The writer is the author of novels, cookbooks and poetry anthologies. His the last book is ‘And all will be happy to see you‘
There are plenty of reasons why someone might want to hold on to a stately home for the eternal rent of £5 a week. But it takes a certain kind of person to explain that – far from being about money – it’s about art. Current residents of Evelyn Waugh’s former home Piers Court, who pay £250 a year, claim to be the author’s ‘superfans’, family friends and, in a sense, the curators of her heritage.
That Piers Court “takes a lot of life”, as Waugh wrote in his diary, seems undeniable: eight bedrooms, six bathrooms and a price tag of £3.16million. Potential buyers had to bid unseen, as existing tenants paying their pepper rent refused any visit before the auction.
And yet, it’s hard to ignore that the tenants are right. If it was all about the money, the rest of us wouldn’t care. Bankruptcies, pending leases and litigation are always part of the real estate equation. But we care about selling Piers Court because Waugh lived there. Literary houses are a hot ticket. The Financial Times has listed five notable properties this summer, including Hogarth House – the home of Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press – and a 1920s mansion, complete with pool house, on the site of Mark Twain’s campaign pile. Even the childhood homes of authors such as Dorothy Sayers are interesting, selling for £2.35million.
For those who don’t have two or three million people to knock, an apartment that once included part of Jane Austen’s house in Bath is now on Airbnb and offers fancy soaps. Rudyard Kipling’s South Coast mansion, also on Airbnb, has a new and improved hot tub.
For fans of Hitchhiker’s Guide, half the houses for sale in Islington have literary fame: local estate agent Hotblack Desiato is named after intergalactic rock star Douglas Adams. Copies of the strange and allegorical bestseller by Richard Adams boat down were reportedly distributed to buyers of the new upscale resort on the outskirts of the author’s hometown in Berkshire. The development is of course called Watership Place and access is via Richard Adams Way.
At a time when we frequently try to separate the art from the artist, why do we care where authors wrote their remarkable works? Maybe it’s the fame factor: something remarkable happened here, which makes me remarkable for owning it (or, in the case of Piers Court tenants, living in it). And yet, it looks like something more. It’s something magical: an alchemy between the authors we love, even after their death, and the lives they led, and the work they did with those lives.
There’s an undeniable human thrill that comes from things that great artists have really touched, really used, really seen. It makes these authors real to us; which makes their characters doubly real. It’s as if the physical reality of their homes lends itself to their words, and the two together make something even greater than the sum of their parts. Authors and their properties become characters and settings in the stories we tell ourselves about art, what it means and how we make it.
Sylvia Plath, who left the family home after the Ted Hughes affair, has rented the house of her dreams: 23 Fitzroy Road. “This is WB Yeats’ house,” she wrote, “with a blue plaque above the door, indicating that he lived there.” And yet her own blue plaque, unveiled by her daughter many years later, is at 3 Chalcot Square in Primrose Hill. “My mother passed away [in Fitzroy Road]“said Frieda Hughes. “But she lived here.” Standing in front of these two houses, I feel the same spark. The author was there. Something of the art was here. The magic was there, however briefly, and if I stay here long enough, maybe a little will land on me.
And otherwise? All is not lost: this blue plaque – according to a study by the University of Leeds – adds 27% to the price of any property it touches. It seems that money and art go hand in hand after all.
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