Prospero’s House in the Southern Kingdom is a “ridiculous, doodad-covered, trash-filled two story horror of a house" [The Face in the Frost, 1]. The two-story monstrosity is composed, inside and out, of a random assortment of peculiar possessions, trinkets, and unlikely and anachronistic nonsense – in short, kitsch. Nothing is known of any previous inhabitants but Prospero’s teacher and mentor, Michael Scott, laid a spell on the hearthstone of the house [36] (it’s anyone’s guess just how wild and junk-laden it was at that time, though). The house sets up against the edge of forest, with a nearby road that wanders toward the village of Brakspeare.
Outside
The highest point of the house, atop the artichoke dome of the observatory, features a dancing hippopotamus-shaped weathervane: “as the wind changed, it blew through the nostrils of the hippo's hollow head, making a whiny snarfling sound that fortunately could not be heard unless you were up on the roof fixing slates” [1-2].
"There is a leisurely orgy of vintage words throughout the text; 'snarfling' comes to mind. It’s a word not to be found in the OED though someday it maybe there,” says Phil Gibson, a classmate of Bellairs from Notre Dame. “The verbal description of Prospero's house, and the frontispiece illustration, remind me of Sorin Hall - definitely our fustiest campus residence.”
Also of note, Prospero keeps a garden of varied flora and fauna as well as a fountain topped with a tubby satyr.
Inside
The front parlor of the house is a sort of makeshift laboratory (somewhat similar to Sherlock Holmes’ on Baker Street), where various colored liquids slurp and glosh and bubble in glass flasks, test tubes, and bottles.
Elsewehre there was an odd assortment of whatnot: a magic mirror that revels in popping off wisecracks to his owner, “a brass St. Bernard with a clock in its side, and a red tongue that went in and out with the ticks as the tail wagged; a five-foot iron statue of a tastefully draped lady playing a violin (the statue was labeled "Inspiration"); mahogany chests covered with leering cherub faces and tiger mouths that bit you if you put your finger in the wrong place; a cherrywood bedstead with a bassoon carved in one of the fat bedposts, so that it could be played as you lay in bed and meditated; and much more junk” [2].
It should be pointed out that during Bellairs’ days as a student at Notre Dame and later in Chicago he collected kitsch; a 1960 letter of John's explains the malady:
These friends share my addiction for antiques bordering on the disgusting, and have found a name for such trash: KITCH is the official title, invented by Gilbert Highet, and includes all the curious which affronts the sensibilities of sane people.
During the 1960s, Marilyn Fitschen says Bellairs bought whatever kitschy items he could afford with friends chipping in the occasional gift. One item that stands out in particular for both Marilyn and fellow graduate student Robert Yaple was a clock Bellairs saw on display in a window in Hyde Park but could not afford: a tall, painted, High Victorian cast-iron figurine of Sairey Gamp (of Charles Dickens’ The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit fame) holding a dog with a clock in its belly.
Myers explains that he and Bellairs also used the bassoon's nickname of "burping bedpost" several times in conversation (“yes, we did indeed have occasional conversations which touched on bassoons”), but must take issue with the awkward imagery presented in the book. “It would be impossible to lie in bed and play a bassoon carved into the bedpost while meditating. Even if the bassoon were upside down with the mouthpiece on the bottom, you would still have to finger the keys, which run along the whole length of the instrument, which would hardly be conducive to meditation. I suppose you could rather ponderously play a right-side-up bassoon while sitting up in bed, but that isn't what Bellairs said. Therefore, if I were John's editor I would have to challenge this whole rather twee image, but knowing his reaction to any criticism of his writings this would no doubt have put a strain on our friendship."
"One wall...was lined with bookshelves, and on them you could find titles such as Six Centuries of English Spells, Nameless Horrors and What to do About Them, An Answer to Night-Hags, and, of course, the dreaded Krankenhammer of Stefan Schimpf, the mad cobbler of Mainz [2]. Other books contained handwritten spells, puzzling pentagrams, and dizzying doodles of various characters, such as King Louis XI.
