Sir John Soane’s Museum is one of the best kept secrets of London. Only the initiated few know of its existence. It is, indeed, remarkable, how since 1888, the year when Henry James’s novella “A London Life” was published, little has changed. The museum, which becomes the dramatic backdrop of the story, still remains “one of the least known” landmarks of London.

This eccentric and poetic place is a perfect time capsule that transports the visitor back into the late Regency era – straight into 1837, when the museum was established after the death of its owner and founder. Although living in Romantic times, Soane possessed a truly Gothic imagination: whimsical, visionary, intense, grotesque and sublime. For instance, Soane imagined his house as a future ruin excavated by archaeologists in his book “Crude Hints Towards an History of My House in Lincoln’s Inn Fields” (1812). He also installed a “monastic suite” in his house, or the “Parloir of Padre Giovanni”(we will refer to it as Parlour), as he called it.

The latter consisted of the Monk’s Cell or "Oratory," the parlour itself, and the Monk’s Yard, with the ruined cloister and tomb that was visible through the parlour window. Let us not forget that the public at the time was raving about the novel “The Monk”, published by Matthew Lewis in 1796. Soane had also installed his version of a monk’s cell called the “Monk’s Dining Room” at his country house, Pitzhanger manor, in Ealing in the early 1800s. So, apparently, these mock- mediaeval spaces, with Gothic (or should we say, Gothick?) ornaments, were simultaneously paying tribute to and satirising the fad for fashionable Gothic antiquarianism.

At the same time, the architect had an easy excuse allowing him to arrange works of art in a picturesque and evocative manner. Interestingly, in the summer of 1816, Soane visited the Hermit’s Cell and castle ruins at Knaresborough in Yorkshire (we wrote about the popularity of hermitages in one of our previous articles, so Soane was no stranger to that craze that spread all over Britain in the mid-18th century). So, in the Soane Museum we see an attempt at creating a hermitage indoors rather than outdoors, in order to “impress the spectator with reverence for the monk”. Soane describes the inspiration behind his parlour as follows:

The Ruins of a Monastery arrest the attention. The interest created in the mind of the spectator, on visiting the abode of the monk, will not be weakened by wondering among the ruins of his once noble monastery.

So, who was exactly John Soane, this early 19th-century precursor to Des Essaintes, who could afford to indulge in such cultivated and whimsical architectural fantasies?

Known for his Neoclassical designs, Sir John Soane (1753-1837), was one of the most inventive and successful Neoclassical British architects of the Regency era. He was the architect who designed the Bank of England and Britain’s first public art gallery at Dulwich in 1817. He was also known as the architect of Pitzhanger Manor, in Ealing (1800) and founder of the museum that bears his name.

He was from humble origins, a self-made man, the son of a bricklayer, who had worked his way up. Soane was born near Reading, Berkshire, on 10 September 1753. At fifteen, he joined architect George Dance the Younger (1741–1825), known for his involvement in extensive urban redevelopment in London and for designing Newgate Prison, demolished in 1902. From 1772, Soane continued his training under the celebrated architect Henry Holland (1745–1806), today mainly remembered for the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane and the Royal Opera House.

In 1771, aged just eighteen, Soane was accepted into the Royal Academy of Art, and within a year, one of the drawings he submitted to the academy’s competition won him the Silver Medal award. Four years later he received the prestigious Gold Medal, as a result of which he was introduced to George III by Sir William Chambers (1723–1796), the influential architect who was Soane’s patron. Soane’s extraordinary achievements induced the King to sponsor and fund him, through the Academy, on a three-year travel scholarship to Italy, from which he enormously benefited.

This was also the start of a royal connection, later enhanced by Soane’s appointments as Clerk of the Works to St. James’s Palace and the Houses of Parliament (1791) and Deputy Surveyor to His Majesty’s Woods and Forests (1797). In his long and illustrious career John Soane was responsible for many remarkable works. Apart from the Bank of England and Dulwich Picture Gallery, he designed the dining rooms of both numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street, some buildings in Westminster and Whitehall, the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, and Freemasons’ Hall in Great Queen Street, London, which had been originally built by Thomas Sandby (1721–1798), a Freemason and the first Professor of Architecture at the Academy. In 1775–76, Sandby was also Soane’s teacher and mentor.

The culmination of Soane’s achievements was reflected in the knighthood he received in 1831 and the special gold medal presentation made to him, three years after his retirement in 1835, by his colleagues in the newly founded Royal Institute of British Architects.

The Soane Museum consists of three houses in a terrace on the northern side of London’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Over a period of 32 years, Soane demolished, renovated and rebuilt three purchased neighbouring houses at 12-14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Since 1794, that architectural experiment kept him busy for much of his life. It allowed him to fulfil, in practice, his architectural concepts with which he wanted to experiment. At the same time, it became the depository of his vast and growing collection of classical antiquities salvaged from historical sites.

