But last weekend, we visited the rather superior Christmas Grotto laid on by the National Trust people at Polesden Lacey. Chaperoned by two grades of trusty: the old hands for whom Edwardian costumes had been run up (by some superior needlework people) and the new hands who had to turn out in mufti. In the case of the ladies, authenticity ran to corsets and stays, the former of these providing, we were told, useful support to the older back when one was standing about all day. I associated to my mother's corsets, rather striking when hung up outside the kitchen window on a rotary line on a cold and frosty morning.
We started at the giant smokers' umbrella in the stable courtyard where we were entertained by a rather superior ladies choir (they called themselves barbershop singers, but they were superior enough to run to tours in the US) followed by a rather superior brass band.
Onto the front door where there was a cart and pair dressed up to give one Christmas rides. The horses were Sussex punches (they were a light brown but there may have been some confusion with Suffolk punches) and the whole lot, cart, horses and minder, came in a very superior self-propelled horse box which was parked up round the back, out of sight.
Inside, a number of the downstairs rooms had been dressed up for Christmas. We had the laundry room where we could inspect the arrangement for bedding. The dining room, a rather nicely proportioned room, had been dressed up for Christmas dinner. They may have reproduced menu and place cards from an actual Christmas dinner. (They slipped up in that a common-or-garden carpenter's folding rule was substituting for the butler's rule which would have been used for checking the placement). The music room came with a lady pianist, but I was not sure that the piano had been very carefully tuned. There was also a wind up gramophone, a rather plebeian version, without a horn, of the very high grade affair that my father had had when I was a child, before he moved onto leak. The thing did work and was playing forties dance music (I think) but they were plebeian enough to be using stainless steel needles, eschewed by my father in favour of thorn needles (from trees) which were a lot more bother but which did a lot less damage to one's valuable vinyl. There was rather a splendid game, played on a round board built as a round topped, one legged table, called puff billiards. The idea was to blow the ball about using the black rubber puff balls (a smaller version of the sort of thing that would be used for a horn in a car in a Poirot) mounted around the perimeter.
There was a Father Christmas wandering about with his entourage.
We also came across the odd reference to the Sitwells (see reference 2), Osbert being a good friend of Mrs. Greville, the last proper owner, the natural daughter of a rich brewer from Glasgow.
The pictures were of a rather higher standard than is usual in the smaller stately home. The brewer's daughter clearly cared about such things - or at least was well advised. We also came across a picture of her early-dying husband, every inch the guards officer I think he was. Just the sort of chap to play a hard gambling army aristo. from Thackeray or Trollope in a costume drama on the telly.
Closed the visit with an inspection of the far-fetched chickens at the back of the kitchen garden - from where we got glimpse of aforementioned horse box.
We decided against on-the-spot Christmas Fayre but did buy some smoked haddock from the rather fancy fishmonger just down the road, run by Ron Fowler and his son. The sort of village fishmonger which can be relied on to have lobsters and scallops as well as smoked haddock. Ours was simmered in water for lunch and then the remnants went into a pearl barley based soup for supper.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/winter-wonder-land.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=sitwell.
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