Pope's grotto has taken so much hold on the popular imagination that it ranks only second to his hideous and grotesque villa by the riverside, which was recently occupied by Henry Labouchere, M.P. The real interest of the place lies in the literary coteries which met in the house, including such men as Swift and Gay, who helped by suggestions and designs during the building of the famous Marble Hill for the Countess of Suffolk, friend of George II. Gay in particular was a _persona grata_ with the countess, and occupied a special suite of rooms set aside for him at Marble Hill. It was three years after Pope's death that Walpole came to the neighbourhood; he had the mania for fantastic building effects even more strongly than the poet. Pope had made his villa peculiar enough in all conscience, but Walpole's so-called Gothic in the rebuilding of Strawberry Hill was a medley of every sort of architectural effect which could conceivably be classed under that heading. "Not to mention minute discordances, there are several parts of Strawberry Hill which belong to the religious, and others to the castellated, form of Gothic architecture." Walpole solemnly boasted that his "house will give a lesson in taste to all who visit it". It might have done so, but not exactly in the way he intended. He made the place a perfect museum, and it became the fashion to visit Strawberry Hill. The Earl of Bath was so enchanted with it that he wrote a ballad, which, in its own kind, might well take rank with the architectural effort which inspired it. Every verse ended: But Strawberry Hill, but Strawberry Hill Must bear away the palm. Walpole wrote of the place, soon after he had acquired it: "Two delightful roads, which you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises, barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer move under my window. Richmond Hill and Ham walks round my prospect; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry!" He used to term the mansion his "paper house" because, the walls being very slight, and the roof not very secure, in the heavy rains it was apt to leak, "but," adds an enthusiastic writer of his own time, "in viewing the apartments, particularly the magnificent gallery, all such ideas vanished in admiration". After his first visit to Paris, Walpole never wore a hat, and used to go out walking over his soaking lawns in thin slippers. He sat much in the breakfast-room, which gave a view toward the Thames, and his constant companion was an inordinately fat little dog. He wrote the _Castle of Otranto_ in eight days, or rather eight nights, for he says his "general hours of composition are from ten o'clock at night till two in the morning".