11 May: Pocket Full of Rye
THE most frustrating day ever. On my first sabbatical, I didn’t plan enough to do and I kept to too small an area. I erred on the other side this time around. I figured how much time it would take me to get from place to place based on freeway times, rather than me inching along on winding country lanes.
Anyway, the day started out well. I got to Smallhythe Place in reasonable time. This was Ellen Terry, the great Victorian/Edwardian actress’s house, a lovely compact Elizabethan home full of thespian tchotkes. My gawd. A caste of Eleanor Duse’s hands, Mrs. Siddon’s turquoise earrings given to Ellen by Marie Corelli, Julia Cameron photos of Ellen as a teenager, the handkerchief used by Sarah Bernhardt to blot her upper lip in Hamlet, Alexandre Dumas’ visiting card. A veritable buffet of death masks – Henry Irving, most prominently. And the costumes – yum! Lady Macbeth is made of a glittery mesh, so the actress would iridesce and clash like an exotic beetle. One of the room stewards said that Ellen took her cat with her on every tour – the steward’s belief was that it wasn’t because Ellen loved the cat so much, but because she knew that there was going to be mice at the hotels where they would be staying. I said that cats always try to get into luggage anyway – maybe Ellen was just bowing to the inevitable.
That visit successfully done, I headed to the next important stop – Rye, aka Tilling… and Miss Mapp’s house. (For those of you playing along at home, Miss Mapp is one of two bossy, pretentious, provincial ladies battling for social supremacy between the wars in E.F. Benson’s riotously funny series of “Mapp and Lucia” books. Benson lived in the house inhabited by Miss Mapp and supplied many of the details of his “Tilling” with the places and the inhabitants of the real Rye.)
At Lambs House, there was more material about a previous famous inhabitant – Henry James – than Benson (did you know that EF had an Olympic gold medal in skating?), but there was a corner in the telephone room (where Lucia stowed Miss Mapp’s piano during her summer tenancy) devoted to the Mapp and Lucia Society. Damn and blast, they have a weekly walk taking you round – showing you where the Wyses lived and everything – but it had already started. After taking in the house, I tumbled out into the garden – the lawn screams tableaux vivants – and Henry James’ dogs are buried in the farthest corner. There was indeed a giardino segreto… Alas, the garden room was destroyed by bombing in the war – EF’s piano ended up hung in the outside telegraphic wires. But otherwise, it was perfectly recognizable from the books. Heaven.
I needed reviving, however, so I went to Fletcher’s House for an early tea. Fletcher, as in Beaumont and Fletcher, the Jacobean playwrights (and did you know Beaumont and Fletcher were Beaumont AND Fletcher, if you know what I mean – who knew!) was born here. The tea was lovely – a wonderful dense cheesecake smothered in black cherries and cream.
Then it was time to get down to Lewes for Monks House – Virginia Woolf’s country house. And what do you think happened? I GOT LOST – consistently, grandiosely, persistently. I spent the whole afternoon circling around, trying to find Rodmell village, as the clock tick tick ticked. I might have made it if it hadn’t been for a huge traffic jam in Hastings. Hastings. What has Hastings done for us since 1066, anyway? Finally, I had to give up – it was too late. I’d seen Charleston, my other afternoon destination, on the way in, so I knew I could get there pretty quickly – and got there 5 minutes after they closed – I had the wrong hours written down. Damn and blast. How many hours I’d spent in the car, driving instead of seeing, aaaaargh. And Monks House (which has people living in it) wouldn’t be open again during the time I was in Sussex. Double aaargh.