A selection of writings, speeches, photographs and events as well as some of my favourite literary passages.
Thursday 28 February 2013
Thursday 21 February 2013
Nick Duke 1945 - 2013
Nick in his favourite Irish tweed cap |
My dear old friend Nick Duke died on 29th January 2013 after suffering for years from MS and other health problems. A memorial service was held for him at St Peter' Church, Bishops Waltham on 19th February attended by over 200 family and friends. This is his Eulogy.
Nick Duke 1945 – 2013
Thomas James Nicholas Duke – ‘Nick’ – was
born at home in Fisher’s Pond to Tom and Ann Duke on 26th June 1945,
following his sisters Jenny and Georgie. Tom was then working in the family milling
business that had been started by his father James Duke in 1895 when he bought
the Abbey Mill at Bishop’s Waltham on one of the Nine Great Ponds which once provided
fish for the Bishop’s Palace.
Hope House, Bishops Waltham |
Nick and Wynne Tufnell |
Nick went on to Charterhouse, where his
closest friend was Andrew Ward, later his best man at his wedding to Jay Jay, and
a good friend to Nick for the rest of his life. Nick wasn’t a particularly
outstanding student, but these were the days when one’s sporting and social
achievements counted for more than academic prizes. In fact I don’t think that A levels were even
graded then. Nick studied modern languages, played the trumpet in the school
band and cricket and tennis in school teams and greatly enjoyed his time there.
Andrew’s younger brother Toby was his fag, and Andrew made Nick godfather to
his own son James, so he can’t have made Toby’s life too awful. Nick always
said that if he had one, he would send a son to Charterhouse.
Curdridge Croft |
And of course girls did in time begin to
play an increasing part in Nick’s life. In those days teenagers really didn’t
pair off until quite late; we enjoyed – as Annie Ommaney (now Spawton) put it –
‘rushing around in a heap’ too much. But Nick was definitely something of a
magnet for girls and I can well remember some who shall remain nameless coming
up and asking me to introduce them to him. Nick and I never had exactly the same taste in
girls, in which I count myself fortunate, as I would almost certainly have lost
out! Those who Nick went out with included all the most attractive and
interesting of the time, including Janet Stokes, Sally Farmiloe, Sarah Keen
(known to us all as ‘Weemus’), Kristine Holmquist, the legendary ‘Hovis’
(Vivien Holt), Rosie Bryans and Nicky Boyle. And of course he later married, in
1975, Jay Jay Syms, the most attractive of all the girls in his orbit. But I’m
getting a bit ahead of myself.
Nick, Charlie Skipwith and I were in the 60’s the self-styled ‘Three Musketeers’, and for one famous party – Sally Farmiloe’s Coming Out party – we dressed appropriately in costumes from Nathan’s. Fortunately Sally even then had an eye to publicity, and had hired Tom Hustler to take the photos, so some good ones exist with Nick looking every inch a D’Artagnan.
Herry and Nick as Musketeers |
In our spare time, we met at The White Horse in Droxford, co-incidentally only a few yards from Stedham Lodge which
became Nick and Jay Jay’s home some twenty years later, and right next door to
Charlie Skipwith’s home, Studwell Lodge. Charlie drank the local brew, Nick
preferred Haig and I drank Coke. It was perhaps indicative of our low level of
drinking in those days that the pub also played host to another group of
regular drinkers known as ‘The Quarterdeck’, which included Charlie’s father,
and at that time no one ever came to grief in the ever - sportier cars that we
acquired; our skills perhaps being honed on all-night games of Scalectrix that
we played on the race-track set up in Charlie’s squash court. Or more to the
point, the car treasure hunts, when the clues were invariably a pub name and
the real object of the game was not actually to make it to the finish!
When Nick left school, his father,
intending him of course to join James Duke & Son, sent him to work on one
of the largest local farms, that of Tom Parker, whose main farm happened to
border ours under Old Winchester Hill. In fact Tom Parker’s farms probably
bordered most people’s farms in that part of Hampshire! In any event, John
Parker recalls that Nick wasn’t an ordinary pupil, there to work as a prelude
to going farming, but a rather to get a close up view of farming as a business
so that he could relate to farmers when he joined his father. But he does
remember - and so do I – that he was made to cover a huge new cowshed at Little
West End with slurry so that it would blend more quickly into the countryside!
