WHAT WILL SURVIVE OF US IS LOVE

Ode to Cadhay, jewel of England.

The Manor House - Cadhay

What with all the heavy weather I thought some beauty would make a welcome change.

Here is a piece about the England that still lives. It is about history and home and what it is to be from somewhere. It is a sort of postcard from a happy place.

It features another Englishman called Rupert whose story tells us much about the land that I call home.

The first bit is about people, the second about place, the third about poetry.

I hope you enjoy reading it.

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SOMEWHERE PEOPLE

I am the sort of person who loves adventure but grumbles about airports. This means we go on holiday in England, that place outside the cities which can seem to a screen based perception of the country as alien as a night without sirens in London.

Holidaying in England allows us to be among people from a somewhere that we recognise, to answer in ourselves the call of home that has grown so faint.

It is a surprise to remember in this international nowhereland that there are still people who are from somewhere. People such as Northerners, like me, who can map a man by his accent.

This bat-like (and batty) talent is like echolocation but more for the purpose of insult and pillage than navigation. It helps to put a place to a voice, and therefore to a face. We know where - and who - we are. And we also know who we are not.

If you are from somewhere you either talk like it or you don’t. I do, because I am a serf, whose ancestors are more likely to be found spilling out of a drakkar on to a frosty beach, brewing beer and singing jolly songs, peopling the ranks of our army.

Truants, talesmiths and alehouse brawlers, fishermen and chatty lasses. Some of our names are on the wall at Thiepval¹.

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If you would like to read more about the disgraceful use of the war dead to create more of them, see my piece on Remembrance Day here:

THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD

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On the other hand there are people who are from somewhere but who don’t talk like it. These people are either:

1. Nowhere People

2. Posh

3. Foreign

Let us see what they are like.

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Open House at Cadhay - from the newsletter

THE GREAT ESCAPE

I know a lawyer who once was a scouser, an idiom which his fancy university has patiently aetherised upon its examination table.

The middle class counterjumper is careful to erase his identity and the handicap it would have been. Careers are all theatre to some degree, the law being obviously performative.

To the Nowhere People, the career is the portal to a world away from the one which bore them. In this Great Escape, nowhere is always better than somewhere. It is the from, not the “to”, which matters.

They are eager to escape what they are, and favour the anonymity of cities, their Utopia. Better a tourist attraction than a landscape, for the land is that from which we spring, and to escape it is the desire of a man who prefers a resort.

It is the spirit of the supermarket.

The time is coming when the nowhere people, once careful to efface their origins in aping their tutors, will affect the kind of accents they used to be so careful to expunge.

The Posh, surprisingly, are always with us. They have retired from the public eye, no longer zooming through our imaginations, literature and screens like Mr Toad. I have always considered Toad to be an exemplar in matters of the road, and it is to him I owe my driving motto - “Victory or Nothing”.

Finally there are foreigners. I will pass over them in silence.

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Tea garden

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FANCY WORDS FOR FANCY PEOPLE

It is a relief to meet someone like Rupert Thistlethwayte who is not pretending to be anyone else. His career is to be himself. Whilst I was at his place I tramped out in my wellies to chop up some wood. This was needless but made me feel like the kind of person I ought to be.

Rupert, who is always accompanied by swans.

I found him by the woodstore and began to inflict myself upon him with enthusiasm.

He patiently endured me. When I had worked something up I signed at his big old house and said,

But YOU - you’re autochthonous². Sprung from the earth. The modern world is rootless and here you are. Here you and yours always were. What a thing it is to belong so much today.

I enjoyed pointing up at him. It is a sort of revenge for those nostrils of his. Norman nostrils, neat as apple pips, into which the timorous eyes of my stunted ancestors would have been compelled to stare³.

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BACK TO THE TUDORS

Rupert’s family have been at Cadhay since the 16th Century. Built in 1550 by John Haydon, it is arranged around a central Court of the Sovereigns, displaying likenesses of Edward VI, Henry VIII, Mary and Elizabeth Tudor.

Robert Haydon, John’s nephew, added the long gallery. His wife, Joan Poulett⁴, is Rupert’s ancestor.

The Long Gallery at Cadhay, replete with pistols

For nearly five hundred years Cadhay has seen near ruin and renewal, its permanence and renascence a retort to the evanescent culture of the portable screen. It embodies the kind of historical memory which competes with the perpetual immediate as an explanation of the world.

Rupert, having no alternative, looks down on me as I wander up to the roof chamber. It is a room which all but summons the gloomy face of Rylance doing Thomas Cromwell.

Mark Rylance as Cromwell peers out of the shadows of Wolf Hall.

Wolf Hall has been adapted by the BBC in one of the best productions of modern television. It is outstanding, and happily a second series has been completed. Based on the books by the late Hilary Mantel, the series documents the relationship of Privy Councillor Thomas Cromwell to the then King Henry VIII.

I said to Rupert that I expected to see Rylance peering out of the penumbra of the roof chamber, and he plainly replied,

Well Hilary did some of her publicity here.

He said this with the modest omission of the fact that the real Privy Councillor to the Tudors dined here. It is natural then to learn Rupert helped Hilary Mantel with some of the historical detail in her sequel to Wolf Hall, titled Bring Up The Bodies⁵.

