...lily, lily,

.

" Garden Study of the Vickers Children"

John Singer Sargent, 1884

54 3/16  x  35 7/8 inches

do you think Sargent painted the perfect lily?
one that stood tall, arrow straight, proud, face to the sun?

 "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose"

John Singer Sargent, 1885-1886

68 1/2  x  60 1/2 inches

His famous and perhaps most beloved painting "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" is one of those that has captivated the gardening side of me for years-one side that has been curtailed by bad back, bad knee-especially the knee right now-I knew I was not meant for kneeling in this world- maybe the next.

I have an abundance of sun in the front of the yard and though the lilies thrived there two years ago I had a gardener-I now have none. I had envisioned rows and rows-masses-of different lilies. I have added 7 species over the 6 seasons I have been scratching the soil in this place.

Leslie Woodriff

Black Beauty 

Midnight

Lilium Leucanthum

Lilium Casa Blanca

Lilium Regale

Well, this is what really happens to the poor darlings-
stooped over, bent stems,heavy heads,trying to face the sun.

It is my fault-I admit. I do stake them-using handy rods with curls at the top-though when a lily insists on topping out at 4 feet-the rods with curls are useless. Bamboo-though beautiful- does not hold up either.
I wanted the lilies in the back of the house &  moved them to the sunny side of the yard-that yard that is waiting to be a garden- without the help of a gardener. Their destination was not sunny enough, nor I think- large enough to do them justice.

THE FANFARE LILY -the first of the season

a strain comprised of huge flowered, substantial creamy white trumpets with golden yellow to apricot centers. Stronger stems bring fabulous blooms to eye level, and fragrance right to your nose.  They do!  As you can see these lilies are tall- at least 4 feet and rather than their usual bloom time-July, they are the first of the lilies to appear in the garden this year, I noted a June 1st arrival.

Do I move them again?
Some strays were left in the front beds and should be moved. As I predicted that location has been over shadowed by several tall camellias and a rampant climbing Cecile Brunner -in an otherwise very sunny yard. Leaving them in their current spot, I feel, would be limiting them their majesty.
Not allowing them to reach their heights, heaven's just look at those poor little backs! 
Moving them would be ideal-if I didn't have to do it, or make the bed they will lie in-or & so on and so forth. I see them along the long run of the fence-but out more- so I can walk around all round & have room to add floaty plants-tall floaty ones- within the bed like the Carnation... the Rose.

My passion for LILY was fixed after reading Beverly Nichols' garden books and his vivid descriptions of his own bounteous lilies.
Why can't mine be more like Beverly's?
Well actually they could- if- I were to write of them not as they are-but as I wish them to be.  I wrote about lilies and summer scents here last year, I  include the Nichol's quote again-because it is beautiful and I love it.


"that was the moment I first saw the lilies. and that was the moment when, having seen them,I mentally signed the contract to buy the house...I had to possess those lilies...The lilies were a variety known as Regale, and they stood in rows of glistening white down the whole length of one side of the kitchen garden.a faint breeze was stirring, & as they nodded their heads there drifted towards us a most exquisite fragrance.never before, in any garden of the world, have I seen such lilies; their loveliness was literally dazzling;the massed array of the white blossom was like sunlit snow. nor was this shining, shimmering beauty merely the result of mass, for as I walked closer I saw that each individual blossom was a perfect specimen, with a stem that was often four feet high, bearing on its proud summit no less than a dozen blossoms." BEVERLY NICHOLS

Here, LILIES bow, paying homage to, while desperately seeking the SUN.

Here, LILIES grace the Sitting Room in a vase

FANFARE went the way of most of my blooms- cut to fill the house with their heady smells-besides I had to spare the darlings, what an awful thought that rain might break their little necks.
But Yes- it still matters that they are beautiful in the garden & in harmony with the Sun & all living things in Nature.