He was also sent on a number of courses; one,
a business leadership course at Newcastle University, set up by the Kellogg
Foundation, he attended part time over a period of three years, driving up for
two weeks at a time with Giles Rowsell in his Triumph Stag and attending
week-long events in Brussels and London. Giles remembers Nick as being very
bright and focused and clearly loving the business environment. In fact at that time the two of them quickly became
leading lights at the Farmers’ Club, starting the Under 30s section when Nick
was only 24, and then joining the main committee where they reduced the average
age by twenty years at a stroke! Nick often stayed with me on his visits to the
Farmers’ Club, and it became our habit to go out early to find the best
breakfast in London. I think our favourite was the Carlton Tower! But Nick loved
business, and I well remember him being at dinner with my parents and a friend
of theirs, Dennis Bulman, who was at the time managing director of Texaco, and
the two of them having a long business conversation well into the small hours.
Dennis Bulman later told my father that he found Nick most interesting and impressive.
Nick spent a few months working in Leith,
which he hated, and he was also sent to run one of their businesses Chipping
Norton for a couple of years. It might have been their revolutionary ‘Evenlode’
business, one of the first complete dry dog foods and for a while very
successful, and which might have made Duke’s fortune all over again, had not
the mighty Mars brought out a competing version, and the firm was slow to put
the feed into garden centers and the like. Chipping Norton wasn’t far from
Moreton-in-the-Marsh where my cousin Mike Lawford lived training to become a
farm manager, and they saw quite a lot of each other there and on runs up to
London; in fact Nick gave up his flat in Chipping Norton and lived in the week
with Mike’s parents until he returned to Hampshire. He was later to be best man at Mike and Penny’s
wedding when they were living in Hampshire and Mike was working for Neil
Fairey.
Nick of course loved cars, as we all did.
His father had Aston Martins and his great uncle had raced at Brooklands. Nick also had the resources of the firm’s
garage with a mechanic, Stan, who understood not just lorries, of which the
firm had a great many, but also the desire of young men to get the maximum out
of whatever they drove. His first car was a very meaty Ford Anglia into which
Stan dropped a hot 1500cc engine. Then came an MGB GT, a Triumph Stag, which
was always overheating, a Tickford Capri and a Scimitar. In the days of the
Capri, he and Ian Hay, who had The Rod Box in Winchester, used to meet for a
bit of a burn-up on the Winchester by-pass, the idea being to reach the
‘Shawford narrows’ before the other. His cars were nominally works cars,
insured for anyone to drive - and we did. We were even sometimes lent Tom’s
Aston Martins, though I’m not sure if he actually knew. I remember taking the
DB5 up to London. Incredible to think of that degree of licence today. Nick did
have one or two accidents, one on the dangerous crossroads which also nearly
claimed Nicky Boyle’s mother, and another when he went ‘all agricultural’ near
Hartley Whitney. He also managed to overturn my commuter car, an ancient Austin
A30, trying to do a handbrake turn at the end of the farm lane at Harvestgate,
but otherwise we all escaped lightly.
Nick as best man to Herry at his wedding to Prue in Sydney in 1971 |
Nick in Curdridge Croft garden with a salmon |
Nick was also a good athlete and apart from
cricket, he excelled at tennis which we played endlessly, particularly at
weekends, on the courts of friends like Johnny Cooke, Nicky Boyle, Belin and
Will Martin, Sally and David Wilson-Young and our own. He was also a useful
squash player, competing on the ladder that Charlie Skipwith maintained in his
squash court at Studwell.
Nick's Stag Party in Botley. Will Martin, Ian Hay, Nick, Charlie Skipwith, Mike Lawford, Andrew Ward. Photo by Herry |
Nick and Tom Duke |
Nick on Athassel Abbey winning the Newmarket Town Plate in 1993 |
Nick also rekindled his relationship with
Kristine Holmquist (now Yankowsky) in 1993 and visited her for some weeks in
California and she also came over the England and travelled with him in France.
There was even talk of marriage, but it never materialized. Kristine however
kept in touch with Nick, and when he was very ill in April 2011, flew over to
see him in hospital, and she’s flown over again to be here today.
