Lovin' London

Looking towards Parliament from inside a phonebooth. Saturday, 1:35 PM. Photo: JH.

June 8, 2009. Flight from London Heathrow yesterday afternoon London time, arriving at Newark six hours later at 6 pm EDT.

Nice trip. Virgin Atlantic, which has a new (to me anyway) seating arrangement in Business or what they call First Class.

The seats are placed diagonally along the aisle and look like half an old fashioned (17th C.) metal tub, with everything you need right around you even a little seat/stool at your feet with a seat belt attached so that a guest can visit during the flight.

The plane is a delight, a surprise.

The windows are behind you, so for those of us who like to look out and see whatever, one has to get up from the seat, turn around and look over the back of the seat to see anything. So the views aren’t good.

Nevertheless, it is much more private. Your next door neighbor is right next door but not really in speaking access because there’s a waist high wall between. You can see only the top of his or her head, and if they’re reclining you can’t see them at all. It’s very simple despite my description.

There’s no getting around it, the trans-Atlantic flight leaves me feeling…. not energetic, to put it mildly.

I love London. I just like to look at it. I like to walk around and look. I love the London taxis. They’re roomy and elegant although they ain’t cheap. Although the drivers are mainly very courteous, sometimes charming, often knowledgeable about the city and its history.

What's so funny with these two clowns in the back of a (very roomy) London taxi riding back to their hotels after dinner in Chelsea at Manicomio? You decide.

The ride from our hotel on St. James’ Place to the Olympia in Knightsbridge averaged about 14 or 15 pounds each way. About twenty bucks and tip each way. And it couldn’t have been more than three or four miles down the Knightsbridge Road. But all the prices are like that. You can still almost double everything against the dollar, although the pound is lower than it was a year ago. You look at a menu and it says 38 pounds for Dover Sole Meuniere and at first you think, that’s lower than New York! Then you translate the price and you realize it’s about sixty-eight bucks.

Nevertheless, it’s all good, if you can get there. We were staying at the Stafford which is a small gem of a hotel located on an L-shaped cul-de-sac, St. James’s Place, off St. James’s Street, and just up from St. James’s palace, which faces the road (which leads up to Piccadilly).

The Green Park is right behind it and within easy walking access. The hotel is a surprise. Across the way is Spencer House which was built before in 1755-56. Next door is a large house that was occupied by James de Rothschild, father of Jacob, Lord Rothschild. Lady de Rothschild died in her 90s, in 1988.

The Stafford is a very pleasant surprise. I'd not heard of it although when I told a friend here in New York that we were going to be staying there, he said: one of the greatest hotels in London, people go back and go back. Very quietly very popular. He was right. Charming in its British "smallness," cozy, traditional, veddy Briddish, just the way you like it, and thoroughly comfortable. That shot of the geraniums outside our fourth floor window sums it up for me. Fabulous bathrooms, tub, shower, etc. Not grand but not small, like the ideal London flat -- with the world just down the street.

When you learn about British history, it can seem that everyone is related.

On Friday, we were taken on a small private tour of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. Waddesdon was a “chateau” built by Ferdinand de Rothschild. These are amazing properties and you can’t help thinking of the mentality and the wealth of the people who built these monuments to themselves. We do it here. It is done everywhere. I think Man will always build monuments to himself. It seems obvious.

After Ferdinand died, wifeless and childless, a little more than 20 years after the house was completed, it passed on to his spinster sister Alice who left it to a cousin, James who kept it up and used it.

After the Second World War, a house like this was impractical even for a Rothschild, and it was given to the National Trust, along with a trust fund for its maintenance. James’ widow who died at 93 in 1988 continued the family interest in the house.

Waddesdon Manor.

Today their son, Jacob, Lord de Rothschild, is the head of the trustees who oversee the house. Because of the family connection to the house, it not only has the house’s collections intact but Lord Rothschild has added some to it.

But there’s much more of interest about our visit and I’ll tell you more about Waddesdon in tomorrow’s Diary.

But back to degrees of separation. Yesterday, before the plane we went over to Spencer House to have a tour. The tour is an hour and it is concise and fact-filled.

The house was built by the earl when he was only 21 years old. He was rich, the heir to his grandmother Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough who had died about ten years before. At the time of her death at age in 1744, Sarah was thought to be the richest woman in England and maybe the world. She also had a big house or small palace in the neighborhood -- Marlborough House, right down the hill around the corner, and across the way from St. James’ Palace where her once-upon-a-time great friend Queen Anne lived.

Spencer House on St. James's Place, built in 1755-56 for the first Earl Spencer, an ancestor of Princess Diana.

