18 May: Famous Corpse-o-Rama!
A lovely breakfast buffet in the Oak Room – I screamed with delight at the sight of fresh fruit. My table looked out across the back lawn, to the ruined chapel.
Every hotel ought to have a ruined chapel.
Silent hands whisked away each dish as I finished the last bite – now I know what being a monarch is like. It’s a wonder more don’t succumb to the strain. I got a map of Stratford from Reception to guide me to the theatre that night, and mentioned that my toilet is behaving badly. Then headed out to Swinbrook, the ancestral village of the Mitfords.
I saw the turnoff to Swinbrook, a single lane up a dark and nasty-looking wood, at some point in my travels yesterday, but God only knows where. My map alleged that it’s somewhere along the road between Burford and Lechlade. I headed out – but first had to get through Stratford.
May I just pause a moment and tell you how much I hate Stratford? I knew it would be annoyingly commercial, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so yuppily annoyingly commercial – where PR hacks take their clients. It’s also poor in signage and impossible to park in. Sleek red brick buildings reveling in their newness elbow the aggressively archaic, twee little shoppes – Much Ado About Toys, forsooth.
Anyway, Swinbrook. Well, I went up and down and up and down the road between Burford and Lechlade, looking for that dark little turning, but I found it not. Every trip through Burford was an agony of inexplicably huge traffic. Existential question of the day: Why Burford? Everyone in the county had apparently flocked to Burford and its High Street of toney shops – everyone but me, who would prefer never to come within 20 miles of it again. Of course I got lost and knew I was going in the wrong direction and couldn’t find a safe place to turn around, and why doesn’t this country have decent roads and… there was a turning to Swinbrook.
The guidebook helpfully informs us that the name means “brook of swine.” It’s a charming little village in beautiful country. Have I mentioned how much I love the Cotswolds? The trees are denser, darker and more individual, standing like sentries along the ridges of the endless hills. The stone is beautiful, a yellowish, pitted mineral ideal for the growth of mosses and lichens. Everything is water and bird song. The streets are narrow and curved – I could see where the churchyard is, but not how to get up to it. You can’t accuse the Swinbrookians of exploiting the girls. The few parking spots were labeled for village use only. While I was searching, I spied a man of about my age in wellingtons and mac leading two young and impressionable water spaniels along the deep grass by the side of the road. He stopped when he saw me and solemnly raised his hand in greeting or benediction. For one moment, dizzying down a swirling chasm of lust, I looked into what my life could have been married to such a one. We locked eyes, and I backed the car into an outcropping of rock.
I finally pulled into what I later discovered was a private car park for a B & B, but it was the only thing labeled as a car park anywhere within Swinbrook. I nosed through the Manor Farm, hoping there was a way through, but eventually made my way up to a cozy little burying ground. I took a snap of the chapel, then began sniffing for Mitfords. They were not hard to find. Nancy and Unity – my gawd, if you name somebody Unity Valkyrie, you can’t be terribly surprised when they grow up to be pals with Hitler.
There was no mistaking the turning for Kelmscott, my next port of call – I passed it about six times on my search for Swinbrook. This is William Morris’ country home, and it’s only open for a limited number of hours on the third Saturday of every month, which is most fortunately what this was. There was almost an hour before it opened, but there were already lots of cars in the parking lot. An old red-faced farmer sat on his power mower and directed folks – I wasn’t sure if he was part of the official staff of volunteers, or has taken this hosting on himself. We chatted a bit, about where I’m from and how I like the country. He ran his hand over the scrape on the car’s side like it was a lame horse. “Now what have you been doing here?”
He pointed me to the churchyard, where I swooned – two brace of Morris graves: William, JANE, May and Jenny. It makes sense, but I hadn’t thought of JANE being buried here too. I cleaned a little moss off her stone.
Farmer John had said there were some Phillip Webb cottages built as a memorial to Morris if you went up the right – eventually you come up to the house itself. (Webb was also the architect of Standen, if you throw your mind back to the Sussex portion of this adventure.) I meandered along, but even meandering as slowly as I could, I was still half an hour early. So I took a walk further along the river path beside the Thames. Birds were yammering in the trees, scolding at the wind which pushed them around in the unsettled air. There were actual real live Queen-owned wild swans paddling along the waterway – one on her nest along the bank. Most cool.
I meandered back. People were queuing at the front door, but once I got my admission card (they only permit a certain number of folks in at a time), I wandered around the gardens, which are lovely and in full blow – hordes of columbines and white and red roses espaliered up walls – young fruit trees out in the orchard meadows, and a great yew hedge named Fafnir, which the Trust is trying to restore to its original dragon shape. It’ll only take ten years.
The scene inside the house was dense, with people and things. Lovely hand-carved wood furniture, sketches of JANE by everybody, Rossetti, Morris, Burne-Jones. And the wallpapers! My favorite was in Morris’ bedroom – a dark, sensuous pattern of grapes on the vine. Jane’s is the light, classic willow pattern. And the needlework – my gawd, the thousands of hours it took the women of the family to do the tapestries and bed hangings and firescreens and counterpanes and all... There was William’s first attempt at needlework, that he and his parlormaid worked on when he was in bachelor lodgings. It’s hideous and poorly done, which warms you to the man, that he stuck with it after such an unpropitious start.
There were two beautiful oil portraits of JANE – the blue silk dress, by Rossetti, which by the grace of God I got to spend a minute alone with while the herd swirled momentarily elsewhere. Another, in her bedroom a Burne-Jones with an olive leaf – a lady and I got into a dispute about whether or not the pre-Raphaelite girls were considered beauties in their time or not. The steward gently parted us and refused to enter into any discussion of the nature of the goings-on between JANE and Rossetti.
I got back to Ettington in time to lie down and watch some cricket – nothing is more soporific than cricket – before getting ready for the theatre. On my way down through the reception area, I was waylaid by the bell captain, one of the suave Middle Eastern boys in blue suits, who wished to point out some of the beauties of the grounds, if I had a moment. The questions were familiar, discreet – I’m traveling alone? Do I have children? – and ended with the offer of a private tour of the chapel when I returned from the play. How would that service charge be listed on my bill -- under “sundries”?
I scored parking by the Leisure Center and hotfooted it up the Waterside to the Theatre. Hordes of people – some of them dressed up, very slick and yuppy. I had a snug aisle seat in the second row of the dress circle and was happy as a clam.
The play was Much Ado About Nothing, done in a 40’s Italian style, which, I’m sorry to say, does not suit poor dear Harriet Walter (Harriet Vane in the Peter Wimsey mysteries), who looked about as Italian as a corgi. But there were some marvelous performances – Benedick was completely fabulous, as were the Prince (played as a haw-hawing dolt), and the guy who played Don John, one of those causelessly malevolent villains that crops up now and again – he took the bit between his teeth and irradiated the whole play with incandescent hostility. The comic watch was actually funny, and when Beatrice got serious, after her cousin Hero was defamed, Harriet was fabulous. It later turned out that the guy playing Benedick was the understudy (which explains why all the costumes were a shade large on him), so more the merit to him for giving such a standout performance. Heavens, I love good theatre.
Although I contemplated breaking in through my window to avoid the “private chapel tour,” I decided to rely on pure speed through the reception area, and won through to my room unmolested.