Nick and Ann Duke at North Dene |
Nick and Cranston with Cordelia, Izzy, Phillip Leboa, Mia and Mike Burgess at North Dene |
Nick was never happier in his latter years
than when recalling old stories and of course jokes, for which he had a
wonderful memory. Ireland in particular had a powerful fascination for him and
it was sad that we were never able to take him back there. It’s at least
possible that one of the reasons he loved it so much was that his father
relaxed there and was happy and amusing, instead of maintaining the rather
stern demeanor he adopted at home. But his love of the old days and the
influence of his father did combine to give him some fairly reactionary views;
I used to tell him that talking to him was sometimes like listening to the Old
Testament, and it was generally pointless arguing with him.
Nick was a charismatic figure, and as Trevor Trigg puts it, had a ‘happy cheerfulness’ about him. Always fun and interesting, he was blessed with good looks, a fine intellect, and sporting and athletic ability as well as a general love of life. He made many friends – both male and female - and retained them, and although his illness made him necessarily less and less able to socialise, he never complained and stuck doggedly to the conceit that he was ‘fine’ almost to the very end. Even a few weeks ago, he would come out with family and friends, helped by Phillip, to his favourite pub, the Hampshire Bowman, to the Thomas Lord at West Meon and to Stockbridge, and be happy reminiscing about the old days.
I can’t close without, on behalf of Nick’s
family, thanking the local community for their great kindness and support. To Cranston’s
several walkers of various ages, to the owners and staff in the village shop,
who were very supportive, to all those in Swanmore and Bishops Waltham who were
thoughtful and helpful in a variety of ways, everything you did was greatly
appreciated.
Cranston |
Herry Lawford
19th
February 2013
Sunday 17 February 2013
Favourite Walks - St Catherine's Hill
The walkway up St Catherine's Hill in the frost. 310 steps. |
Monday 11 February 2013
Sunday 20 January 2013
Wednesday 16 January 2013
The Murphys and the French Riviera
In a fascinating BBC documentary about the history of the French Riviera I learned for the first time of the role of the Murphys - Gerald and Sara - in creating the beach-loving life for which it's now synonymous.
After marrying they lived at 50 West 11th Street in New York City, where they had three children. In 1921 they moved to Paris to escape the strictures of New York and their families' mutual dissatisfaction with their marriage. In Paris Gerald took up painting, and they began to make the acquaintances for which they became famous. Eventually they moved to the French Riviera, where they became the center of a large circle of artists and writers of later fame, especially Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Archibald MacLeish, John O'Hara, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley.
Prior to their arrival on the French Riviera, the region was experiencing a period when the fashionable only wintered there, abandoning the region during the high summer months. However, the activities of the Murphys fueled the same renaissance in arts and letters as did the excitement of Paris, especially among the cafés of Montparnasse. In 1923 the Murphys convinced the Hotel du Cap to stay open for the summer so that they might entertain their friends, sparking a new era for the French Riviera as a summer haven. The Murphys eventually purchased a villa in Cap d'Antibes and named it Villa America; they resided there for many years. When the Murphys arrived on the Riviera, lying on the beach merely to enjoy the sun was not a common activity. Occasionally, someone would go swimming, but the joys of being at the beach just for sun were still unknown at the time. The Murphys, with their long forays and picnics at La Garoupe, introduced sunbathing on the beach as a fashionable activity. From Wikipedia
The painting by Gerald Murphy is titled 'Clocks'
See also Farewell Robert Le Pirate about the famous nightclub at Cap Martin
Tuesday 15 January 2013
Favourite Poetry - Stag's Leap
Unspeakable
Now I come to look at
love
in a new way, now that
I know I'm not
standing in its light.
I want to ask my
almost-no-longer
husband what it's like to not
love, but he does not
want to talk about it,
he wants a stillness
at the end of it.
And sometimes I feel
as if, already,
I am not here - to
stand in his thirty-year
sight, and not in
love's sight,
I feel an invisibility
like a neutron in a
cloud chamber buried in a mile-long
accelerator, where
what cannot
be seen is inferred by
what the visible
does. After the alarm
goes off,
I stroke him, my hand
feels like a singer
who sings along him,
as if it is
his flesh that's
singing, in its full range,
tenor of the higher
vertebrae,
baritone, bass,
contrabass.
