Sir Herbert Jekyll - brother of the landscape gardener Gertrude Jekyll
Listener's query
"We have a silver-topped walking-stick with the inscription 'From Sir Herbert Jekyll to Finlay September 1932'. Can you tell me about Sir Herbert Jekyll?"
Brief summary
Sir Herbert Jekyll and his sister Gertrude both died in 1932, he in September and she in December. They are buried in Busbridge churchyard in west Surrey in a tomb designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with whom their lives were inextricably entwined. The Jekylls had returned to west Surrey in the late 1870s, buying a property and land at Munstead near Godalming.
Gertrude was a painter, writer and architect, and high priestess of the Arts and Crafts Movement. She had become more interested in the totality of domestic architecture, including the landscape. In 1889 she met the young Edwin (Ned) Lutyens. He was more than a quarter of a century her junior and became not only a friend but also her pupil. In the 1890s they began to design houses and gardens together. There are more than a hundred of Gertrude's gardens in west Surrey alone. She treated the garden as an outside part of the house, integrally a part of it and with its own rooms.
Sir Herbert lived next door to Gertrude with his wife Agnes. Though a career army man, he was himself a craftsman. In 1900 Sir Herbert was able to give Lutyens' career as an architect a boost. The Paris Exhibition of that year had a British Pavilion. Sir Herbert headed the British delegation and commissioned Lutyens to design the Pavilion. It was an Elizabethan manor-house containing various styles of rooms. The British Pavilion led to important commissions on the continent. In the decade and a half leading up to the Great War, Lutyens was hugely successful, designing buildings all over the world.
The Jekylls remained at Munstead, Sir Herbert and Lady Agnes, a noted cookery writer, living at Munstead House and Gertrude at Munstead Wood. After the war they rather lost touch with Lutyens. Gertrude was getting old, while Lutyens was working in India for three months of the year and was busy building memorials to the war dead, most famously the Cenotaph in London and the Great Memorial Arch at Thiepval near the Somme. Lutyens' work became less gentle, more mathematical and severe.
The walking-stick, it is thought, was a present to someone highly valued who worked on the estate. There were a number of families of that name in the area.
Experts consulted
Jane Brown, Michael Edwards and Lady Ivry Freiburg
Further reading
Jane Ridley, Edwin Lutyens: His Life, His Wife, His Work (Pimlico, 2003)
Jane Brown, Gardens of a Golden Afternoon: The Story of a Partnership, Edwin Lutyens & Gertrude Jekyll (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982)
Jane Brown, Lutyens and the Edwardians (Penguin, 1997)
Richard Bisgrove, The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll (Frances Lincoln Ltd, 1992)
Websites
Place to visit
Godalming Museum
109a High Street, Godalming, Surrey GU7 1AQ
Tel: 01483 426510
Fax: 01483 523495
Website:
Has a permanent exhibition about Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens.
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Vanessa has presented听science and current affairs programmes for 大象传媒, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for 大象传媒 Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.听