The World at his Feet

 

Sir William Blathwayt (1649--1717) had the world at his feet and made a small fortune as a result. It was a case of energy, ability and chance, or perhaps luck. Born in the year a king was executed, an event which signified the dawning of a new age, he prospered under James II as Secretary of State for War and chose the winning side when William of Orange came on the scene and drove the old king into exile. He was lucky in his choice of wife, Mary Ann Wynter, the heiress of Dyrham Park, whom he married in December 1686. Between then and her death in 1691 she bore him four sons and a daughter. The two events may not be unrelated.

His greatest piece of luck was being born when he was and achieving office when he did. The late C17th and early C18th witnessed a global transformation and the underpinnings of the British Empire to come, and William Blathwayt knew exactly how to tack his sails. When William of Orange came to the throne, all things Dutch became the rage; aristocrats competed as to who could most slavishly imitate the new king—few more effectively than Sir William Blathwayt who demolished Dyrham’s dilapidated Tudor mansion and replaced it with the present Dyrham House and gardens, which copied almost exactly the new king’s palace and gardens. 

Mary, however died from her various exertions and never lived to see the house completed. She was buried in the adjacent medieval church, where her husband and children in due course also took up residence. It was a salutary experience walking from the house and  family portraits to their graves, where my feet are artfully shown.  

From the second portrait in order: William Blathwayt, Mary Wynter, William Blathwayt II (1688- 72) John Blathwayt (1690-1754) soldier and musician who fought at Culloden, Anne Blathwayt (1691-1717)

St Peter's Church

Before then, however, they had a life, and what a life. 

The Dutch fashion of panelling up to the ceiling

The Dutch fashion for embossed leather wall coverings

The Diogenes room named after the central figure in the tapestry

The State bedroom. No monarch actually slept there, but every great house had one just in case and as a status symbol. Out of picture to the right are two ornately carved armchairs for important visitors to any in-bed monarch. To the left are two armless chairs for the less important. And two stools at the foot of the bed for nonentities. 

The Tapestry Bedroom richly furnished with Flemish tapestries

Best Staircase, so called because it led to the best rooms. Made from red cedar wood, it was shipped from Carolina at enormous expense - perk of the job. Sir William was Surveyor and Auditor General of Plantation Revenues at the time, amongst other positions. The cedar wood oils left a strong and pleasant odour. Sir William had only one complaint: it took longer for the wood to travel from Bristol docks to Dyrham Park than the time it took to sail the Atlantic. You wonder at the number of horse and carts it took to carry it all - and at the state of the pre toll gate roads of the time. 

Old Staircase and the rooms above. As a high ranking government official, Blathwayt used British diplomatic, military and colonial networks to source his materials from across the world: Carrara marble from Italy, pine timber from Sweden,  rare and valuable timbers for his staircases; in particular, black walnut and red cedar from Virginia. Dutch east Asian networks sourced him fine porcelain, damask and silk.

The National Trust, to show their sensitivity or to make a point, ask you to avert your eyes or even take an alternative route as you reach the first floor. The reason are the two side tables in the picture below showing two enslaved men each holding a large scallop shell. You may stop reading here if you wish or take it as being part and parcel of the age.

I had to avert my eyes from some obscure exhibition of modern fabric art scattered randomly across the house and covering some very fine paintings, and wonder why no part of the exhibition was shown below stairs, ie the kitchens and servant quarters. 

There were however these very fine bells. Before the C18th it was the custom to have servants within hearing distance. Later on a complex system of bells were created whereby upstairs communicated with downstairs. In some houses servants could tell by the sound of the bell which room required service. In Dyrham the marker pendulum continued swinging after the sound stopped, again allowing the servant to know which room required service. 

A mind unto itself

I was no longer a pale and tubby boy in spectacles, naked but for khaki shorts and plimsols. I was Lone Eagle, lithe and bronzed surrounded by other small boys immersed in the same delusion; Cheyenne undergoing one of a series of rites: endurance running. The red-brick terraces of Ribblesdale Avenue had changed into canyons, Colorado or Utah, we weren’t choosy. On other occasions, I’d be Little Feather, a Mohawk pursued through northern forests by Iroquois; a cowboy on a blood-red plain surrounded by menacing buttes watched by the silhouettes of distant Indians. 

The images came from the Westerns that dominated the 1950s and early 60s. So vivid were they in our minds, it was easy to layer them over red-brick and tarmac. We could even turn grey skies blue.

All this coursed through my mind as I stared at my wife, unwilling, unable to believe. “Are you saying—” I paused to get this straight. “That you can’t picture this cup when you shut your eyes?”

