12 May: Bloomsbury South
So I started out earlier today and got to Standen in good time. Standen was a home designed by Arts and Crafts architect Philip Webb, and furnished by the William Morris Company for a family of folks with both money AND sense. All the needlework, not counting that done by the women of the family, were done by the Morris women. Fabulous textiles – there was an acanthus bedspread done by May Morris which had never been used, donated by someone still wrapped up in its original tissue paper, so you could see all the original colors. Extra fabulous ceramics by William de Morgan – I’m usually not much a one for ceramics, but these were so luminous and luscious in color, delightful in shape. Original Morris papers on all the walls, of course. Very human and light and charming. The garden was marvelous, but it was sprinkling a little rain, so not many folks were out in it. I felt so good and relaxed and lucky to be here.
Nyman’s Gardens were supposed to be near at hand, but once again, I got lost… and lost… and lost. Somehow, I managed to get to Lewes… and stopped at Anne of Cleeves House, which I’d never heard of before. It turned out that Anne of Cleeves never actually lived there – it was one of the houses that she received revenues from after she became Ex-Mrs.-Henry-the-Eighth Numero Four-o. They had lots of folklife tchotkes from the history of the area, including some marvelous 18th century ironwork. And they answered the important question – what did become of poor dear Anne after the divorce?
Well, she stayed in England and chose not to make a big fuss about it – even became friends with princesses Mary and Elizabeth. By not Catherine-of-Aragoning it out, she got a comfortable, wealthy, fun life in England without any husband to interfere with her pleasures. She outlived Henry himself, and her tomb is the first recorded use of the skull and crossbones.
Upstairs is a table which, according to legend, was in the inn where the killers of Thomas a Becket threw down their arms and went into the other room for a beer (“You’ve just killed the Archbishop of Canterbury and made your escape in a foaming hellride across the benighted countryside... It’s Miller Time.”) They heard a crash and came back to find all their weapons on the floor. They put the arms back on the table, went for their brewskis, and the same thing happened again. “Even the furniture hates us now!” exclaimed the jumpiest and most dramatic of the assassins.
So I blew off the idea of Nymans. Since I seemed so close to Rodmell, I decided to try and find Monks House, though I knew it wasn’t open to visitors today. I did find it, a plain white clapboard house in a quiet, narrow lane. I could hear the children of the tenant playing and laughing.
Plenty of time to get to Charleston, and I actually knew how to get there from my trail of tears the day before. The weather, which had been gloomy and damp, opened up into lovely sun and fresh breezes from the coast. There were tiny brown bunnies in the long grass beside the road – keep away from the tarmac, bunnies!
Charleston, the country home of painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell (the latter being Virginia Woolf’s older sister) is a magical place – a ramshackle Sussex farm transformed by Vanessa’s lifeforce and creativity into a shrine to ingenuity and exuberance. Every flat surface in the house is covered with painting – down to tiny lines of scalloping and crosshatching along the edges of the bookshelves. I’ve never felt so much life in a house – it’s as if they just stepped out for a second. Paintings all over the walls, too – theirs and ones they picked up, as well as the original furniture. Unfussy, homey rooms that invite one to sit and talk and browse and think. In front of the house is a big pond with a wonderful sculpture. On the bathtubs are painted fleshy, robust women in classical postures. Over the drawing room mantelpiece, they had painted a frame around the large oval mirror. When the mirror was broken, why, they painted in a replacement.
The room stewards were all delightfully chatty and helpful. My two favorite pieces – wait, three favorite pieces – a cat, a bowl of plums and a bathscreen in Vanessa’s room, that I think of as Queen of the Night. Her room opened onto both her studio and the garden. The studio’s been left so inhabited, with paints and brushes and little postcards and bits of sketches everywhere.
The garden was marvelous – again, so full of life and energy and love. Marvellous beds of purple and white perennials – lots of columbines, of course, and old tree roses and lovely delicate irises, the flowers as fine as parchment, planted in masses. Note to myself: more irises! Fake bits of classical statuary and homemade mosaic in the paths. Just marvellous.
Then time to impoverish myself in the gift shop. They had lots of wonderful items by local artists. I desperately wanted to get something for Susan here, since I was thinking of her every minute I was there. Finally found a lovely V. Bell still life in the colors of her home. I also got a frieze of flies for myself (to go with the bugs in the hall), some iridescent beads for Barbara, and some pleasantly odd wooden teaspoons for Jerry.
Finally, it was time to head home. The day was still glorious and fresh – I was so relaxed and happy. On my way out of the driveway, a brilliant and arrogant grouse stalked in front of my car, sure of his right of way. As I turned onto the main road, the classical radio station played a version of “She Moved Through the Fair” that had me admonishing myself that blubbering and driving do not mix.
I stopped in Rye for dinner. Took a walk around town, which was mostly shut up tight for a Sunday evening. A shame, really, because I would have loved to have bought that phrenologist’s skull at Baba Yaga’s for Glennski. Enjoyed seeing Mallards… er, Lamb House again. Stumbled across “Taormina,” quaint Irene’s house – blue-placarded with “Radcliffe Hall lived here”, it’s now the Charles II Guest House. I ended up where I started, at the Queen’s Head, and very much startled the server by requesting a meal. When I first sat down, I thought “Biker bar,” but gradually came to see this as a misdiagnosis – the Queen’s Head is the Martinelli’s Steak Pitt of Sussex. Décor has obviously been aggregating for decades – arrangements of silk flowers older than I am, and an inexplicable preponderance of African fetish figures. I ordered a steak, ale and mushroom pie and a cider, and relaxed in solitary splendor in the restaurant. The music was late 70’s getting-laid music, “I want a lover with a sloooow hand,” “Pillow Talk,” “Looooving yooooou is easy ‘cause you’re beeyooootiful” – it was just a matter of time before the dulcet crooning of Peaches and Herb would meet my ears. (The lads in the billiards room, however, were listening to Boston.) The waitress said “cheers” so often, I opined that it’s a mental disorder, like King George III ending every sentence with the word “peacock.” Anyway, the food was fabulous, though much more than I could eat.