16 May: All Roads Lead to Frome
Decided to head out via Westbury, where there’s a white horse from the 18th century cut into the hills outside of town. It appeared suddenly as I came round a curve in the road, and I whinnied and snorted with delight. (Did I mention that the classical music station gives racing tips every morning? That’s what I call civilization…)
The weather was glorious again – bright and warm without being hot, a light breeze keeping the day fresh. The only problem was that the Westbury detour cost dearly in terms of time getting lost, always a significant item in my schedule. It seemed that all roads in the area lead to Frome. I threaded my way through Scenic Trowbridge (insert irony here) and finally got to Stourhead after noon. Guests feed in through a reception center, where they are advertising a Fete Champetre in July. To demonstrate the glamorous entertainment you can expect, there is a mannequin dressed in a red velvet eighteenth century man’s evening suit, carrying a jelly sandal instead of a glass slipper.
Despite the large amount of cars in the parking lot, there was not an oppressive number of people on the paths of the garden – there was lots of room between parties. A black cat, precise as a portrait in silhouette, caught sight of me and trotted across a broad lawn to say hello. He was thin but well-cared for, and carried on like I was his long-lost best beloved… until another group arrived and he was off to greet them with equal enthusiasm, the slut. A volunteer told me his name is Moses.
I headed off through the woodlands. There were forests of bluebells and the biggest, fluffiest rhododendrons I’ve ever seen – if you wanted to film a movie called “Killer Rhododendrons Take Over The World,” this would be the place to make it. As I wound down through the woods, I began to glimpse the lake down below.
Not to go all Mansfield-Park on you guys, but I’ve never seen such a perfect blend of Nature and Art as Stourhead. “She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.” (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 43) My notions of garden design have been confined to putting stuff that likes sun in the sunny side and putting stuff that likes shade in the shady side of my little plot. The hand that designed Stourhead touched the original landscape lightly and with skillful respect, to bring out the best of what was already there. The play of wind in the trees made the leaves applaud with delight. When I finally got down to the lake, I saw greyling trout gulping down gnats like roasted peanuts. As you make the circuit around the shore, exquisite prospect after exquisite prospect opens up. Someone said, “I want an obelisk, and a grotto, and a Palladian temple, and an arched bridge, and while we’re at it, why not throw in some fake ruins?” The colors were at their prime – the trees more individual than many people you meet.
It wasn’t until I was three-quarters of the way around the lake before my body realized that what… I’d…been… breathing… in… was…. POLLEN!!!!!, so I had to sit down a bit while antihistamines took effect. I settled under a huge walnut tree, shaped like a bell jar – the underleaves are pale green, while the outer, mature leaves are a beautiful, rich oxblood. Very cool. I watched people stand under its cool branches and lament that cameras will never record the delicacy of the hues. The warmth of the day meant that the garden was giving the best of its fragrances too, lazy and rich. I climbed up to the circular temple (as opposed to the Palladian temple – you just can’t have too many temples), then back down to the tea shop for a restorative slice of cake.
Montacute wasn’t more than half an hour away, thank goodness. I parked under trees (also thank goodness, in view of the warmth of the day) and crunched through to the house. The front garden had white roses whose perfume could make you drunk. The interior of the house was a veritable treasure trove. I don’t know anything more satisfying than a sixteenth century house lovingly touched up in the seventeenth and eighteenth… In the front hall, I asked the steward about a compelling portrait, Elizabethan-ish, hung up high above the family portraits. She told me it was Elizabeth of Bohemia. The Winters Queen.
How her portrait had come to Montacute was that Edward Phelips, the original builder of the house, organized the wedding masques for her. Suddenly it clicked into place – this was the wedding that John Donne celebrated in his famous epithalamion, about the two phoenixes.
"A bride, before a good night could be said,
Should vanish from her clothes into her bed,
As souls from bodies steal and are not spied."
The steward congratulated me on doing my homework, and confided that upstairs in the crimson bedroom is… their marriage bed!
And then on the top floor in the portrait gallery was another portrait of E of B, with a lock of Prince Henry’s hair woven into hers (Henry the Prince of Wales was her brother – his death delayed her marriage for a year, so she was in mourning for him while sitting for this portrait). She’s also wearing Catherine of Medici’s pearls.
Did I know about the Medici pearls? The room steward drew me closer. The pearls eventually ended up with Queen Victoria (E of B’s daughter Sophia, the Electress of Hanover being the founder of the House of Hanover), who was taken to court by the German part of the Hanover family to get the pearls back, which Victoria could not legally have inherited. The court ruling against her, Victoria took eight years to return them (well, you know, being Empress of India takes up a lot of your time, and what with Prime Ministers and Hapsburg princelings turning up at all hours of the day and night, some things do settle to the bottom of the to-do list). Rumor has it, whispered the steward, that not all of the pearls made it back – remember Queen Alexandra’s choker? “Never!” I exclaimed. Not only that, concluded the steward, the current Queen has an earring and brooch set of what have been authenticated as Medici pearls. Busted!
(The Medici pearl story showed up later in my bedtime book, The Love of Stones.)
Anyway, before all these delights, I had to examine the ground floor rooms. In Lord Curzon’s room were another passel of portraits, including a most knowing wench by Reynolds… and one of Curzon’s mistress, Elinor Glyn – the author of It. Another course of "It’s a Small World After All…"
The library was undergoing dust monitoring – they had little flypapers all over the room, and professional dust watchers recorded its accumulation, so they can determine the optimal dusting schedule for this particular venue. The National Trust is so cool.
On the stairs were massive Gobelin tapestries – one showing the labors of Hercules, in which the doughty hero is apparently whacking a dragon to death with a carpet beater. Then the first thing that greeted me in the fabled Crimson Room was the Unknown Elizabethan Lady on the cover of my commonplace book staring down from the wall beside the marriage bed. I swooned. Incredulously, I asked the room steward if the painting was an original or a copy.
It was the original.
When I collected myself from that swoon, I asked about the bed. The steward lowered her voice to tell me that they are no longer allowed to call it E of B’s marriage bed, for alas, its provenance is undocumented. Obligingly, she used her torch to show me the underside of the carving inside the bed ceiling, and the arms of the Prince of Wales and the Elector of Palatine. We gloated over the carving together, she pointing out that it was made in 1611 and for someone “quite posh.” That was as far as she’ll commit herself with the Bed Formerly Known as the Marriage Bed of Elizabeth of Bohemia and the Elector of Palatine.
In addition to E of B’s portrait, in the upper gallery (the biggest Long Gallery extant, as I understand – the family used to take exercise there on days of foul weather. The Long Gallery is now the National Portrait Gallery’s Tudor and Stuart exhibition space.), there were a lot of hard-nosed babes – Bess of Hardwick, for example, and that Anne of Denmark portrait with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink hairdo. Every stitch, every gold thread is separately painted on these portraits. There’s a childhood portrait of James I, where you can see the same lazy left eyelid visible in the later old, tired portraits. The room steward directed us to a portrait of the child Prince Henry, whose shoes will always be pointing to you, whatever angle you approach him from.
I was completely blissed out after this, and so headed home. Didn’t get lost at all, and had a lovely tray of bread and cheese and salad in my room, just the ticket. Got to watch another episode of Panic Mechanics – this time, transforming Ford Escort vans into non-motorized downhill boxcar racers. What a day. And tomorrow I head up to Stratford.