Great Regulars: By now, the taste for [Thomas] Hope's furniture

and his interior style was so specialised that when the contents of the Deepdene were dispersed in 1917, there was really only one purchaser interested in the furniture: Edward Knoblock, the author of Kismet. Regency itself, as a style, was generally discounted, and the Brighton Pavilion considered utterly ridiculous. Reading only slightly between the lines of the excellent catalogue, we find, however, that this taste was kept alive by a small minority of gay men, including Lord Gerald Wellesley, doomed (when he became Duke of Wellington) to the nickname The Iron Duchess

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Taste acquired

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