The SARGENT STUDIES

Polly and Dorothy Barnard Studies by Sargent, 1885

see more of the Studies and read about the premise behind the painting here

The SARGENT STORY
a first hand account of the proceedings by Sir Edmund Gosse

Sargent painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose at Broadway 
Photo c. 1885-86

 

from the letters of Sir Edmund Gosse (here)

The progress of the picture, when once it began to advance, was a matter of excited interest to the whole of our little artist-coloney. Everything was used to be placed in readiness, the easel, the canvas, the flowers, the demure little girls in their white dresses,before we began our daily afternoon lawn tennis, in which Sargent took his share. But at the exact moment, which of course came a minute or two earlier each evening, the game was stopped, and the painter was accompanied to the scene of his labors. Instantly, he took up his place at a distance from the canvas, and at a certain notation of the light ran forward over the lawn with the action of a wag-tail, planting at the same time rapid dabs of paint on the picture, and then retiring again, only with equal suddenness to repeat the wag-tail action. All this occupied but two or three minutes, the light rapidly declining, and then while he left the young ladies to remove his machinery, Sargent would join us again, so long as the twilight permitted, in a last turn at lawn tennis"  

"The seasons went from August till the beginning of November "Sargent would dress the children in white sweaters which came down to their ankles, over which he pulled the dresses that appeared in the picture. He himself would be muffled up like an Artic explorer. At the same time the roses gradually faded and died, and Marshall and Snelgrive had to be requisitioned for artificial substitutes, which were fixed to the withered bushes . . . .  In November, 1885, the unfinished picture was stored in the Millets' barn. 

When in 1886 the Barnard children returned to Broadway the sittings were resumed. For Sargent it seemed the fun was in the process. Edwin Howland Blashfield recalled that when he saw the canvas each morning, the previous evening's work seemed to have been scraped off, and that this happened repeatedly at each stage.  

read more of the painter's story at John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery here
this is my source for Lilies- none other than the Lily Garden


.

the rest of the story, Beverley Nichols

.

Rex Whistler

Mottisfont Abbey

soon after moving into MERRY HALL, the Master of the house (that would be Nichols, the owner) sauntered into the kitchen to speak with Gaskin (that would be Nichol's Man-who ran the house). The Master was off to find URNS.

G- Urns? Whatever for?

N- For the pillars outside

G- There's a hundred and one things we want more than urns. We've hardly got two tea-cups left to match. There's only one coffee pot that isn't cracked. The Hoover's on its last legs. You ought to e putting first things first.

(Nichols tries to pacify Gaskin and takes off rather in a hurry. As he drives out to shop Urns, Gaskin's words drew him in."Most people would have agreed with him, particularly if they had seen Merry Hall. There were a thousand and one essentials clamouring for attention...walls falling down and cellars flooding and windows sticking, and there was a most peculiar smell in the woodshed. This latter,alone,was a first thing of major importance."

(He's coming around. No?)
No.

"But then, I have never believed in Gaskin's philosophy. Surely-in all matters appertaining to elegance-the most important thing to do first is the last thing? "

As Nichols continues speeding down the road, ruminating on Gaskin's

'Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'

No- for Nichols rants on- "that is the meanest, drabbest little axiom that ever poisoned the mind of youth..."
determinedly, defiantly,
"These profound but anti-social reflections were suddenly interrupted by a loud hiss and a sharp jerk of the steering wheel. "

"I had a puncture. It seemed a rather cold comment on my philosophy, for if the first thing you have to do is to change a tyre... well, the first thing you have to do is to change a tyre, and that is all there is to it."

Did that sharp reality jolt Beverley into a change of heart, a turn round back to Merry Hall to see to that woodshed.
What do you think?

at Merry Hall

of all the Beverley Nichols books MERRY HALL is my favorite.
Yes, that encompasses many books, and You could change my mind; I'm Open.
Perhaps it's because it was the first Nichols & You know what they say about your first.
Perhaps it's because it is a love affair with a house.
Nichols threw caution to the wind stepping into a house he loved- with rows of lilies he fell head over heels for. There were lean times-Nichols admits as much to his biographer & friend Bryan Connon in Beverley Nichols: A Life.

There are so many glorious Nichols passages in this book, You just have to read it.

 .

on furnishing a house

.

"If you have only just enough money to buy a bed, a chair, a table and a soup-plate, you should buy none of these squalid objects; you should immediately pay the first instalment on a Steinway grand."

