Reggie's Return

Hello Dear Reader.  After a one year and one month absence, I am pleased to return to the Blogosphere, and to pick up with you where I left off.  It has been an event-filled period in my life, with both ups and downs.  I am older and wiser and better for it, I believe.  I genuinely thank the many of you who contacted me during my absence to let me know that you have been thinking about me, hoping that I'm all right, and encouraging me to return here.  It means a lot to me.

This past weekend we attended the splendid Trade Secrets Rare Plant and Garden Show, held annually in Sharon, Connecticut, which I've written about here several times before.  The photograph I'm showing is of yours truly carrying a marvelous tree fern up the walkway at Darlington.  We bought the fern at the show from the good people of Snug Harbor Farm, of Kennebunk, Maine.  The fern is destined for our screened porch, where it will take pride of place I am sure.  I look forward to enjoying its company in the ensuing months.

Late spring is one of my favorite times of year, Dear Reader.  It is a time of rebirth and renewal, where the world comes deliciously alive here in the Hudson River Valley.  I love it for many reasons, including the prospect it heralds of growth and for beauty unfolding.

It's nice to come home.

Reggie

photograph by Boy Fenwick 

The Old Gray Barn Is Getting a Facelift

One of the joys (and responsibilities) of Darlington is that it has a number of buildings on the property.  Four, to be specific. In addition to the brick and clapboard main house there are two wooden barns—one originally designed to hold a carriage, and the other for farm equipment and livestock.  There is also a brick workhouse built for doing laundry and cooking in warmer weather.  All the structures on the property date from the first decades of the nineteenth century and are original.

The old gray barn last July, pre-restoration, festooned with
forty-eight star flags in honor of Independence Day

Since buying Darlington more than fifteen years ago we have done a lot of work to the buildings and grounds.  Not only did we want to, Dear Reader, as we believe it is our responsibility to sensitively care for such treasures, but their deteriorating condition required it.  As I wrote in my introductory post on Darlington, the condition of the house and property was one of benign neglect when we bought it.  The previous owner, Mrs. Proctor, was in her late nineties at the time and had been living in what is euphemistically referred to as "a home" for several years.  Darlington had sat empty for five (or more) years, used only occasionally by relatives when visiting the area.

The barn one month later.  Work has begun.
Note absence of chimney on right hand side of the roof . . .

During their ownership of Darlington, the Proctors, people of means who appreciated the historic significance of the house and property, took good care of it.  However, by the time we bought it from them little had been done to the house or grounds since the 1970s, other than putting up an occasional coat of paint and regularly mowing the lawns.  Darlington had become a sleeping, overgrown beauty, drifting into decay . . .

The barn's west elevation.  The three windows' sashes have been
removed for restoration and reglazing.  The ghost of the roof of a
lean-to that once adjoined this facade can be seen sloping down from
the right.  We are going to open the boarded-up window on the
first floor and replace the sliding door to its right with a matching
window that will restore the facade's original two-over-two
symmetrical window placement

Our first priority was to focus on the main house, which required major and extensive restoration, and also a complete updating of all of its systems.  As the urgency of those repairs subsided, we turned our sights to the other buildings on the property.  Our next project was a ground-up restoration of the carriage barn, which we have repurposed as a gardening barn, filling it with tools and rakes and enough Guy Wolff clay pots to keep a nursery happy for years.  We have also done a substantial amount of restoration to Darlington's work house and hope to have it completed later this year when the fellow who has done the work on it so far frees up from other commitments.

Our restored carriage barn.  We plan on using the same
green paint color on the windows and doors of the large barn

More recently we have turned our attention to what we call the "large barn" at Darlington.  It was built in around 1840 as a working barn and originally held the property's farm machinery and equipment, along with the livestock that was used in managing the 165 acres that Darlington once encompassed.  Today it is where we keep our cars, large clay pots in the winter, stacks of firewood, and our refuse and recycling containers.  In other words, it functions as a large modern-day garage.

