walpole, their
geometric expression was a means of opposing man and nature.
This was not true privacy, Walpole opined, but sheer captivity:
an "impotent display of a false taste."59 Walpole's small villa was
situated in Twickenham, at that time a location popular among
the London nobility. He was not a genuine squire ; his father,
the famous Robert Walpole, passed a few sinecures on to him,
which of course also meant some serious political work for our
Neogoth. However, as a result he had no need to live from an
agricultural enterprise. Strawberry Hill had hardly any land at all,
which only gives additional meaning to the all-embracing view
in Müntz's print.

58 Anecdotes, 800f.

59 Idem, 789.

34
This tension between private fantasy and public interest was
particularly intense for Walpole. He speaks on behalf of his class,
when he writes about "the inundation of luxuries which have
swelled into general necessities", meaning of course a critique
on the spreading of some wealth to the lower classes. The same
applies to his positive comments on free trade. Such criticism he
held to himself, that is: for his notes. His aversion to being a
censor morum or an arbiter elegantiarum refers to the
importance of both social and aesthetic privacy.60
In Paris, on a visit in 1765, Walpole did not feel at home at
all. He wanted to prove, in the English manner, the right to an
individual way of living. He was critical of the philosophes who
always sought publicity; free thought must be kept to oneself.
Although Walpole was a society figure, entertaining and witty in
an English way, he was also distant in the same English way. To
a would-be friend he wrote that it would better to be dead than
to love someone.61
British understatement in both his correspondence and in
his architecture, is the manifestation of the two aspects of
formal publicity and informal fantasy. He pleaded architecture

60 Idem, 789, xii. Censor morum: a judge in moral matters; arbiter elegantiarum: a judge in matters aesthetic

and fashion.

61 Fothergill o.c., 30, 128f, 152.

35
as an anecdote, that is: as a short hitherto unpublished history,
an architecture reticent in every respect of its detailed
extravagance. This paradox marks the Englishman and his
artefacts. It is a permanent feature of Strawberry Hill, even after
professionals left their mark on it. Walpole complained about
the large numbers of uninvited visitors to his 'enchanting
house'. They formed a threat to the outlined caesura between
privacy and public life. One of Jane Austen's novel-characters
wanted to pay a visit, but is refused. Yet, Walpole wrote his
Description as a catalogue for visitors.

Trompe-l'oeil
Walpole's use of fake material was in line with the great theme
of the century: deception. The continuous praise of our
imagination was part of this. Playing games with our appearance
was raised to the second power; representation triumphed over
honesty. Everything had to look like something, it did not need
to appear genuine. It is the very certainty that something is a
sham, which only enhances its effect.62 An aestheticism, then,
of make-believe. The artists were taken to the task of making

62 Starobinski o.c., 64, 66; Vaughan o.c., 101f, 121.

36
such transparent deception interesting. Walpole realized that
the fascination of mere surprise does not last too long.63 At the
same time, between British spouses a culture of open and
honest companionship developed. A paradoxical century,
indeed!

In the Baroque, absolutist order on the continent, masks had

become very popular; index of the countenance of the seducer.
Facades were given the 'illusion of authority'; indoors, 'the
authority of illusion' prevailed. Masking was important, as the
separation between the private and the public aspect of man
had not yet become all that clear.64

63 Anecdotes, 808; and in this context also Dallaway, o.c. 827.

64 Starobinski o.c., 90, 74, 64; compare also Goethe's reaction to Italian masks: Italienische Reise (Insel edition,

1976), 103f, 669ff, 126. Also, Sennett: The Fall of Public Man, 1977

37
But non-absolutist England had its own kind of masks, the house
of Strawberry Hill being one of them. The provocative 'poor
taste' of Walpole's private Gothic filled his friends with feelings
of horror , in the same way that on the continent the greatest
dissembler in matters of love had the 'worst reputation', but
therefore enjoyed the most success as a seducer.65
It seems useful to distinguish between trompe-l'oeil and
illusionism.66 Illusionism aims at delusion. In baroque art for
example, through the use of perspective a opula s surface is
extended into space. The chancel of the Sta. Maria presso S.
Satiro of Bramante (1483) seems much more elongated than it
actually is, this to compensate for lack of space. Such an illusion
is permanent, after all, religious churchgoers never question
their impressions. The purpose was to convey amazement and
emotion, not however deception. The worshipper entered into a
sacred order and desired to be drawn into that state.
Eighteenth-century trompe-l'oeil, on the other hand, does
deceive; its deception is obvious, even though it presents itself

65 Luhmann o.c., 131.

66 By contrast, De Winkler Prins Enc., Vol. 18, 626, describes trompe-l'oeil as illusionism. Wrongly so, that is if

my hypothesis here developed sticks.; and Vol. l 9, 759.