& so,
He did.

Nichols' own Merry Hall

tripping along in the footsteps of his decorator friend Syrie Maugham .

ACANTHUS PRESS will publish a book this fall, SYRIE MAUGHAM .

Open publication - Free publishing - More syrie maugham

it's War and Pakistan- Beverley Nichols

...until I complete some research on another in depth post about the natty Nichols- I will leave you with this last look at the other introspective complex Nichols.



Facing reality is hard. At times in Nichols life, he refused to really look at it. With the outbreak of the second World War imminent, he motored to Lourdes with the aside to friends that he was "seeking a renewal of Faith." As always with Beverley a touch of the dramatics was more expected than the simple truth that he was off to an assignment.

From Lourdes , He sped to Cannes ."Cannes was a lunatic asylum" and a place he knew well. The fact that he was able to turn from one fix to the next , Beverley said, from " the sublime to the second rate" could be considered "damning proof of his superficiality." Nichols might have been fooling a few but not many-He was in no way fooling himself.

In Cannes, the streets were jammed but his favored old haunt- the Carlton Hotel was practically empty. Charles, the bartender, insisted "Monsieur Beverley" have drink on the house. Beverley wandered out to the terrace and who did he find-but the original party animal- Elsa Maxwell.

Maxwell
(from wikipedia photograph by Karl van Vechten)

La Maxwell: "Come up to the villa and dine. It may be the last time that I can ever ask you." Presumably, referring to the home of Dorothy better known as Dickie Fellowes-Gordon, her life long companion.

Seven souls dined that night in the open air of the villa's terrace. Suddenly the lights of the bay went dark. An omen? Maxwell wondered how long it would be before the lights would come back on.

Beverley Nichols remembered years later that moment signified the dimming of the Mediterranean's allure for many of his generation.

Nichols' notes survived on the night's conversation up at the villa- reading like a "hymn to the past."

Aly Kahn, EM, BN

Here- some of the conversation.

What will happen to that lovely city (Salzburg)? Shall we have to bomb it?

D o you think they've moved all the pictures from the Louvre?

Where is Cecil Beaton? Will he photograph the war? Will he draw it?

Do you remember Ludwig's fairy castles? Will they be bombed?

Will we use gas?

Do you remember Le Touquet and Syrie Maugham's Villa?...the Dolly Sisters?

Suppose the Germans get the Channel Ports? Can the French be trusted? What about Laval?

Much of what they talked about that night-manifest itself through the war years. They lost friends, some, like Maxwell, returned to America. Nichols for one-returned and stuck it out in England for the most part.

Nichols and India 1943

A trip to India during the war years by Nichols resulted in the book Verdict on India-a far cry from his jaunty garden tales. The book was a best seller and sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. The book followed the British propaganda line throughout- except for the last 70 pages. Here, Beverley asserted the need for the creation of Pakistan. The idea was radical- new. Nichols' open airing of the idea of partition was the first widely read of its kind. For Nichols- it was simple- Opposition to a nation for 100 million Muslims was a denial of self determination for 100 million Muslims. Verdict on India was published in 1944.

Pakistan's Independence Day is observed TODAY, Aug. 14, the day on which Pakistan became independent from British rule in 1947.





use of all the photographs in the BEVERLEY NICHOLS stories has been graciously granted by Timber Press.
source for this story from the Bryan Connon's biography Beverley Nichols A Life.

BEVERLEY NICHOLS Passages

Rex Whistler illustration for one of Nichols books

"a garden is a place for shaping a little world of your own according to your heart's desire"

Beverley Nichols from Garden Open Tomorrow

the Nichols Sudbrook Garden

Earlier this summer, I had the real pleasure of sitting down to chat with a bonafide Beverley Nichols scholar.



No, I did not head off to Richmond, Surrey.

Nichols' Georgian Manor House in Ashtead, Surrey

known to readers as MERRY HALL

find out more about the real one(here)

This Nichols devotee was in my own backyard! Not Quite- but... The distinction of being the one cited authority on Beverley Nichols goes to North Carolina native Roy Dicks. Roy and I sat down over- oh so Southern- Ice Tea and spent hours blissfully waxing poetic about Beverley Nichols. You just want to do that when Beverley Nichols gardening books are on the table.

