Source: Wikipedia
My neighbors moved out in early December. I went over and helped them move some stuff out of their attic, though we had trouble figuring out where to put it because their den was already packed with boxes. That’s what happens when people live in one place for more than three decades: they accumulate a lot of stuff. That reminds me of George Carlin: “That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time.” I know my neighbors had some arguments about whether they needed so much stuff, and how much of their stuff was shit, and while they left some stuff behind I don’t think either of them could agree whether it was enough.
Their house is empty now but I know soon the developer who bought it will do the same thing he’s done with three other houses on our street: he’ll knock it down and build a new house that’ll be at least four times bigger and two, maybe three storeys. They’re downhill but the new owners may be able to look down on us.
The empty house also makes me think about the painting Last Day At The Old Home by Robert Braithwaite Martineau. Martineau studied under the Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt, who also painted some moralistic scenes, but it’s more like those satirical paintings by William Hogarth: stuffed with details, and every detail hammers the point home. On the far left there’s the dying tree seen through the window, the grandmother weeping while a man—according to Wikipedia he’s the butler—holds the keys to the house, but he could be a realtor, purchasing the house for a nouveau riche owner who wants the trappings of old money. The youngest child, a daughter, looks at her grandmother sadly. In the middle the mother half-heartedly tries, and fails, to take the glass of liquor her son is holding. Or maybe she could use a drink herself. Son and father are raising their glasses in a toast. The son looks anxious, uncertain, but the father looks like he’s saying, “Well, them’s the breaks!” The armor on the mantle probably symbolizes the family’s proud, chivalric history, hollow now, merely a decoration.
Also according to Wikipedia it’s the father’s gambling, symbolized by the painting of a horse in the front left corner, that’s led to the family’s ruin. I’ve read other interpretations that it’s a warning against the dangers of alcoholism—the father drank up all the old wealth and is not only still drinking but is passing the love of alcohol on to his son. I saw the original in an exhibit years ago and spent a long time admiring the details. It’s a large painting which makes it impressive. But the message was so heavy, so obvious, I also thought it was funny. Addiction is a terrible thing—there’s nothing funny about how it destroys lives. But Martineau was just so earnest it’s less of a study of the toll addictions take on families and more like a Victorian version of Reefer Madness. The fact that he used his friend, Colonel John Leslie Toke, and family, and their home, Godington House, as models is also funny to me, even though there’s no hidden message there. I don’t think Martineau was subtly calling his friend a spendthrift, gambler, or alcoholic—there’s nothing subtle here. It was just convenience: he had a friend who could pose for his “This is your centuries old home on [insert vice], kids!”
About thirty years later Toke would sell Godington House, but this wasn’t art imitating life. The house had been in his family for more than four hundred years but the world had changed, and 1895 was a very different time even from 1862 when Martineau made his painting, which further undermines the painting’s thesis. It was mostly changing economics and the rising middle class, among other things, that led to the decline of the so-called “great families” that had persisted for centuries, not moral turpitude. Godington House passed through a couple of private owners and is now held by a non-profit trust, which seems like a good way to preserve all that stuff.
I have a friend who is a film maker who found this abandoned house where not only was the electricity still on, but everything was left behind. It’s a literal flash-back to the early 1990’s. Here’s the video:
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That’s why I love the Pre-Raphaelites—they really knew how to capture emotion and layers.
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Great stuff, Chris.