Cannons (house) - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Such was the fame of the house that the Duke had to introduce crowd control measures - including a one-way system - to manage the large numbers of visitors who flocked to the estate. Cannons was featured in early travel guides including a 1725 travelogue by Daniel Defoe where he described Cannons extravagance thus:

This palace is so beautiful in its situation, so lofty, so majestick the appearance of it, that a pen can but ill describe it... 'tis only fit to be talk'd of upon the very spot... The whole structure is built with such a Profusion of Expense and finished with such a Brightness of Fancy and Delicacy of Judgment.

A few years later Alexander Pope was seen as satirising Cannons in his poem Of Taste (1731), which ridicules the villa of an aristocrat called "Timon" and includes the lines:

Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven,
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre...

Timon, like Chandos, is a patron of the painter Louis Laguerre and listens to elaborate music in his chapel. After adverse comment, including a caricature by William Hogarth of Pope splattering Chandos' carriage, the poet apologised to the Duke, denying that any comparison with Cannons was intended, but it has been suggested that Pope could have anticipated that some people would see a connection. Within a few years another point of comparison had emerged - Pope had prophesied the demolition of Timon's villa.