To reach the State Rooms, as has been said, we enter the Clock Court and catering across it to the right pass under the colonnade which uglifies the front of Wolsey's rooms, and so come to the King's Great Staircase by which the public reaches the galleries. This staircase, its walls and ceiling painted by Verrio, has on the whole a somewhat sombre and certainly unpleasing effect. It is true that we have in it one of the most notable examples of Verrio's decorative achievements, but it is an example which I frankly find unattractive. It is sombrely gorgeous but in an unrestful fashion, with its sprawling gods, goddesses, and heroes in all manner of impossible positions, its pillars overhung with clouds or clouds swooping down, as though weighted with the figures, about the pillars. Beneath in a brownish tone are painted various "trophies". The art of decoration, one cannot help feeling, was at the time that William the Third had this staircase painted, at a very low ebb indeed.
Curiosity may make some visitors pause to single out from the medley the figures of the Fates, the Cæsars, or particular gods and goddesses, but most will pass on into the noble King's Guard Room with its wonderful mural decoration of muskets, pikes, and pistols. Though there are some pictures here--notably, opposite the fireplace, a large portrait by Zucchero of Queen Elizabeth's porter--it is chiefly the old arms marvellously arrayed in diverse patterns that take the eye. Upwards of a thousand pieces are said to have been utilized in decorating this room--their arrangement being made by a gunsmith who had earlier done similar work at Windsor Castle and the Tower of London. It may be added that he utilized his materials more successfully than did Verrio in painting the staircase, and it is pleasant to learn that Gunsmith Harris's work was so well appreciated that he was granted a pension by way of reward. From the tall windows at the farther end of the Guard Room we look out over the Privy Garden to the river, with the terraced Queen Mary's Bower on the right.
It is not necessary to describe in detail the things to be seen in the long succession of State Rooms, from the entrance to them by the King's Great Staircase to the exit by the Queen's Great Staircase. Varying in size in accordance to the purpose for which they were designed, audience rooms, bedrooms, writing closets, or galleries, all are lofty rooms, and some of the smallest are the most crowded with pictures--as, for example, the Queen Mary's closet--leaving which we pass from the rooms that occupy the first floor of the south front to those of the rather longer east front. Details as to the paintings, tapestries, or furnishings would alone occupy more than the space of this little book, and the visitor in search of such details will find them in the official handbooks. The tall windows, rising from the window seat level, and affording beautiful views of the grounds, form a feature of the Orange portion of the buildings, which shows a distinct advance upon the earlier style of fenestration--picturesque as are the smaller type of windows of the Tudor period.