38
as 'just like the real thing'. Baroque illusionism was idealism in
praxi; trompe-l'oeil, by contrast, is realistic deception,

presupposing a down-to-earth spectator who wants to be

momentarily deceived. And a spectator, who knows that he is
deceived and is therefore – paradoxically - never deceived.
Eighteenth century trompe-l'oeil implies the sharp division
between subject and object. Walpole's 'human impertinence'

39
was merely conscious fantasy, never meant to be true to reality;
nor was it meant to represent it.67
Shaftesbury's heirs adored make-believe and rejected "very
ugly enthusiasm", hi h as o side ed as being take i .68
Within one's inner circle you could be a sovereign, prepared to
play a game with yourself or with others. Unless an adult is really
ill, he is only able to stage that kind of juvenile picnolepsy, the
periodic lapse of attention which in the young, however, is
normal.69 Self-conscious trompe-l'oeil organized such theatrical
'absences'. This is what Strawberry Hill did to Walpole and his
friends in the beginning of its growth; later on, when
monumentalit ega to p edo i ate, the castle was also
seen as to affect the larger public.
In 1770 Walpole lectured Kent on the limitless camouflaging
of his artifices.70 In 1788, he apologized for the 'sketchiness' in
his own first neo-Gothic, which he now considered the result of

67These remarks were inspired by Kitson's chapter on Baroque, in: Myers/Copplestone, De geschiedenis van de
kunst (trsl. 1988), 607ff, 625ff.

Shaftesbury's 'Letter concerning Enthusiasm' took pole ppsition; in Characteristicks (1714), volume I, 48/55.
68

Walpole's quote in Clark, o.c. 134n.

69 Virilio, Esthétique de la disparition, 1989 ed., 13ff.

70Anecdotes, 802, 805. A little later in his text already, Walpole praises Kent for his beautiful suggestion of the
natural flow of what was not a atu al little st ea . Just all e Co t adi tio …

40
the unscientific knowledge of his once comrade in arms,
Bentley, and the artisans. This is not fake modesty.71 Walpole
only wanted to point out the poor quality of the initial trompe-
l'oeil effects, subsequently looking for better ones. Genuine old
castles and paintings cannot be disappointing, they have
exhausted their potential for deception. 72 This is the reason
why the imitation of original Gothic is eminently suitable for
trompe-l'oeil; any Englishman saw right through it, no papist
illusions there. Which is why I call Walpole's neo-Gothic exotic.
He aimed at an in-crowd; he wrote that you would not easily
suspect that his library is not a genuine remnant of a mediaeval
cloister.73

71 Miller in Strawberry Hill, 352ff thinks so.

72 Quoted in; Fothergill o.c., 41.

73 Miller o.c., 355.

41
However, he hastened to add, a true 'Goth', someone in the
know, immediately observes the difference between genuine
and fake, and will consider his first mistake to be a product of
his individual misplaced fantasy. Trompe-l'oeil is always self-
conscious projection. As early as 1753, Walpole thought that
Sanderson Miller's imitation ruin had the authentic patina from
the period of the battle between the Barons.74 Those who would
claim that Adams reinforced the illusion of 'genuine' rather than
'just like the real thing' missed an important point.75 Although
compared to the coincidental, miniaturizing approach of the
Committee of Taste, this new design had only the appearance
of authentic totality, Adams' room is nevertheless an addition
to the rest of the villa which, according to the principles of
organic growth, must appear as a collection of historically
different additions. Thus, intentional trompe-l'oeil continued
also to inform the later construction phases, although the use of
materials and the design became 'more authentic'.

74 Quennell o.c., 15.

75 Miller, Strawberry Hill, 172f.

42
In Conclusion
Was Walpole an anachronism? A Romantic, in a not yet
Romantic age? Each artistic movement creates its own
forerunners and, often provocatively, ignores the current
'standard' history. Former 'non-entities' from the far-away past
become celebrated heroes; those who were celebrated get
floored.76 Historians, following the preferences of artists, tend
to turn history into a period without caesuras. Then there is the
other extreme: in a reaction to all this, the monographer tries to
protect 'his' artist from belonging to any movement, because he
is considered to be unique.
Could works of artists from the second half of the
eighteenth century be called 'pre-' or 'proto-Romantic'?
Rousseau has been called a 'Romantic' sentimentalist; Otranto
the prototype of the nineteenth-century horror novel.77 Byron
and Scott observed in Walpole 'the author of the first romance
and of the last tragedy in our language', in short: the first
modern version of 'the ancient romance of chivalry'. It would be

76 Vaughan, Romantic Art, 1978, 27.

77 Winkler Prins, Vol. 16, 466; Praz, 'Introductory essay', 15f; Miller, Strawberry Hill, 9, 24. Also: Fothergill, o.c.,

163; Clark o.c., 81f, 87f, 57; Miller, 'Space and imagination', 89f. Also compare Quennell, L'Angleterre
romantique, especially its subtitle: 'écrivains et peintres 1717-1851', 18ff and 10, where Romanticism is
projected onto 18th-century authors; as if they consciously were writing about The Unconscious . Quennell
thinks that he may understand/interpret their writings with the help of contemporary psychoanalysis – a well-
known non-sequitur. Compare also: Lankheit, Revolution und Restauration (1965), 20f.

