by Sue Shephard
Beware of stylizing. Accept no rules. Let the flowers remind you of how they looked when growing. You are not human unless you have a way of expressing yourself. Flowers are the contemporary woman’s paint-box. I detest set arrangements such as a triangle of roses or a crescent moon of chrysanthemums. Don’t make lovely flowers into statements of geometry.
This was wild talk indeed, and no doubt some stalwarts were unmoved by it. It was all highly revolutionary for Australian ladies, who had become used to the American fashions in flower arrangement. But the younger women were ecstatic. They loved the ‘Cordon Fleur’ lady.
At the end of April Connie and Sheila were back on the Himalaya loaded with souvenirs, exotic plants and cuttings of eucalyptus, sweet-scented frangipani, outsize gardenias, dahlias and zinnias, some of which she used to decorate the captain’s table. They arrived home in time to prepare for Chelsea Flower Show, for which Connie created a dramatic ‘souvenir of Australia’ display using flowers and exotics that she had had specially flown in. The president of the Australian Garden Society thanked her for the tour, informing her that new flower-arranging societies were being started every day across the country and members were exchanging flowers by air. It was at Chelsea that year that Roy Hay approached Connie to ask if she would join the committee of the Royal Gardeners’ Orphan Fund. She readily agreed, and offered to lecture without fee to any flower or garden club that was willing to pass round the hat for the Fund. She raised more than a thousand pounds in one year.
Connie continued to spend long summers at Ard Daraich, where she worked on her last book, Favourite Flowers. Despite some perhaps inevitable repetition, it is one of her most lyrical pieces of writing, full of snatches of poetry, bubbling with life and her passion for flowers; and vivid as ever, with individual plants always observed with a fresh eye: ‘Look and never let the eye grow stale,’ she advised her readers. She thanked Shav, from whom ‘I have the great good fortune to be accorded generous, unswerving encouragement together with solace when needed, in all things I do and have done.’ Her most autobiographical book, it is suffused with childhood memories, humour, personal anecdote, self-criticism, jokes and perceptive wisdom. It also reveals her as widely read, a keen Scrabble player, and staggeringly knowledgeable in all things horticultural.
In the summer of 1959 her American friend the journalist Helen Kirkpatrick, now Mrs Robbins Milbank, came over with her husband to visit Connie. They stayed at Winkfield and enjoyed a wonderful reunion. When Helen confessed to Connie that she had been going to an ikebana class, Connie shook her head and said, ‘If I catch you doing any of those affected designs, my girl, I’ll cut you off without a farthing!’ They all then headed to Scotland to see Shav and enjoy a few weeks’ holiday at Ard Daraich. The weather was glorious and Connie was in great spirits. But Helen noted: ‘Connie seemed to be very much preoccupied with tidying things up.’ Her son Tony now headed the business, which had expanded into three shops, two in London and one in Guildford in Surrey. The Winkfield school continued to thrive under the joint headship of Christine Dickie and Rosemary Hume; Harold Piercy, ‘a brilliant young Spry-trained decorator’ who had joined the business during the coronation, became head of the flower school. George Foss and Sheila McQueen continued as the principal lecturers. ‘But then,’ Helen wrote, ‘she was nearly seventy, and retirement of some degree seemed eminently sensible, albeit unlike her.’ In fact, Connie was seventy-three; as with so many things in her life, she was never quite truthful about her age.
After the Milbanks had returned to America Connie went home to Winkfield, where the beautiful weather continued and produced an astonishing display of flowers in her garden. Her beloved roses excelled themselves, their great arching branches wreathed from end to end with sumptuous, prolific blooms. In Favourite Flowers, she wrote:
My long-held dream really did materialize . . . there were a few weeks of this summer when in one part of the garden the roses flung their flowering branches about in an abandon of sweetness, when they fell in waterfalls from the old trees that supported them, when they were intoxication to the senses . . . this year they seemed to hold an element of the miraculous . . . There were moments when the glory of every flowering tree and shrub from the magnolias down to the privets seemed almost to be saying ‘Look thy last on all things lovely, every hour.’
The quotation is from one of Connie’s favourite verses by Walter de la Mare.