I want to say to him,
now, What
was it like, to love
me - when you looked at me,
what did you see? When
he loved me, I looked
out at the world as if
from inside
a profound dwelling,
like a burrow, or a well, I'd gaze
up, at noon, and see
Orion
shining - when I
thought he loved me, when I thought
we were joined not
just for breath's time,
but for the long
continuance,
the hard candies of
femur and stone,
the fastnesses. He
shows no anger,
I show no anger but in
flashes of humour
all is courtesy and
horror. And after
the first minute, when
I say, Is this about
her, and he says, No,
it's about
you,
we do not speak of her.
from Stag's Leap, by Sharon Olds, who has won the TS Eliot Poetry Prize
Monday 14 January 2013
The Joys of Bird Feeding
The old garden wall with the hazel tree on the left |
I have never fed wild birds as I believed that once begun, one had to be consistent and continue to feed, otherwise the birds would starve in cold weather. I was probably wrong, but I now have a country garden where I can maintain regular feeding and have therefore set up some feeding stations on and beneath a fine hazel tree in my garden in Hampshire.
Old Swan House with the hazel tree hung with feeders, with the robin feeding station at its base The urn feeds the pigeons |
The garden robin with his feeder |
And the urn in the foreground has been pressed into service as an additional feeder - for pigeons and doves. It remains to be seen whether the local squirrels will come and help themselves as well, but all are welcome.
Thursday 6 December 2012
Sally Macpherson 1940 - 2012
Sally Macpherson |
My dear friend Sally Macpherson - who I knew mostly as Sally Wilson-Young - died in November 2012. She was an extraordinarily lovely person - a bright light full of energy, talent and charm. She passed across the the Meon Valley like comet, brightening the lives of all around her.
At her Funeral Service at the Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley St in London her step-son, Andrew Stafford-Deitsch spoke so beautifully about her that his words below best serve as her tribute. I have been given his eulogy by her daughter Amanda, who looked after her wonderfully in her final months.
'Sally was born in Cincinnati in 1940 to Dale and Eloise Grace. They lived outside Cincinnati and Dale ran the family dairy business. Sally actually worked there for one summer job, which resulted in a life long hatred of ice cream, at least until the very end when she took to having ice cream, cream and butter with everything! She had two siblings, Kathleen and Michael and in spite of lots of differences, Sally and Kathleen shared a common determination from the earliest age to get to New York. Sally’s childhood years were focused on ballet, followed by horses and then art and she majored in History of Art at Bradford junior college in Massachusetts.
In 1961, she went to New York and worked in publishing and in art galleries. There she met my father Peter, who had, by then, been divorced from my mother for several years and they were married in 1964. Amanda was born in May 1966 and by all accounts they were very happy.
I don’t remember the wedding but I do remember a beautiful apartment on 5th Avenue with a view of the park and a lovely warm feel to it. I also remember several holidays with my father and brothers when, of course, Sally was very much in evidence. Being a typically horrible 10 year old product of divorced parents, I was determined not to like Sally. She and I were about the same height at that point and I vividly remember one squabble during which I was pulling her hair and she was biting me or perhaps it was the other way round but my heart really wasn’t in it. I had already realised that as well as being pretty she was actually a lot of fun and a moment later - and much to the relief of my father - we both starting laughing and ceased all hostilities.
And she was certainly very pretty - her two beautiful daughters are evidence of that!
My father’s early death in 1970 was an awful shock to all of us, but particularly for Sally. They had only been married for six years and Peter was not yet 45. Nonetheless and true to form, she recovered quickly and moved on to marry David Wilson- Young with whom she had Ian in 1975 and Olivia in 1979. At first they lived in Mexico but by 1974 they had moved to Jervis Lodge in Swanmore which they turned into a most elegant home. They loved to entertain friends and family there and they went on many wonderful trips together as David’s job took him all around the world.
David couldn’t always take Sally with him and he was away a lot which left Sally alone in a strange country which must have been hard. In The White Cliffs, Alice Duer Miller wrote:
The English are frosty
When you’ve no kith or kin
Of theirs, but how they alter
When once they take you in!
The kindest, the truest,
The best friends ever known,
It’s hard to remember
How they froze you to the bone.
