So, having aired the major grievances in my existence (c: yesterday, I think I can go without another diary-like blog post for a long time. Today I oscillated between Gawker and other websites, though I wrote Greek exercises and (with inward groaning) renewed my acquaintance with the aorist tense, played the piano and violin, and sang, too. Gawker was unusually rewarding, what with the mice whose presence the New York City Health Department discovered in the Metropolitan Opera, the perfectly aligned sunset that is to make the streets of Manhattan glow red this evening, and the opera based on Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth which is to be performed at La Scala (and the rich selection of Gilbert-and-Sullivan riffs which the blog's commenters wrote on hearing this news).
As for the writing, nothing did materialize yesterday, but I added half of a long paragraph to "The Fountain and the Labyrinth" today. The heroine has arrived in Beaconsfield, so I describe the crossroads where London, Aylesbury, Wycombe and Windsor End meet, as it may have looked in the 17th century, and am about to launch into a depiction of the inn (I chose Royal Saracen's Head). My research yesterday was deeply absorbing, because I found a treasure-trove of old photos and postcards and pictures of Buckinghamshire's towns. There are beautiful scenes like the Pepperpots at a bridge over the River Wye, with a grey flint chapel (/shoemaker's cottage) hidden in the trees nearby; the Church Loft, built in 1534, with the passage leading through into the slightly triste but peacefully quiet Church Lane; and the intricately carven wooden lodge (reminiscent of Hänsel and Gretel), with the ornate brick gate-posts and wrought-iron fence beside it, as well as the stately but compact, lavishly pillared mansion of Hall Barn.
A week or two ago I saw a photo of the Château Chambord, which Francis the First built in the Loire Valley and which was finished in 1547 (the year he died), and the thought struck me that landscapes and edifices can be as beautiful and elaborate and perfect in real life as they are in a painter's imagination. This idea was confirmed when I was looking over the English photos. (But the festooning on the Hall Barn Lodge seems overdone, as if the artist's chisel were bewitched to move compulsively and incessantly like the red shoes in the fairy tale; still, I think that the faces of the cherubs, which don't really fit the bodies, often have an amusing medieval sinisterness, and I enjoy the peaceful curling leafy sprays that end in dragons' or gargoyles' heads). I like the names of the towns, too, like Wycombe and Fingest and Stokenchurch.
For some reason I very much like the St. Bartholomew Church at Fingest, too. It has a great square Norman tower at one end with a double-tented (twin-gabled?) roof on top, slits down the sides, and one modestly large window embedded in its western face. Then there is a nave with a little buttress sprouting out of the middle to the left and right, and at the end there is a chancel, added to the nave in the 13th century, which also sprouts a buttress at each corner. There is an entry porch of dark wood at the nave, a tiny sprinkling of gravestones in the mild green lawn surrounding, and two sombre yews standing guard outside the chancel. While the nineteenth-century brick Methodist chapels that proliferate in the neighbouring towns are at times not without their charm, and there are other venerable churches of which I am also fond, this church was most authentically earthy and plain and impressive.
Anyway, Stowe isn't along the route, but I've been gazing at its National Trust website, which is at times, unconsciously funny. Here are scenes from the Western Garden, where the edifices are meant to represent "illicit and unrequited love":
As for the writing, nothing did materialize yesterday, but I added half of a long paragraph to "The Fountain and the Labyrinth" today. The heroine has arrived in Beaconsfield, so I describe the crossroads where London, Aylesbury, Wycombe and Windsor End meet, as it may have looked in the 17th century, and am about to launch into a depiction of the inn (I chose Royal Saracen's Head). My research yesterday was deeply absorbing, because I found a treasure-trove of old photos and postcards and pictures of Buckinghamshire's towns. There are beautiful scenes like the Pepperpots at a bridge over the River Wye, with a grey flint chapel (/shoemaker's cottage) hidden in the trees nearby; the Church Loft, built in 1534, with the passage leading through into the slightly triste but peacefully quiet Church Lane; and the intricately carven wooden lodge (reminiscent of Hänsel and Gretel), with the ornate brick gate-posts and wrought-iron fence beside it, as well as the stately but compact, lavishly pillared mansion of Hall Barn.
A week or two ago I saw a photo of the Château Chambord, which Francis the First built in the Loire Valley and which was finished in 1547 (the year he died), and the thought struck me that landscapes and edifices can be as beautiful and elaborate and perfect in real life as they are in a painter's imagination. This idea was confirmed when I was looking over the English photos. (But the festooning on the Hall Barn Lodge seems overdone, as if the artist's chisel were bewitched to move compulsively and incessantly like the red shoes in the fairy tale; still, I think that the faces of the cherubs, which don't really fit the bodies, often have an amusing medieval sinisterness, and I enjoy the peaceful curling leafy sprays that end in dragons' or gargoyles' heads). I like the names of the towns, too, like Wycombe and Fingest and Stokenchurch.
For some reason I very much like the St. Bartholomew Church at Fingest, too. It has a great square Norman tower at one end with a double-tented (twin-gabled?) roof on top, slits down the sides, and one modestly large window embedded in its western face. Then there is a nave with a little buttress sprouting out of the middle to the left and right, and at the end there is a chancel, added to the nave in the 13th century, which also sprouts a buttress at each corner. There is an entry porch of dark wood at the nave, a tiny sprinkling of gravestones in the mild green lawn surrounding, and two sombre yews standing guard outside the chancel. While the nineteenth-century brick Methodist chapels that proliferate in the neighbouring towns are at times not without their charm, and there are other venerable churches of which I am also fond, this church was most authentically earthy and plain and impressive.
Anyway, Stowe isn't along the route, but I've been gazing at its National Trust website, which is at times, unconsciously funny. Here are scenes from the Western Garden, where the edifices are meant to represent "illicit and unrequited love":
The Statue of Queen Caroline
A tribute to the consort of George II, her statue was soon moved to the end of the Eleven Acre Lake after her husband fell out of favour with Lord Cobham
The Hermitage
It is said to represent the last refuge of the misogynist, surrounded by evergreens to underline the gloom
Artificial Ruins
Built as a ruin, they have twice had to be rebuilt, once in the late 19th century and again in 1974
The Menagerie
Its earliest function was as a much-admired museum for stuffed animals, including an eight foot crocodile and a thirty two foot boa constrictor. This is now part of Stowe School
Posts
1 comment:
Many of the photo links no longer appear to work. But they can be searched for in this photo database.
Post a Comment