Favourite Places - Stockbridge

The view over Stockbridge and the Test Valley towards Stockbridge Down on a summer evening

Favourite Gardens - Heale House

I first visited the gardens of Heale House near Salisbury over 25 years ago and remember them - and the glorious C16th house - as particularly lovely. A second visit this week confirmed that memory. Several noteable features such as the superbly trained apple trees are comparatively recent plantings (1976) but now look satisfactorily ancient, and the line of silver birch below the garden on the south side of the house have been underplanted in the manner of Highgrove. The Japanese planting along the streams beside the tea house is charming and full of light and shadow and it all combines to create a marvellous serene and secluded garden.

There is also an exceptional nursery (as well as a good tearoom) where one finds delightful and unusual plants.

Click here for more photos of the garden.


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Favourite Writings - Bernard Levin on a Wexford Opera

On a memorable performance of Spontini's La Vestale, by Bernard Levin

1979 was The Year of the Missing Lemon Juice. The Theatre Royal in Wexford holds 440; it was completely full that night, so there are, allowing for a few who have already died (it is not true, though it might well have been, that some died of laughter at the time), hardly more than four hundred people who now share, to the end of their lives, an experience from which the rest of the world, now and for ever, is excluded. When the last of us dies, the experience will die with us, for although it is already enshrined in legend, no one who was not an eye witness will ever really understand what we felt. Certainly I am aware that these words cannot convey more than the facts, and the facts, as so often and most particularly in this case, are only part, and a small part, too, of the whole truth. But I must try...

The set for Act I of the opera consisted of a platform laid over the stage, raised about a foot at the back and sloping evenly to the footlights. This was meant to represent the interior of the Temple where burned the sacred flame, and had therefore to look like marble; the designer had achieved a convincing alternative by covering the raised stage in Formica. But the Formica was slippery; to avoid the risk of a performer taking a tumble, designer and stage manager had between them discovered that an ample sprinkling of lemon juice would make the surface sufficiently sticky to provide a secure foothold. The story now forks; down one road, there lies the belief that the member of the stage staff whose duty it was to sprinkle the lifesaving liquid, and who had done so without fail at rehearsal and at the earlier performances (this was the last one of the Festival), had simply forgotten. Down the other branch in the road is a much more attractive rumour: that the theatre charlady, inspecting the premises in the afternoon, had seen to her horror and indignation that the stage was covered in the remains of some spilt liquid, and, inspired by professional pride, had thereupon set to and given it a good scrub and polish all over. The roads now join again, for apart from the superior charm of the second version, it makes no difference what the explanation was. What matters is what happened.

What happened began to happen very early. The hero of the opera strides on to the stage immediately after the curtain has gone up. The hero strode; and instantly fell flat on his back. There was a murmur of sympathy and concern from the audience for his embarrassment and for the possibility that he might have been hurt; it was the last such sound that was to be heard that night, and it was very soon to be replaced by sounds of a very different nature.
The hero got to his feet, with considerable difficulty, and, having slid some way down the stage in falling, proceeded to stride up-stage to where he should have been in the first place; he had, of course, gone on singing throughout, for the music had not stopped. Striding up-stage, however, was plainly more difficult than he had reckoned on, for every time he took a step and tried to follow it with another, the foot with which he had taken the first proceeded to slide down-stage again, swiftly followed by its companion; he may not have known it, but he was giving a perfect demonstration of what is called marcher sur place, a graceful manoeuvre normally used in mime, and seen at its best in the work of Marcel Marceau.

Finding progress uphill difficult, indeed impossible, the hero wisely decided to abandon the attempt and stay where he was, singing bravely on, no doubt calculating that, since the stage was brightly lit, the next character to enter would notice him and adjust his own movements accordingly. So it proved, in a sense at least, for the next character to enter was the hero's trusted friend and confidant, who, seeing his hero further down-stage than he was supposed to be, loyally decided to join him there. Truth to tell, he had little choice, for from the moment he had stepped on to the stage he had begun to slide downhill, arms semaphoring, like Scrooge's clerk on the way home to his Christmas dinner. His downhill progress was arrested by his fetching up against his friend with a thud; this, as it happened, was not altogether inappropriate, as the opera called for them to embrace in friendly greeting at that point. It did not, however, call for them, locked in each other's arms and propelled by the impetus of the friend's descent, to careen helplessly further down-stage with the evident intention of going straight into the orchestra pit with vocal accompaniment - for the hero's aria had, on the arrival of his companion, been transformed into a duet.
On the brink of ultimate disaster they managed to arrest their joint progress to destruction and, working their way along the edge of the stage like mountaineers seeking a route round an unbridgeable crevasse, most gallantly began, with infinite pain and by a form of progress most aptly described in the title of Lenin's famous pamphlet, Four Steps Forward, Three Steps Back, to climb up the terrible hill. It speedily became clear that this hazardous ascent was not being made simply from a desire to retain dramatic credibility; it had a much more practical object. The only structure breaking the otherwise all too smooth surface of the stage was a marble pillar, a yard or so high, on which there burned the sacred flame of the rite. This pillar was embedded firmly in the stage, and it had obviously occurred to both mountaineers at once that if they could only reach it it would provide a secure base for their subsequent operations, since if they held on to it for dear life they would at any rate be safe from any further danger of sliding downhill and/or breaking their necks. It was soon borne in upon them that they had undertaken a labour of truly Sisyphean proportions, and would have been most heartily pardoned by the audience if they had abandoned the librettist's words at this point, and fitted to the music instead the old moral verse: The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight; But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night.
By this time the audience - all 440 of us - were in a state of such abandon with laughter that several of us felt that if this were to continue a moment longer we would be in danger of doing ourselves a serious internal mischief, little did we know that the fun was just beginning, for shortly after Mallory and Irvine reached their longed-for goal, the chorus entered, and instantly flung themselves en masse into a very freely choreographed version of Les Patineurs, albeit to the wrong music. The heroine herself, the priestess Giulia, with a survival instinct strong enough to suggest that she would be the one to get close to should any reader of these lines happen to be shipwrecked along with the Wexford opera company, skated into the wings and kicked her shoes off and then, finding on her return that this had hardly improved matters, skated back to the wings and removed her tights as well.

