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

Reggie Recommends, Again: Agraria's Bitter Orange Potpourri

I received a package the other day, Dear Reader, containing an unexpected and thoughtful gift from the owners of Agraria, a home fragrance company based in San Francisco.   It was a box of their Bitter Orange potpourri, which I have been a devotee of for thirty years.  I first wrote about my love affair with Bitter Orange potpourri two years ago, which is how I came to the attention of the folks at Agraria.  They have been kind to send me a present of a box of their Bitter Orange potpourri each Christmas since then, much to my surprised pleasure.

Agraria's Bitter Orange potpourri benefits from
being decanted into a large bowl, so its
heavenly scent can waft through one's rooms

I have never done a paid endorsement of a product here on Reggie, Dear Reader, and I don't expect to start doing ones any time soon, either.  In this case, because the gift from Agraria was sent to me as a "thank you" for an unsolicited review and not in exchange for it, I am happy to recommend Agraria's Bitter Orange potpourri to you.  If you are anything like Reggie is, he is confident that you will also fall in love with Bitter Orange's marvelous, can't-live-without, heady scent.  That is, if you haven't already. . .

Here's a repeat of the post that I published in December 2011, in which I shared how I first learned of Bitter Orange and why I have loved it ever since:

I'm not, in general, a fan of potpourri.  Most of what is available today is vile, made of things like artificial peach scented cedar shavings.  No wonder it has such a bad reputation.

One of our Chinese export punch bowls, ca. 1800,

filled with Bitter Orange potpourri

However, there is one potpourri out there that I love, and which I make a point of buying every year when the weather turns cold and the heating season begins.  It is called Bitter Orange, and it is made by a company called Agraria.  I recommend it to you, Dear Reader.

It is the most marvelous potpourri there is.

Agraria makes its Bitter Orange potpourri in small batches of fragrant dried flowers and orange slices, cinnamon sticks, cloves, lavender, natural oils, and other exotic organic ingredients.  Bitter Orange is lovely—citrusy, floral, spicy, and woodsy.  I fill an antique Chinese export bowl with it every year at this time and place it in our drawing room at Darlington House, where its scent deliciously pervades the room.

I first learned of Bitter Orange back in the early 1980s, shortly after it became available in New York.  I vividly recall my introduction to it, in the living room of a large apartment on the Upper East Side that belonged to the parents of a classmate of mine from Yale.  I remember sitting in a chair in the room and wondering "What is that marvelous scent, and where is it coming from?" and my then delight in learning that it was a potpourri called Bitter Orange from a small company named Agraria, based in San Francisco.  The mother of my friend had just bought it at Henri Bendel, the only store in the city that stocked it at the time, and she was quite pleased with herself for having done so.

A freshly opened box of Bitter Orange,

revealing the treasures inside

At the time I had never seen or smelled potpourri before.  It seemed rarefied and exquisite to me, and I was entranced by it.  This was long before potpourri had become a degraded mass-market commodity found in every gift-shoppe, drug store, and big box retailer in America.  It was very special, then.  Bitter Orange created a sensation in New York when it was introduced to the city in the mid-1970s, where it became known as "the Park Avenue potpourri," as it was immediately popular among the city's uptown smart set.

I had to have it.  I went to Bendels at the next opportunity I had and bought myself a box of it.  I was shocked at how expensive it was, but that didn't deter me.  I simply had to have it.

And I've been buying it ever since.

Agraria's handsome box

for its Bittersweet potpourri

Agraria's Bitter Orange has spawned many imitators over the years, but none have succeeded in replicating its signature scent or quality.  It is unique.  Bitter Orange was the foundation of Agraria's subsequent success, and today the company's products are widely distributed, a testament to its vision and the integrity of its offerings.  I'm pleased that they have been so successful.

If you are not already a fan of Agraria's Bitter Orange potpourri, Dear Reader, I recommend that you get some, because I trust that you will love it, as I do.  But be forewarned: it is addicting.

