Inherited the Stations of the Cross Which Mrs. Arthur Pollen Had Painted for His Chapel at Rottingdean
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
inherited the Stations of the Cross which Mrs. Arthur Pollen had painted for his chapel at Rottingdean. Plain oak benches completed the furniture. (309) The exterior was, according to Waugh, subject to wartime’s “enforced neglect and misuse” when Knox moved in. James Lees-Milne, known for describing stately homes, visited the Manor in the 1970s. He found “a wonderful old Elizabethan house…. Moated Grange sort of garden surrounded by high grey walls, with apple trees, much ragged grass, a raised terrace which [Julian Asquith] assured me his mother Katharine Asquith remembers having two mounts, one at either end, when she was a child” (Ancient as the Hills: Diaries 1973-74, London, 2000, 75). In the early 1960s, Katharine moved out of the Manor, which was leased to tenants during her son’s overseas assignments. She lived in the village in a house called Tynts Hill. Despite his declining health, Waugh continued to visit. Katharine’s grandson Raymond lived there from 1961 to 1967, when he was a boy attending school. Raymond, the present Lord Oxford, was Waugh’s godson: “Evelyn came there frequently.... I remember his visits well: he and my grandmother used to talk about literature, West Country gossip, religion in a relaxed and quiet way while I played under the piano with my toys. There could have been no more sweet tempered, interesting, engaged, ‘right’ sort of interlocutor in my memory than Evelyn.” Lord Oxford recalls that Waugh was a very generous godfather, always sending memorable gifts on appropriate occasions (e-mail, Sept. 2011).[16] Katharine died in 1976. During his visits in the mid 1930s Waugh met Conrad Russell (1878-1947), a close friend of Katharine Asquith, Diana Cooper, and Christopher Hollis. He lived in a five-room cottage, Little Claveys, across the road from Hollis. Russell moved to Mells after farming in Sussex. His family included politicians and intellectuals, and his uncle, Lord John Russell, had been Prime Minister. Russell had been friends with Katharine’s husband at Oxford. After work in the City before World War I, he served in the army with distinction, then took up farming. He had enough money to live independently. After her husband’s death, he proposed to Katharine, but she turned him down. They remained close friends, and he often wrote to her, to his two sisters, and to Diana Cooper, whom he had known since youth.[17] Russell’s letters provide a vivid picture of social life at Mells when Waugh visited. Russell was not a Roman Catholic and criticized changes at Mells Manor after Lady Horner’s death in 1940. He noted that Katharine converted a servant’s bedroom into a chapel, and that priests were almost always present. He became better acquainted with Hilaire Belloc and Ronald Knox, welcome at Mells since Lady Horner’s demise. Knox appeared from time to time to help with the farm, at least during the war (Letters of Russell 202-04). Despite his agnosticism, Russell was a frequent guest at the Manor, but he was bored by endless discussions of minute details of Catholic dogma and ritual. He often wrote to Diana Cooper about these (Letters of Russell 280). .