The south facade of the barn.  We are removing the unfortunate 1960s
garage door and the inappropriate horizontal window, along with the small
sliding door on the right.  The rusty tin roof, which dates from the
late-nineteenth century, is in good shape, and will be scraped and painted

When we bought Darlington the large barn was packed to the rafters with seventy years' of the Procters' accumulated stuff (they were great pack rats) and infested with insect damage.  A lean-to addition had been cobbled onto it in the 1940s, and the building's Greek Revival integrity had been further undignified by the addition of inappropriate windows and an ugly 1960s-era garage door.  Although we quickly eliminated the lean-to, it took us until last year finally to bite the bullet and begin working on the barn in earnest.  (When I write "we" here I must clarify that it is not Boy and I who are the ones actually doing the work to the barn.  No, we are fortunate to have others who are skillfully doing it on our behalf under the careful supervision of Isaiah Cornini, the consultant we have been working with ever since we bought Darlington.  Mr. Cornini advises us and designs and manages all of the restoration projects we do on the property.)

Another view of the barn, showing both the south and east
elevations.  We are going to paint the siding and cornice
in a period-appropriate mustard/ochre color; sashes and
doors will be painted the green used on the carriage barn

So why did we wait so long to tackle the large barn's restoration, you might ask, Dear Reader?  There were several reasons.  First, the financial crash of 2008 happened, which put the brakes on my interest in taking on such a large project, and second, it took us for ever to decide that we didn't need to do as thorough (and expensive) a restoration to the barn as we have done to the other buildings on the property.  Rather, we decided that it was sufficient (and less financially punishing) to do a careful and thoughtful shoring up of the structure, replace its later, less-than-successful remuddlings, and update the building's systems for modern-day requirements.  When we are finished we will have returned the barn to a close approximation of what it looked like when it was originally built almost 180 years ago.

Another view of the barn's east facade.  We have
already removed an unsightly cinder-block chimney that
was added in the 1940s.  The boarded-up windows on the
second storey are false ones, added for symmetry
when the barn was built.  We will replace the later
horizontal windows with sash windows, restoring the
facade's original two-over-two window symmetry,
similar to the building's west facade

Over the next several months I plan on posting about the barn's ongoing restoration and updating.  I am confident that when the work is completed the barn will, once again, be the handsome and dignified structure it once was and was always meant to be.

A later view of the barn's east facade showing the restoration of the
cornice underway where the cinder-block chimney once interrupted it

Won't you please join me in my journey?

All photographs by Reggie Darling

It Is All Rather a Blur . . .

Christmas came somewhat late to Darlington this year.  Not after the fact, mind you, as we observed the appropriate dates as they occurred on the calendar.  No, I'm talking about when the psychology of Christmas finally wrapped its arms around me and said "Now!"

I was very rushed approaching the Christmas holiday this year.  Work was all-consuming and unrelenting, as were the more pleasant demands of the New York social season, and I found myself galloping head forward during the weeks leading up to Christmas with a list of "to-dos" a mile long and the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel a long, long, way away.  Somehow I got through what I needed to by the time I had to do it, and I bolted from my office on the Friday before Christmas shouting with glee that I was finally done with working for the year and that was that!

A full two weeks at Darlington beckoned to me most pleasingly.

Stocked up with comestibles and presents, and fortified by a delicious holiday luncheon at Swifty's with Boy and his two charming assistants, we loaded the family jalopy and drove up to the house that very afternoon, not scheduled to return to the city until the first full week of January.

Darlington's 2013 Christmas Tree

I can't remember the last time we had two entire weeks of uninterrupted residence at Darlington House.  It's been at least several years.  Although we usually spend Christmas and New Year's at Darlington, we often break up our stay with a trip to Boston for a night or two, for a change of pace.  This year we decided to spend the entire break at Darlington.

A Chinese covered jar was inspiration for
the tree's color scheme this year . . .

It's all been rather a blur, really.  A blur of afternoons spent cooking and fiddling about, playing backgammon, listening to music, and reading.  A blur of evenings largely devoted to the joys of the table and bottle, and catching up on movies we've wanted to see (or rewatching old favorites).  It has been a blur of parties, too.  A blur of trips to the grocer or wine merchant, or to Agway for bird seed and dog biscuits.  A blur of attending services at the Episcopal church I go to.  A blur of drinking egg nog and eating tasty treats, promising myself (and Boy) that it would all come to an end in the New Year (but hasn't quite, yet).  A blur of sleeping in as long as I like, wakened not by an alarm clock blaring at me but rather by my darling Basil licking my face, asking to be taken out and fed his breakfast.

