Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Visiting Blenheim Palace: Thoughts on Creativity, Envy and the Good Life

By

View from the palace, showing the island.
Image credit.

I’ve lived in Oxford for 14 years now (in two instalments) and try to walk around the Blenheim Gardens and grounds once a year, if not once a season. I love the lakes: they get me.

And, often, when I visit the gorgeous gardens of stately homes, I feel a twinge of envy. I would not feel envy if they had earned them by their labour as Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey earned his seventeeth century manor house in Dorset. The immense inherited wealth in Britain, as in Blenheim or Chatsworth, sometimes does make me feel envious, though both estates, of course, leverage and make their inherited largesse to make even more money, as is necessary in a country with high taxation, like the UK.

“I am a bit envious,” I tell Roy. “What beauty to enjoy every day! And just to have inherited it!!”

But then, as we walk around, I realise that it would take a particular temperament to live happily in Blenheim Palace, and that I might not have it.

It would, oddly, take much tolerance for imperfection. As I walked through the Secret Garden, my fingers itched as I saw weeds and plants needing dead-heading. And this despite a crew of gardeners.

You have to make peace with a crew of gardeners who cannot keep up with the garden–just as you yourself cannot!

You sacrifice privacy–for running a palace and its grounds must take an veritable armada of cleaners, housekeepers, groundsmen and gardeners.

You are pierced with worries, for the ultimate responsibility of keeping an ageing building and its furnishings shiny ultimately falls on to you.

And in this daily piercing with mundane responsibility, even with the money to throw at each hydra head of things which need to be done, you surely would not have time to be a writer.

So, though living in Blenheim Palace, with its gorgeous grounds, would be many people’s definition of the good life, it would not be the good life for me. Too many worries, and distractions. Too little privacy!

* * *

I read an American survey a decade or so ago which asked people how much money they needed to live happily; the respondents, across the income levels, said $10,000. In other words, everyone wanted just a little bit more money.
Oddly enough though, the really moneyed classes have produced relatively few creative people–writers, artists, film-makers. Keeping up with one’s lifestyle appears to siphon off energy and ambition. Each extra thing you own adds stress and worry and distraction to your life. And, for those artists who eventually became very wealthy, their best work was in the period of relative poverty.

Christianly speaking, envy, I guess, is rebellion against the plan God has chosen for your life… the IQ, family income, gifts, nationality, he has given you. At times, one wishes God had given us more–I have certainly have–but we develop both our characters and our gifts as we seek to work against constraints (of time, of our own talent, of our weakness of character, of the shortage of money or energy or strength).

Envy is wanting to live in someone else’s story–a futile wish!!–instead of trying to write the best story we can with our own life. And one can always revise the story of one’s life to make it read better. Small leveraged changes will inevitably bring about other bigger and bigger changes.

And the gifts and character we develop as we struggle in this “vale of soul-making” are certainly more precious than if we had them handed to us on a platter, like Blenheim Palace is handed down to generation after generation of the Marlboroughs.

 

Detail of the entrance to Blenheim Palace
The main entrance courtyard to Blenheim Palace
View of the back of palace and water garden

 

A close up of the mazelike hedges

 

Intricate detail at the top of 40 foot columns

 

A lion and a hapless rooster (?)
The top of the archway leading out of the palace
An intriguing sculpture at the top of a pair of pillars

 

A particularly beautiful pheasant

We came to Blenheim to walk in the gardens.  It was daffodil season

This photo shows only a quarter of the field of daffodils
Daffodils as far as the eye can see
Densely planted containers of daffodils

The Secret Garden, pictured below, was renovated in 2003, and opened to the public in 2004.

Cherry blossoms by a Japanese style pond
with a single mallard
Two maples just coming into leaf:

 

Ranunculus
Magnolia

 

Viburnum — very fragrant

A couple of shots of the Italian garden, which is not open to visitors

Topiary birds around the edge
Italian Garden, Blenheim Palace

The gardens are filled with statuary.  |Here is one of the smaller ones on the top of a pillar.

Finally, the estate is full of wonderfully gnarled trees:

 

Share:

Related Posts:

Comments

  1. Such loveliness, Anita! You are blessed to have it close to you, and to have the leisure to walk and see it. I love your beautiful photos, too.