Agraria's website, which features not only their Bitter Orange potpourri and related products, but also a host of other gorgeously-scented irresistibles, can be found here.

Photographs by Boy Fenwick

Basil's First Darlington Christmas Begins . . .

Boy tells me that I am wasting too much time and too many images by posting on my Facebook page instead of here at Reggie.  He thinks I've been neglecting you, Dear Reader.

So I'm going to do something about that.  I plan on adding more short-and-sweet mini posts here to augment the longer, wordier, image-filled posts I've been doing for most of this past year.  The migration of my shorter posts to FB is one of the reasons I've been posting less frequently here at Reggie.

Today's post follows through on my resolution.  It features a photograph of our sweet little Basil sitting on the floor of one of our barns at Darlington, with our newly cut Christmas tree—an Abies concolor, commonly known as a Concolor Fir—waiting in the background.  Boy cut the tree down this morning at a nearby Christmas tree farm with the assistance of our wonderful handyman/groundsman/all-around-helper/godsend Rich (just as he did last year, too).

We plan on putting the tree up in our drawing room next weekend, with the assistance of darling Basil, of course.  Given what Boy has told me about his plans to decorate this year's tree, I am sure it will be one of the most beautiful we've ever had.

Needless to say, Basil is beside himself with excitement!

Photograph by Boy Fenwick

Mardi Gras at Darlington House

Unlike our New Orleanian cousins, we take a fairly low key approach to Mardi Gras at Darlington House.  However, this year things got a little out of hand, and even Thomas Jefferson got into the spirit!

I don't know about you, Dear Reader, but what with all of my overindulgences of the last couple of days, weeks, and months, I'm actually rather looking forward to lightening up during Lent this year.

Photograph by Boy Fenwick

Mother Lode!

We've had rather better luck in our never-ending hunt for vintage ornaments, Dear Reader.

White Whale Limited, our favorite antiques shoppe in Hudson, New York, is a treasure trove of vintage ornaments this December.  The dealers there stocked up on them throughout the year, and their store is laden with them.  Over the last two weekends Boy and I visited the shop several times in our quest for ornaments, as the dealers brought them out in stages to replenish their stock as needed.

The photograph in today's post shows but a fraction of the vintage ornaments we bought at White Whale this Yuletide season.  Boy has arranged them prettily in a gilt Paris Porcelain reticulated basket on stand, circa 1820.  It now sits on a cocktail table in our drawing room.

In addition to the colorful ornaments shown here, we also found lots of silver ones at White Whale that Boy has already hung on our Christmas tree.  Our tree is the subject of my next post, Dear Reader.

Now, I'm off to do my final Christmas shopping!

Photograph by Boy Fenwick

Reggie's (Not) Holiday Sweater

Reggie has what some people refer to as a Holiday Sweater.  No, Dear Reader, he doesn't own one of those awful, lurid acrylic ones—covered with images of cheery Santas, candy canes, wrapped packages, and reindeer—favored by mittelklassen women of a certain age or worn ironically by post-collegians to Ugly Christmas Sweater parties.

Reggie's sweater, made by Dale of Norway

Reggie's sweater is an authentic, classic wool Norwegian one made by Dale of Norway.  It is not a holiday sweater at all, but rather a sweater made to be worn during the winter, ideally while the wearer is engaged in an athletic outdoor activity, such as skiing.

A vintage poster for the Norwegian America Line
Image courtesy of PosterTeam.com

Dale has been making sweaters and other knitted garments since 1879 and is the best source today for traditional Norwegian sweaters, as far as Reggie knows.

A full view of Reggie's traditional Norwegian sweater

Dale is named after Norway's Dale River, where the company's factory sits and where it still makes its sweaters to this day.  Dale takes great pride, and rightfully so, that its sweaters are—and always will be—Norwegian-made, versus farmed out to a factory in China.