Sudbrook

This spring Timber Press released the book Roy edited- Rhapsody in Green-The Garden Wit and Wisdom of Beverley Nichols. The title comes from one of Nichols chapters in Green Grows the City. The collection is wonderful- After reading its pages, I want to run back to my own Nichols copies and start reading again. No one could turn the garden phrase like Beverley Nichols- not to mention- filled with the sorts of people one wishes to run into along the garden path.

My own introduction to Nichols came about 10 years ago- I just stumbled into him. A passing reference to this prolific writer and his gardening books intrigued me and my 1st reading was of Merry Hall. I started growing some wonderful lily specimens after reading of Nichols own lily love, devotion and worship. Over the years, I found most of the Garden books and have filled in the missing ones with the Timber Press's faithful reprints.

"Some fall in love with women; some fall in love with art; some fall in love with death.

I fall in love with gardens, which is much the same as falling in love with all three at once.

For a garden is a mistress, and gardening is a blend of all of the arts,

and if it is not the death of me, sooner or later,

I shall be much surprised."

Beverley Nichols- 1st lines of Merry Hall

As you can imagine-I was hooked.

Beverley Nichols in the Garden of Merry Hall

"a little gem"

photograph from the JC Raulston Arboretum

"I must confess that for me the flower of the magnolia is most beautiful when life has almost ebbed from it. These are the twilit hours when the petals flag and falter, when their immaculate ivory texture dims, when they glow with a ghostly radiance that seems to come from another world"

BN from Forty Favourite Flowers

Roy was introduced to the world of Beverley Nichols by friend and gardener- JC Raulston. If you enjoy the beauty and fragrance of the Magnolia grandiflora "little gem"- you can get down on your knees and thank this late horticulturalist. He is recognized for revitalizing garden nurseries across the country with such species as the likes of "little gem" and has an arboretum named in his honor in North Carolina.

(Read more about him here and the Arboretum here)

Down The Garden Path was the first of the 60 book titles by Nichols that Roy collected. In 1994, Roy began his search for the Nichols oeuvre with the help of a book finder in England. Through this search- he became a friend of Nichols' biographer Bryan Connon, made pilgrimages to four of the Nichols' homes and began his pursuit of having the Nichols gardening books published for a new generation of gardeners and readers. Roy approached Timber Press with the idea and after many starts and stops- their first-Down The Garden Path, of now ten books is in print. Down The Garden Path is also the first of Nichols' magical ramblings about the joys of gardening and the love of a house. Along with editing and writing several of the introductions for the books, Roy lectures throughout the country on Nichols and his books.

Nichols and great friend Osbert Sitwell

At our sit down, Roy encouraged the reading of the Connon's Nichols biography. Just as expected Beverley Nichols was witty, cuttingly humorous, multifaceted and very complex. He orbited with the stars and the royals during his heyday and I hope Nichols' words become bandied about everywhere in the near future- especially here and hopefully on other blogs as well.

the Glatton Garden

Down the Garden Path

Beverley was known less for his "hands on" in the garden and more for his "hands off "in the garden.

When it came to the labors of the garden BN left it to the laborers.

Nichols at Glatton in front of his Tudor Cottage











with friend and companion Cyril Butcher

atop A Thatched Roof

Glatton

As for the "Truths" in the Nichols gardening books- Roy tells all; The Houses and Gardens were very real. Nichols' love for both was certainly real and Our Man- Gaskin- Nichols' valet amongst valets- was real, as was Oldfield-Nichols' beloved gardener.

Nichols, Gaskin, Oldfield

Roy's "favorite Nichols book is definitely Merry Hall. I think it is his best single book because it was written at the height of his powers in 1951, having written the Glatton trilogy and "Green Grows the City" before it, so his garden writing was very confident. It is full of quotable lines and wonderful scenes with the battling women neighbors."

On that note, from the biography of Beverley Nichols A Life by Bryan Connon, hear Nichols on his characters (excerpted from BN's The Gift of a Home)



Reader- You may choose to skip these descriptions but I advise you not to- the words of Nichols on his creations are highly diverting!