Now, however, the singing never having stopped for a moment, the chorus had come to the same conclusion as had the hero and his friend, namely that holding on to the holy pillar was the only way to remain upright and more or less immobile. The trouble with this conclusion was that there was only one such pillar on the stage, and it was a small one; as the cast crowded round it, it seemed that there would be some very unseemly brawling among those seeking a hand-hold, a foothold, even a bare finger-hold, on this tiny island of security in the terrible sea of impermanence. By an instinctive understanding of the principles of co-operation, however, they decided the matter without bloodshed; those nearest the pillar clutched it, those next nearest clutched the clutchers, those farther away still clutched those, and so on until, in a kind of daisy- chain that snaked across the stage, everybody was accommodated.

The condition of the audience was now one of fully extended hysteria, which was having the most extraordinary effect - itself intensifying the audience's condition - on the orchestra. At Wexford, the orchestra pit runs under the stage; only a single row of players - those at the edge of the pit nearest the audience, together, of course, with the conductor -could see what was happening on the stage. The rest realized that something out of the ordinary was going on up there, and would have been singularly dull of wit if they had not, for many members of the audience were now slumped on the floor weeping helplessly in the agony of their mirth, and although the orchestra at Wexford cannot see the stage, it can certainly see the auditorium.

Theologians tell us that the delights of the next world are eternal. Perhaps; but what is certain is that all earthly ones, alas, are temporary, and duly, after giving us a glimpse of the more enduring joy of Heaven that must have strengthened the devout in their faith and caused instant conversion among many of the unbelievers, the entertainment came to an end when the first act of the opera did so, amid such cheering as I had never before heard in an opera house, and can never hope to hear again. In the interval before Act II, a member of the production staff walked back and forth across the stage, sprinkling it with the precious nectar, and we knew that our happiness was at an end. But he who, after such happiness, would have demanded more, would be greedy indeed, and most of us were content to know that, for one crowded half-hour, we on honeydew had fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise.

Bernard Levin

on form at Ashtall Manor

I visited Ashtall Manor for the on form sculpture exhibition two years ago and found it and the Bannerman-designed garden beautiful. Visiting again this year (the exhibition is biennial) was an even better experience. The weather was near perfect and the light wonderful. And there was a concert in the church and supper provided in the 'Potting Shed' to round off a perfect day.

For more photos, click here  

Favourite Poems - No Man Is An Island

This famous poem, written by John Dunne in 1624, was read out on stage at Glastonbury by PJ Harvey in June 2016 following the Referendum. How apt and and moving it is. 

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. 

Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Chelsea Flower Show 2016 was as interesting as ever, both for the superb show gardens (especially the 'Best In Show' Telegraph garden by Any Sprugeon) as well as for the plants that go in an out of fashion. This year no one used Anthriscus 'Ravenswing' when only three years ago it was everywhere, and there was masses of purple. For more photos click here 

Favourite Gardens - West Green

West Green near Hartley Whitney is a beautiful 1720's house with a somewhat scarred past (brutal first owner Gen Henry Hartley and almost demolished by an IRA bomb) that was left to the National Trust by Sir Victor Sassoon in 1957 but has been taken on a long lease by Marylyn Abbott who has completely redesigned the fascinating and beautiful garden. Click here for some more photos.  

Favourite Sculptures - the Garden Gallery

Rachel Bebb's wonderful Garden Gallery in Broughton held a private view for the latest summer exhibition of sculptures called 'Footprints on the Sands of Time' and featuring Charlotte Mayer as well as 120 other works. Click here for some more photos of the exhibition. 

The Manor at Upton Grey

     

The Manor House at Upton Grey is an Arts & Craft house with a beautiful garden carefully restored by Rosamund Wallinger and her husband based on the original plans by Gertrude Jeykell from 1908.
Click here for some more photos   

Favourite Gardens - Hinton Ampner

'At Hinton, I am inclined to believe that the most attractive area is the sward of plain grass between the church and the house with the tall jade-green stems of beech trees rising beyond it. There is a spaciousness and tranquillity here which my more elaborate efforts elsewhere have not achieved.' - Ralph Dutton.

Although much of the garden is lovely, I agree with Dutton that the best part is the 'ungardened' view between the house and the church where the ancient beeches preside over the smooth sweeps of lawn. Much of the garden is on clay which is easily dried out by the wind, so that topiary and areas such as the Dell, full of mature trees and shrubs, are more successful.

I do agree with Dutton, though, when he writes: 'I have learnt during the past years what above all I want from a garden and that is tranquillity.'

The view from the terrace in June.

The house is wonderful, having relatively few perfectly proportioned principal rooms, all beautifully decorated in Dutton's precise neo-Georgian style.

The Entrance Hall

The South Drawing Room

The Dining Room

Breakfast laid out in Ralph Dutton's bedroom

For more photos, click here