Memorial Trees and Roses at Old Swan House

The Orchard at Old Swan House

When I planted up the garden in 2014 my first order was of six fruit trees from Blackmoor Nurseries, Selborne to create an orchard where the vegetable garden had been. The trees were then planted in memory of particularly close friends, and each has a slate label at their base with their name and dates on. They are (with links to their eulogies):

Cherry 'Czar' - Nick Duke

Nick Duke (1945 - 2013) - a Czar cherry in the lower left next to the old Victoria plum.

James Grieve apple (Venky)

S. Venkitsewaran (Venky) (1941 - 2013) - a James Grieve apple on 'Venky's terrace'

Greengage St Julien (Jo Johns)

Jo Johns (1939 - 2014) - a St Julien Reine Claude greengage opposite Venky's terrace'

Mirabelle plum (Lucie Skipwith) 

Lucie Skipwith (1942 - 2014) - a Mirabelle plum close to the drive

Sunburst cherry (Annie May)

Annie May 1944 - 2014) - a Sunburst cherry next to the old damson

A Conference Pear (Nicky Boyle)

Nicky Boyle closest to the garage and drive 

                                     A quince tree commemorating Bill Birch Reynardson (1923 - 2107)

In addition to the fruit trees in the orchard there are two roses:

Sally Wilson-Young / Macpherson (1940 - 2012) - a Mme Alfred Carriere rose planted on the eastern wall

Rose Banksii alba (Kate O'Brian) 

Kate O'Brien 1953 - 2017) - a white Banksian rose planted under the hazel tree on the eastern wall.

Old Swan House Garden in Spring 2020

It's been the finest spring weather that I can remember with almost continuous sunshine since late March. The grasses came down then too and immediately started sending up new green growth The pheasant grass that I had been worried about needed some careful cutting out of dead leaves, but is now growing more strongly. It's the only grass that doesn't get cut down.

We had a couple of very wet days in early April but they were necessary to water everything and refill the pond.

As I write this, on 23rd April, the forecast is for more sunshine, and so I have continued to water the box as well as any new planting - including last year's black bamboos and this year's euphorbia wulfenii. I decided to replace some of the wulfenii as they were getting too leggy.

A few of the box needed attention as some of them had been partially stripped, but all are growing strongly again and producing new growth.

The orchard has done particularly well this year and although there were a couple of frosts, they don't seem to have damaged the blossom, which is now largely set. It would be wonderful to have a good fruit season as last year's was mixed - good for apples and pears and Victoria and Czar plums, but no damsons, greengage, cherries or Mirabelle. Incidentally, Bruce Williams trims the fruit trees (as well as the box) and they are now all perfectly shaped thanks to his ministrations.

Apple blossom in the orchard

Katya has tied the roses in to the wall and left a beautiful tracery of canes that promise abundant flowers this year.

Mme Aldred Carriere - Sally's rose - beautifully tied in. It was surplus to requirements at the Old Rectory until rescued by Katya. 

The lawn (as someone said in another context, 'the silence between the notes' - was scarified in the autumn and hasn't quite recovered. Fortunately, Lawntech have just decided that they can, after all, continue their quarterly treatment and it is already improving with a spring top dressing.

 

Lastly, I took a video of the garden at dusk, turning on the lights as I went round. It's come out quite well

Titian at the National Gallery - Love, Desire, Death

‘Death of Actaeon’ (about 1559-75), the National Gallery, London

The National Gallery have organised an astonishing exhibition - Titian - Love, Desire, Death, that  unites all six paintings, in a series that Titian referred to as the 'poesie', for the first time in over 400 years. Ironically, the exhibition opened in March 2020 just as the Coronavirus restrictions prevented the public from visiting; a shocking event that perfectly demonstrates the cruel and capricious way in which the Gods play with our lives. 

'Danaë’ (about 1551–3), The Wellington Collection, Apsley House

The scene is based on the story of the Princess Danae recounted briefly by Ovid and at greater length by Boccaccio. She was isolated in a bronze tower following a prophecy that her firstborn would eventually kill her father. Although aware of the consequences, Danaë was seduced and became pregnant by Zeus / Jupiter, who, inflamed by lust, descended from Mount Olympus to seduce her in the form of a shower of gold.

‘Venus and Adonis’ (1554), Prado, Madrid

Venus tries to stop her lover from departing for the hunt, fearing—correctly—that he would be killed. The mood of sensuality, conveyed by the beautiful depiction of Venus, seen from the back, enhances the viewer’s sense of the tragic end to this story, expressed through their exchanged glances and the frightened Cupid. 

