Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Sissinghurst, Kent

Morning Rumination:
I had what one might call a phenomenal day–and I rarely use that term lightly. I mean, I awoke at 6. 30 am. I am now convinced that the reason I could never sleep beyond 5 am in my former flat at High Holborn was because it was much too warm at night. Not only was there a lack of cross-ventilation but I used to sleep under a down comforter (that’s American for a duvet) and I am sure that the combination caused me to wake up far too early each morning. It is also quieter here as traffic noises do not reach me in this secluded fold of Farringdon. At any rate, with the longer hours I am sleeping here, I wake up deeply refreshed. Though it is supposedly summer, this bedroom is far cooler and though day breaks as early as 4 am, I sleep like a baby till 7!

I read Harry Potter for an hour making swift progress. I am now only a hundred pages from the end of Book VI which leaves me just one more volume to finish–shall probably read that one next week in Oxford. At 7. 30, I checked my email, responded to notes that required immediate action and at 8.00 am, I entered my bathroom for a shower, prepared a toast and melted cheese sandwich (breakfast to go) and took the bus to my Bedford Square NYU campus as I needed to photocopy some forms that I filled out last night for my Oxford stint.

I had intended to spend the day at Sissinghurst ‘Castle’ and Garden in Kent but since the bus that went from the railway station in Kent to the garden only left twice a day (at 11. 45 am and 1. 45 pm), I had the time to print out a few of the many interviews that I have been transcribing in the past couple of weeks. However, soon I noticed that the toner of my printer in my office needed to be replenished and, on scanning the train schedule, I discovered that I would need to hurry to get to Charing Cross within the next 45 minutes to take the 10. 30 am train to Staplehurst.

I locked up my office quickly, caught the 29 bus to Charing Cross, bought a return day ticket (15 pounds round trip) and made the 10. 30 am train just in the nick of time. It was a very leisurely hour long ride to Staplehurst where I would connect to the public shuttle bus that would deposit me at the garden.

Train to Kent:
The train journey to Kent on South Eastern Railway was pleasance personified. En route, I read up City Secrets of London, a book that gives insider tips on the most interesting and unique bits and pieces of the city. Now that I have almost come to the end of my year in London, I do want to make sure I see the very last dregs of the city’s ‘sights’.

We passed by some of the most recognizable city landmarks (Hungerford Bridge, the London Eye–up close and looming ahead of me like a gigantic bicycle wheel–Tower Bridge, the Gherkin–indeed this was the first time I was traveling by train across the Thames and it was a pretty marvelous experience on what was another truly spectacular day).

When we left the city behind, we zoomed into a tunnel and it took us quite a while to get out of it…but when we did, we had magically left urbanity behind and emerged into the Kentish countryside that lay quiet and emerald bright in the golden light of day. Mile upon mile of velveteen lawn sprawled out before me as far as my eye could see punctuated only by the white conical hats of the rust oast houses in which the famous Kentish hops are dried for the brewing of its famous beers (Shepherd Naeme is the oldest brewery in the country and it is based in the medieval town of Faversham). Not for nothing is Kent called The Garden of England–indeed orchards that in autumn would yield the sweetest pears, apples and plums were plain to see as the train whizzed past and I could quite easily imagine the splendour of their spring-time blooms.

Arrival at Sissinghurst:
I arrived at Staplehurst in exactly an hour. There was a bus awaiting me at the station at 11. 30 am. when we pulled in. It is a quaint toy-like building seemingly in the middle of nowhere. In fifteen minutes’ time, after we’d driven through the town of Staplehurst (4 pounds round trip) with its exposed beam houses and medieval pubs, we were in the midst of rural Kent, fields with the occasional sheep wandering through them, proclaiming its farming pursuits. The signs to Sissinghurt Castle and Garden were prominent, proudly displayed by The National Trust that owns and maintains the property.