As summer turned to autumn, Favourite Flowers was published and Connie and Rosemary immediately embarked on a new book, to be called Hostess and to be illustrated with specially commissioned sketches by Lesley Blanch.
At Christmas Connie was as buoyantly inventive as ever with her ‘Christmas nonsense’, supervising the tree decorations, the wreaths and winter flower arrangements. Shav gave her his usual gift of a valuable Blue John vase. New Year brought another happy feast among friends and family. She telephoned Rosemary to arrange to do some editing on their new book.
On the evening of 3 January 1960 as they sat around the dinner table at Winkfield, Connie was bubbling with ideas: for the garden, for Chelsea, for the schools and for another Christmas – ‘Next year, I know what we’ll do,’ she laughed. Then, as she climbed the narrow stairs to her drawing-room after dinner, she suddenly stumbled and fell unconscious. She was carried to her bed, where within the hour she died.
‘Dear, downright Connie,’ wrote an old friend, ‘I’m so glad her light went out without a long flicker. She wasn’t one to dwindle into old age.’
Epilogue
Mourners remembered a cold, bleak funeral held on a bitter January day when even the massed white flowers and hundreds of tributes that poured in from all over the world could hardly cheer the mood. There was a sense of shock and of loss that Constance Spry had left so suddenly and unexpectedly. Friends rallied to breathe some warmth and gaiety back into her memory. On the day of her funeral her friend the journalist Ruth Drew spoke on the BBC Today Programme:
Just three weeks ago, I spent a day with Constance. When she gave me a parting hug, I said, ‘You’ve been a tonic, as usual!’ Constance was always that. Her vitality – her versatility – her needle-sharp wit . . . all made her the most stimulating companion. What made her a true friend was her steady integrity and her generous sympathy.
National newspapers carried fulsome obituaries and early in February the BBC broadcast a tribute where friends and colleagues could recall their special memories of Connie. The horticultural journalist Roy Hay spoke first: ‘Constance Spry was one of those rare beings who knew exactly what she was aiming at, did exactly what she wanted to do, and yet was able to inspire all those who worked with her to see things as she saw them.’ Kitty Rich, a school-friend from Ireland, remembered how Connie Fletcher worked so hard to help people in need . . . how she also laughed and always dressed with flamboyance. Nancy Fairbairn (Ritchie), one of the first students at Winkfield, recalled happy days there ‘some of the best of my life’ and how ideas of all kinds ‘constantly flowed from her. Graham Stuart Thomas described her as a great gardener and plantswoman who saved precious old roses from extinction. Helen Kirkpatrick spoke ‘down the line’ from New York:
She had an insatiable curiosity and an extraordinary talent in arousing it in others. Her opposition to mediocrity in any form and a rollicking sense of humour made Constance a rare human being. She was always so alive and so full of fun and enthusiasm; we never noticed she was growing old.
Lady Sybil Eccles recalled the preparations for the coronation and said, ‘No wonder she succeeded in so many ways; as a writer of meticulously accurate cookery and garden books, as an unaffected lecturer, as the gayest of teachers in her school near Windsor.’ The designer Herman Schrijver recalled her artistry, her eye for different colours and for spacing and placing flowers so perfectly: ‘I loved to watch her hands covered in rings and bracelets tinkling as she worked and chatted. One will always remember her, always.’ The journalist Anne Scott James wrote an article in whic
h she remembered her friend Connie:
If you spent a day with her, she would cook a five course lunch which was a gastronomic poem, arrange a dozen vases of flowers while you carried in the lunch, make three varieties of scones for tea while you drank your coffee, write an article while you ate the scones and pick you a basket of flowers to take home while you read the article.
A collection of £900 was contributed to the Royal Gardeners’ Orphan fund. Connie herself left £27,000 – hardly a fortune from such a hugely successful life – but she had never cared about profit and loss, only about creativity and freedom of expression. In 1961 David Austin started growing and selling old-fashioned roses commercially. He called his first hybrid ‘Constance Spry’ in memory of all that she had achieved with her beloved roses.
