his hand to work in sympathy with his eye. I have made a habit of looking, of really seeing.
My main business at Wormingford has been to continue in my own way what went before, but on my own terms, and as best I can. With my youth crowded with artists, these last years are a kind of fulfilled silence in which a remote old farmhouse has collaborated with an unexpected enthusiasm. So I am fortunate. I too have made a habit of looking, of really seeing.
5 Fidelity
Fidelity Cranbrook and the Gathorne-Hardy children featured in
Let’s Make an Opera
In the early summer of 1955 I stayed at Great Glemham House for the first time; the Countess driving and asking shamelessly direct questions, swerving and laughing. Humphrey Repton had so planned the approach that one was halfway to it before it announced itself with Georgian panache. As we passed the pretty lodge Fidelity called out, ‘Mr Paternoster!’ Then came all the windows, roofs and frantic dogs. ‘She doesn’t bite – she just likes to give your ankle a little nip.’
The Gathorne-Hardys had come to Suffolk for the air just before the First World War. Their titles, Cranbrook and Medway, flowed happily enough alongside the Alde, which was a minor stream for the most part like the Lark, Linnet and Brett, where herons and kingfishers lived. Other than where they were bridged one would encounter them with surprise, having forgotten their existence. As country seats are inclined to do over the years, Great Glemham House had held back change, and the village and its fields, woods and lanes were still more or less exactly as George Crabbe, the rector, would have found them – although the previous mansion, a Tudor building, was set at the foot of the rise. He himself lived in Rendham, the neighbouringvillage, from which at this moment Maggi Hambling drives to paint the Aldeburgh sea most days.
She explains this compulsion:
On the morning of 30 November 2002, I experienced a dramatic storm; huge waves crashing on the beach, thrashing the shingle. Back in the studio, while working on a portrait from memory of a London beggar, I looked out to witness the landscape around me still being ravaged by wind and rain. The urge to paint the memory of the morning took over and the sea supplanted the beggar on that canvas. This was the first of my North Sea paintings. They were small, mostly vertical oils.
Fidelity too had reason to go there and reason to come back. A day or two later I walked down the park to explore the village. There was no sign of conservation . The park was walled in for a mile or two yet wide open to anyone. There was a well-cut flint church, a basic Victorian school, a pub, and a handful of painted cottages, some outlying farms, and that was all. The scene was both intimate and yet remote. Acton, where I was born, was exactly like this – though growing. Great Glemham was not extending. Neither was it frozen.
Actually my very first introduction to it was in the evening when Jock Cranbrook took me batting. We went out at dusk to smouldering rubbish dumps towatch these eternally misunderstood creatures weaving and crying over them. All Gathorne-Hardys were high up in natural history, books, the Bench, local government , horticulture, and chairmanship, whilst remaining amateur and ‘free’. Fidelity was high up in tolerance and amusement. Her loud clear voice rose above the squalls. And most of all at the Aldeburgh Festival forays. They had made her Chairman from the very beginning, and it was one of their best achievements.
She was one of those classic inter-war blondes. Kurt Hutton would complain to her face about the strong line of her jaw, but I found her beautiful. Her tossing honey-coloured hair and her features, all eagerness, were quite wonderful. I can hear her laughing away all this with scorn. In retrospect I see her as one of those people who claim little because they know they have enough. She was a provider not a taker. Benjamin Britten,
My main business at Wormingford has been to continue in my own way what went before, but on my own terms, and as best I can. With my youth crowded with artists, these last years are a kind of fulfilled silence in which a remote old farmhouse has collaborated with an unexpected enthusiasm. So I am fortunate. I too have made a habit of looking, of really seeing.
5 Fidelity
Fidelity Cranbrook and the Gathorne-Hardy children featured in
Let’s Make an Opera
In the early summer of 1955 I stayed at Great Glemham House for the first time; the Countess driving and asking shamelessly direct questions, swerving and laughing. Humphrey Repton had so planned the approach that one was halfway to it before it announced itself with Georgian panache. As we passed the pretty lodge Fidelity called out, ‘Mr Paternoster!’ Then came all the windows, roofs and frantic dogs. ‘She doesn’t bite – she just likes to give your ankle a little nip.’
The Gathorne-Hardys had come to Suffolk for the air just before the First World War. Their titles, Cranbrook and Medway, flowed happily enough alongside the Alde, which was a minor stream for the most part like the Lark, Linnet and Brett, where herons and kingfishers lived. Other than where they were bridged one would encounter them with surprise, having forgotten their existence. As country seats are inclined to do over the years, Great Glemham House had held back change, and the village and its fields, woods and lanes were still more or less exactly as George Crabbe, the rector, would have found them – although the previous mansion, a Tudor building, was set at the foot of the rise. He himself lived in Rendham, the neighbouringvillage, from which at this moment Maggi Hambling drives to paint the Aldeburgh sea most days.
She explains this compulsion:
On the morning of 30 November 2002, I experienced a dramatic storm; huge waves crashing on the beach, thrashing the shingle. Back in the studio, while working on a portrait from memory of a London beggar, I looked out to witness the landscape around me still being ravaged by wind and rain. The urge to paint the memory of the morning took over and the sea supplanted the beggar on that canvas. This was the first of my North Sea paintings. They were small, mostly vertical oils.
Fidelity too had reason to go there and reason to come back. A day or two later I walked down the park to explore the village. There was no sign of conservation . The park was walled in for a mile or two yet wide open to anyone. There was a well-cut flint church, a basic Victorian school, a pub, and a handful of painted cottages, some outlying farms, and that was all. The scene was both intimate and yet remote. Acton, where I was born, was exactly like this – though growing. Great Glemham was not extending. Neither was it frozen.
Actually my very first introduction to it was in the evening when Jock Cranbrook took me batting. We went out at dusk to smouldering rubbish dumps towatch these eternally misunderstood creatures weaving and crying over them. All Gathorne-Hardys were high up in natural history, books, the Bench, local government , horticulture, and chairmanship, whilst remaining amateur and ‘free’. Fidelity was high up in tolerance and amusement. Her loud clear voice rose above the squalls. And most of all at the Aldeburgh Festival forays. They had made her Chairman from the very beginning, and it was one of their best achievements.
She was one of those classic inter-war blondes. Kurt Hutton would complain to her face about the strong line of her jaw, but I found her beautiful. Her tossing honey-coloured hair and her features, all eagerness, were quite wonderful. I can hear her laughing away all this with scorn. In retrospect I see her as one of those people who claim little because they know they have enough. She was a provider not a taker. Benjamin Britten,
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