The History of Sissinghurst:
For students of contemporary English Literature, the name of Sissinghurst ought to be familiar (as indeed it has been to me for decades). Associated with novelist, gardening columnist and gardener, Vita Sackville-West, a prominent member of The Bloomsbury Group and a close friend of novelist Virginia Woolf, the home and garden have become legendary and a compulsory stop on the itinerary of any English garden-lover. I have read about this place and seen umpteen pictures in the many gardening magazines to which I have a subscription–both writers and gardeners have been fascinated with the lives and the outcome of its residents.

Born Victoria Sackville-West to an aristocratic family at the turn of the 20th century, ‘Vita’ as she became known, was raised in Knole House (which I shall be visiting later this week) in Kent, an old Elizabethan country estate that had been in her family since the time of Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset to whom it had been gifted by Queen Elizabeth I. Because she was a female, Vita could not inherit property in those backward Victorian and Edwardian Ages. Knole House, therefore, passed on to other members of her family; but upon her marriage to Harold Nicholson, Vita bought Sissinghurst since she always wanted to live close to Knole and in the midst of the Kentish countryside.

Sissinghurst had been an abandoned property for at least a hundred years when it fell into the hands of Vita and Harold. It had last seen occupation during World War I when French soldiers were stationed there. It was they who thought that the remnants of the old Tudor mansion with its unique tower resembled a chateau and the term ‘Castle’ was used for the first time in connection with the property at Sissinghurst–a designation that stuck. It came to be known as Sissinghurst Castle and Garden– a fact that must have pleased the history and tradition-conscious Vita!

For the next three decades, Vita and Harold lived at Sissinghurst, raising their two sons, Nigel and Ben there (and their dog Rebecca), writing their novels, their reviews, literary criticism and biographies and…most famously, creating a garden. Indeed, the last was their mutual passion and it was Harold who designed the property in such a way as to create divisions within it–the divisions that have come to be termed ‘garden rooms’. These divisions were achieved through the use of tall hedges, box and yew borders, red brick walls (now covered with ivy, creepers and climbing roses) and bent wood edging.

Vita, for her part, planned the plantings with the idea of creating separate, individual gardens each themed differently (the Herb Garden, the Rose Garden, the Cottage Garden and, most well-known of all and possibly the reason so many people travel to Sissinghurst each year for a glimpse of it, the White Garden). It was for all these reasons that I have wanted so badly to visit Sissinghurst in season. I yearned to walk in the footsteps of this fascinating literary couple who left their mark on gardening history as well as created a sense of marital camaraderie and shared interests that have always appealed to the Romantic in me.

I have to say that I have visited Sissinghurst before–about four years ago, in the company of my cousin Cheryl and her husband David. But we had arrived there at the end of November when the garden had been closed for the year. All we could see then was the moat that surrounds the property and the twin turrets of the Tower. This time, I was determined to go in June, when I knew the gardens would be at their prime and, believe me, if I could have ordered the kind of day I would have liked for this expedition, I could not have chosen better!

Touring Sissinghurst:
Sissinghurst is open only three days a week–on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. I can just imagine the hordes that must descend upon the place at the weekends in the summer. If the number of people present today was anything to go by, well, I am glad I did not wait for the weekend but chose this odd day instead. There were numerous coach groups, comprised, no doubt, of garden club members. I loved the fact that so many of the visitors were elderly (the average age of the visitors was sixty if they were a day) and they were dressed in the ubiquitous wide-brimmed straw hats that made so many of them appear as if they would bend down any minute and start doing a bit of weeding themselves!

Apart from the clothing and headgear that is so distinctive a part of English garden visitors, there are the comments and I absolutely love to eavesdrop on them: “Oh, do you see those roses. Aren’t they extraordinary?” and “My word, is that clematis? How do those flowers grow so large?” and “Would you look at those delphiniums? Just lovely, they are!” Toddlers, meanwhile, stumbled among the foliage of a border bed and were lifted gingerly by mothers pushing strollers while gardening staff trundled along, their wheel barrows filled with the plants they’d uprooted to thin the beds.

