THE RICHARD BARTTELOT SITE

  '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

  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   The dodo and the dinosaur are aeons out-of-date, – Effete and unadaptable – extinction was their fate, I'm an eighteenth century throwback, with the mind of a child of eight:              ''Fools rush in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

Richard and I often visited Steep, lunching sometimes at the Harrow or 'The Pub with No Name' for its associations with Edward Thomas, a poet we both admired. Sometimes members of my family came along and here we are (Richard, my son Henry and daughter Imogen) at the Edward Thomas Memorial Stone on Shoulder of Mutton Hill.