designed the gardens and grounds for, I think—I’m not sure of the exact number—almost two hundred of England’s top country houses and estates, and for such noble piles as Blenheim Palace. I do remember my mother telling me about what Capability Brown said to Hannah More in the seventeen sixties, when they were both famous.”
“Who or what was Hannah More?” I ask, no longer embarrassed by my ignorance. England is a stranger land than I’d bargained for.
“She was a religious writer— very widely read—and a very generous philanthropist up until her death sometime in the eighteen thirties. Anyway, Capability Brown called his complicated gardens and grounds grammatical landscapes, and when he was showing Hannah More around some completed estate grounds—perhaps her own, although I have no idea if she hired him to do her country place—he put his landscaping in Hannah More’s own terms, and I remember most of what my mother, who was an avid gardener right up until her death twenty years ago, quoted from Brown’s soliloquy.”
I think even Benson up on the driver’s seat is listening, since he is leaning back further than before without reining in the horses in any way.
“Now there, Capability Brown would say, pointing his finger at some landscape figure which looked as if it had always been there but which he’d designed,” says the Deacon. “There I make a comma, and there— pointing to some boulder or fallen oak or other seeming natural element, perhaps a hundred yards away or in the gardens —where a decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject.” The Deacon pauses. “Or something fairly close to that. It’s been a lot of years since my mother talked to me about Capability Brown.”
I can see by the inward direction of his gaze that he’s been hearing his mother’s voice.
“Maybe that castle folly on the hill is a semicolon,” I say stupidly. “No, wait, you said Capability Brown didn’t do the folly.”
“He would not have constructed a folly for a million pounds,” says the Deacon with a smile. “His specialty was doing elaborate gardens where even the trained eye doesn’t realize there’s a garden there.” The Deacon points to a partially wooded hillside with an amazing variety of shrubbery, fallen trunks, and wildflowers.
But then the carriage tops a low rise, we make a slight right turn with hooves still clopping on asphalt, and all of our babble ceases.
The formal gardens are clearly visible now, surrounded and sometimes intersected by straight and circular driveways of pure white gravel—or perhaps crushed oyster shells, or maybe pearls for all I know. The gardens and fountains are breathtaking, but it’s the first full sight of Bromley House beyond the gardens that has me immediately standing in the carriage, looking over Benson’s shoulder, and muttering loudly, “My God. Dear God.”
Not exactly the most sophisticated entrance I’ve ever made. But quite probably the most American-fundamentalist-religion-sounding (though my family in Boston were Unitarian freethinkers).
Bromley House is officially a Tudor mansion, designed—as I mentioned earlier—by the first Lord Bromley, who was chief clerk and assistant to Queen Elizabeth’s Lord High Treasurer, Lord Burghley, when he began work on the house in the 1550s. The Deacon later told me that Bromley House was one of several prodigy houses built by rising young men in England around that time, but I’ve forgotten what the term really means. He also told me that although the first Lord Bromley and his family moved into the livable parts of the estate in 1557, the actual building period of Bromley House extended over thirty-five years.
Thirty-five years plus another three and a half centuries, since it is obvious even to my architecturally untutored eyes that generations of lords and
“Who or what was Hannah More?” I ask, no longer embarrassed by my ignorance. England is a stranger land than I’d bargained for.
“She was a religious writer— very widely read—and a very generous philanthropist up until her death sometime in the eighteen thirties. Anyway, Capability Brown called his complicated gardens and grounds grammatical landscapes, and when he was showing Hannah More around some completed estate grounds—perhaps her own, although I have no idea if she hired him to do her country place—he put his landscaping in Hannah More’s own terms, and I remember most of what my mother, who was an avid gardener right up until her death twenty years ago, quoted from Brown’s soliloquy.”
I think even Benson up on the driver’s seat is listening, since he is leaning back further than before without reining in the horses in any way.
“Now there, Capability Brown would say, pointing his finger at some landscape figure which looked as if it had always been there but which he’d designed,” says the Deacon. “There I make a comma, and there— pointing to some boulder or fallen oak or other seeming natural element, perhaps a hundred yards away or in the gardens —where a decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject.” The Deacon pauses. “Or something fairly close to that. It’s been a lot of years since my mother talked to me about Capability Brown.”
I can see by the inward direction of his gaze that he’s been hearing his mother’s voice.
“Maybe that castle folly on the hill is a semicolon,” I say stupidly. “No, wait, you said Capability Brown didn’t do the folly.”
“He would not have constructed a folly for a million pounds,” says the Deacon with a smile. “His specialty was doing elaborate gardens where even the trained eye doesn’t realize there’s a garden there.” The Deacon points to a partially wooded hillside with an amazing variety of shrubbery, fallen trunks, and wildflowers.
But then the carriage tops a low rise, we make a slight right turn with hooves still clopping on asphalt, and all of our babble ceases.
The formal gardens are clearly visible now, surrounded and sometimes intersected by straight and circular driveways of pure white gravel—or perhaps crushed oyster shells, or maybe pearls for all I know. The gardens and fountains are breathtaking, but it’s the first full sight of Bromley House beyond the gardens that has me immediately standing in the carriage, looking over Benson’s shoulder, and muttering loudly, “My God. Dear God.”
Not exactly the most sophisticated entrance I’ve ever made. But quite probably the most American-fundamentalist-religion-sounding (though my family in Boston were Unitarian freethinkers).
Bromley House is officially a Tudor mansion, designed—as I mentioned earlier—by the first Lord Bromley, who was chief clerk and assistant to Queen Elizabeth’s Lord High Treasurer, Lord Burghley, when he began work on the house in the 1550s. The Deacon later told me that Bromley House was one of several prodigy houses built by rising young men in England around that time, but I’ve forgotten what the term really means. He also told me that although the first Lord Bromley and his family moved into the livable parts of the estate in 1557, the actual building period of Bromley House extended over thirty-five years.
Thirty-five years plus another three and a half centuries, since it is obvious even to my architecturally untutored eyes that generations of lords and
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