In fact, of course, Sally’s Americanness was attractive in itself and positively exotic in rural Hampshire. Sally had great taste and she applied it in many ways. She was always immaculately and stylishly dressed, and she made her houses beautiful as well as homely and welcoming. She achieved her effects with minimal fuss and just a few well chosen and probably rather expensive objects to hold one’s attention. Many I spoke to talked of the wonderful atmosphere that Sally created - often in her white apron doling out food to masses of people and loving every moment. Her cooking was really superb and she produced delicious, imaginative, creative meals with no apparent effort. She commented to one friend that she wasn’t sure she’d ever get through the pearly gates - she thought she would most probably be stuck at the entrance with her wooden spoon and whisk serving up another huge meal!
In talking about Sally, her sense of fun comes up again and again. She had a great sense of the ridiculous and her infectious laughter was never far away but the word that was used more than any other was “loyalty”. She was truly interested in what everyone was doing, immensely supportive of any new project or relationship and always ready to help. I heard that she called one close friend-in-distress every morning to make sure that she was okay. She had a rare ability to help without imposing.
But there was much more to Sally than compassion, excellent cooking and great style. She retained her strong interest in art and, although she stopped painting watercolours fairly early on, she was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. I heard that visiting an exhibition with her was a delight as she was so well informed and discerning. She also bought many good paintings which could be seen on the walls of her beautiful houses.
Her interest in design led, perhaps inevitably, to gardening and despite reservations about an American telling the English how to do their gardens, she had the style and sensitivity to generate steady business, as well as many admirers, with her garden designs. I’m happy to say that we are lucky enough to have one of her gardens at home and it gets better with every year. Far from imposing her opinions, she listened carefully to what we wanted and then created around it. I have to admit that all the best bits are hers. Quite remarkable for someone who used to tell us that when she was in New York she couldn’t even keep a window box alive!
Sally’s interests and achievements were much broader even than the art and gardening to which I have already referred. Her cheerful good nature hid a determined streak and masses of energy so that when a new interest captured her imagination, or a problem needed to be addressed, she really worked at it. She was very tenacious. Problems got solved. New challenges were mastered.
Having learned the piano as a child, she adored music and was a keen fan first of ballet and then of opera. She also wanted everyone else to share her passions. Amanda says that by the time she was 15 she had seen 100 ballets and was thoroughly hooked. Sally was rather less successful in persuading Ian of the merits of opera. He would go, dreaming of boxing matches missed, and afterwards assure Sally that he had really enjoyed the performance!
She read widely and well into the night and was keen to discuss books with anyone who showed an interest. She claimed to be unable to add 2 plus 2 and yet she became a keen Bridge player and really enjoyed it. Completely unknown to me, Sally was also an accomplished skier and had even bagged a stag in Scotland having spent the day flirting with an apparently rather good looking young stalker twice her height and half her age!
When, finally she moved to Steadham House in Droxford, latterly with her third husband Rory, she brought with her all the skill and expertise that she had acquired over the years and managed on that relatively tiny canvas still to create a delightful house and garden. It offered all the warmth and welcome of Jervis Lodge but on a smaller scale and the quality of the cooking and entertaining was at least maintained as Rory introduced a new group of interesting and cultured friends into the mix.
But to return to the theme of loyalty, this, I think was what most defined Sally to all of us. She adored her family above everything and was immensely and rightly proud of her children and grandchildren. She was delighted when Jimmy and then Jaine joined the family and wanted more than anything to see the next stages in the lives of all of them and indeed of all of us. Particularly toward the end, it was sometimes difficult to get her to talk about herself at all-she wanted to be updated on everyone else first and she delighted in the detail and in discussing what it all meant and where it all would lead. She dismissed her own problems as if they merited no mention.
To everyone I spoke to, Sally was an exceptional friend, a friend in need, generous, and extravagant - wildly so on occasion - with no understanding of money and no idea why people got so upset about the stuff. She liked to give good presents and good parties: whether she could really afford them was a secondary consideration. She didn’t judge people, she looked for the best in them and then used her sense of humour to extract it and there was always laughter - gales of it.
She will be greatly missed by all of us.'
Below is a photo of Sally and friends at one of the annual lunches given by B'lin and Will Martin at Hill Farm. She's on the grass, third from the left. It's appropriate because it includes many of her close friends, all of whom miss her terribly to this day.
Front row: Anna-Maria Pearson, Charlie Madge, Terry Porter, Wendy Cartwright, Ayako Lawford, Penny Lawford, Sally Wilson-Young, Prue, Belinda Martin
Sally, Annette and Patrick Lawford and Prue at a holiday in the South of France 1976
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