"one of the characters who seems to have most interested people is MARIUS, the amiable scholar who wanders through the page dropping little scraps of knowledge as lightly as if he were taking part in a sort of literary paper-chase. Since his outstanding characteristic is his erudition I feel embarrassment in confessing that Marius is really only a fictional extension of an aspect of myself. Although this sounds conceited... As we go through life most of us accumulate quite a large collection of miscellaneous curiosa...it seemed...amusing to gather them together in the brain of another man, and let him play with them as he pleased. As soon as I had conceived this idea, Marius began to become very real to me."



on "OUR ROSE": So many readers claimed to have met her in their own lives. Well, of course, they had met her, if they had ever belonged to a provincial Garden Club ... Our Rose is a distillation of those thousands of ladies who have transformed the gay and careless art of flower arranging into a grim and exacting science, with formal rules and strict taboos, and serried legions of passionate contestants, hotly arguing about the precise angle at which a lupin may be place in its appropriate vase.

& MISS EMILY: again many readers claimed to recognize her. She was a very English type- well-bred, down-to-earth, not overburdened with humour, inclined to be bossy. You can still meet her in many a country lane, tramping home to a luncheon of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, with an elderly spaniel at her heels... Neither of these ladies was of an amiable disposition, and neither had much feminine allure. But I have a fondness for them... 'they may have been a headache, but they never were a bore.' To me, at any rate.

Nichols and his gardener Oldfield in the greenhouse

Merry Hall

For Beverley- writing his gardening books " was more like arranging a bunch of mixed flowers, here a story, here a winding paragraph, here a purple passage, and suddenly there was a book."

from BN All I Could Never BE

A favourite with Nichols' gardener Oldfield

Lilium 'Triumphator'

at the JC Raulston Arboretum

The Rhapsody book is illustrated with the original William McLaren drawings that accompanied many of the original Nichols books. The detailed drawings depict cherubic garden statuary, flower specimens and intimate vignettes from the garden.

a McLaren illustration

Rhapsody In Green will take you through all Nichols' garden books-in brief, leaving you with a quickened step to visit Nichols in all his gardening splendor starting... down the garden path.

Favourite Quotes from the Collection-

Casablanca Lilies from the Garden of Toby Worthington

Roy says his favorite quote is the one the book ends with and the one he always save until last in my talks:

"If all men were gardeners, the world at last would be at peace."

(BN, from Green Grows the City)

"The regal lilies do indeed praise the Lord. Some of my own, last summer were so exultant that they praised Him through no less than thirty snow-white trumpets on a single stem, and even the most accomplished angel could not do much better that that." (Forty Favourite Flowers, BN)

Nichols with lilies from the Gardens of Merry Hall

"A clump of paeonies, to its owner, is something that is deeply rooted in his heart. These flowers are part of himself... The owner of those paeonies has slaved for them, sacrificed for them, sometimes, I think, taken years off his life for them. They are not just 'for cutting', They are for living with, and maybe for dying with, too." (Laughter on the Stairs, BN)

the other two books in the Merry Hall trilogy

"There is only one 'basic rule' in flower arrangement. And that is to love the flowers, to listen to what they have to say, to watch the way they dance, and then to allow them to express themselves in their own sweet way." (The Art of Flower Arrangement, BN)

photograph from the JC Raulston Arboretum

"Even a single 'shop' carnation in a country bunch seems to put the whole thing out of focus, like a woman in a Dior dress at a meeting of the parish council." (Garden Open Today, BN)

Down the Garden Path- along with these two books are known as the

Allways trilogy-

& follow the Tudor cottage & garden in Glatton, Cambridgeshire

When I checked back with Roy recently- I had to ask a few very personal questions- and in the vein of previous posts- Of course One had to be-



WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FLOWER?



"It's always hard to select a favorite flower, but if pressed, I'd say it would be hellebores. There are so many colors and patterns and they add color to the winter garden all through January, February and March."

AND FINALLY- HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

"Right now I have some early fall-blooming cyclamen in the garden, and some Formosa lilies."

