Visit to a stately home:

Exterior austere to the point of ugliness.

Entrance hall of vast echoing marble, half-way between a museum and a railway terminus.

Severe but very beautiful dining room, cold and uncomfortable but everything displayed to the best advantage.

Sculpture gallery like a gigantic vitrine.

Drawing room flocked and gilded with a coffered ceiling, the red walls displaying French and Italian old masters.

State bedroom canopied and esconsed in tapestries.

State Sitting Room so formal that sitting in the space must have had the still performance of a tableau.

Library the only habitable room, the books humanising the majestic apartment.

The chapel marble lined (again) but the lamps giving the chamber a warm brown-gold tinge (like stewed tea).