I had the time of my life and realized as I flitted, butterfly-like, from one garden room to the next, that there is a limit to the love of one’s own company! For it is difficult to be in a garden and remain silent. I mean, for the many months that I have tolerated my own company in this city, I spent hours in museums or in art galleries in intellectual or in artistic contemplation of greatness. But, in a garden, where it is not the mind that is stimulated but the senses, one must simply express in verbal form, one’s delight in one’s surroundings. How is it possible, for instance, to pass by a clump of two-colored sweet peas and not exclaim at their uniqueness? How can one survey a batch of brand-new snow-white Icecap Delphiniums that are taller than I am and not gasp in disbelief? How can one possibly pass by irises, yellow as buttercups, and not wonder at the concealed stakes that must hold up those weighty sunshiny heads? And yet somehow, I managed to curtail my natural verbose impulses and simply imbibe as best I could the brilliance of the vision and the doggedness of the effort that had created so splendid a sight before my dazzled eyes.

So treading my way at leisure through the Purple Garden with its lavender and salvia and the first lupins I believe I have ever seen in my life, I entered the Library. This Tudor building (completely clad in red brick) was once the Stable and housed the horses who undoubtedly worked in the fields in centuries when Sissinghurst was a working farm. Harold and Vita converted it into the library, inserted windows, a gigantic stone Inglenood fireplace and loads of books that line the walls like soldiers. A quick peek at their titles showed me works by Horace Walpole, Herbert Spencer and William Blake. There is a striking oil-painted portrait of Vita above the mantelpiece–she is not a beautiful woman but she exudes breeding like her rose bushes exude fragrance–effortlessly! I was struck by the coziness created by the use of Turkish kilims on the floor and an abundance of lamps. The room just begged to be sat in and enjoyed, preferably with a good book in hand.

Outside, I walked towards the twin turrets of The Tower and found a line waiting to climb the spiral stairway to the top for what, I could only assume, would be thrilling views of the Kentish countryside. A few minutes later, I was curling myself around those stone-steps lined with portraits of Ottoman personalities that were inherited by Vita’s mother. En route, I passed by the most charming octagonal shaped room–Vita’s boudoir (though they call it her study–a term far too bland, I believe, for her flamboyant personality). This room was bagged by Vita as soon as she saw it and she cozied it up, as she had done the library, with a chaise-longue (for swift naps, no doubt, in-between her bouts of strenuous writing), a bent wood chair, a desk that was cluttered with writing paraphernalia and a black and white portrait of her dear friend Virginia Woolf, and in an ante-room, stacks of books on the wall. Virginia would, no doubt, have been envious of Vita’s Room of Her Own (as indeed I was)!

More twirling around the spiral steps and I was up at the summit where the scene spread out before me was indeed as thrilling as I expected. The garden beneath me looked like a patchwork quilt upon which Lilliputtians crawled for the folks inspecting them were suddenly shrunken in size. I could hardly stop myself from taking pictures of the property from on high.

And then I was down and finally in the White Garden (entered by the cutest wooden door set in a red brick wall) and had to pinch myself to believe that I was actually there in the flesh–for God knows how many times I have been here virtually and in my imagination. Could I imagine what this place looked like on a full moon night? Just as splendid as must the Taj Mahal, I thought, as I took in the sights of white shrub roses and tall white poppies (the first I have ever seen), white nicotiana whose fragrant heads brushed my trousers and white foxgloves, giant white peonies and white shoo fly flowers and there, standing like a proud focal point in the garden, the Icecap Delphiniums that the gardeners created only this year replacing what they called “poor Galahad” who now seems like a poor relation at the same wedding banquet! These towered above and dwarfed me (as you can see from the picture below).

It was time to pause to take in the flowery feast spread out before me and it was by a sheer stroke of luck that I found a shaded arbor that was planted with what was probably wisteria vine that had finished blooming. Seating myself at a table that seemed tailor-made for a picnic, I pulled out my sandwich and began to munch when I was joined by the sweetest pair of ladies you could imagine. I have written before about the basic unfriendliness of the English, particularly in gardens, where they stick to their own company and do not welcome intrusions.

