He May Have looked Like Sebastian Flyte, But Actually...

We'd arranged to meet Mike and Su at Knole but hadn't reckoned with most of the house being shut- as happens with NT properties over the winter season. The cafe was open- and very busy, there was carol singing in the Great Hall- which we stuck with for three or four numbers- and the gatehouse was open for an exhibition of the life and works of Edward Sackville-West- last of the Sackvilles to reside at Knole- with special reference to his Bloomsbury connections and his carryings on in the Weimar Republic.

The Eddy exhibition was elegaic and sent you away going "how sad". Virginia Woolf said of the young Eddy that he had the face of a Persian cat- and Graham Sutherland (the rather fine painting was there on the wall) pictured him as a bag of nerves. "I have always been frightened of things," said Eddy, "And you have captured that." But if you glance over his biography dispassionately- he was, as doomed aristos go, really rather productive and forward-looking. He loved music, became a distinguished music critic, championing the young British composers, including Britten and Tippett, and- with his companion- Desmond Shawe-Taylor- produced an encyclopaedic guide to classical music on record. He wrote forgotten novels and a well-regarded life of De Quincey. He also worked extensively in radio. His friendships transcended Bloomsbury and included many of the luminaries of the mid-century British art establishment- including Britten and Pears, Kenneth Clark, and the conductor Malcolm Sargent. He wasn't particularly fond of Knole- which he inherited from an uncle and found a burden- and moved out as soon as he could- handing over his rooms in the tower to Sargent. In short, bugger Brideshead.

In Days Of Old...

I've been feeling a little sorry for knights in armour. Our churches are full of them- and they make a lovely show- and I'm always happy to see them- but isn't there something rather sad about chaps who thought it the height of human glory to go round sheathed in metal- shutting out so much of the sensual world- with the sole aim of battering other metal-sheathed persons and intimidating and killing those who couldn't afford the gear? I don't suppose many of them were "parfit and gentil" and, whew, but they must have sweated a lot.

And what a lot of noise they must have made, clanking through the countryside. Imagine a whole bunch of them on horseback. Or did they oil their joints? There's a poem by A.A. Milne about Sir Thomas Tom of Appledore, the knight whose armour didn't squeak- but it doesn't say how he achieved that distinction...

Anyway, I was sorting through my photo folders the other day and there were an awful lot of knights in there and I thought it a shame they weren't being viewed, so here are three of them...

This first fellow is nameless- as are so many. He'd have been painted once and the painted heraldry would have told people exactly who he was but the paint flaked off and no-one renewed it and he's been reduced to nothing more than a typical specimen of the genus. He's reaching for his sword but he's got a pleasant face. He's to be found at Dilwyn in Herofordshire.



This next fellow is also reaching for his sword. He's quite well known because his action pose is unusual. The latest scholarship identifies him as William de Valence the Younger who died, fighting the Welsh, at the Battle of Llandeilo in 1282. He lies in Dorchester Abbey which- confusingly- is in Oxfordshire not Dorset.



And here's one in full colour- an ancestor (one of several, all derived from a single template) who are pictured in the chancel windows of Tewkesbury Abbey. They date from the 1330s and were the self-aggrandising gift of Eleanor Despenser, nee De Clare. If I knew my heraldry I could probably tell you exactly who he's meant to be- but I don't and it's debatable whether anyone apart from Eleanor ever really cared...