The Roof Chamber at Cadhay.

The history of the main house at Cadhay is too rich to bear relation here. So is that of Rupert’s family, which includes the improbable but true story of Mary Reibey.

A distant ancestor, she was arrested for stealing a horse in 1791. Disguised as a boy at the time, on the discovery that she was a woman she was sentenced not to death, but transportation to Australia.

This horse thief became immensely wealthy and the Bank of New South Wales was founded in her house. She is featured on the Australian $20 dollar note to this day, and it is her fortune, bequeathed to the Pouletts, which allowed the family to buy back Cadhay after it being out of the family for two centuries.

Mary Reibey - right on the money.

Rupert was born there, by the back door. He grew up in the house being “ a sorry old place…festooned with cobwebs.” Later on, it passed to him.

Why was this place not dissolved by the ruin of inheritance tax?

It is permitted to hold on to the family home by opening it to the public, whilst Rupert pays for the considerable costs of its upkeep. It is thanks to him that this little heart of England still beats.

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A GARDEN OF ENGLAND

Outside, the grounds and buildings are a delight. You can stay in the former stables, or the old cider press.

Even the main house can be rented, year round. You will find in many of the rooms examples of the exceptional furniture which, I am told, Rupert may still be persuaded to make.

Rupert made this unusual bench, along with quite a bit of the furniture you find in the houses.

It is a privilege to be here, because it is astonishing that something this beautiful has survived into this century of ugliness and resentment.

Rupert’s strenuous efforts to restore and revive this home and hearth of England have fructified into a tender welcome.

An invitational treasure, Cadhay breathes with heritage, worn with a natural ease, as if the summer itself were made for it to shine.

I have warned him that if he does not price me out⁶, I will be back every year to wear the seasoned livery of England in these grounds.

There is another flourish outside with the splendid allotments. You often can see Rupert pottering about them, as the locals come and tend their plots. In the height of summer, it is a splendid place of fruits and blossoms and butterflies.

The allotments at Cadhay - a thriving community venture

We come here for the beauty, for the splendour of a place that is and has always been a home.

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WHAT WILL SURVIVE OF US

Ben Jonson, who was born when Cadhay was in its twenties, wrote the famous poem To Penshurst in 1616.

It is a paean to a house that speaks gently of the heart and soul of England. Had he come to Devon, he would have written it to Cadhay.

I cannot help to think in these terrible times of the plangent lines of another poem, too, in which the power of memory in stone suggests the survival of the best of what we are.

That poem, An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin, is shaded by the poet’s English gloom. It speaks of a gesture captured in the carved tomb of an earl and a countess at Arundel Cathedral. How surprised was the poet that

One sees, with a sharp tender shock,   

His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

He says this captures a moment overlooked in life, but immortalised in art. It is the substance of memory now, at once real and not.

“The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.”

There is something of this accident in all of us. Ours is a time where the question of what will survive is an urgent one.

Cadhay is a monument to the hazard and the hope of life. In a world turned away from the heart and the hand it moves, there is beauty, there is love. There is a sense of before that shapes what is before us.

There is still a place called home.

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Rupert has not paid me for this, and though it pains me to say so about one so unapologetically tall, he is a decent man. I wrote this because his place is wonderful and he a rather interesting fellow.

You can stay at Cadhay year-round, visit the estate every Friday on open days, or book a guided tour of the house.

The modern world is a constant menace. Cadhay and the surrounding area is under threat from a proposed quarrying operation. To find out more - and help defend Cadhay - please visit the Straitgate Action Group blog.

I will resume normal service from Monday. It has been a busy week. More about that later!

1. I have written about the First World War memorial at Thiepval here.

My ancestors’ names feature on its wall, and the place is one sadly invoked by the same sort of people who continue to send men to die, that they may have some monument to themselves. These people are called Machine Politicians.

I took my infant son to Thiepval for the centenary of the Armistice.

2. Fancy people require fancy words. This one combines “auto” (self) with “cththonic” (from below the earth). It means he has come from where he is found. Most of us come from where we once were, and are lost.

3. The Normans are still with us. Their fancy names betray them sometimes, but the nostrils of those aquiline noses are a dead giveaway. They built keeps upon tall mounds into which they introduced my ancestors, giving us the charming custom of the oubliette.

Yet there also persist savage dwarves who remember, such as myself. I do not fail to remind Rupert of this, and am surprised to have escaped the dungeon thus far.

4. Poulett, Poulete, Powlett - posh people have their own way of saying and doing things. Where does Rupert go on holiday? What does he dine upon but swans? It is a mystery.

5. If you haven’t watched the television adaptation of the late Hilary Mantel’s book Wolf Hall, do. It is exquisite. Filming has now completed on a second series, which is excellent news to anyone who loves beauty. The first one was a masterpiece.

The real privy councillor named here was Sir Amias Poulett, also former ambassador to France and Keeper of Mary Queen of Scots during her imprisonment. He was father to Joan, and was also one of Rupert’s forebears.

6. I warned him that scum like me will turn up if he did not charge as much as everyone else. He doesn’t, and his place is magnificent.

It can cost thousands to book a holiday at Center Parcs, or in Cornwall.

Why does he not demand the customary King’s ransom for a week in his holiday cottages?

“I’m not Cornish",” he said. And he isn’t.