IN English Hours (1905), Henry James suggested that ‘the well-appointed, well-administered, well-filled country house’ was the only thing the English had ‘mastered completely in all its details’. Born in 1843 in New York, James had a cosmopolitan upbringing that included long periods in Europe. By his early thirties, he was living in Paris, before settling in England in the 1870s and becoming a naturalised British citizen in 1915, the year before his death. A successful, well-connected author, he had become an experienced country-house visitor. He was not always impressed. After staying at Eggesford Manor, Devon, he observed in a letter to his father that: ‘The whole thing is dull... there is nothing in the house but pictures of horses—awfully bad ones at that.’
The country house was one of his favourite settings for novels and short stories and he often drew inspiration from the houses he had visited or knew. In The Lesson of the Master (1888), he describes ‘an old country-house near London’ with a long gallery that ‘marched across from end to end and seemed—with its bright colours, its high panelled window, its faded flowered chintzes, its quickly recognised portraits and pictures, the blue-and-white china of its cabinets and the attenuated festoons and rosettes of its ceiling—a cheerful upholstered avenue into that other century’. This is a reference to the Adam-designed gallery at Osterley Park, now in west London.
Denne historien er fra November 29, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 29, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