“I can’t visualise anything,” she said. “This apple.” She held it up to remove all doubt she meant this apple; positioned it in front of her face and closed her eyes. “Gone.”

“In your mind’s eye,” I urged. “You must be able to imagine it.”

“No. I can’t. There’s nothing.”

I closed my own eyes and saw a whole bowl of them, an orchard in a sun-kissed valley (visualisation comes with cliché) I imagined eating one, heard the crunch, salivated at the sharpness of its juice.

This was my first introduction to Aphantasia and a whole new world I never knew existed. Mind you, as she confessed, she’d only recently discovered it herself. Until then she’d assumed everyone shared the same inability. For her it was normal. For me it would be like living in a prison cell – but only because I’d know what I was missing. 

“How do you recognise people?” I asked.

“I remember faces when I see them. I know exactly what I see. I just can’t visualise you when you’re not there.”

Later, I googled it, and there it was. Aphantasia—the opposite of Hyperphantasia, the tribe to which I belong. I wonder how many live and work together unaware of the other’s ability/inability to visualise things. It’s not exactly a conversation starter. It just doesn’t come up? Why should it if each assume things are as they are? 

Aphantasia (I love the name, a good Rom-Fantasy title) tends to cluster around those gifted in Stem subjects like science, computers or maths. It may have some evolutionary advantages; PTSD tends to be less severe for example. I on the other hand have to stop people in mid-flow when they describe a broken arm or a tooth extraction gone wrong. I immediately feel it, and a wince becomes a shudder of imagined pain.

The brain is a weird and wonderful thing, a mind unto itself.  

Money never hugs you back

 

I’ve been hugged many times, but there are hugs and hugs, and there are some that can be overwhelming. One such was a week or two ago and brought to mind something I experienced in 1982.

In 1982 I visited Sousa Junior High School in the Bronx as part of my one-year teacher exchange in New York. Its principal was Dr H Wilson Brindle. At first glance he looked an avuncular, middle-aged black man, but as I walked in and he rose from his desk perception radically changed. He radiated an invisible charge, growing stronger as he approached me. When he offered his hand, the effect was almost electric. You can read (and it’s worth reading)  more about him here. 

So back to the hug. I give them and I take them now as a matter of course. In fact, when I think of it, that too is largely a result of that year in America when everyone seemed to hug at the drop a hat. I on the other hand was a cold Northern fish. Hugging was something done between consenting adults, which in a sense it is. All this was new to me at the time, but I learnt and adapted and never looked back. Thank you, America!

Hugs aren’t meant to be rated, as in Strictly Come Dancing, but there are hugs that unaccountably transcend the normal. They possess a strong and mysterious power creating an immense sense of well-being—so much so you don’t really want it to end. They are few and far between, perhaps mercifully; they could be some kind of gateway drug to something else entirely. But seriously, what on earth is it? 

Spiritual? For Hildegard of Bingen there is no doubt in the matter, and I rather think I’d like being hugged by her. ‘The mystery of God hugs you in its all-encompassing arms.’ Anoir Ou-Chod thinks on similar lines. ‘A hug is the bridge between two souls.’ Though I have less inclination to be hugged by him. 

Politicians, perhaps predictably, approach hugs more warily. ‘Once a bear’s hug has got you, it is apt to be for keeps.’ Harold MacMillan.

Lyndon Baines Johnson thought much the same thing. ‘Hug your friends tight but your enemies tighter – hug them so tight they can’t wriggle.’ 

Clearly some hugs come with health warnings, but whether spiritual or unexplained charisma on tap they can be a force to be reckoned with. 

Biggus Dickus

 

 

The penis has dominated man’s thinking for millennia. Thousands of small bronze amulets or carvings have been found of a winged phallus—the Fascinus—a minor Roman deity. Used to ward off the evil eye, one presumes they were effective. Then there is the Secret Figurine, peculiar to Anglo-Romano Britain. Found all over England, these were pocket sized figurines depicting a small man in a pointed hood. When unlocked, the outer coat opens to reveal that the entirety of the body is a penis with legs. I swear, if I was a young and thrusting entrepreneur I’d be manufacturing thousands of these little beauties. If you ask me, the market’s wide open. 

Even landscape is affected by the noble penis. The famous Cerne-abbas-giant with his impressive appendage was once a resting place for young woman seeking a husband. In Irish myth and legend, glens and valleys were caused not by glaciation but the far more satisfactory story of ancient giants gouging the earth with their dangling appendages. 

The Gaelic name for one Cairngorm mountain is Bod an Deamhain or Penis of the Demon. It was changed to Demon’s Peak when the easily offended Victoria came to visit it.

Similarly, The Old Man of Hoy has proved a more acceptable name than its Gaelic original.