It's been an absolutely lovely blur, Dear Reader.

. . . as was our collection of early English
Staffordshire pearlware figures . . .

I've purposely not overburdened myself this break with chores and projects.  I have a tendency to keep myself busy with such time consuming obligations, even while on vacation.  Not this Christmas.  While I did keep a "to do" list (it would be impossible for me not to), I kept it short and have not kicked myself because some of the chores listed upon it must wait to be completed another day.  Although I've had a number of calls with the office while away, they haven't been burdensome or overly time-consuming.

. . . and a pretty pearlware dish

"So, where is this going?" you might ask, Dear Reader.  It is an explanation of why your Dear Old Reggie hasn't posted photographs of our Christmas tree this year, at least until today.  Boy put our tree up and decorated it ahead of Christmas day, but we didn't get around to photographing it until afterwards, completing doing so only yesterday.  The pictures shown in this post were taken over a one week span, seeking to capture the tree at its best advantage, and under the best light conditions.

This Christmas we placed our tree in Darlington's drawing room, for the first time in many years.  Its theme was inspired by the color scheme of the room, and by the English and Chinese ceramics we have placed about it.

In particular, the color scheme was inspired by the painted decorations on our early nineteenth Staffordshire pearlware figures of classical deities and virtues.  We've collected them for years and I've written about them before, here and here.

The pearlware figures are decorated with pretty painted pastel colors in pinks, blues, yellows, lavenders, and greens.  Boy drew from their palette when decorating the drawing room's tree.

The result is very different from the woodsy Winter Wonderland themed trees that Boy has put up in previous years in our dining room.  Our drawing room Christmas tree is very, very pretty.  And very pink, too.

In addition to being inspired by the pastel colors of our Staffordshire figures, we wanted to give our drawing room an old-fashioned Christmasy look, from the 1940s.  I festooned the mantel and mirror with vintage pink lametta garlands that Boy gave to me many years ago.  He found them while on a photo shoot, back before he became a Fancy New York Decorator, and he haggled with the woman who owned them until she sold them to him.  I'm really rather fond of them.

I particularly like this year's Christmas tree.  It is so pretty and sweet that it almost makes my teeth hurt, but in a good way.  It makes me think of the children's board game, Candy Land, which was a favorite of mine when I was very little.  Until, that is, I figured out that the game did not involve the receipt of actual candy, a distinct disappointment to me at the time.

Now that I'm a grown man and have developed a taste for treats other than candy, I can admire the loveliness of our tree unfettered by anything but pure pleasure in its prettiness.

I am writing this post sitting at my dining room table at Darlington.  The table is covered with the white damask cloth we laid for a luncheon party several weeks ago, and it is a pleasant and snowy-white pedestal for tapping away on my laptop, writing this essay.  A footed dish of clementines is but a short reach away.

I will leave Darlington House fortified by a lazy, indulgent two weeks of leisure and relaxation.  I can confidently say, Dear Reader, that this is the first time in years that I have ended a vacation truly rested and ready for what waits for me upon my return.

Happy New Year!

All photographs by Boy Fenwick

Christmas Traditions at Darlington

Every family, however you define it, has its own Christmas traditions.  At least those families who observe Christmas, which we do at Darlington House.  I celebrate Christmas for the enjoyment of the holiday, and also for the spiritual message that inspires it, and me.

Christmas just wouldn't be the same
without pots of paperwhites about the house

There are a number of Christmas traditions that we observe at Darlington that I brought with me from my birth family, and there are ones of a more recent vintage that we have made our own.

FD, Camilla, and MD
Christmas 1947

As I have written before, one tradition that I observe at Christmas is to adorn the grill of our Rover with a wreath.  My mother, MD, decorated her cars with a wreath when I was a boy.  I loved it then, and I love it still.  This year we ordered our Rover's wreath from the good ladies of Cedar Farm.  I think they did a lovely job of it (they also made the wreath shown in the background, hanging on a door of one of our barns).

This year's Rover Wreath

Another Christmas tradition I observe is to set out a crèche.  MD was mad for crèches, and collected more than a dozen of them over the years.  The one we have at Darlington is a dime store crèche made in Italy in the 1950s that I bought at a Groupe Shoppe years ago.  I've been adding figures to it ever since.  If you look closely at the photograph you'll see that there is a little pug, given to me by my sister Camilla, among the adoring throng.

