The Word Cloud

I have always loved looking round National Trust properties. Especially those once lived in by writers. My favourites include Monk’s House, which was the Sussex home of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and Sissinghurst Castle, a bramble-infested dump which Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson transformed into one of the world’s most famous gardens. 

Visiting the homes of favourite writers helps to give me an insight into how they once lived. And, for the writers who described their homes in their books, it’s even better. So when we moved to a small village near Rye, in East Sussex, eighteen months ago, I became a volunteer (the youngest one, actually!) at Lamb House in Rye. It’s nothing if not a writer’s house.

Between 1920 and 1940, it was the home of E F Benson, who wrote over seventy novels but is best known for the six comic novels about Mrs Emmeline Lucas, better known as Lucia, and her dear friend Georgie Pillson. Lucia is the biggest snob you will ever find trapped between the pages of a book, and is gloriously funny with it — not that she knows it, of course. She’s like a magnificent ocean liner sailing through the seas of life, with Georgie as a small yacht trailing in her rather choppy wake. Four of these novels are set in the small town of Tilling (a thinly disguised Rye), and one of the principal houses involved is Mallards (an equally thinly disguised Lamb House) with its ‘giardino segreto’ and the garden room that looks out over the street: perfect for spying on the neighbours.

Fred Benson wasn’t the only writer to have lived at Lamb House. His predecessor was Henry James, who fell in love with the house in 1897. He rented it and later bought it for £2000, a sum that terrified him as he never thought he’d pay off the mortgage. Henry wrote his four last great novels in the house, and even became a British citizen during the First World War so he could continue to travel between Rye and his London flat. He adored the house, and entertained many of the writers who lived nearby, including H G Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Steven Crane, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford.

These are the two heavyweight inhabitants of Lamb House (literally in the case of Henry, who was a stocky chap), but Rumer Godden lived there too in the 1960s.

We get a mixture of visitors there. Some are on what they admit is a pilgrimage — normally in honour of Henry James. They often question us closely about Henry’s life or works. Which was the novel set in Venice? What exactly was wrong with his sister? Where is he buried? If he never married, was he gay? (Whenever I hear this question, I always imagine poor old Henry shifting uncomfortably in his chair in the corner of the room, and beginning one of his lengthy, circumlocutory explanations that leave no one any the wiser.)  

Other visitors are here for Fred. We often get pairs of slightly camp men, one with eyes shining, drinking in every detail of what they clearly regard as Mallards, while the other keeps looking at his watch and muttering dark comments about expecting to be rewarded with a cream tea for being forced to come here. They never ask if Fred was married. They already know the answer. 

And then there are the coach parties. Every Thursday, one of the two days of the week when Lamb House is open, huge coaches roll in from neighbouring towns and choke the one-way system. The visitors spill out on to the narrow pavements and twist their ankles on the cobbled streets as they gaze up at the Elizabethan houses. Some of them are enchanted by everything they see. Others are bitterly disappointed. Where is the shopping centre, they ask, appalled to discover that they’re already standing in it. Isn’t there a Debenhams? What, not even a Marks and Spencer? OK, they sigh heavily, we’ll go to W H Smiths, then. But there isn’t even one of those. We do have a newsagent, where you can buy anything from a magazine to a fishing net, but it never seems to have the same appeal as Smiths, where every branch looks the same. 

What the hell can they do for four hours? Well, they can always come to Lamb House. They stand in the hall looking slightly bemused (‘We knew we should have gone to a matinee of Phantom instead’) while being given a short history of the house. ‘Henry James?’ I’m often asked. ‘Who was he, then? Oh, a writer.’ (Always said in tones of withering scorn.) 

But some visitors come for a very specific purpose. There was a noted occasion several years ago when not one, not two but three writers bumped into each other at Lamb House and discovered they were all there for research purposes. All three of them were writing books about Henry James. They were Colm Toibin (The Master), David Lodge (Author, Author!) and a third who probably rushed straight down to the harbour and threw themselves into the sea in despair. 

One Saturday in early May, I was sitting at the small Georgian card table that doubles as our cash desk, taking the money from the visitors. It was busy, with lots of people milling about. A youngish couple came in and I greeted them with a smile. I looked at the woman and thought she looked rather like J K Rowling. Her companion, who had a faint Scottish accent and was in a leather biker’s jacket, handed me a twenty-pound note, but I had to hand it back as I had almost no change left. Did he have anything smaller? He delved into his jeans pocket and produced a very crumpled Scottish five-pound note and some coins. One of the corners of the fiver that bore the serial number was missing. It looked as though it had been through the washing machine several times. He searched for the missing corner but couldn’t find it. I apologized and said I would have to consult my colleagues about whether I could accept it, because of the missing corner. The J K Rowling lookalike gave me a hesitant smile and melted away. My colleagues (a retired art teacher in her seventies and an eighty-year-old retired barrister) said they thought it was OK to accept the fiver. (I later learnt that it wasn’t.) So I gave him his tickets and thought no more about it, except how strange it was that J K Rowling’s double should turn up with a man with a Scottish accent, considering that she lives in Edinburgh. 

Yes, exactly. All I can say is that it was a very busy afternoon and an hour of looking at National Trust tickets, always presented upside down, to check their expiry date does things to one’s brain. I only discovered the truth when, as usual, I read the comments in the visitors’ book at the end of the afternoon. J K Rowling had signed her name and revealed herself to be a huge fan of E F Benson. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to discover what she thinks of Henry.