  In fact the last great manifestation of the penis is to be found in the noble codpiece exemplified by that of Henry VIII. Since then, it seems to have withered away in  a manner of speaking.

That is until the recent furore surrounding the Bayeaux Tapestry! And boy, has it excited academics. In case you need to know and can’t afford the £33 to see the actual thing, there are 626 human figures, 190 horses, 35 dogs, 37 trees 32 ships, 33 buildings—and 93 penises on display!

Four of them are attached to men. Others detect five or even six men wih them,  though one of those is only a pair of testicles, the penis itself obscured by an axe handle. Talk about excitable dons!

As in most things, there is a serious point to be made and these dedicated and sharp-sighted men go about it. They note that every  male figure on the large middle panels display nothing but their modesty.

The only penises shown here are equine—88 of them—and used to denote status. King Harold rides a well-endowed stallion. William, the ultimate victor rides a more impressively endowed stallion. His half-brother Bishop Odo rides a modestly endowed stallion more befitting to a man of God. None of the 35 dogs are endowed, which seems a shame. 

So, where are all the well endowed men? They are to be found in the smaller top and lower panels and offer a sly commentary to the main events or the ‘official version’ in the middle. They are believed to be based on those Aesop’s Fables denoting sexual trickery and deceit and provide a nudge-nudge, wink-wink aside to a particular event shown in the main panels.

Unfortunately, your £33 entry fee is based on a ‘conveyor’ belt system allowing each visitor a bare 40 minutes. So many penises, so little time. 

Girls' Shoes!

My first Holy Communion I remember as a bit of a disaster. Hospitalisation meant I missed much of the painstaking preparation and what little I had was rushed. I just knew it was immensely important without fully appreciating why. More importantly I was wearing ‘hand-me-down’ sandals. And even worse than that, girls’ sandals one of which wouldn’t buckle.

 

It was many years later when things finally fell into place. In particular: John 6. 35 – 57.

‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and who ever believes in my will never go thirsty…and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. . . For my Father’s will is that everyone that looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and will raise them up on the last day. . . . Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood …remains in me, and I in them.’

This is both powerful and unambiguous. Even so, for a long time I found it difficult to fully appreciate why priests and Catholics took such risks in C16th England: ruinous fines, broken bones and death for the sake of Holy Communion. 

If I had been GK Chesterton, I would have had no problem. No problem at all.

After his reception into the Catholic Church, Chesterton went to High Wycombe to be prepared by Father Thomas Walker for his first Holy Communion. Father Walker remembered the preparation as ‘one of the happiest duties I had ever to perform. . . It certainly did not take long to prepare him for he evidently knew as much as I could tell him. Nevertheless, he said I was to treat him as any child whom I was teaching…I went through the catechism very meticulously explained all the details, to which he lent a most vigilant and unswerving attention. (So aware was Chesterton) of the immensity of the Real Presence on the morning of his First Communion. . . that he was covered with perspiration when he actually received Our Lord. When I congratulated him, he said, “I have spent the happiest hour of my life.” But, at least to begin with, he found it difficult going to Holy Communion, his ‘best happiness.’ He was ‘too much frightened of that tremendous reality on the altar. “I have not grown up with it, and it is too much for me.”’  

        

Deep down, I regret feeling none of what Chesterton experienced that first time, but then I have grown up with it. In fairness, too, I suspect Chesterton may have been feeling something else if he had been wearing girls’ shoes, one of which was unbuckled. 

The National Botanic Garden of Wales.

 

A few weeks ago, we visited the National Botanic Garden of Wales. To be frank, on a damp and gloomy day, I wasn’t expecting that much but ended up wanting more and pencilling in further visits, but with the proviso – don’t be suckered by ‘Gift Aid.’ *

The bio dome alone is pretty spectacular, being the largest single spanned glasshouse in the world. The climate within is geared to plants from the Mediterranean, California, Peru, Majorca and Australia. 

Strangely though, I found that less impressive than the 560 acres of parkland surrounding it. Walking through it you seamlessly entered an C18th landscape and the world of  Sir William Paxton. 

The estate was famous for its necklace of engineered lakes, still in evidence today

Present day photos ——and 1815 paintings by Thomas Horner

Meadow land and William Paxton's  three acre double-walled garden 

Before the enterprising William Paxton, the future National Botanic Garden of Wales had been part of the Middleton estate. Their house, Middleton Hall, must have looked quite imposing. It had for example 17 hearths as indicated by the Hearth Tax records of 1670. 