AHHH! I THINK NICHOLS WOULD APPROVE.

all of these beautiful b&w photographs come copyright Timber Press- thank you for allowing me to use them.

...down the Beaton path - Beverley Nichols & Cecil Beaton

photograph of Cecil Beaton's great friend and artist Rex Whistler

by Cecil Beaton

(read more about Rex Whistler here)

BEATON v. NICHOLS

...continuing FLEUR COWLES FLOWER GAME with detours along the way

Robert Mapplethorpe (here)

Gwili Andre by Cecil Beaton
from Chris Beetles (here)

I can not imagine the sparks that flew when the young aesthete Cecil Beaton met the older aesthete Beverley Nichols. It seems Nichols was trying to coax the 24 year old innocent into an affair. Nichols boasted of bedding a number of famous fellows, dropping Names in hopes of impressing Beaton. In the biography- Beverley Nichols A Life by Bryan Connon, Nichols recalls Beaton as being "startled".
( I bet.)

Artists Gilbert and George
by Cecil Beaton

Cecil Beaton photographs from CHRIS BEETLES (here)

By 1928, Nichols was a best selling author and had audaciously written an autobiography Twenty-Five, he boasted one should have accomplished enough to write such a book at the age of 25. Cecil Beaton was well on his way to his own fame- and ultimately one could say-'outfamed' Nichols.

Nichols by Beaton

In 1929, Nichols wrote Beaton that he must go to New York to be a big success and promised him a commission of 10 photographs for the American Sketch- a new publication where Nichols was to be editor. Nichols had been set up in New York with the job and brought "little pieces of England" to the city- ultimately selling his French furniture in exchange for sturdy "English" Victorian mahogany. Nichols' sophisticated manservant Gaskin was imported as well to oversee it all.

BN

photograph courtesy of Timber Press

CB

by CB

from Chris Beetles (here)

Beaton did take on the city, but the commission BN promised never came through. I can't help but wonder- was it the Sketch publishers who vetoed the Beaton commission or was it Beverley's own snub? Perhaps- a would be lover scorned- at what might have been Beaton's demure to Nichols overtures. I'll never know- neither to my knowledge recorded the reasons. Beaton was in New York and of course angry about the whole thing.

A Happy Ending though: It turns out Beaton didn't need Beverley's help and ultimately landed in what was to be- his own- always -sweet pot of jam.






I can't leave these two erudite aesthetes without knowing they patched things up and fortunately the truth of the tale is that they did. They exchanged genuinely affectionate letters as they got older, admiring each others work and lamenting the onset of old age.

Beverley

The photograph of Beverley done much in the style of Beaton and likely is one of his portraits- no doubt there was a bit of provocative chatter at the sitting.

Beaton, Gladys Cooper, Nichols

Excerpts from the FLOWER GAME

Beaton's Japanese Paper Blossoms

Nichols- not known for brevity exclaimed:

"What a lovely idea!... With the exception of the bougainvillaea, it is firmly British. The only thing that may make it unusual is that I do NOT put roses first. I think that the average garden is greatly 'over rosed'. The whole Idea, of course, is only a dream because one couldn't grow snowdrops and bougainvillaea together. Or Perhaps YOU could!

Nichols with his garden Lilies

... In order of priority is as follows:

Lilium regale, bougainvillea (common magenta variety); Double purple Lilac (Souvenir de Louis Spaeth); Camellia (Donation); Rose (Fragrant Cloud); Snowdrops in clumps (Galanthus ebrosessii); Agapanthus; English Primroses in clumps; and English Blue Bells, philadelphus ( Belle Etoile).

Beaton's scattered Roses fabric creation

Beaton- in less flowery language said:

" Any large white Orchid of any variety, so long as it is white. (I have grown some and they are a great delight!) ; white Paeony, dark red Roses, white Rose, Pink Rose, lily- of- the Valley; auratum Lily; white Marguerites, white Geraniums, Clematis.

Mapplethorpe's Orchid

Rose by Robert Mapplethorpe

Sir Cecil Beaton died in 1980.
Beverley Nichols outlived him by three years.