The list has inevitably grown over the years; new ones have joined my classic crowd and more shelves have been filled.
Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey is now next to White Mischief by James Fox.
The Day of Reckoning by Mary Clive. Born Pakenham, and still alive at 101, she is as good a story-teller as any of that tribe of writers. She writes of the ‘day-to-day surroundings of well-to-do families’ in the early part of the twentieth century. The illustrations, some familiar – When Did You Last See Your Father?, The Finest View in Europe, a cover of Chatterbox – others of private and national events, whirl you through her life with nostalgia and joy. But don’t miss the text.
Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay by George Ewart Evans (1909–88) is one of a cherished series that includes Where Beards Wag All and The Horse in the Furrow. The author describes rural life in Suffolk and set about his task just in time, when there were still farm labourers who could remember working the heavy soil with Suffolk horses and all that went with it.
Notes from a Small Island. The brilliant American Bill Bryson notices so much about this country which we take for granted but are fascinated to see described as new. It beats me why he is so fond of England and its natives – it’s amazing that he stayed here after arriving on a foggy midnight in Folkestone to the typical English opposite of a welcome.
I galloped through On the Black Hill when it came out in 1982 in order to get an impression of Bruce Chatwin’s inimitable way of writing, which carries you with him to the novel’s inevitable tragic end.
Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter, a terrifying illustrated book for children, could not find a publisher now. My sisters and I used to think that great Agrippa, ‘foaming with rage in his dressing gown’ and ‘so tall, he almost touched the sky’, was the double of my father.
Somerville and Ross: The World of the Irish R.M. by Lewis Gifford is a biography of my Anglo-Irish heroines who wrote about life in southernmost Ireland before the boom when there was only bust.
Coke of Norfolk and His Friends by A. M. W. Sterling was a Christmas present long ago from my Uncle Jack Mitford, who could not have guessed that agriculture would be my overriding interest.
They’re Away was a present to Andrew from a bookmaker. It is my favourite volume of poetry about hunting and racing, by Beatrice Holden (1886–1968), a redoubtable hunting woman of Atherstone and Warwickshire fame. Years ago I stuck her obituary from Horse & Hound inside the cover. It ends, ‘Gallop on blithe spirit, and may you find your heaven in a good grass country.’ ‘A Closing Memory of Lord Harrington’ is one of her best, a mysterious tale known by all hunting people. Lord Harrington’s dying wish was that his hounds should meet the day after his funeral. They quickly found a fox that ran straight to their master’s grave, where ‘the grass was trampled and pressed / Where yesterday the best-loved man in the Midlands was laid to rest’. The huntsman took off his cap and whispered, ‘Gentlemen, I am taking them Home; / His Lordship has called his Hounds.’
Primrose McConnell’s Agricultural Note-Book (1919 edition) is inscribed, ‘After my death this book is to be given to Debo. With love Conrad Russell, XII Night 1947’. The blue-eyed Somerset dairy farmer became a friend during the war when Andrew was stationed at Warminster. He made cheese, and was as clever and individual as Russells are apt to be.
Primrose was a man. His Note-Book is dedicated to the memory of his son, also Primrose, who was killed in the Great War. It is closely packed with facts and figures pertaining to the land. The physical work expected of a farm labourer earning pitiful wages is shocking to us now. A man was expected to pitch 4,000 to 5,000 sheaves of corn a day and a woman to milk ten cows, night and morning, for 1¼d per cow.
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen. I suppose this book is on everyone’s list.
If Hopes Were Dupes (1966) by ‘Catherine York’. This is by my first cousin, Ann Farrer, who wrote this sorrowful account of her nervous breakdown and total dependence on her psychoanalyst. It would send a shiver down any spine.
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. How did he do it? I wish I knew. There are copies of this book all over the house. They won’t last long. My own is guarded by fatter volumes, several inches thick (Farm Live Stock of Great Britain and Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management), which protect this little jewel.
May God preserve them all.
