ARTS

Edward James at Monkton

Sitting on Mae West's lips

Antony Lambton

Now that Monkton House is emptied it is worth recalling a visit I paid there nearly 40 years ago, when it was still owned by Mr Edward James, who lived nearby in the vulgar, ugly, Gothic castellated house, West Dean. My father's house was eight miles away and before the war I had often heard conversations which usually stopped when I came into the room, concerning this extraordinary, unknown neighbour and the orgies etc which gossip said took place in a little house hidden in the woods on top of the Sussex Downs.

These rumours had excited my youthful imagination and after the war, when Diana Mosley kindly gave me a letter of introduc- tion to him, I wrote immediately and asked if I could see his mysterious folly. He politely telephoned and asked me to lunch and to see round the gardens of both his houses.

I think it must have been in April, as the daffodils were out, when my host, a miserable-looking little man with meagre, petulant limbs, a sparse beard, mean face and shifty little eyes, met me at the door. Later he showed me around, complaining about his head gardener who had put the narcissus, bought the previous year, in the wrong place. 'I am absolutely fed up with him,' he whined, 'he never does a thing I tell him and this morning, after I sacked him, he played at being pathetic, cried, and said he had been here for 22 years. But I wasn't having any of that. I won't have people working for me who don't do as they are told.'

I was shocked, having been brought up to understand that it was one of the facts of life that gardeners never did what they were told and that this characteristic was sadly recognised by their employers who never thought of sacking them.

Afterwards we went into the drawing room and I remember feeling at once both shy and unhappy at the ghastliness of his guests. They were neither young, pretty nor clever but second-rate, tinselly and on the make, all waiting to laugh or applaud whenever their host spoke. I felt profound- ly uncomfortable conceiving an aura of corruption hanging like mist around them. Perhaps my criticism is unfair as I was very young and felt dull and inadequate. After lunch we drove a few miles to a gate which a keeper unlocked and, salut- ing, let us in. James totally ignored him.

Again I was disturbed. At the front door another keeper was waiting to welcome us, while an iron palm tree clanked in the garden. I had expected something exotic but from the outside the folly seemed to me no more remarkable than many other little Lutyens houses scattered over the south of England. The inside was another matter. To the right of the entrance was a black carpeted staircase with small white footprints going up and down. These I knew belonged to Tilly Losch who had been James's wife. During this brief inter lude she had a romance with Randolph Churchill which so infuriated her husband he ordered his gamekeepers to shoot him on sight, an instruction which caused con- siderable excitement in the then remote district.

The first room on the left I had been told was the shape of a womb lined with mink. As I had never, since I was born, seen a womb I couldn't tell if this was the case but it looked a fairly ordinary square shape to me, with only a few wispy fur skins lining the corners. It was, however, adorned by four pictures which James led me round in silence. The first showed two boys looking at each other. In the next they shook hands, in the third they undressed. In the fourth they blatantly enjoyed themselves. It is wise if you look at pictures to be aware that their owner will expect compliments. They are usually easy to give. However, on this occasion I could not think what to say. `Charming' or 'delightful' hardly seemed the right adjectives, while to remark they were interesting might have sounded sug- gestive. After a moment's thought I com- mented on the artist's draughtsmanship. The little man snapped, 'Do you think they would be here if they weren't works of art?'

This increased my embarrassment and I was pleased to get out of the room and examine the drawing room with its famous sofa the shape and colour of Mae West's carmine lips. Again not quite knowing what to do I sat down and found it very uncomfortable.

James by this time had, I am sure, taken as strong a dislike to me as I had to him. I am afraid I hadn't paid him the sort of compliments without which he felt in- adequate.

Glumly, he took me into the unkempt garden, which he complained taxation made it impossible for him to maintain adequately. I found it disappointing and can only remember two eccentricities of interest. The first was a stone or concrete piano which I thought looked both affected and ugly. To my amazement he asked me to sit down and play. Again I annoyed him by replying, 'Alas, I'm utterly unmusical. I can't play a single note.'

`Try, try', he squeaked in anger.

I helplessly obeyed. The effect was a series of thuds. I stopped.

`Go on, go on', he said. I continued, but more gently, as it was painful uselessly hitting my fingers on the stone keys. At last a thin trickle of dirty water leaked on to my trousers. This infuriated James who shouted, 'It's meant to gush, the whole point is for the water to flow like music. Now these idiots have let the pipes block up. I really don't know what to do with them. You can't rely on a soul since the war.'

Relieved that the water had not gushed over me like music I wiped my trousers and we walked away down a glade, James still fuming, myself silent with dismay. At last we passed a pedestrian goddess on a pedestal. Seeing an opportunity of redeem- ing myself I insincerely commented on its beauty.

`Do you know her?'

`No', I said doubtfully.

`Well, let me introduce you. Clio, Lord Lambton. Lord Lambton, Clio, the muse of history.'

As the muse's hands rudely remained stretched upwards, two yards above my head, there was no way I could shake one of them, so I had to compromise by bowing and saying fatuously 'How do you do?' We walked on, James complaining about the brambles, and then mercifully returned to West Dean.

I think I mollified him a little on the way back by saying it was the most original house and garden I had ever seen. This was true. At any rate he asked me to stay to tea. Horrified at the idea of his squalid court, I said I had to go home. This seemed to annoy him, not, I am sure, because he liked my company, but because as he had asked me he thought I should stay. Giving me a cold, flabby little handshake, he tripped angrily into the house. In haste to escape I drove off over the lawn.

I am glad to say I never saw him again but he was one of the unpleasantest men I have ever met and I couldn't care less that the contents of the house are dispersed. Both it and the garden were too affected to be interesting and the sooner the un- lamented, nauseous little man is forgotten, the better.