A Chance Brush with the British Raj:
Well, these two ladies proved me wrong–you cannot generalize about anything, can you? Jeanie and Beatrice were friendly and warm and by their speech–both accent and diction–I could tell two things: they were ladies of quality and they had traveled. For it is only those who have had some kind of global exposure who can be so open to fellow travelers on the road of life. And then guess what? It was all revealed. Both these ladies who unbelievably were in their mid-80s (how on earth was that possible??!!) had been born in India and had lived a good part of their early lives in Calcutta–in fact, one of them had her daughter at the Elgin Hospital, she said–a lovely lady whom I met a little later. Their fathers were stationed in India during the fading days of the Raj and they knew that glorious eastern city in her colonial heyday. No, neither one of them had been back in at least a half century but they cherished the fondest memories of their days there. We had the nicest conversation–they were articulate and curious and had minds sharp as buttons! Glory be to them (and may I have that same inquisitiveness of spirit when I become a octogenarian)!

A half hour later, my sandwich all consumed, their daughters joined us–lovely women (probably cousins) who looked at if they might be my own contemporaries. So there I had it–a chance to finally speak to someone and to exclaim about the genius and synergistic creativity that combined in the Vita-Harold marriage and to talk about these ladies’ school days in Mussourie and Nainital and the diplomatic parties they attended in Calcutta as young brides! Indeed, these ladies whisked me back to the Edwardian world–not of Sissinghurst but of the Raj, half a globe way, and I felt privileged and honored to have been allowed to step into that space, if only for a little while.

Then, I was off, camera slung around my neck, to see the Rose Garden (many bushes were past their prime and in need of deadheading!) and the Cottage Garden and then the wide open meadow where bees buzzed and a dovecote stood sentinel all the way to the banks of the lovely deep moat that gave their Tower its castle antecedents and on to the Lime Alley punctuated at both ends by classical statuary and on to the Nuttery where I watched busy gardeners at work thinning herbaceous borders.

And I realized, all of a sudden, that what makes Sissinghurst so distinctive a garden is not the plantings and not the flowers and not the garden rooms and certainly not the pathways (some brick, some gravel) but it is the architecture–the old-fashioned and utterly charming collection of buildings (the Tower, the Tudor library, the cottages, the farm houses) that lie sprinkled among the acres that do it. It is the age that is proclaimed by their brick walls and slate roofs, the roses and clematis that ramble up their sides clinging ferociously for a centuries-old foothold, the aged wooden doors and rusty wrought iron handles, that give this space its mark of distinction. For, of course, I could take notes and replicate the selection of flowers that Vita advocated in my own gardens at Holly Berry House in Southport, Connecticut. But no, they would never look the same (even were I to reproduce the lushness of those peonies or the profusion of those hydrangeas–which I never could) because they would be viewed against the white clapboard siding of a typical New England colonial–not against the moss and lichen-covered stone walls of an Elizabethan outhouse! And, therein, lies the difference!

While the gigantic wrought-iron clock on the Tower (a present to Vita from Harold and her boys) tolled the lazy hours, I found sustenance at tea-time in a pot of National Trust Blend and a generous slice of coffee and walnut cake as I propped myself by a window to have the glory of the countryside spread out before me for free, as it slumbered silently on this spectacular afternoon. Then, I browsed in the shop, read snippets from the lives of the Nicholson family and promised myself that I would read Sissinghurst: An Unfinished Story by Adam Nicholson, their grandson, who still lives and writes on the property, following doggedly in the footsteps of his illustrious grandparents!

It was time for me to catch the 5. 30 bus returning to Staplehurst station which left me only about ten minutes to browse through the lovely exhibition on the first floor of the barn. I wish I had thought of doing this earlier for the exhibit was just heart warming–it contained Vita’s journals in her own handwriting with the accompanying printed pieces as they appeared in The Observer, the London newspaper in which she wrote a gardening column for decades. How could a female writer like myself not take inspiration from so unusual a woman? I am so glad I went to Sissinghurst and I cannot wait to get to Knole–I know that the two visits will work like a jigsaw puzzle to fit together all the missing pieces that comprise her privileged life.