43
just as risky to consider a preceding movement as a forerunner
and consequently less ripe.78 The search for forerunners is
arbitrary, when a work of art is deemed 'Romantic' and not on
the strength of its theme.
In my analysis, a cultural-ideological 'movement', such as
Romanticism, has a unified 'character' which consists of a
special, structural connection of its various themes. A decisive
difference exists between the eighteenth-century genesis of
these Romantic themes, and what can be analysed as the
structure of Romanticism, a unity brought into these themes in
the first half of the nineteenth century.
Long before the Romantic movement came about, in
England and elsewhere the notion of the sublime had been
developed. This would even remain a hot item until the second
half of the nineteenth century, then lapse again, yet re-emerge
in the USA around the mid-twentieth century. It is therefore
pointless to call something 'Romantic' because it is 'sublime'. In
each of those periods, 'sublime' takes on a new meaning, thanks
to the context in which it appears. The English eighteenth
century considered sublimity to be an external, 'objective'

78Praz, Lust, dood en duivel, vert. 1990, 25f, 29; Poenicke, 'Eine Geschichte der Angst', in: Das Erhabene (ed.
Preis), 78.

44
phenomenon of nature, something which makes the 'subject'
tremble. The Romanticism of the nineteenth century linked the
sublime to a fear off, yet also the source of longing for the
indefinable and also unreachable – sentiments of an inner
origin. Sehnsucht it was called. The themes of melancholy,
ennui, horror, incest and loneliness had already been evolving
as early as the eighteenth century; only after 1800, Sehnsucht
gave them their structural unity of ' The Romantic'.
English special kind of Romanticism cannot be severed from
its 'historic basis', its background of the Industrial Revolution
which exploded after 1795, joined with the alarming facts of a
fast-growing population and of social unrest. The French
Revolution also played a significant role, particularly the
disappointment felt among intellectuals and artists about its
downfall and failure.79 To the Romanticist, revolt was the
consequence of his 'alienation'. He felt fundamentally alienated
both from and by his environment; his 'inspiration' emanated
from within. It was not any longer, as had been the case in the
18th century, the result from exterior sensations. Walpole and

79Sierksma, Toets en taak (1991), 'Passage I'. Hauser, Sociale geschiedenis van de kunst (vert. 1957), 442, 465.

The Penguin book of romantic English verse (1968), introd., xiv. Around 1776, in France the notion of
'romantique' was considered a 'mot anglais', or as in Boswell, as a romantic idea', as 'romantic genius', as
'romantic madness', or as ' o a ti p ospe t , o. . , / , . Thus, one may be sure that the word does
not yet indicate a concept and has not the structural meaning of Romanticism yet. Cf. also Praz, Lust, 31.

45
his friends, by contrast, remained level-headed in their 'dull'
society, which is why they were consciously 'alienating'
themselves from it, if only now and then and for their own
private amusement. They did not want to have anything to do
with papist mysteries and with the supernatural, aspects so
essential to the Romanticist.80
Nineteenth-century Romanticist Neo-Gothic architects
were opposed to copying, they built in a genuinely 'medieval'
style. To Walpole, the private use of neo-Gothic was merely
amusing; copies were the rage.

Romanticist neo-Gothic, by contrast, was mainly applied to

public buildings such as the Houses of Parliament. The
distinction between genuine and fake was phased out, and with
it the condition for the eighteenth century trompe-l'oeil. To the
megalomaniac all imitation is unromantic.

80 Barzun o.c., 66f.

46
Romanticism implied an imperialism of the soul, elevating an
ordinary woman to an angel, requiring from readers and
spectators that they share the author's world-view. It invoked
heaven and earth and longed for 'authentic' experience.
Walpole and his friends, on the other hand, reduced their self-
importance; their irony was related to understatement.
Romantic irony, on the other hand, involved an inflated if not
bloated ego; the Romantic artist was not in need of
encouragement from an outer world which he considered less
important that those 'higher things'.
Precisely because Walpole's Gothicism was an exoticism
that considered all things alien as curious, his contribution to the
Gothic Revival was no Romanticism, which – by contrast -
regarded foreign cultures as independent organisms, having
their own, equally worthy perspectives. For Romanticism
Western Reason was no longer the yard-stick, as it had been for
the eighteenth-century exoticist, who considered Europe as the
standard for the rest of the world.
Walpole does not belong to Romanticism, rooted as he was
in the empiricism of 'subject and object' developed by Hume
and Burke. He was not a Romanticist by some kind of premature
birth, skipping the boundaries of his own time, even though in

47
1774 he wrote that he wanted nothing more to do with the
present. Walpole sought after a fusion of the probable and the
improbable; he was very interested in Piranesi's Carceri.81 It is,
however, pointless to suggest a sharp caesura between an 'early
picturesque Walpole' and 'a late Walpole who was in the act of
anticipating the Romantic sublime'.

81Otranto, 43.

48