The name is apposite for a start, conjuring up the poverty and infamous villains of the nineteenth century East End. Dennis was actually a Canadian by birth who lived in this house from 1979 to 1999. His presence can still be felt there, as it should be. He is the artist after all of Dennis Severs' Still Life house.
It is an amazing experience which I recommend to adults (unfortunately with many stairs it is inaccessible to wheelchair users) and responsible, mature youngsters able to 'not touch things'. Not touching things is a big part of a visit to Dennis' house, and then looking and then just inhaling and meditating with a big grin on your face (just me perhaps). I really found it an invigorating, near-spiritual experience. This is how museums should be... some of them at least. This is an immersive experience from the days before VR.
And so the rooms in Dennis Severs' House. Nine or ten of them it seemed to me in a terraced, pretty posh (nowadays anyhow) East End street. To start with there's a very dark basement perhaps to cleanse your era. A kitchen to introduce you to how the tour is going to be. Dennis' notes are helpful.
Slow and steady. Ponderous. Breathe it in, the motes of dust, the papers lying around, the cake and the cauliflower, the spectacles and the pottery - Mother's porcelain collection. Charles Dickens' little study with I suspect some of Charles' books lying about. Not to mention Dennis' study with some vintage computer and crazy lettering of notes redolent of the occult. I think Dennis believed in ghosts and it's hard not to catch sight or sound of the odd phantom here.
How we used to live. I am a Huguenot silk weaver. I have a little room upstairs, poorly filled - just shirts hanging up - but a beautiful garret room view looking out into the City on a blue sky day when the smog clears.
Have you seen The English (Netflix series; Wild West Tarantino-esque meets Regency culture and Raif Spall acts his socks off)? Here is Emily Blunt's divinely proportioned and perfumed parlour room. Femininity and worship of the townswoman.
The ceilings are too low in places. The beds are absolutely gorgeous. Whatever happened to four-poster beds? They are amazing. What else is life about but books and sleep? A lot of Bibles; too many bibles.
The older woman's room is quite effecting on me. I lose it a bit here - get quite heady. It's the lines in the book about Jesus mixed with the extraordinarily impressive collection of blue and white porcelain and the matriarch's domineering portrait overlooking. She is talking to me. What happens when the feminine mistress of the house ages? This cult hasn't been thought through that well. Might need a shift in culture here or there.
In fact here we are now nearing the end of our visit in another room in the early 20th century. Victoria's beneficence has donated a Park to the clutter of the East End but here is coal, militarism, brutal battles for plots of mud-land. Monarchy is another totem. Monarchy and the feint red, white and blue glamour of long ago battles with Old Boney. But the chintz is appearing already now; the tat; material things clottlng the room; and, tarnished by blood and coal, the empire is fading.
I leave the house, inhale fresh air and a cigarette. This is London. A man can lose oneself in London. Thank you Dennis. That was fantastic.