Our not entirely tasteful Christmas crèche

I also have a collection of Black Forest bears that I put out at Christmas.  I inherited the nucleus of the collection from my mother, who inherited it from her father.  I've added to it over the years, and I put the bears on the mantel in our Snuggery, along with half a dozen or so little Steiff toy animals that I played with as a child.  I've had some of them for almost fifty years.

The mantel in our Snuggery, decorated for Christmas

When it comes to food and drink we have a number of traditions at Darlington.  I always make sure to have a box of Darling clementines on hand at Christmas.

Every Christmas Eve, before attending the evening festival service at the Episcopal church in the nearby town (assuming I can stay awake—and sober enough—to attend it), I make a simple oyster stew, a dish that my sister Hermione introduced me to as a Christmas Eve tradition many years ago.

I think I may try Alex Hitz's recipe for
oyster stew this year
Image courtesy of House Beautiful

On Christmas day we tuck into an old-fashioned English dinner of prime rib roast and Yorkshire pudding (recipes courtesy of my dear friend Lindaraxa), followed by Stilton cheese and Christmas pudding with hard sauce.  MD adored hard sauce.

Lindaraxa's English roast beef and Yorkshire pudding
Image courtesy of same

In years past, when Fauchon still had an outpost in Manhattan, we used to put in a store of their sublime pâtes de fruit and marron glacé to eat over the Christmas break.  Now we console ourselves with chocolates and other treats, including blinis heaped with caviar or salmon roe and crème fraîche.  Champagne is usually within easy reach.

A Darlington tradition of Christmases past
Image courtesy of Fauchon

Another tradition of ours during the Christmas break is to drive to Albany, New York State's capitol, and have a festive lunch at the city's venerable Jack's Oyster House.  It's been an Albany institution for one hundred years now.  Jack's is usually packed this time of year with tables of happy revelers out for a holiday lunch.  We heading there for ours today, in fact.

Jack's Oyster House's card

A more recent Christmas tradition that we've added to our repertoire at Darlington is dipping into the most delicious egg nog imaginable, made by our friend Ted Greenwood.  Ted makes a large batch of it from an old family recipe every year and distributes it on Christmas Eve to his lucky friends in Ball jars.  He calls it Ted Nog.  It is beyond yummy, particularly when adorned with a bourbon or rum floater on top.  Needless to say, Ted is very popular with his fortunate friends this time of year!

Our friend Ted "Nog" Greenwood at a
Darlington dinner party several years ago

Another tradition I look forward to every Christmas is listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols sung by the choir of King's College Cambridge, and broadcast on our local public radio station on Christmas Eve.

The choir of King's College Cambridge
Image courtesy of Zimbio

Of course we hang garlands and wreaths and put up a tree at Darlington, and we decorate the house festively for Christmas.  But, then, that's the subject of another post, soon to follow. . .

I found these little German wooden candles in
a hospital thrift store ten years ago.
I've put them out at Christmastime ever since

Tell me, Dear Reader, what are some of your Christmas traditions?

All photographs, unless noted, by Boy Fenwick or Reggie Darling

More of Darlington House in AD

I thought it would be appropriate for me to mark my return to the blogosphere by showing additional photographs of Darlington House that appeared in the June issue of Architectural Digest magazine.

The main elevation of our drawing room at Darlington House
featuring a wallpaper panel from Dufour's Cupid and Psyche series

These are pictures that appeared in the print version of the magazine, but that weren't featured in the online edition until only recently.  You can see the other photographs of Darlington House that also appeared in the June issue of the magazine in my Reggie Revealed post.

Darlington's dining room, restored to its original yellow wall color

The full run of photographs of Darlington House, along with the accompanying article written by the marvelous and erudite Mitchell Owens, is featured on AD's website, and can be found here.  I'm thrilled by it.

Reggie spends a lot of time sitting at this table, pecking away
on his laptop, working on posts for this blog

I must admit that having a house that I live in appear in a design magazine has always been a fantasy of mine.  That Darlington House was chosen to be featured in Architectural Digest, the pinnacle of such magazines in my view, makes me dizzy with pleasure.