The Middletons, like Paxton who succeeded them, derived much of their wealth from the East India Company and India in general. It is no surprise that in the present climate of self-abnegation this has to be apologised for. The Botanic Garden website is particularly mealy-mouthed going on about the ‘horrendous’ injustices visited upon the innocent. This despite the fact that we merely usurped previous conquerors like the Mughals or equally rapacious indigenous princes. And it was not entirely cost free whether in terms of the humble soldier on both sides, or indeed the three Middleton brothers who died on their way home from India.

 Whether we—or indeed Indians—would now feel more comfortable if the French had beaten us to it is open to debate. 

 

Paxton's new Middleton Hall painted by the artist Thomas Horner

 There are other things that cut across the grain of modern opinion. In the 1802 elections William Paxton spent £15,000 in order to secure his election: a total of 1107 breakfasts, 36,901 dinners, 6842 suppers, 25,275 gallons of ale and porter, 11,074 bottles of spirits, 8879 bottles of porter, 4064 bottles of sherry, 509 bottles of cider, £18. 18 shillings worth of milk punch, £54 worth of mulled wine, and 4,521 instances of horse hire. He lost the election, but the electorate had a bloody good time. A far superior way of doing things in my opinion.

Blasted oak and Paxton's Tower in the far distance 

And again, Paxton Tower can be seen on the horizon

Despite this princely expenditure William Paxton had no trouble finding the money for his 36-foot-high three-sided gothic tower. Such follies built to be seen were then an essential feature of most grand estates, this particular one built in honour of Nelson, killed in the Battle of Trafalgar. Originally called Nelson’s Tower, engraved tables commemorating his victory in English, Welsh and Latin were placed on each side of the tower. 

So much to learn. A single lifespan is not enough; three or four perhaps might fit the bill, then as well as history, I’d be able to study geology, a growing passion but one too late to develop, and botany. The latter exemplified in the final pictures below: a tree covered by fungi and the attendant information that follows.

*And one more thing to learn. On buying an entry ticket you’ll be asked if you want to sign up for ‘Gift Aid’. In Britain this is a way for charities to gain exemption from tax and is normally cost free to the individual ie the government reimburses the charity of any tax due on the transaction. In this case however it’s the individual that pays— a ten percent addition to the original price. If they were honest and asked for a ten percent tip from the start I know what my answer would have been. There are insufficient lifespans to erase my miserly streak.

An Adventurous Twelve-Year Old Boy

 William Paxton (1744-1824,) was the son of a Scottish wine-merchant who spent much of his childhood in London. He enjoyed it so much, that at the age of twelve he joined the Royal Navy as a Captain’s servant, rising through the ranks to become a midshipman and ultimately an officer on a British Merchant ship bound for India. There he made a fateful decision; he trained to become an assayer, analysing minerals and ores to establish their worth. His worth was recognised when he was made assay master at Fort Worth in Bengal from where he went on to form his own company. 

 

Some won great fortunes in India. Most died in action or from tropical disease as the numerous memorial plaques in obscure country churches bear witness.

 

Like many at the time, he made his fortune in India and returned to Britain immensely rich and determined to become a landed gentleman.

In 1789 he purchased Middleton Hall, replacing it with a  brand new and much grander mansion. It even had water closets, with water fed from a rooftop cistern, fed in turn by a small reservoir built in the side of a neighbouring hill. Rural Carmarthenshire had never seen the like. 

 

 

Paxton totally transformed the surrounding parkland. A three acre double-walled garden was built, the double walls of stone and brick creating a milder microclimate, which extended the growing season for vegetables and fruit. Within the garden he built a large greenhouse with underfloor heating which allowed peaches and other more exotic fruit to be grown. 

He developed woodland and a complex necklace of lakes, dams, and waterfalls, and when he discovered the healing properties of the water, piped it into his mansion as well as building a public bathhouse outside the estate for local people. People flocked to sample the healing waters to the great benefit of the immediate community. 

 

The entire neighbourhood benefited from William Paxton, (now a sir). He founded a charity school at Llanarthne, leased land for the building of the Bethlehem Baptist Chapel, and subscribed the then substantial sum of £1000 for a canal as well as improving Kidwelly Harbour.

 

His greatest contribution to the area was perhaps the regeneration of the then run down town of Tenby. Recognising the growing demand for the sea-side holiday when much of Europe was being trampled by the Napoleonic wars, Paxton developed a prestigious bathhouse in Tenby which attracted a steady influx of visitors. He built lodging houses for the new ‘tourists,’ provided fresh drinking water, widened streets, built new roads and a brand-new theatre for the town. Similarly, he improved the water supply for the county town of Carmarthen, replacing leaky wooden pipes with new iron pipes.

And his relevance today? The Middleton Hall estate along with his pioneering work in agriculture and landscaping provided the basis for today’s prestigious National Botanical Garden of Wales. 

Not bad for a boy who went to sea at the age of twelve.