Fortunately for him, his wife’s inheritance funded his constant renovations and prodigious collecting. The museum now houses some 40,000 objects —sculptures, books, paintings, and curiosities of all sorts. Many are on permanent display, while others can only be seen by appointment. Soane was constantly arranging and rearranging these objects throughout his life, not just to incorporate new acquisitions, but also to enhance their poetic qualities through inspiring juxtapositions. Indeed, the museum is famous for its idiosyncratic arrangement of objects.

In 1833, Soane managed to get the Parliament to pass legislation that would require trustees to preserve his houses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the entirety of their collection, exactly as they stood at the moment of his death. To achieve this goal, in 1833 the architect negotiated an Act of Parliament to preserve his own home and collection and to keep it open and free of charge for inspiration and education. As a lecturer, Soane would request his students to perform sketches of his house's interiors. Eventually, it has become one of the best-documented building interiors in the world, with thousands of records.

The house that now hosts the museum has a number of remarkable architectural and interior features. First, many visitors comment on its complexity and theatricality—the play of light and shadow, an array of mirrors, and windows looking into mysterious, inaccessible spaces and courtyards give the house its certain mystique and allow visitors to discover something new every time. According to deputy director of the museum Helen Dorey, Soane believed strongly that light could manipulate emotion.

Soane also interpreted and rearranged spaces within his house in original ways, which communicated performative qualities to his interiors. For instance, running short of wall space, he designed a gallery with sets of hinged panels that could be opened up like pages in a book to display the artworks. This way, going through all sets, page after page, and beyond the last set of canvases, one can glimpse a view of the house itself, which demonstrates the interior as the ultimate work of art. The house was conceived partly as a display of Soane’s architectural brilliance and partly as the space where he could showcase his precious collection. Soane had a vision to create an extraordinary educational museum which would live on long after himself. He also liked to play with historical allusions, and this is how his ‘Ante Room’ and ‘Catacomb’ lead to the ‘Sepulchral Chamber.”

When one speaks of the ‘Sepulchral Chamber," one certainly needs to mention the legendary Egyptian alabaster sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti I (died 1279 BC), which is the key object in Soane’s collection. Across its surface, both inside and outside, carved in hieroglyphs, is an Egyptian text known today as the Book of the Gates, a series of spells and rituals that the dead pharaoh would need to safely pass through the underworld and reach the afterlife. Inside, across the bottom of the sarcophagus, is visible the elegantly drawn figure of Nut, goddess of the sky, whose role was to guide and protect the dead.

The sarcophagus was discovered in 1817 in the Valley of the Kings by Italian adventurer and explorer, a former travelling circus performer-turned-pioneer archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni. Belzoni is known, first and foremost, for his removal to England of the seven-tonne bust of Ramesses II, the clearing of sand from the entrance of the great temple at Abu Simbel, and for the discovery and documentation of the tomb of Seti I with the sarcophagus in it. If one looks closely, one can still see the name ‘Belzoni’ on the sarcophagus today, where he scratched it into the rim.

Belzoni had planned to sell the sarcophagus to the British Museum, requesting £2,000 for it. However, the museum declined to pay this sum for the object, and this was the moment when Sir John Soane stepped in. As he was greatly interested in ancient artefacts, he went on to purchase the sarcophagus for his own collection. Perhaps, he derived additional satisfaction from snatching the rare and valuable object from the British Museum. The sarcophagus was Soane’s most prized and expensive possession. He held three grand evening receptions at his house after acquiring it. The receptions were attended by 900 people, some of them leading figures in British art and society.

All these people came to view “The Belzoni Sarcophagus and Other Antiquities” in the evening by lamplight (as the invitations stated). Among them were S.T. Coleridge, J.M.W. Turner, and Benjamin Robert Haydon, who offered a vivid account in a letter to a friend (Miss Mitford, 28 March 1825) of how, while “fancy delicate ladies of fashion [were] dipping their pretty heads into an old, mouldy, fusty, hieroglyphicked coffin, blessing their stars at its age, […] the Duke of Sussex … came squeezing and wheezing along the narrow passage, driving all the women before him like a Blue-Beard, and, putting his royal head into the coffin, added his wonder to the wonder of the rest” (Haydon 222).

Another remarkable feature of Soane’s museum is the recently restored small drawing office on the top floor. The Drawing Office is the oldest surviving example of its kind and is now open to public tours for the first time in its 200-year history. The office was the creative heart of Soane’s home: here, Soane’s draughtsmen and pupils worked on his architectural projects, inspired by his extensive collection. At its peak of productivity, six pupils worked in the drawing office, twelve hours a day, six days a week. The final pupil joined the office in 1824 and the last employee in 1829.

