Hunkerville House

Hunkerville House is Duchess Josiana’s London residence and one of the properties in the Clancharlie inheritance. Its significance lies in the way the novel makes a great house both a mark of inherited rank and a vulnerable private space: Josiana entrusts Barkilphedro with a key to her apartments, and the house later becomes part of the estate named for Gwynplaine. Its doors connect aristocratic domestic life to the quiet machinery of court influence and succession.

Setting and Place in the Estate

Hunkerville House stands near Oldgate, a gate of London on the Harwich road. The description fixes it in a recognisable urban setting rather than presenting it as an isolated country seat. At Oldgate, a statue of Charles II is shown with a painted angel above his head and a carved lion and unicorn beneath his feet. The detail places royal imagery at the threshold of the city, while the house itself belongs to the inherited wealth and authority of the Clancharlie family.

The house is described as larger than Corleone Lodge, Duchess Josiana’s Windsor residence. From Hunkerville House, when the wind is easterly, the peals of St. Marylebone can be heard. These details give the London residence a distinct position within the novel’s geography: it is a substantial aristocratic home close to a city gate, yet its description also registers the surrounding city through a distant sound. The contrast with Corleone Lodge matters later, when court business removes Josiana from London to Windsor.

A Private House Open to Surveillance

Duchess Josiana uses Barkilphedro’s talents as a spy and gives him one of the confidential keys to her apartments. Lord David Dirry-Moir has the other. The practice is described as a seventeenth-century custom called giving the key: privileged access to private rooms was considered permissible within the manners of the period, even when it meant entering a bedchamber. In this arrangement, Hunkerville House is not merely a residence. Its interior is subject to the same intimate court relationships and unequal exchanges of confidence that shape public power.

Barkilphedro’s key is specially made with wards at both ends. It opens the inner apartments in both Hunkerville House and Corleone Lodge, allowing him access to Josiana’s private rooms at either residence. The device physically joins the two houses while giving a single spy entry into both. The narrative presents that access as part of Barkilphedro’s larger method: he advances by making discoveries that put powerful people in the hands of someone socially lesser. The master-key gives that method a concrete instrument, and Josiana’s confidence in him supplies the permission it needs.

The arrangement also makes the house’s apparent privacy conditional. Josiana has granted the access herself, but the consequence is that another person can enter her apartments at any hour. Barkilphedro’s position at court grows through precisely this kind of access to other people’s secrets. Hunkerville House thus stands at the meeting point between domestic confidence and political usefulness, without ceasing to be a home whose rooms belong to Josiana’s private life.

From London Residence to Windsor

After Barkilphedro has been present at Hardquanonne’s confrontation with Gwynplaine, Queen Anne sends a postchaise from the royal household to fetch Duchess Josiana from London to Windsor. Josiana would have preferred to disobey or delay the order, but court life leaves her no such choice. She must leave Hunkerville House at once and travel to Corleone Lodge.

The timing aligns Josiana’s departure with Gwynplaine’s arrest: she leaves London as the authorities arrive at the Tadcaster Inn to take him to Southwark Prison. At Windsor, the Usher of the Black Rod tells her that Queen Anne is occupied in an audience with the Lord Chancellor and cannot receive her until the next day. Josiana is ordered to remain at Corleone Lodge and await the Queen’s commands. The move therefore turns Hunkerville House into the London home she is compelled to leave while the court controls when, and where, she may be received.

Inheritance and Narrative Significance

When Barkilphedro later explains Gwynplaine’s newly revealed inheritance, he names Hunkerville House among the properties that belong to him, describing it as larger than Corleone Lodge. The house is included in a much wider account of his rights and holdings, alongside Clancharlie Castle, nineteen bailiwicks, and an estate said to bring an income of forty thousand pounds a year. The announcement transforms the meaning of Hunkerville House: it is no longer only the residence from which Josiana was summoned, but also a tangible sign of Gwynplaine’s restored dynastic position.

Across these episodes, Hunkerville House links intimate access, courtly control, and hereditary ownership. Its master-key makes private space available to surveillance; the royal summons displaces its resident; and Barkilphedro’s inventory makes the house evidence of a title and fortune transferred to Gwynplaine. The building’s importance is therefore not confined to its size or location. It gives physical form to the novel’s changing relations of confidence and power, as a residence in London becomes an item in the inheritance that alters who can claim the Clancharlie name and possessions.