On 28 May 1962 Val Pirie married Shav Spry at Caxton Hall and became the second legal Mrs Spry. They divided their time between Winkfield and Ard Daraich. Shav became senile and took to walking round the school without his clothes, much to the consternation of the female students. He died in 1967 and Val made her home near Salisbury where she lived well into her nineties.
Constance Spry Ltd continued for some years under the chairmanship of Tony Marr at South Audley Street and the two other shops. In November 1973 the company decorated Westminster Abbey for Princess Anne’s wedding. For a while Winkfield School continued to thrive under the care of Christine Dickie and Rosemary Hume. Sheila McQueen became a renowned lecturer and writer on flower arranging, receiving an RHS Victoria Medal of Honour and an MBE. She died in 2008 aged ninety-three.
Winkfield carried on under several different managements and in different premises until it finally closed in 2008. Tony Marr did not survive the first management change and, after marrying his second wife Vita, he retired to live mainly in Scotland and died in 1993.
The Cordon Bleu Cookery School still flourishes in Marylebone Road in London. It became fully integrated with the Cordon Bleu Group in 1990 and several other schools were opened in places such as Tokyo, Ottawa and Sydney. After successfully running the London Cordon Bleu school for most of her life, Rosemary Hume bought a house in the Kyles of Bute, Argyll, where she retired to live with her brother-in-law Dr Jan Nunn, with whom she had had a long relationship. She died in 1984.
In one of her last books Connie reproduced some verses from a ‘sentimental poem’ the name of whose author she had forgotten. The poem, ‘Prayer’, is by the American poet Louis Untermeyer and was published as part of A Gospel for Restless Hearts. It offers several clues to her character and one can see why she chose to quote it.
Open my eyes to visions girt
With beauty, and with wonder lit –
But let me always see the dirt
And all that spawn and die in it.
Open my ear to music – let
Me thrill with spring’s first
Flutes and drums,
But never let me dare forget
The bitter ballads of the slums.
From compromise and things half done
Keep me with stern and stubborn pride;
And when at last the fight is won,
God keep me still unsatisfied.
Acknowledgements
I particularly wish to thank Martine Frost, who ran the Constance Spry School until 2008. She generously gifted the school’s archives to the Lindley Library and has been most generous in helping me with this book and for allowing me to quote from Constance Spry’s books and reproduce photographs of flower arrangements. I am also indebted to the late Elizabeth Coxhead, whose research and interviews for her biography of Constance Spry, published in 1975, were an invaluable source.
I would like to thank several people who recalled for me their memories of training or working either at Winkfield or the Spry Flower School – in particular Rosamund Banks (Gould), Nancy Briggs (Ritchie), Alleyne Cook, Susie Edwards (Lunn), Gillian Hammick (Inchbold), Norma Howard (Fletcher), the late Sheila McQueen, Francis Monkman, Rex Murfitt, the late Vita Marr, Fred Wilkinson and Amanda Williams (Spence).
My thanks for help and for permission to use published and unpublished material to Lord Aberdeen, Griselda Barton, Hamish Bowles, Lord Eccles, Roy Gluckstein, Lord Haddo, Caroline Moorehead and Diana Souhami. My grateful thanks for permission to quote from the Cecil Beaton diaries and for permission to quote from Beverley Nichols. Extracts from Vogue magazine are by courtesy of Condé Nast Publications. Extracts from Beverley Nichols’ Garden Open Today and Down the Garden Path are reprinted by permission of Timber Press Inc. (publisher of the current editions) and the Estate of Beverley Nichols (the copyright holder). Extracts from Cecil Beaton’s diaries are reprinted by permission of the Literary Executors of the late Sir Cecil Beaton, 2010 and Rupert Crew Limited. Permission to reprint verses from the poem ‘Prayer’ has been granted by the Estate of Louise Untermeyer, Norma Anchin Untermeyer and Laurence S. Untermeyer, care of Professional Publishing Services, CT, USA. The drawings by Lesley Blanch of Constance Spry in her garden and the decorative chapter plates originally published in Come into the Garden Cook (1942) are reproduced by arrangement: Copyright the Estate of Lesley Blanch.