Back in London for the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair:
The train got me back to London in an hour, but absent-mindedly, I got off at London Bridge instead of Charing Cross. It was not a problem, however, for I jumped into the Tube and headed off to Marble Arch where I had made plans to meet my friend Stephanie at the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair.

It was my friend Loulou who had given me a free pass to the event that admitted two and since I hadn’t seen Stephanie in ages and she knows how fond I am of antiques, I thought she would best appreciate a dawdle through the stalls with me. She was arriving from Richmond on the Tube and only reached there at 7. 30. The late evening opening was winding down but we did have a quick half hour to dally with the dealers and marvel at their wares–paintings by Frank Leger and Picasso, sculptures by the late Victorians including one of my favorites of all time–Drury’s The Age of Innocence priced at 60,000 pounds!–jewelry from Cartier and Boucheron, rare Persian carpets, Sevres porcelain and what American interior designer Mario Buatta (aka The Prince of Chintz!) jokingly calls “phooey Louis” were all available. If you had a stuffed wallet and some good taste at your disposal, you could walk home with gems–just like that! Stephanie exclaimed freely and loudly and we both wished we had more time to tread through these treasures. But at 8.oopm, the curtain came down on another day of dealing and we made our way outside to find the buses that got us back to my flat.

Dinner at St. John in Farringdon:
For I took Stephanie with me to Farringdon to deposite my bag in my flat before we set off for dinner in the neighborhood. She loved the loft space I currently occupy as she took in the Modern Art on its walls–the Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroes (miniatures of which we had seen at the Art Fair only to receive sticker-shock!). It was only ten minutes later, that we left in search of dinner as she was starving and I suggested the St. John Bar and Restaurant that lies right opposite my building. Though we did not have reservations, the maitre d’ was able to squeeze us in and we spent the next couple of hours catching up and eating a most interesting meal.

As it happened, we got into conversation with an American foodie couple from Boston who sat right besides us at the next table (put a pack of Americans together and the conversation starts flowing, doesn it it?). Hard to believe that they had come to London only to eat at this restaurant! I had just chanced to find a tidbit about this place in the book I had been reading but to be given an endorsement as huge as this was stunning. It seems the restaurant is world-famous (it is ranked Number Two in the world) and is known for its “Nose to Tail Eating” which means that its menu features parts of game that no other restaurant would serve–literally from nose to tail. With a two-volume recipe book collection to its name, this restaurant is a star. With that introduction, we ought not to have been surprized by a menu that included Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad, a special of Lamb’s Neck, Oxtail (which features the entire tail), a deboned pigeon and snails with courgettes!

Stephanie and I decided to play it somewhat safer! For appetizers, she got Crabmeat on Toast while I got the Roast Pork and Rabbit Terrine (both very good and superbly seasoned and spiced) and for a main, we decided to share what we thought would be pot roast of “Gloucester Old Spot” as we get it back in the States, only to discover that it was nothing more special that roast ham served with stewed peas! At 20 pounds, we both thought it was atrociously priced and Stephanie even declared that her mother’s ham was far better than this! By the way, the bone marrow and parsley salad was no longer available nor was the terrine we also ordered and finally when it came time for ‘pudding’, I ordered the elderflower sorbet only to be told that they had also run out of it! Instead, they brought us a strawberry sorbet (which they said was free of charge) but which neither of us wanted anyway and so declined. Instead we shared the chocolate terrine which was delicious but in my opinion, much too firm–I think I’d have preferred a creamier texture. At about fifty pounds for the meal (I had a glass of red house wine, Steph had a Diet coke), we thought we did not get our money’s worth at all. Had our American companions not hyped it up so much, perhaps we would not have been so sorely disappointed…but perhaps we should give it another try before writing it off so completely.

A few minutes later, I was kissing Stephnie goodbye as she returned to the Tube and at 11.30, I was winding down at the end of what had been, as I said at the beginning, a truly phenomenal day.