Rich men's houses
May. 10th, 2013 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustVisiting Cragside at the weekend, I thought of Hearst Castle; though when we visited Hearst Castle, just over a year ago, I thought of Lord Armstrong's other residence, Bamburgh Castle. I have many photos of Hearst Castle, and no notes, so this will be mainly a picture post - which is fine, because you have to see it to believe it:
Visiting Hearst Castle was a bit like visiting Father Christmas, when I was little. You didn't really go anywhere, but you sat in a room decorated as a coach or a ship or whatever this year's theme required, and scenery scrolled past the windows until you were declared to have arrived. A rapid transaction in which each child received a gift had been inflated into something more substantial. Hearst Castle is impressive enough in itself, but the approach to it is spun out in the same way: you drive through the estate to the car park, walk through a visitor centre the size of a small shopping mall where you collect your ticket for the tour of your choice and take a bus up the hill to the house where you meet your tour guide.
We had chosen the tour of the upstairs rooms: it isn't the one recommended for a first visit, but it's the one which includes the library. Despite which, I don't have a clear image of the library, either as a photograph or in my mind. Mostly I was fascinated by details, lagging behind the group peering into corners, then having to scurry to keep up. There were a sequence of guest rooms, ranged along their own corridor like monastic cells, ready and waiting for their glamourous occupants:
I liked the arched drawing room - it felt like a room you could actually be comfortable spending time in (though I thought also that you could hold a grand ceilidh in there, if only you could get rid of the furniture):
Before long, the tour was over: we were at liberty to wander round the gardens for as long as we liked, before taking the bus back down to the visitor centre. We could admire the view out to the ocean, and nose around, but not into, the "cottages" for visitors. Again, it was the details which were irresistible:
These rabbits hide in shadow, decorating the risers of the flight of steps in the first picture. It was a hot day, and the Neptune Pool gleamed like a sapphire, untouchable - but the best surprise was the last place we saw, hot and weary and ready to board the bus:
The Roman Pool is cool and blue and silver, tiled from ceiling to floor, meticulously modelled on who knows what classical original, surrounded by statuary, mad and beautiful, a perfect demonstration of what you can do if you have all the money there is. Now I wished we'd chosen a tour that gave us more access to the pools (we could, I suppose, have strung two tours together, but at $25 per person per tour...)
Back down at the visitor centre we had lunch, watched a free film show, checked out the gift shop. I bought a copy of Marion Davies's memoir, The Times We Had, with a foreword by Orson Welles - the only time in the whole day that his name was mentioned. You wouldn't want Hearst to be overshadowed by Citizen Kane, but this absolute silence on the subject was more noticeable than a passing reference.
The other odd 'silence' was the absence of the Spanish language. From our arrival in California I'd been struck by how much bilingualism there was, and as we travelled south the presence of Spanish became greater. But Hearst Castle seemed to operate exclusively in English.
South along the coast, we came to the beach favoured by elephant seals, who lie in crowds, occasionally turning over or flicking sand across their bodies to cool themselves: it's as inexplicably gripping as watching a potter's wheel. Eventually we dragged ourselves away, and found our hotel in Cayucos.
Visiting Hearst Castle was a bit like visiting Father Christmas, when I was little. You didn't really go anywhere, but you sat in a room decorated as a coach or a ship or whatever this year's theme required, and scenery scrolled past the windows until you were declared to have arrived. A rapid transaction in which each child received a gift had been inflated into something more substantial. Hearst Castle is impressive enough in itself, but the approach to it is spun out in the same way: you drive through the estate to the car park, walk through a visitor centre the size of a small shopping mall where you collect your ticket for the tour of your choice and take a bus up the hill to the house where you meet your tour guide.
We had chosen the tour of the upstairs rooms: it isn't the one recommended for a first visit, but it's the one which includes the library. Despite which, I don't have a clear image of the library, either as a photograph or in my mind. Mostly I was fascinated by details, lagging behind the group peering into corners, then having to scurry to keep up. There were a sequence of guest rooms, ranged along their own corridor like monastic cells, ready and waiting for their glamourous occupants:
I liked the arched drawing room - it felt like a room you could actually be comfortable spending time in (though I thought also that you could hold a grand ceilidh in there, if only you could get rid of the furniture):
Before long, the tour was over: we were at liberty to wander round the gardens for as long as we liked, before taking the bus back down to the visitor centre. We could admire the view out to the ocean, and nose around, but not into, the "cottages" for visitors. Again, it was the details which were irresistible:
These rabbits hide in shadow, decorating the risers of the flight of steps in the first picture. It was a hot day, and the Neptune Pool gleamed like a sapphire, untouchable - but the best surprise was the last place we saw, hot and weary and ready to board the bus:
The Roman Pool is cool and blue and silver, tiled from ceiling to floor, meticulously modelled on who knows what classical original, surrounded by statuary, mad and beautiful, a perfect demonstration of what you can do if you have all the money there is. Now I wished we'd chosen a tour that gave us more access to the pools (we could, I suppose, have strung two tours together, but at $25 per person per tour...)
Back down at the visitor centre we had lunch, watched a free film show, checked out the gift shop. I bought a copy of Marion Davies's memoir, The Times We Had, with a foreword by Orson Welles - the only time in the whole day that his name was mentioned. You wouldn't want Hearst to be overshadowed by Citizen Kane, but this absolute silence on the subject was more noticeable than a passing reference.
The other odd 'silence' was the absence of the Spanish language. From our arrival in California I'd been struck by how much bilingualism there was, and as we travelled south the presence of Spanish became greater. But Hearst Castle seemed to operate exclusively in English.
South along the coast, we came to the beach favoured by elephant seals, who lie in crowds, occasionally turning over or flicking sand across their bodies to cool themselves: it's as inexplicably gripping as watching a potter's wheel. Eventually we dragged ourselves away, and found our hotel in Cayucos.
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