John Fowler: Prince of Decorators
by Martin Wood
It is not given to many for their surname to be turned into an adjective immediately recognisable by a section of society. ‘Fowlerised’ meant a house transformed by John Fowler to his (and the owner’s) taste. In spite of having known John for many years, I had little idea of the extent of his work and influence until I read this book. Dedicated to looking and learning, he dealt with all dates and styles of buildings through scholarship and a prodigious memory.
He was born in 1906, a one-off in an unartistic family, with talents that took him to painting furniture for Peter Jones in 1934, where he earned £4 a week. He was refused a rise in wages so he and his colleagues downed paintbrushes and set up on their own.
They struggled on until 1938, when John joined Lady Colefax. Twice his age and a fashionable decorator with a shop in Mayfair, Sybil Colefax knew the women who wanted something more than Syrie Maugham’s everlasting white and mushroom, which had ruled during the early 1930s. Fashion had moved on in its inexorable way and John seized the opportunity. Through his personality and knowledge he soon became the clients’ favourite. He was exempted from war service because of myopia. While fabrics were rationed, he used his ingenuity to cover sofas with old curtains, and his clients’ unwanted evening dresses were cut up to make trimmings or cushion covers.
In 1944, when Nancy Tree bought into the business now called Colefax & Fowler, she and John became an irresistible force. They bickered and sparred, they flounced out and flounced back, they laughed and got angry, and through this exhausting process produced some of the most beautiful interiors in the land. They fed off each other to the benefit of their clients. The business prospered through word of mouth: Nancy’s friends and relations, who happened to be the highest echelons of society, aspired to this resourceful duo. Nancy had the ideas and taught John how the famous houses were to be lived in and enjoyed through comfort and beauty. John, the dictator of the work-room, got on and performed the task, supported by his skilled craftsmen. He taught them as Nancy had taught him.
Before John came on the scene, Nancy and her husband Ronnie Tree had bought Ditchley Park, a James Gibbs house in Oxfordshire, and made it an earthly paradise. Ditchley was an inspiration to John. In 1954 Nancy (now married to Jubie Lancaster) restored Haseley Court, near Oxford, where their full-blown taste reached its zenith. The list of places John worked on reads like a dictionary of that unique English asset envied by the rest of the world – the country house. It included Blithfield Hall in Stafford shire, Radburne Hall near Derby, Mereworth Castle in Kent, Arundel Park and Syon House. Most were private houses but some opened to the public after the war. The book’s index shows hardly a county without an example of his work.
In 1956 John got his first job with the National Trust at magical Claydon House in Buckinghamshire. This led to many more, including Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire. I was on the committee for its redecoration before the Trust opened it to the public. I carried John’s patterns, flew up and down stairs, moved furniture (‘Don’t push that chair – PICK IT UP’) and trudged the length of the Long Gallery time after time at his bidding. He was already mortally ill but did not spare himself or his helpers in the cold, unwelcoming rooms that turned into fairyland under his direction. His treatment of the staircase was an example of his disdain for democracy. The committee arrived one day to find that the carved balusters had been painted white and the walls a brilliant yellow. Jaws dropped, but the murmuring went unheeded and we moved on to the next thing.
Cornbury Park and Chequers, two mammoth jobs, were his last major commissions
. Neither is accessible to you and me but both are mighty impressive according to the lucky few who know them.
John was two people. A tyrant to his staff, he changed into a delightful companion after work, amusing and amused. He took to gardening and saw the importance of the relationship between indoors and out. He was also a master of scale. The photographs in the book of a ‘pocket’ flat, the size of a double garage, give the impression of a much bigger place. He dealt with palaces and cottages with equal enthusiasm.
This book is an historic document, a reminder of times past, beautifully written with photographs that accurately depict the interiors – even the colours are right. It will be the standard reference book of taste in England during the second half of the twentieth century.
