There have been some readers’ requests for posts and it is my New Year Resolution to tackle them.
Like most people’s NYRs, mine will fall short as the first request is for a disquisition on The Great Russian Novel. Anna Karenina is as far as I’ve got and I have a hunch that watching the current BBC adaptation of War and Peace will not get me any further. It is being given a rough ride by the critics. To give any sort of insight into the subject requires at least a postgraduate thesis. One that I could, I suppose, undertake at the admirable Goodenough College whose Director, Andrew Ritchie, has posted a comment enlarging on a point made in a recent post, Soft Power. It is worth your attention.
Next, a reader in Ireland asked me to write about the Bellew seat*, Barmeath Castle, where I was brought up. I was looking forward to this task; pretty easy for me. However, a weekly magazine, Country Life, in their edition dated 6th January has beaten me to it. It is written by architectural historian, Roger White, and accompanied by Paul Barker’s photographs. The one above is not his, by the way; you will have to part with £3.20 to read the article and see them.
I learnt something. There is a striking picture of the circular, vaulted ceiling of “the prospect chamber”. The posh name is news to me. When my sister married in 1963, this turret room was used for storing her wedding presents until they were transferred to her matrimonial home in Co. Meath. It was known in my childhood as “the room where Angela’s wedding presents are”. Actually, to be truthful, one or two of them were so slow making the move to Meath that they passed into my ownership. I still have a tray, of which she must have received many. To be fair I also have at least one of my brother’s wedding presents: a canteen of cutlery given by a fellow officer in the Irish Guards from Brunei.
The Country Life article glosses over the hard work and expense of maintaining such an estate. It mentions the gardens, lake, walled garden, archery range and beech maze. It does not say that there are only about 250 acres of pasture to pay for all this. You can see below the sort of thing my brother has to deal with.
There is a third request, for an explanation as to why “Lady Day no longer coincides with the Feast of the Annunciation and the somewhat complex calendrical machinations of quarter and cross-quarter days”. May I leave this to another Day? But don’t be discouraged from making suggestions for future posts.
*seat is what it’s called in Country-Life-speak. I think my brother would call it his “place” in Co. Louth. I heard the late Debo Devonshire refer to her “house” in Ireland (Lismore Castle). If you’d like to listen to her in conversation with her niece, Charlotte Mosley, at the Frick in New York in 2010, here is the link. It is a delightful way to spend an hour.