Upstairs, Downstairs at Burghley House

My Scottish grandmother loved to watch "Upstairs, Downstairs"; I preferred "The Partridge Family."

But I came to appreciate the meaning of the British TV show's title in a completely different way when a savvy friend passed on the March WSJ magazine to me.

In it was a story on England's Burghley House and its current occupants/caretakers.  I'd seen the house in the film The Golden Bowl when it was decked out in appropriate historical splendour, but the WSJ showed it in anachronistic pleasure:  history on the ceiling (upstairs); modern family put-your-feet-up-on-the-chesterfield comfort on the floor (downstairs). 

To be sure, the modern family comfort depicted here is all red-and-smart-coffee-table-book elegance, but still.


**Those gentle readers who prefer more of a pop culture metaphor might wish to substitute "mullet" for "Upstairs, Downstairs" . . . or as we call it in Canada, "hockey hair."