In a short but heartening exchange, Mr Honey, flapping himself around his calves, as is his wont, with a horse-whip declared that ‘Nothing, but nothing beats a picture’. He was fresh in from Yorkshire and very full of himself, but I shall summarise his fuller account.
Tag: Temple Newsam
Mr Honey, who had been walking the grounds of Temple Newsam, happened, on his return, to call out ‘When’s tea?’ in a very echo of a similar question put to me by Miss E of Llandudno. It was a fine spring day and he had all justice on the side of his appetite, which has never held back in its demands, yet was I minded to hold the crumpets till I had told him a tale of that great lover of lardy-cake, Capability Brown, whose landscapes are said by many to have been led directly to the invention of tea-time.
Having made clear (note 222) that being unable to resist any temptation or external pressure, I have found it politic to retire to my tower whenever asked by anyone to do anything, I was immediately found out by the demands of Dr E of Leeds and the unstoppable Mrs L of Ilkley that I should attend them at Wentworth Castle for the launch of ‘Yorkshire Capabilities’, Volumes 75 and 76 of the New Arcadian Journal.
Should this journal not be better known? Should there not be collected editions?
In my last (note 213), I offered to my companions at the Tatler’s Waste-bin a list of all those landscapes of that fine man and lord-lieutenant of Huntingdon, Capability Brown, for which I had records of an active deer park.
The treasure of Horsham: see the easy flow of the woodland belt
Dr G has been written from York to ask where good plans by the great Capability Brown are to be found, and where they will be on view during the tercentenary year.