It’s impossible visiting these houses not to consider what the owner/builder was like, and what motivated them. Think of it: a 21-year-old builds himself a veritable palace, and a beauty too. Yes the times were different but the human condition was still the human condition.

The guide today at Spencer House told us that Earl Spencer liked what we would now call luxury. He once spent 30,000 pounds on a pair of diamond buckles at a time when the average British farmer was living on 10 pounds a year. In fact 30,000 was an enormous personal annual income.

The ballroom on the second floor. The Spencers sold off much of their furniture and art over the generations as the family fortunes rose or fell according to the particular earl. The first earl, however, had the money and wanted the opulence. Many pieces of furniture are reproductions of the original but the house has been returned to its original splendor.

Detail of the ceiling of the ballroom.

L. to r.: One of four of the original lanterns from the Doge's barge that visited the Nile each year to celebrate the Venetians relationship with the Far East. Napoleon plundered the barge but the lanterns were saved. This hangs over the grand staircase; A reception room on the ground floor.

The house reflects that sensibility. It is full of grand architecture, art and design. Mythology conjoins extravagance and it really is a beautiful work of art. But thinking about the guy – a very young guy who is loaded ... Sorry to sound so vulgar when discussing an Earl, but, however ...

Spencer had the money and had the time. And in those days, an aristocrat was “admired” for being a gentleman. A mere business tycoon was not necessarily “a gentleman,” and therefore ... In other words, someone like Earl Spencer who had the time, the money and the imagination.

(He also had four sisters, including Georgiana who married the Duke of Devonshire, and about whom the Amanda Foreman biography and the film, “The Duchess,” is about).

This room, off the dining room, was used for the ladies' tea after a dinner when the men congregated elsewhere for their cigars. The room was originally green but another earl changed it to red to give it some warmth as it was an especially cold room in the house because of its two outside exposures, especially in the winter. The green just added to the "coldness." Consuelo Vanderbilt, the duchess of Marlborough, gave birth to her first son (later the 10th duke of Marlborough) in this room in late September 1897, and by then it was red. The duchess' bed was where the planter is. It faced the door to the ballroom.

Left: The green room which the earl wanted to be a celebration of his wealth and the family he hoped to sire. Green at that time was a very expensive color to create because it required arsenic, a very expensive and not plentiful substance. The gold is 23 carat gold. Here the earl, sitting on a settee behind the statue and in the window alcove, would receive and entertain his male guests after dinner.

These “gentlemen” also had the political connections and connections to the monarch. They got their “education” from doing the Grand Tour which included mainly Italy. There they absorbed the Renaissance treasures and brought many of them home and built palaces around them.

So, Spencer House. It no longer is in the family. The family is also that of Princess Diana, formerly Lady Diana Spencer who, like the first earl was born (and is buried) at Althorp. She too was related to all of them – the duchess of Marlborough, Queen Anne. And so is Lord Rothschild, in a way: it was he who was involved in the acquisition of Spencer House about twenty years ago, (the Spencer family had sold it in the 1930s) and has restored it to its splendid origins.

The 10th Duke of Marlborough was born Spencer House on September 18, 1897, the first born son of the 9th duke and his 20 year old wife, Consuelo Vanderbilt. The 9th duke had rented the house from his cousins to use for the London season.

One of the house's libraries.

The Music Room on the second floor.

The dining room, then a new concept in a house among the aristocracy and the royalty who took their meals in various rooms. This room was therefore fashionable and influenced interior design.

This past Saturday we also visited the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms located under the Clive Steps on King Charles Street.

This is where Churchill had to take refuge during the Nazi bombings of London, and from where he could conduct his wartime government with his aides, assistants and staff. It’s a bunker, basic and vast. Everything has been left as it was when the war ended. There was large number of people who lived and worked there, and to be present and aware of them casts a different feeling about war when you are present. But more about that later in the week when we can show you JH’s pictures.

Outside the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum.

Churchill also, incidentally is part of that one Degree of Separation from the above mentioned characters including Sarah the first Duchess of Marlborough. The 9th duke was also his father’s older brother, so the 10th duke was his cousin. His wife Consuelo was also a favorite of Churchill who also had an American mother.

But more about all that tomorrow when we return to business, jet-lag-less, one hopes.

But, lest we forget, the object of this trip was to get a good look at the Olympia where we also spent a couple of days taking it in for you to see.

The Castle Howard exhibition at the Olympia Art and Antiques Fair. Castle Howard was the first commission of Van Brugh (a playwright turned architect) who also was the original designer of Blenheim Palace. It is the Yorkshire stately home that has been in the Howard family since it was built for them in the early 18th century. It was used as the residence of the Lords Brideshead in the PBS TV series "Brideshead Revisited" based on the Evelyn Waugh novel.

Sue Norman, Chelsea.