In the Blue Room at Farringford, a surviving fragment of wallpaper frieze connects Alfred and Emily Tennyson’s home on the Isle of Wight to one of the most contested cultural debates of the modern age: the story of the Parthenon Sculptures, better known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles.
First displayed at the Great Exhibition in 1851, the wallpaper reproduced part of the Parthenon frieze, transforming an ancient Athenian monument into a Victorian decorative object. Its presence at Farringford invites us to look beyond pattern and colour, and to ask how classical art, empire, taste, ownership and cultural memory came together on the walls of a family home.
The Great Exhibition, held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, aimed to showcase the best of industry and design from across the world. Open for nearly five months, it welcomed more than six million visitors and displayed marvels ranging from flushing toilets to the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Among its exhibits was a stand of wallpapers manufactured by Jeffry Allen and Company, the first company to produce William Morris’ wallpaper designs.
One wallpaper on display, depicting part of the Parthenon Frieze, was later purchased by Julia Margaret Cameron and given to her friends, the Tennysons. Though it is believed that neither Mrs Cameron nor the Tennysons particularly liked it, they hung it in the hall at Farringford after the previous wallpaper was found to have caused a bout of arsenic poisoning.
Fragments remained there through the ensuing century, beneath layers of paint and panelling, until they were discovered during Farringford’s restoration. Both the frieze and the arresting blue wallpaper were reproduced and hung in pride of place, and the room, which had been a reception room during the hotel years, was renamed after it.
The story of the frieze does not begin in 1851, however. It begins in the fifth century BCE, when the sculptures for the Parthenon, a temple to Athena in the city that bears her name, were created under the direction of Phidias. From their place atop the Acropolis, they watched as wars were waged and empires rose and fell. In 1687, during the Venetian siege of Athens, an explosion left the Parthenon partially ruined.
It was in this damaged state that Lord Elgin encountered them, during his time as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, of which Greece, at that time, formed a part. He was fascinated by the sculptures, and initially wanted the British government to employ artists to take casts of them. The government refused to do so, but Elgin was undeterred, and employed the artists himself.
Though his initial intention was only to take casts, he soon began removing the sculptures themselves. Between 1801 and 1812 his agents removed about half of the surviving Parthenon sculptures, as well as artworks from other buildings on the Acropolis, focusing on those in the best condition. He brought them back to London and set up his own viewing gallery to generate public support, hoping to persuade the government to purchase them. His determination may have had something to do with the considerable debts he incurred transporting the sculptures.
Their public reception was mixed. Some said the beauty of the marbles was great enough to prompt a new golden age of artistic achievement in England, while others said they were nothing special. Some believed Elgin had rescued them from the Turkish people and Napoleon’s army, while others saw his actions as reckless plunder.
One such critic was Lord Byron, the favourite poet of Tennyson’s youth, who was in Athens at the same time as Elgin, staying in a Capuchin monastery at the foot of the Acropolis. In The Curse of Minerva, he imagines London laid to ruin by a vengeful Athena, whose temple Elgin had destroyed. Later, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, he refers to Elgin as “the paltry Antiquarian”, and as “violator”, “spoiler”, “plunderer” and “robber” in turn.
Tennyson’s other favourite poet, Keats, seems to have had a similarly dubious opinion, though he expresses it less robustly. In On Seeing the Elgin Marbles, Keats ponders his own mortality before the timeless beauty of the sculptures. Yet the poem’s ending, where “Grecian grandeur” is mingled with “the rude/ Wasting of old time—with a billowy main—/A sun—a shadow of magnitude”, may be read as a critique of the treatment of the Acropolis by Elgin’s employees. It suggests that transportation overseas, away from the Greek sun of their original context, reduced the sculptures to a shadow of their former magnitude, or that their magnitude is overshadowed by this history.
It is interesting to note that, while Byron was able to travel to Greece and see the Parthenon in the flesh, Keats was only able to view the sculptures because of Elgin’s actions, and he in fact returned to the British Museum repeatedly in order to see them once they were instated there. Byron’s critique is shaped both by the desire to preserve an ancient monument, and by his privilege in having had access to them in their original context. Keats, on the other hand, did not have this privilege, and for this reason many contemporary readers may find his stance relatable. He is overcome by the Marbles’ beauty and grateful to have seen them, but the history of their acquisition complicates his feelings. His response reflects the conflicting emotions many contemporary Britons feel when considering how we have benefitted from our country’s colonial past.
It was not only Romantic poets who had concerns about the morality of Elgin’s actions. In 1816, before the government agreed to purchase the sculptures, there was a formal investigation into the legality of their acquisition. The key evidence was Elgin’s assertion that he had been given permission to take whatever he liked of the statues in a letter from an Ottoman official. Though no evidence of this letter has been discovered in Turkish records, an Italian translation is held by the British Museum.
He listed various reasons for taking the sculptures. First, he wanted to inspire the artists of Britain and create a new golden age of artistic output. In addition to this, Elgin said he had been told that locals were chipping off parts of the sculptures and using them to make lime for construction. He also expressed fear that Napoleon (whose empire was at that time spreading across Europe and looting its treasures) would get hold of them.
A year previously, following Napoleon’s defeat at the battle of Waterloo, the European artworks that he had hoarded in the Louvre, renamed the Musée Napoléon, had been returned to their countries of origin. The British reception to this event had been overwhelmingly positive. People felt that the ancient treasures of Italy, including the Venus de Medici, belonged in their original contexts. No doubt this affected people’s views on the Parthenon Sculptures somewhat.
Nonetheless, the government enquiry eventually found that the sculptures had been acquired legally, and were of sufficient artistic merit to warrant their purchase for £35,000 from Elgin. Parliament voted in favour of this motion, and they were soon transferred to the British Museum, where the collection was to be kept together and distinguished as “The Elgin Collection”.
The question of their return gained renewed international prominence in 1983, when the Greek government formally requested their return and listed the dispute with UNESCO. The British Museum has resisted calls to return them, with the British Museum Act 1963 often cited because it restricts the trustees’ ability to disperse objects from the collection except under limited circumstances. Talks were resumed in 2022, but no agreement has yet resolved the question of ownership.
As such, their history in England has been long and varied, and encapsulates many debates that characterise the current moment. One cannot help but wonder what Tennyson, who loved Byron and Keats, thought of the wallpaper given to him and Emily by Mrs Cameron. He read Byron extensively in his youth and mourned his death passionately, so Byron’s sentiments must have helped shape his worldview. His love for Keats came with age, so perhaps he came to appreciate the nuances of the situation, as Keats did.
Either way, the fragment of frieze discovered in what is now the Blue Room is a reminder of the rich and varied stories that surround us, concealed in the objects that we see every day. What first appears to be a striking piece of Victorian decoration is also a reminder of the larger histories it carries with it: of empire and artistic influence, admiration and unease, ownership and loss. Like the wallpaper itself, these questions have remained partially hidden, waiting to be uncovered again. In the Blue Room, visitors are invited not simply to admire a pattern, but to reflect on how the past continues to shape the spaces we inherit, preserve and inhabit today.
If you would like to visit Tennyson's Isle of Wight home go to Visiting Farringford .