A family of skiers, entirely outfitted in Norwegian sweaters, ca. 1960s
Photograph courtesy of Vintage Ski World

Dale is correctly pronounced Dah-leh, and not Dail, as Reggie used to pronounce it until he was corrected by a Norwegian woman who laughed out loud when she heard him bungle the pronunciation of the company's name.  Needless to say, he never made that mistake again.

A ski sweater knitting-pattern-book cover from the 1950s
Image courtesy of Etsy

Reggie has been a fan of Norwegian sweaters for many years.  He got his first one—the classic Norwegian fisherman's sweater from L.L. Bean—when he was a student at Saint Grottlesex.

While not necessarily made in Norway, Reggie
is generally fond of traditional ski sweaters,
such as the one shown here
Photograph courtesy of LIFE Images

Reggie always hankered after a traditional Norwegian ski sweater with a knitted design spread across the shoulders.  He admired similar sweaters worn by his classmates at Saint Grottlesex and at Yale.

Gary Cooper and Claudette Cobert
in Sun Valley, Idaho, in the 1940s
Image courtesy of Sun Valley Guide
(and thanks to Slim Paley!)

It was only ten or so years ago, though, that Reggie stepped up and bought the beautifully made, intricately knitted Norwegian sweater shown in the photographs at the outset of this essay.  He bought his from Gorsuch, which has stores in Vail and Aspen, Colorado.

A vintage ski poster for Aspen, Colorado
Image courtesy of Swann Galleries

Reggie is a fan of traditional, "native" clothing, especially garb from Scandinavia and Germany.  When he was a little boy in the 1960s, Reggie owned and wore a set of lederhosen that his father bought for him (along with a set for his brother, Frecky) on a trip to Germany.   

Another vintage ski-sweater knitting-pattern-book cover
Image courtesy of Handmade by Mother

One of Reggie's most treasured possessions is a Tyrolean hat, complete with all the trimmings, that he bought on a ski vacation in Cortina, Italy, a decade ago.  He plans on featuring it in an upcoming post.

A vintage ski poster for Cortina, Italy
Image courtesy of Vintage Ski World

One of Reggie's regrets is that he no longer owns an authentic, vintage Loden jacket that he bought twenty or so years ago, only to give it away shortly thereafter in a fit of temporary insanity when purging his wardrobe.  Ah, well.

A vintage postcard of the Mormon Temple
Image courtesy of The Postcards Project

Reggie's Norwegian sweater was made by Dale to commemorate the 2002 Olympic Games held in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Dale has been making sweaters for Olympic teams since the 1940s.  It was only in writing this post that Reggie realized that his sweater features an image of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City in its knitted design, right below the sweater's zipper!

At first it made Reggie somewhat uncomfortable that his sweater incorporated an image of the Mormon Temple.  But once he thought about it for a while, he actually liked it.  He now appreciates the somewhat bizarre humor of owning a traditional, classic Norwegian sweater that incorporates such an image; the fact that it does so does not detract from his pleasure in owning the sweater one bit.

Tell me, Dear Reader, do you have any traditional "native" clothing in your wardrobe?  If so, what kind?

Photographs of Reggie's sweater by himself

A Christmas Tree for Darlington

This past weekend a Christmas tree arrived at Darlington.  Well, it didn't just arrive, Dear Reader, it took some effort to make it happen.

Our freshly cut Christmas tree
in the back of our handyman Rich's pickup truck

When we put up a Christmas tree at Darlington House we go to a tree farm and we cut the tree down ourselves.  We are fortunate to live in an area where there are half a dozen such farms within an easy drive.  Walking through the farm's fields, searching for, and then deciding upon a tree, cutting it down, and bringing it home is a pleasant and evocative annual ritual.  It stirs up memories of similar expeditions in years past, and one is conscious of undertaking an activity similarly engaged in by millions of others, both in the present day and ever since the first man cut the first tree down one winter's solstice many, many thousands of years ago.