     ‘Diana and Callisto’, (1556–9) National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland

The nymph Callisto was the favourite of Diana, the virgin goddess of the hunt. Jupiter, king of the gods, noticed her beauty and disguised himself in order to seduce her. Titian has painted the moment Diana forces Callisto to strip and bathe after hunting and discovers her pregnancy.

‘Rape of Europa’ (1559–62) from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

This is the story of the abduction of Europa by Zeus / Jupiter. Europa is sprawled helplessly on her back, her clothes in disarray. In the myth, the god assumed the form of a bull and enticed Europa to climb onto his back. Once there, the bull rode into the sea and carried her to Crete where he revealed his real identity. Europa became the first Queen of Crete, and had three children with Zeus. The painting depicts Europa on the back of the bull, just off the shore of her homeland.

‘Perseus and Andromeda’ (probably 1554–6), The Wallace Collection, London


Perseus and Andromeda is perhaps the most dramatic of all of these paintings. Andromeda is shown chained to a rock as a sacrifice to appease the sea monster, who had been sent by Neptune to punish her mother for claiming that she and Andromeda were more beautiful than the Nereids. The hero Perseus swoops down to rescue her, his powerful vertiginous descent contrasting vividly with her passive vulnerability.

Diana and Actaeon

This painting portrays the moment in which the hunter Actaeon bursts into where the goddess Diana and her nymphs are bathing. Diana is furious and turns Actaeon into a stag, who is then pursued and killed by his own hounds, a scene Titian later painted in 'The Death of Actaeon' (see below)

'Death of Actaeon’ (about 1559-75), the National Gallery, London

This is the sequel to Titian's Diana and Actaeon showing the story's tragic conclusion, which approximately follows the Roman poet's account. After Actaeon surprised the goddess Diana bathing naked in the woods, she transformed him into a stag and he is attacked and killed by his own hounds.

The paintings are inspired by stories taken from Ovid’s 'Metamorphoses' and other classical works and were almost all painted for Prince Philip of Spain (later King Philip) over 10 years from about 1551 to 1562.

Ovid's poems provided Titian with tales from a world where capricious and cruel immortals play havoc with the lives of men and women. The paintings all have themes of seduction, disguise and power.

Click here for the National Gallery Facebook page where the two 'Diana' painting are discussed

Click here for the fascinating BBC programme which discusses the exhibition 

See also Favourite Writings - Ovid 

And finally, I can't resist adding another similar painting, 'Bacchus and Ariadne' by Luca Giodarno, that hangs in the Herbert Gallery and Museum, Coventry. 

'It is a virtuoso reinterpretation and expansion of Titian's famous painting of 'Bacchus and Ariadne' which is now in the National Gallery, London. It tells a story which was popular in classical times and in the renaissance. Theseus had killed the Minotaur and escaped from the Labyrinth by means of a ball of string given to him by Ariadne. He took Ariadne off with him in his ship but (this is where the painting begins) abandons her on the island of Naxos. She holds the string and gazes at his vanishing sail, but behind her Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry arrives to comfort her.' The story is further immortalised in Richard Strauss's semi-comic opera, 'Ariadne Auf Naxos' 

See also 'The Lasting legacy of Ovid'

A Brief History of Plagues

1918 - waiting to receive patients in the US

We have become so accustomed to being protected from serious illnesses by advances in public health and medicine that we no longer remember that devastating epidemics have ravaged us many times over the centuries. The Black Death in the C14th is thought to have killed half the population of western Europe, and the 'Plague Pits' on St Catherine's Hill outside Winchester still attest to its virulence. The 'Spanish 'Flu (actually from Kansas) of 1918-9 killed about 40m people and the 'seasonal' 'flu that strikes us every winter carries off about the same number of people worldwide, but because of its low toxicity (0.1%) and predictability, it's not classified as an epidemic.  

The closest I have come to a plague was the SARS epidemic of 2002 in Asia which killed about 800 people before being contained, a very small number compared to the historic plagues and even with Ebola, which has killed about 11,000 since first being identified in 1976. The Swine 'flu of 2009 was far more virulent, killing between 150,ooo and 575,000 people worldwide.

It's interesting to learn that a respiratory disease epidemic was listed as one of the top five threats to the UK population in government studies prepared in 2104-5, but this doesn't seem to have resulted in much forward planning (as in the stockpiling of PPE and ventilators).  Bill Gates's amazingly prescient TED Talk in 2015 should have also alerted the government to stockpile the obvious equipment like ventilators, but of course there are no votes in being prepared.

This piece from a professor of Classics is an interesting history of the devastating plagues that ravaged the ancient world.

Thucydides and the plague of Athens

The coronavirus is concentrating our minds on the fragility of human existence in the face of a deadly disease. Words like "epidemic" and "pandemic" (and "panic"!) have become part of our daily discourse.

