And by this time they were come up to the great iron gates in front
of the house; and Tom stared through them at the rhododendrons and
azaleas, which were all in flower; and then at the house itself,
and wondered how many chimneys there were in it, and how long ago
it was built, and what was the man's name that built it, and
whether he got much money for his job?

These last were very difficult questions to answer. For Harthover
had been built at ninety different times, and in nineteen different
styles, and looked as if somebody had built a whole street of
houses of every imaginable shape, and then stirred them together
with a spoon.


For the attics were Anglo-Saxon.
The third door Norman.
The second Cinque-cento.
The first-floor Elizabethan.
The right wing Pure Doric.
The centre Early English, with a huge portico copied from the
Parthenon.
The left wing pure Boeotian, which the country folk admired most of
all, became it was just like the new barracks in the town, only
three times as big.
The grand staircase was copied from the Catacombs at Rome.
The back staircase from the Tajmahal at Agra. This was built by
Sir John's great-great-great-uncle, who won, in Lord Clive's Indian
Wars, plenty of money, plenty of wounds, and no more taste than his
betters.