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Richard Barttelot, by Stephen Carroll

  I first set eyes on Richard Barttelot nearly forty years ago when I moved into Stopham House, a rambling country house formerly the seat of the Barttelot family who claimed they had come over with the Conqueror. His cousin, the local baronet, had sold a leasehold interest to developers and the house had been converted into eleven flats. There were two entrances: the main entrance where the grand apartments were, and the servant's entrance (named by estate agents as 'the North Entrance') where the humbler flats were situated. Mine was round the back on the top floor and had once been the nursery. There was a fire escape leading from the bedroom which looked out on several acres of parkland and gardens and on summer evenings I liked to open the door and sit out on this when I got home from work. I noticed that regularly at dusk, a slight, nervous-looking man in late middle-age in a white shirt, cloth cap and gloves would hurry over the grass and make his way to some out
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Richard with Stephen Roche

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 At the Harrow Inn, Steep, 9 September 1999
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 Here are a couple of photos showing R.B. at his best. One in Venice, which we visited together in 1985 (I think it was) and another beside Stopham green with him carrying an enormous tin bath for the children to use in the garden. It had been hanging on the wall of one of the coach houses at Stopham House for as long as anyone could remember.   
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 At the seaside - Aldwick, near Bognor, c.1993 , c.1992
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Dowlish Wake revisited.

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Yesterday we went on a sentimental journey to our old Wednesday haunts, stopping off at Dowlish Wake where there is a memorial to John Hanning Speke, the famous Victorian explorer. We had visited the church at least twice with R.B. and I looked through the visitors' book to see if he'd written the date and  signed his name. Sure enough there was a ghostly signature, much fainter than it would have been ten years before.  It prompted me to look up my diary entry for that day:  Wednesday 4 July 2018 Just back from a visit to Barp on this damp, warm afternoon. We took him a small record player bought in the charity shop – and he seems delighted, having put on an ancient L.P.   Crack crack crack it went.... perfect. Went into Ilminster ('I have a letter to post to Australia') and then back to Dowlish Wake to have a look in the church for the Speke memorial which was worth seeing. A very Victorian church in a very English setting. Then we visited Perry's, the cider pla
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'The Palm Without the DUST' by R.B.

  'The Palm Without the DUST' (a short life of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery.)   Born with a silver spoon in his mouth,    Lord Dalmeny succeeded To vast riches and high estate    Almost before he needed.   He naturally went to Eton,    And then to Christ-Church College,- But training   a horse meant more to him    Than striving after knowledge.   He found a suitable Heiress, –    Married 'because she was there', She brought him a fortune, – and Mentmore,    And gave him a son and an heir.   He travelled at large round the Empire,    But then his troubles began,– He supported Gladstone on Ireland,    And succeeded the 'Grand Old Man'.   He was certainly highly ambitious    And successful 'on his day', He managed to win the Derby three times,    But not to get his own way.   A 'fascinating failure',    He stood on all kinds of planks, – And had to lay Foundation Stones    And
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A FOOL AFTER FORTY, by R. B.

  If a man's still a fool at forty, he must be a fool indeed: if I can't now tell a book from a brick, or discern a flower from a weed At three score years and ten – what further wisdom do I need?              ''The plastic bag will always let you down''.   The dodo and the dinosaur are aeons out-of-date, – Effete and unadaptable – extinction was their fate, I'm an eighteenth century throwback, with the mind of a child of eight:              ''Fools rush in where angels fear to tread''.   The bloke who sniffs the roses while on his way to work, Or who lazily reposes when he should be at the kirk, – Mistakenly supposes that his duties he can shirk,              ''We are all due for the High Jump'', said Sir Malcolm.   If I'm strolling through the fields, do I deserve to be alive? A parasitic passenger who's happened to survive, – The Reaper's got me in his sights, though to dodge
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