Rich holding the tree on the walkway
leading to Darlington House

This year the ritual was somewhat complicated for us.  First of all, our Rover—which we typically use for such expeditions—was in the shop for an extended (and expensive) stay.  And I wasn't up to engaging in the task, having been waylaid by a nasty, persistent cold.  Fortunately, our trustworthy and exceptionally helpful handyman, Rich, was agreeable and took Boy to the tree farm in his red pickup truck and helped him find and bring home a tree to Darlington House.  It was rather an undertaking, though, since the farm they visited is a very old and overgrown one.  It no longer has fields of trees, but rather forests of them.  The noble tree that Boy and Rich ultimately selected stood over forty feet tall, and it required calculations and a chain saw to fell and shorten for the trip home.

The lower part of the tree is cut off—we will
use the branches to decorate the house

Not only that, but Rich assisted Boy in readying the tree to bring into the house.  That takes some doing, Dear Reader, because it wouldn't do to merely bring a tree into Darlington House without first grooming it.  Grooming it, you ask?  Yes, you read that correctly!  Our tree needed to be (further) cut down in order to fit the ceiling height of our house, and it also required pruning of extraneous branches so that there was sufficient space to artfully hang ornaments.  But such administrations were not unique to this particular tree—almost every Christmas tree we've ever had at Darlington House has required (well, at least benefited from) such attention before it is deemed ready by Boy to be decorated.

Reggie is not a fan of most farmed Christmas trees that are available these days.  Too many of them have been aggressively pruned during their growth to achieve a form that Reggie considers to be too fat and too bushy, and too perfectly conical.  One cannot hang ornaments on such a tree, Dear Reader, one can only drape them.  No, Reggie prefers an old-fashioned, naturally formed Christmas tree, one that hasn't been managed during its growth.  But even such natural trees need a little help to achieve the spindly perfection they require (at least at Darlington House) for optimal ornament display.  One must carefully and judiciously prune them of at least a few extra branches in order to ensure perfection.

The tree, now cut down to size, is shown standing
in the brown painted galvinized wash tub
we use to hold it

It took Boy and Rich half an hour or so of careful grooming in order for the tree to be ready to be placed in our dining room.  Dining room, you ask?  Who puts up their tree in their dining room, instead of their living room?  Well, Dear Reader, we put our tree in our dining room instead of our drawing room (which is what we call our living room for reasons that are too complicated to explain in this essay) or our Snuggery (which is what we call our sitting room/den/study/library, also for reasons that are too complicated to explain here).  We do so because it is the one room at Darlington House that has a sufficient amount of empty space for one to fit!  

Once the tree has been cut down to size
the process of thinning out the branches
for optimal ornament display begins

Our drawing room is a symphony of symmetry, Dear Reader, and it would be highly disruptive to the room's carefully balanced arrangement if we were to introduce a tree into it.  I shudder at the very thought of it!  Our Snuggery, on the other hand, is so jam-packed with furniture and decorations that we would either have to cart much of it away in order to squeeze a tree into the room, or it would need to be a very tiny tree, indeed.

The now-groomed tree, placed in our dining room
and ready to be decorated

So, into the dining room our Christmas tree went.  And Reggie didn't have to lift a finger once during the process, as Boy and Rich did it entirely themselves.  Not only that, but Boy decorated the tree by himself, too, without any assistance from Reggie.  As I've explained here before, Reggie long-ago learned that it is best to leave such tasks as decorating Christmas trees or arranging flowers to Boy, since he does a much better job at such things than Reggie does (or can).  Besides, why should I get in the way of such activity when Boy is a high-toned, fancy New York decorator and I'm not?  People pay him to do this kind of thing!

This year, Boy's Christmas tree theme (and there is a different theme every year) is "Silver and Pinecone Woodland."  He decorated it solely with vintage silver ornaments, pine cones gathered from our property, white fairy lights, and a flock of little gray and white birds perched on its upper branches.  It is really rather beautiful.

Stay tuned . . .