Half
a mile from Twickenham near the Thames stood the celebrated home of
Horace Walpole, the Earl of Oxford, from 1747. The house was originally
a lodging house, and Walpole wrote to friend upon his purchase that
it was "a little plaything house ... and the prettiest bauble you
ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with phillagree hedges ...
two delightful roads that, you would call dusty, supply me continually
with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as the Exchequer move under
my window. Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my prospects, but, thank
God, the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensbury. Dowagers
as plenty as flounders populate all around, and Pope's ghost is just
now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight."
Walpole
went on to enlarge the house, but ensured it never lost its charming
aspect which had at the first captivated him.