Soane retired from practice in 1833; he retained two assistants, talented draughtsmen George Bailey and Charles James Richardson, until the time of his death in 1837. The office was altered several times before it assumed its final form, as seen today, between 1824 and 25. At the same time, his lower office was converted into a display space, now known as the Colonnade. What his and our contemporaries found truly remarkable was his ability to come up with novel and ingenious solutions to maximising the utility of the space whilst creating a truly unique and dramatic office space. As one reaches that part of the house, one approaches five carved wooden columns, which represent the five orders, the basis of all classical architecture, reputed to have belonged to Sir Christopher Wren.

Soane’s contemporaries also remarked that he made ‘generous provision for servants’ when designing the house, which was unusual at that time and probably reflected his roots. Speaking of creaturely comforts, the house was fully plumbed and with flushing toilets, which was luxurious for its time.

If the house looks odd and somewhat eccentric today, it appeared the same to his contemporaries and to subsequent generations of Victorians living in the second half of the 19th century. Travelling back in time to 1888, let us explore Henry James’ description of the museum display in his novella ‘A London Life', which was first published in the United States in Scribner's Magazine:

The heterogeneous objects collected by the late Sir John Soane are arranged in a fine old dwelling-house, and the place gives one the impression of a sort of Saturday afternoon of one's youth—a long, rummaging visit, under indulgent care, to some eccentric and rather alarming old travelled person. Our young friends wandered from room to room and thought everything queer and some few objects interesting; Mr. Wendover said it would be a very good place to find a thing you couldn't find anywhere else—it illustrated the prudent virtue of keeping. They took note of the sarcophagi and pagodas, the artless old maps and medals. They admired the fine Hogarths; there were uncanny, unexpected objects that Laura edged away from, that she would have preferred not to be in the room with.

Perhaps, these feelings experienced by the protagonists back then are not so far removed from those visitors experience today.

Indeed, Soane was known for his eccentricities. Two months before his death, he sealed up personal papers and objects, with instructions that they should not be opened until November 22 (the anniversary of his wife’s death) in 1896. There were three such repositories, where Soane deposited his private belongings in what many understood as an act of self-archiving. Having deposited these items into his bathtub, he ordered to seal its lid. The lid was eventually lifted with great ceremony fifty-nine years after his death. However, all that was found inside were false teeth, household accounts, correspondence with his family, lottery tickets, empty drawing cases, an unused diary for 1822, pamphlets and sale catalogues, and many such other items. Victorian newspapers called this “one of the most famous of post mortem jokes…” (The Sunderland Echo, 18 July 1906). Eventually, this bathtub with old junk came to be referred to as Soane’s symbolic sarcophagus.

Also, when wandering around the museum, one eventually stumbles upon the portrait of elderly John Soane in masonic garb. Soane, indeed, was a lifelong mason, very proud of his connection to the Brotherhood. His career as a Freemason was rather impressive. The reason for that could have been his wish to follow in the footsteps of his teacher and mentor, Thomas Sandby, Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy and a high-ranking Freemason. Soane might have received the invitation to follow Sandby’s example. As documents state, on 19 November 1813, James Perry, Past Deputy Grand Master (1787–90) and a radical journalist and friend of Soane and Thomas Harper, Deputy Grand Master of the Antient, or Atholl Grand Lodge, proposed and seconded John Soane into Freemasonry in the Grand Master’s Lodge No. 1.

At an emergency meeting held on 25 November 1813 at Freemasons’ Hall, London, Soane was initiated, passed, and raised to the sublime degree of a Master Mason during the course of the same evening.

In December, Soane was appointed Grand Superintendent of Works (or President of the Board of Works) and declared as such by the Duke of Sussex (1773–1843), the first Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE), on 27 December. This was done in order to enable him to supervise the building of the new Freemason’s Hall for the United Grand Lodge in Covent Garden in London in 1814.

For Soane, this meant a stratospheric rise through masonic ranks. On 4 June 1823, Soane was elected to the UGLE Board of Finance for a four-year period, and exactly five years later, in 1828, he was nominated to the Board of General Purposes, where he served for the next seven years.

In 1823, he also presented the Ark of the Masonic Covenant. The Ark, an idea conceived by the Duke of Sussex, had been built by John Soane and presented to the newly formed United Grand Lodge, at his own expense. At the ceremony on 27 December, an Ark of the Masonic Covenant was centrally placed in the temple and played a focal point in the proceedings when the two Grand Masters and their respective deputies advanced toward it to perform the symbolic act of union of the two Grand Lodges.

The first minutes record: “…the ark of the Masonic Covenant, prepared, under the direction of W. Brother John Soane, Grand Superintendent of the Works, for the Edifice of the Union and in all time to come to be placed before the Throne.” Sadly, the Ark was burned and destroyed in the disastrous fire of 5 May 1883. However, the records of this remain. We can only regret that Soane’s interiors of the Freemason’s Hall never survived in that fire. Only part of the hall’s façade survives adjacent to the Art Deco monumental building of the United Grand Lodge at 60, Great Queen Street in London.

John Soane was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable figures of his time, a person of many interests and talents. So, if you are in London, you should visit the home of this visionary architect and draw inspiration from the space he created.