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Why does anyone bother visiting country houses? Unless you're an enthusiast of architecture, it's a reasonable question. Certainly, you will get a lot of different answers, some of which you might think to be quite silly. I have visited houses to see a single piece of furniture, for example, and inevitably (every house I've ever visited) I find that there is a great deal more than that one piece to look at. Stourhead in Wiltshire, for example, has an extraordinary garden--there are a lot of them in England, but my remit was to look at the William Linnell card table. Of course, Stourhead is chock full of interesting furniture from the dining chairs, the Roman pietra dura cabinet to the Chippendale the Younger furniture in the library and more. What happens is that one (me, in this case) gets an obsession about seeing something and when you finally get to see it, you can relax and look around--there's always more to see. I remember thinking that I would be at Stourhead for a short time--this visit was my first to Stourhead at least forty years ago--and I got super engaged in the house and then I saw the lake and the azaleas and rhododendrons and I had to walk around the lake where there was a grotto, etc. etc. (For readers that want to tell me that azaleas and rhododendrons don't bloom simultaneously, this was a weird spring and some of the rhododendrons were out early.)
I found myself at Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole's country residence, just before Christmas. I visited it when i was living in London in the 1970's, but I didn't remember it at all. (I still have that brochure). And it would be a hard house to forget as it is a Gothick folly, purchased by Walpole in the 1740's. (For anyone who wonders why I add the K to Gothick, that applies to all Gothick from the mid-18th century, not from the 19th century, though some people no longer add the "K".) Horace Walpole is one of the more interesting figures of the 18th century who was not a politician. The youngest son of Robert Walpole (England's first real Prime Minister) he was opinionated and free with those opinions. He could be caustic and he could also be laudatory and he could change his mind. He could be mischievous as well, once wearing a lace cravat that was carved by Grinling Gibbons, the Anglo/Dutch wood carver, to a tea party. You might call him a wag, but he had more energy than a wag as he wrote the first Gothic novel. In short, he did things his own way. Strawberry Hill was his summer cottage in Twickenham (now part of London) just off the river Thames which you can no longer see from the house. The place reeked of his personality and that is what is so memorable about the house. It was also stunningly unique--go see it if you are able.
I have been to a few wonderful country houses that aren't at all grand. Easily among the most memorable is Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi. Like Strawberry Hill, the house is, essentially, Faulkner's personality. Try saying that about any of your friends homes or apartments or even your own. There are not that many people who wear who they are on the interior (or exterior for that matter) of their homes. I do, a little bit, simply because I have period furniture dominating my life which helps define me. But take away that prop and my home becomes far less singular. It is, in fact, one very good reason for one to pick carefully what they put in their homes. We will be judged one way or another so you might as well have fun and throw a few curves into your home as Walpole did with his Gothick and Faulkner with his work area--Spartan but a room for concentration--it was hard to imagine Faulkner not typing at his work table. No wonder he enjoyed the odd drink. In addition, he gave a name--Rowan Oak--to his house which is an impossibility or maybe an improbability--the Rowan is the Mountain Ash tree and does not grow in Mississippi and no oaks grow in that part of Mississippi. A hard working prankster playing with words which he did exceptionally well. Country houses reveal something, and good or interesting ones reveal a spirit of the owner. That is really saying quite a lot.
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