December 2007
Tiaras
What are tiaras for? They are the finishing flourish to the best evening dress, accompanied by long white gloves of thinnest suede, ending above the elbow and cleaned after every outing. They are the night-time equivalent of an Ascot hat, the female accompaniment to a man’s white tie and decorations, the opposite of dressing down and the pinnacle of the jeweller’s art. They are often accompanied by necklaces and brooches of a like design, a casket of delight with which to decorate a female form.
Before the last war, tiaras were worn by married women (only) at all the grand balls in London, and very beautiful they were. Some of the most striking were once-seen-never-forgotten. The face underneath was known by the helmet of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and pearls glittering above: harsh, spiky and upstanding, or a humbler circlet threaded through the marcel waves of the hair. It was like recognising people in a country crowd by their dogs. We would have been very muddled if there had been a general swap around and the Duchess of Northumberland wore Lady Astor’s and Lady Londonderry turned up in one of the Duchess of Buccleuch’s. Some of the young women were fairylike in their beauty. The old and fat were not, but even they were improved by their headdresses.
The royal tiaras, some of extraordinary splendour, are familiar through being much photographed, but family jewels of lesser mortals are left in the bank and seldom given an airing. Like most English heirlooms, the jewels belong to the man and are worn by the wives. (If things go on as they are, I see the day looming when it will be the other way round.) These women are usually too busy looking after difficult husbands and animals to bother about having their diamonds cleaned, so the royal jewels shine out, always in pristine order, and the enormous stones worn by the peeresses, happier in gumboots and strangers to the hairdresser, are apt to look dim in comparison.
Queen Mary wore tiaras like she wore her toques – as if they were part of her being. In her day, when formality and rigid standards of dress were the rule, King George wore a tailcoat, white tie and the blue riband of the Garter while Queen Mary wore an evening dress and tiara, even when they were dining alone. A favourite was a diamond bandeau, the base of a tiara given to her as a wedding present in 1893 by ‘The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland’.
My grandmother-in-law, Evelyn Duchess of Devonshire, was Mistress of the Robes to Queen Mary for forty-three years from 1910. Together they weathered long hours of tiara’d evenings, including those during the fabulous Indian Durbar in Delhi in 1911. The magically beautiful but relentless programme, carried out in torrid heat, was exhausting for all concerned, and after one particularly lengthy evening Granny Evie was heard to say, ‘The Queen has been complaining about the weight of her tiara…The Queen doesn’t know what a heavy tiara is.’
Evelyn knew what she was talking about. The larger of the two Devonshire diamond tiaras is indeed a whopper. It was made in 1893 for Louise, the 8th Duke of Devonshire’s wife. She was formerly married to the Duke of Manchester and was known as the ‘Double Duchess’. The diamonds have an historic interest. They were not, like so many, bought by their owner as a result of the fall of various royal houses; they came from the Devonshire Parure. This set consists of seven monumental pieces of jewellery, which, until you look closely at them, might have been pulled out of the dressing-up box. They are a bizarre combination of antique (Greek and Roman) and Renaissance cameos and intaglios carved from emeralds, rubies, sapphires and semi-precious stones – cornelian, onyx, amethysts and garnets – set in gold and enamel of exquisite workmanship by C. F. Hancock of London. They were commissioned by the dear old, extravagant 6th Duke of Devonshire, the ‘Bachelor’ Duke, for his niece, Countess Granville, to wear at the coronation of Tsar Alexander II in Moscow in 1856. This tiara and its companion necklace, stomacher and bracelet are very prickly to wear. I know because I put them all on for a Women’s Institute performance when I was cast as ‘The Oldest Miss World in the World’.
My mother-in-law, Mary Devonshire, was Mistress of the Robes to the Queen from 1953 to 1967. Tall and beautiful, she looked magnificent when dressed for a grand occasion. The big tiara suited her perfectly and anyone who saw her in close attendance on the young Queen at the coronation in 1953 will remember the perfection of her bearing on that famous day. In the course of her duties, which included formal banquets for visiting heads of state and other ceremonial occasions, she used to fetch the jewels from the bank stowed in a Marks & Spencer carrier bag.