Librarians and archivists who were particularly helpful include Liz Gilbert at The Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Library, Brett Croft at the Condé Nast (Vogue) Archive, Louise North at the BBC Written Archives and Rose Cunnane at the Peamount Hospital Archives. I am also grateful to librarians at The Bristol University Theatre Library, The Bristol City Library, The London Library, The British Library, The Dorchester County Library, The Durham Mining Museum, The National Archives of Ireland, Dublin, The National Archives, Kew, The Archives of the British Red Cross, The Derbyshire Record Office, The Principal Registry of the Family Division and The National Association of Flower Arranging Societies.
My personal thanks to Georgina Morley, my brilliant editor at Macmillan, to my agent and dear friend Heather Holden-Brown and her assistant Elly James. I particularly wish to thank many friends who helped and supported me while I wrote this book, including Prosper Devas, Jemima Hunt, Fred Wilkinson, Tim and Joyce Jeal, Norrie and Anna Maclaren, Judy Preston, Tim Mowl, Christopher and Jane Francis, Loesje and Barrie Houghton, and Stewart and Catherine Boyd. My biggest thanks, as always, are reserved for my children Louisa and Joe and most of all for my husband, Ben, for thirty-five years of loving and sharing.
Select Bibliography and Sources
Books by Constance Spry in date order, all published by J.M. Dent
Flower Decoration (1934)
Flowers in House and Garden (1937)
A Garden Notebook (1940)
Come into the Garden, Cook (1942)
Summer and Autumn Flowers (1951)
Winter and Spring Flowers (1951)
How to Do the Flowers (1953)
Party Flowers (1955)
The Constance Spry Cookery Book, with Rosemary Hume (1956)
Simple Flowers (1957)
Favourite Flowers (1959)
Hostess, published posthumously, with Rosemary Hume and Anthony Marr (1961)
Journals and Newspapers
Country Life
Flower Arranger
Garden History, vol. 31, No. 1, 2003, pp. 80–94
Good Housekeeping
Harper’s Bazaar
House and Home
Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society
The Garden
The Gardener’s Chronicle
Tatler
Vogue
Books
Battersby, Martin, The Decorative Thirties. Studio Vista, London, 1969.
Beaton, Cecil, Photobiography. Odhams Press, London, 1951.
—Diaries: The Wandering Years, 1922 –1939. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1960.
Blacker, M.R., Flora Domestica 1500 –1930. The National Trust, London, 2000.
Cannadine, David, Class in Britain. Penguin Books, London, 2000.
Castle, Charles, Oliver Messel: A Biography. Thames & Hudson, 1986.
C
ohen, Deborah, Household Gods. Yale University, 2006.
Connon, Bryan, Beverley Nichols: A Life. Timber Press, MA., USA, 2009.
Cooke D. and McNicol P., A History of Flower Arranging. Heinemann, London, 1989.
Coxhead, Elizabeth, Constance Spry: A Biography. W. Luscombe, London, 1975.
Duberman, M.B., Vicinus, M., and Chauncy, G., eds., Hidden From History – Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. Penguin Books, London, 1991.
Earle, Mrs C.W., Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden. Thomas Nelson, London, 1898.
Elliott, Brent, The Royal Horticultural Society: A History 1804 –2004. Phillimore & Co., Stroud, Glos., 2004.
Faderman, Lillian, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship & Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. Junction Books, London, 1981.
Fisher, Richard B., Syrie Maugham. Duckworth, London, 1978.
Goode, Henrietta, Camouflage and Art: Design and Deception in WW2. Unicorn Press, London, 2007.
Hennessy, Peter, Having it so Good: Britain in the Fifties. Allen Lane, London, 2006.
Jekyll, Gertrude, Flower Decoration in the House. Country Life, London, 1907.
Keane, Maureen, Ishbel: Lady Aberdeen in Ireland. Colourpoint Books, Dublin, 1999.
Lyons, F.S.L., Ireland Since The Famine. Collins, 1971.
Malcolm, E. and Jones. E., eds., Medicine and Disease and the State of Ireland. 1650–1940. Cork University Press, 1999.
McKibbin, Ross, Classes and Cultures: England 1918 –1951. Oxford University Press, 1998.