Having recently partaken of viands and a bottle or two of the finest ginger beer, the occasion benign, and the mood as refreshing as a cool breeze on a hot day, I and my companions beg to offer an apology for having hitherto left unaddressed the life and work of the great architect James Paine (1717–1789).
Tag: Weston (Page 1 of 2)
Of course once one starts on one thing, something else is sure to happen. This suggestion that gardeners and designers, even significant ones like William Emes, might on occasion have been taken on to finish what the effortlessly euphuistic, Capability Brown, had begun, scarcely ventured upon in notes 217, 218 and 238 now brings a shower of other examples down on my head: Why not Michael Milican, working to Brown’s instruction at Chatsworth, but paid by the Duke and not by Brown? Why not Winkles – Brown’s man at Tottenham, who never figures in Brown’s accounts?
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.
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.
When it comes to master-classes, it is not only ‘what are master-classes for?’, but ‘who they are for?’, and even, with apologies to grammar, ‘why they are for?’ The best I can do by way of response to these questions is to summarise the sentiments of our head honcho, John Phibbs, who will be leading the April series.
The Gothic Temple at Burghley – hardly Gothic, not exactly classical, but with a fine entrance at the back.
How fond and how French in their originality and particularity are the questions that Mme de B de V has sent me from France.
Brown as a young man
The proud answer is yes and yes, and furthermore this day (20th January) could be the birthday of that elegant moulder of the elements, Capability Brown (note 143).
A plan for Sandleford Priory said to have been copied from Spyers
Many correspondents have returned to the question of mapping, the accuracy of maps, the date of maps where no date is provided, and the inconvenient tendency to overwrite maps, so one scarcely knows who has done what when.
Mrs F has contacted me from Kenilworth to ask whether Capability Brown designed menageries.
The postman has bounced again, and this has brought further inquiries to my breakfast table, all on the subject of quarrying and mess.