These words are Greek in origin, and they point to the fact that the Greeks of antiquity thought a lot about disease, both in its purely medical sense and as a metaphor for the broader conduct of human affairs. What the Greeks called the "plague" (loimos) features in some memorable passages in Greek literature.

 Pericles Funeral Oration on the Greek 50 Drachmai 1955 banknote. Picture: Shutterstock

One such description sits at the very beginning of Western literature. Homer's Iliad, (around 700BC), commences with a description of a plague that strikes the Greek army at Troy. Agamemnon, the leading prince of the Greek army, insults a local priest of Apollo called Chryses.

Apollo is the plague god - a destroyer and healer - and he punishes all the Greeks by sending a pestilence among them. Apollo is also the archer god, and he is depicted firing arrows into the Greek army with a terrible effect:

Apollo strode down along the pinnacles of Olympus angered

in his heart, carrying on his shoulders the bow and the hooded

quiver; and the shafts clashed on the shoulders of the god walking angrily. ...

Terrible was the clash that rose from the bow of silver.

First he went after the mules and the circling hounds, then let go

a tearing arrow against the men themselves and struck them.

The corpse fires burned everywhere and did not stop burning.

About 270 years after The Iliad, or thereabouts, plague is the centrepiece of two great classical Athenian works - Sophocles' Oedipus the King, and Book 2 of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.

Thucydides (c.460-400BC) and Sophocles (490-406BC) would have known one another in Athens, although it is hard to say much more than that for a lack of evidence. The two works mentioned above were produced at about the same time. The play Oedipus was probably produced about 429BC, and the plague of Athens occurred in 430-426BC.

Thucydides offers us a description of a city-state in crisis that is as poignant and powerful now, as it was in 430BC.

Thucydides writes prose, not verse (as Homer and Sophocles do), and he worked in the comparatively new field of "history" (meaning "inquiry" or "research" in Greek). His focus was the Peloponnesian war fought between Athens and Sparta, and their respective allies, between 431 and 404BC.

Thucydides' description of the plague that struck Athens in 430BC is one of the great passages of Greek literature. One of the remarkable things about it is how focused it is on the general social response to the pestilence, both those who died from it and those who survived.

The description of the plague immediately follows on from Thucydides' renowned account of Pericles' Funeral Oration (it is important that Pericles died of the plague in 429BC, whereas Thucydides caught it but survived).

Thucydides gives a general account of the early stages of the plague - its likely origins in north Africa, its spread in the wider regions of Athens, the struggles of the doctors to deal with it, and the high mortality rate of the doctors themselves.

Nothing seemed to ameliorate the crisis - not medical knowledge or other forms of learning, nor prayers or oracles. Indeed "in the end people were so overcome by their sufferings that they paid no further attention to such things".

He describes the symptoms in some detail - the burning feeling of sufferers, stomach aches and vomiting, the desire to be totally naked without any linen resting on the body itself, the insomnia and the restlessness.

The next stage, after seven or eight days, if people survived that long, saw the pestilence descend to the bowels and other parts of the body - genitals, fingers and toes. Some people even went blind.

Words indeed fail one when one tries to give a general picture of this disease; and as for the sufferings of individuals, they seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure.

Those with strong constitutions survived no better than the weak.

The most terrible thing was the despair into which people fell when they realised that they had caught the plague; for they would immediately adopt an attitude of utter hopelessness, and by giving in in this way, would lose their powers of resistance.

Lastly, Thucydides focuses on the breakdown in traditional values where self-indulgence replaced honour, where there existed no fear of God or man.

The whole description of the plague in Book 2 lasts only for about five pages, although it seems longer.

The first outbreak of plague lasted two years, whereupon it struck a second time, although with less virulence. When Thucydides picks up very briefly the thread of the plague a little bit later, he provides numbers of the deceased: 4400 hoplites (citizen-soldiers), 300 cavalrymen and an unknown number of ordinary people.

Nothing did the Athenians so much harm as this, or so reduced their strength for war.

Modern scholars argue over the science of it all, not the least because Thucydides offers a generous amount of detail of the symptoms.

Epidemic typhus and smallpox are most favoured, but about 30 different diseases have been posited.

Thucydides offers us a narrative of a pestilence that is different in all kinds of ways from what we face.

The lessons that we learn from the coronavirus crisis will come from our own experiences of it, not from reading Thucydides. 

But these are not mutually exclusive. Thucydides offers us a description of a city-state in crisis that is as poignant and powerful now, as it was in 430BC.

• Chris Mackie is a Professor of Classics at La Trobe University