One of the distinguishing characteristics of the house is its chaotic nature.  Unlike a museum, there is no attempt to have things of one type all grouped together.  I should say, unlike a modern museum, for if one is familiar with the glorious whirl of the old British Victorian/Edwardian collections, then one has a sense for the interior of this house.  That Cuban sea shells ought to be next to rocks from Ontario, against Chinese pottery, against Victorian romantic art, against….well why not?  Children’s books shelved next to philosophy next to noir novels?  It tends to offend the modern desire for externally constructed and imposed order, full of divisions, walls, and credentials.  The British collections of a century ago reflected a polymath approach to the world.  Natural science and culture were not antagonists but part of a whole.

I got to thinking of this while dusting a room in which this approach is especially apparent: a carefully labelled (in Latin) shell collection interspersed with a range of decorative arts.  Science and art together, why not?