A view of the upstairs hall

When I leaf through AD's pages featuring the houses, apartments, yachts, and castles of celebrities, billionaires, and tastemakers I can't help but wonder how it is that our own little plain Jane of a house was chosen to appear in its pages?  It almost takes my breath away.

A view of the upstairs sitting room, which we call our "Snuggery"

Even so, a little voice in the back of my mind keeps asking, "What's next, Reggie?  What else do you have up your sleeve?  When are you going to buckle down and actually get to work on that book of yours that you've been talking about?"

Well, Dear Reader, I'm not going to let those inner voices rain on my parade here quite yet.  I plan on continuing to revel in the pleasure of the AD story having run, resuming my regular posting here on RD, and allowing myself the space to sit back and enjoy it all.

At least for now . . .

All photographs by William Waldron and styled by Howard Christian.  All images courtesy of Architectural Digest

Hello Again

Reggie is pleased to announce that he is returning to the blogosphere.

He got rather a lot accomplished over the last five weeks, and he is now able to refocus his sights on his silly scribbles here.

I'm planning any number of posts, Dear Reader, that I hope you will enjoy.  Please stay tuned!

Reggie received the antique postcard featured here from his dear friend Jane Maxwell, of whom he is inordinately fond.  What a delightful and thoughtful gift it was!

Reggie Revealed . . .

"Who is that man behind the curtain?

Wait a second—could that be Reggie Darling at the controls?
Image courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

"Is his name really Reggie Darling?  What kind of name is that?

"And who is this Boy Fenwick person?  And that adorable pug that Reggie sometimes shows on his blog—is his name really Pompey?

I suspect they'd be able to figure out who Reggie really is pretty quickly . . .
Image courtesy of CBS Television

"Where is Darlington House?  Is that its actual name?  Who names their houses, anyway?  Why is it that they never show full rooms, only vignettes?  Do you think they even live there?

"And all those stories about Reggie's family, do you think they really happened?

Same with this crew.  I'll bet that Reggie couldn't fool them, either!
Image courtesy of CBS Television

"How much of this stuff is made up?

"I can't find out anything about these guys when I Google them.  That's pretty strange, I think.  You can almost always find something about someone these days with a simple Internet search.  Not these two, though.  Except that blog—there are lots of links to that . . . but not to them.

"It all sounds kind of fishy to me . . ."

Well, Dear Reader, it has come time for me to answer some of these questions.  For, you see, Reggie has been revealed.  There is a certain design magazine on the newsstands now that spills the beans.  Reggie has been outed.

The magazine in which all is revealed . . .

And that's just fine with him.  Because, Reggie actually outed himself.  He agreed to use his "real" name in the story in the magazine because a lot of people already knew that Reggie wasn't the name he was born with, but rather a nom de plume.

Darlington House, as seen in the June 2013 issue of AD

Besides, he was quite pleased to have Darlington House featured in the magazine, and he thought it would be silly not to have his "real" name associated with it.  He's very proud of Boy Fenwick for appearing in Architectural Digest's pages, a coup for any decorator.  It doesn't get any better than that, Dear Reader.

Mr. Boy Fenwick standing at the front door
of Darlington House

"So," you may ask, "If you use made up names in your blog, Reggie, is everything else made up, too?"

Won't you please come into the front hall?

No.  Well, not really.  Other than coming up with playfully Wodehouse-ian names, most everything Reggie writes about is true, and actually happened.  From time to time, though, he does admit to playing around with some of the minor details (such as writing that MD drank scotch when in reality she drank Canadian Club).  But he does so mostly to perfect the voice in his stories.

Do make yourself comfortable in the drawing room.
Would you like something to drink?  A cocktail, perhaps?

"But why, Reggie, do you use a nom de plume?"

Because, Dear Reader, I prefer to keep this blog—a lifestyle one—separate from my very busy and demanding professional life in the financial services industry.  I have a whole "other" life that I prefer not to co-mingle with what I do here in my off hours, for fun.

Reggie is upstairs in the master bedroom straightening his tie
at the moment.  He'll be right down to meet you!

And I plan to keep it that way, too, Dear Reader, even though Reggie's secret it out.

Won't you please play along with me?

Photographs: Unless noted otherwise, all images courtesy of Architectural Digest magazine