    I agree with you–there is something about not having quite enough that spurs one on to greater productivity and creativity. It’s taken me a number of years to come to realize . . . that I am _content_ in my four-room condominium. (Even though my husband and two children do bump elbows with me, at times.) However, my new job makes me very happy! Totally providentially, I am now an interim co-pastor for a smaller congregation in the Chicago suburbs. Please, could you pray for the church and the dear congregation? St. Luke’s Church. Thanks so much, Anita. @chaplaineliza

    • I am impressed that you are content in 4 rooms for 4. But I guess the children will leave eventually. Do you have time to walk and explore. I remember a glorious arboretum in Chicago!

      Congratulations on the new job, Elizabeth. I hope you thrive in it!

      • Yes, but the Arboretum is out west of the city, a long way from our house (in Evanston). I’ve been there, but it’s been quite a while. We enjoy going to the Chicago Botanic Gardens a couple of suburbs to the north of us (much nearer!). My father-in-law has been kind enough to get us a family membership for the past few years. We go there at least once every two or three months! Lovely flowers, beautiful landscaping. And such a place for birding! All wonderful reasons to go there. God has created such diversity and beauty in this world. Awesome!

  2. I get a similar feeling when walking around Versailles. If the King got fed up with blue flowers, they were changed to red ones overnight, requiring battalions of gardeners all of whom needed somewhere to sleep and eat. One was outnumbered a thousand to one in one’s own house.

    How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes (As You Like it V,II)

    I have forsworn Pesach in Jerusalem for Easter in Paris, btw.

    • Paris for Easter, wonderful. We dropped in to Paris briefly in Feb–showing the girls Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur! Next big trip, Helsinki, God willing!

  3. I was thrilled to view the gardens of Benheim Palace with the fantastic statutes that you recently visited. I just recently went to a large estate called Montalvo in Saratoga, CA, that is now used as an art center and theatrical productions. The home was large, spacious and full of wonderful works of art. I felt a bit of the envy for such a lovely space such as you did for the Benheim Palace. One advantage is that Montalvo is near home and I can visit when I want. It is true that we must be content with what we have. The joy of seeing the flowers, and the garden areas artfully arranged can inspire the visitor to creative endeavors through writing, painting and poetry and photography. I can be inspired to see such homes and estates as a way to channel my artistic side to produce something that makes me a creative person. You have obviously been impacted by the beauty of the lakes, the palaces and other areas surrounding you.

    • Thanks, Kathy. I lived in CA for 7 months (on the Stanford Campus, at Palo Alto), and have visited numerous times in winter. I would like to visit again if the Lord opens a way, and I pray he does!!

  4. Thanks for the insights, Anita. I’d never thought about the lack of creativity among moneyed classes. Hmmmmmmm.

    It’s been said that envy is the only sin that yields no pleasure (something hard to verify, but it rings true for me). Contentment, on the other hand, seems to yield all sorts of pleasant fruit in our lives.

    • Ah, contentment, I shall seize you!
      A little easier today as my own garden is looking beautiful in the spring sunshine. It is 1.5 acre, large for an English garden, though a mimuscule fraction of Blenheim’s. I am, however, totally incapable of looking after it.

  5. I understand what you are saying and your honest feelings of envy toward it. I absolutely love your work. However, so as to remind the large numbers who must be reading your brilliant thoughts, an heir does nothing to earn their inheritance but have the same blood line. Is it not true we are heirs to the Kingdom of God, simply through inheritance and adoption by the Blood that covers us? Does this make our work lacking despite our high position within the Kingdom? You’re a follower of Christ and I love your stewardship of the gifts given to you. Whether your writings bring you wordly wealth or not, I am not the same from reading your works. And I will just wager, your works would come from the same heart whether you werw sitting in loads or lacks of money. Our freedom was not earned but given to us, but I can assure you, my inheritance has only soared me to new heights. Your photos are beautiful.

    • Karrie, thank you for the reminder. I like how Jesus told his Father, “All that I have is yours, and all that you have is mine.” I think that’s somewhat true of us who live in Jesus, though when I am tired I find it hard to hold on to my inheritance of creativity and grace towards all men and women 🙂