There can be no slouching with a tiara on your head. It makes you stand and sit up straight. In spite of combs, hairpins and kirby grips, there is always the possibility of it slipping, which makes the most dedicated teetotaller look the worse for wear. Tiaras elevate the wearer, making her look more distinguished and taller because of the unaccustomed posture (which used to be taught as ‘deportment’, long forgotten in this sloppy age).
The Queen Mother was a lesson to us all in this. She was not tall but her carriage was such that she would have been outstanding in a crowd even if she were not a queen. When she was over eighty, I remember seeing her sit bolt upright through an entire performance of the ballet at Covent Garden, her back never touching her chair.
Tiaras could often be ‘taken down’, unscrewed from their frames by miniature carpenter’s tools, and fastenings screwed on to the back to make brooches. These were the ruin of many an evening dress when the pin was blunt and had to be forced through satin or silk, leaving a sizeable hole.
In the 1930s, the 6th Duke of Portland was wounded by the enormous diamond headdress about to be worn by his beautiful wife, Winnie. He went to talk to her when she was getting dressed and sat on a nearby chair. The tiara was there first and he leapt up, impaled on the platinum spikes that held the precious stones. It was hopelessly broken. ‘Oh never mind,’ said Winnie, not bothering about her husband’s injured behind, ‘I’ll wear another one.’ Some could be useful weapons. Two quarrelling women sprouting branched spears on their heads look for all the world like stags about to clash antlers in the October rut. A curiosity of about 1860 is a coronet of fox’s teeth, mounted points upward. It belongs to the Marquess of Waterford, an Irish peer whose family has always been devoted to foxhunting. Lady Waterford tells me it is not often worn.
At a big dance in the 1950s and 1960s it was not uncommon for men to wear tailcoats and women their jewels. I remember going to such an entertainment in London in the early 1960s, by myself as Andrew had an engagement elsewhere. With unwonted confidence I wore the big tiara. It must have looked rather odd because my home-made dress of cotton broderie anglaise was definitely not up to it. When I ran out of partners and wanted to go home, I went out to look for a taxi. It never occurred to me that it might not be a good idea to stand alone in the street, long after midnight, with a load of diamonds round my neck and 1,900 more glittering above my head.
One memorable evening we were staying at Windsor Castle for a dance given by the Queen. I came down to dinner, got-up as I thought our hostess and the other guests would be, the big tiara firmly in place. To my horror none of the other women wore theirs. It is far worse to be overdressed than underdressed and I sat through dinner wishing I was anywhere else. When the dancing began, I took it off, put it
under a chair and enjoyed myself enormously. I suppose Windsor Castle is the only house where you could be sure of finding the blessed thing still there at bedtime.
March 2002
Auction Catalogues
The catalogues of the big auction houses arrive here by post. They are fat and heavy and when you have flicked over the pages that tell you how to bid and how to pay (and your fate if you don’t pay pronto) you reach the nub of the matter, profusely illustrated, with what you are encouraged to buy.
The number and quality of works of art that find their way to the salerooms never cease to amaze me. In spite of the vast quantity now frozen to death in galleries and museums, a big proportion of which is not shown because there is no room, a seemingly endless supply still passes through the auction houses of London, Paris, New York and Geneva – covering the whole gamut of artists and craftsmen from over the centuries.
The scholarship and meticulous research that make up the descriptions in these catalogues are a history lesson in themselves, as well as a lesson in the history of art. Specialists in each subject trot out their expertise. Details of works by familiar and unfamiliar names sometimes end with ‘Thanks to…for the identification of the sitter’ or ‘Thanks to…for confirmation of the artist’. In these cases even the experts, in their ceaseless search for accuracy, have had to call on others for help. But suddenly your unquestioning acceptance of all this scholarly stuff, the last word in some narrow field of painting or other art, is nullified by the ignorance of much to do with birds, fruit and flowers, crops in landscapes, beasts of the field, horses, carriages, hounds and dogs.
All in One Basket Page 18
