Thank you Vita and Harold

I re-read Yeats Leda and the Swan this afternoon and was surprised how raw it is. I felt as though I was standing close to the beating wings and staggering girl. The picture it conjures is much more primeval than this representation I saw yesterday at Hever Castle in Kent:

Leda looks slightly bored rather than terrified or repulsed, don't you think? I am starting to wonder about myself. I have only been blogging for a couple of weeks and this is the second picture of bestiality I have posted. Well, technically it isn't because Pan was a god and so was the swan (Zeus), although why Zeus didn't just front up as himself I don't know. According the Wikipedia, Leda later gave birth to Helen and Polydeuces. She also had two children to her human husband. The entry goes on to state, "In the W.B. Yeats version, it is subtly suggested that Clytemnestra...has somehow been traumatised by what the swan has done to her mother". Funny about that. I wonder what the ancient Greek is for "EEEIIIIOUUUWWW!!!!"?  Probably "EEEIIIIOUUUWWW!!!!"

Hever Castle has a beautiful Italian garden containing  (I just realised I have no idea of the names of most architectural elements in gardens) a sandstone loggia and terraces and little garden rooms planted in different ways.

Hever Castle, Kent 

You can't see the grapes very well in the photo, you need to zoom in if you are interested.

The castle itself was the Boleyns' home, until they fell from favour and were executed or died naturally, when Henry VIII gave the house to Anne of Cleves (she of the evil smells) as part of her divorce settlement. Anne of Cleves lived there for 17 years. The Waldorf-Astors later bought the house. 

We are now staying in Priest House, Sissinghurst Castle. Most of the Tudor Castle was destroyed during the Castle's time as a prison for French prisoners of war in one of the interminable wars the English had with the French. Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson bought the castle in the 1930s and created the most beautiful garden. Vita was a prolific author, lover of Virginia Woolf and subject of the wonderful Portrait of a Marriage, by Nigel Nicolson. Harold was a diplomat, author and garden designer. Theirs was an enviable partnership.  

Priest House, looking on to the white garden  and a bit of husband

I am sitting in the very room where Vita passed away. A chicken is roasting in the oven, friends are downstairs chatting happily in the golden light of a mid-summer evening and I am so, so thankful to Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson for creating this idyll.