The Good Life
Even pest bunnies deserve a nice resting place, but not one to rival the Lygon pet cemetery.
Ihave buried another rabbit. This, in high summer, is no mean feat. The ground, at least where the garden hose fails to reach, is now as hard as diamonds.
It is even dry in the deep shade under the alders near the potato patch, a spot where I put lots of grass clippings. Still, the soil was just soft enough there this week for me to dig another small hole for another small body.
This one had been caught by the cat, although she really hasn’t been holding up her end of the rabbit despatching business this summer. She’s caught just four so far; last year, she got nine. This compares rather badly with the cat of an old friend, Susie, that has caught 63 rabbits over the past three summers. Number 62 was left in the kitchen. I wouldn’t mind if Susie’s cat lived in the country, but it lives in Auckland – though quite near the zoo.
But some dead rabbits are better than none. The cat left her latest victim on the lawn, brain missing, before coming inside in a very overexcited state. The chase had clearly tuckered her out though; we found her fast asleep shortly after – on the lawn next to her dead rabbit.
The first rabbit buried under the alders was one I’d shot. It was large, with grey and brown fur as soft as ermine and huge eyes, like black and hazel marbles. It was quite beautiful.
He or she was the second one I’ve dispatched. I threw the first into a paddock for the hawks and rats, but then felt bad. I thought I should be giving these creatures, pests though they are, a decent burial; if nothing else, their beauty demands it. So, there is an untidy rabbit cemetery growing in the deep shade of the alders near the potato patch.
I’ve encountered just two other cemeteries for animals. Our nearest neighbours have one for their dogs under some large trees – oaks, I think. The other one was rather grander, at Madresfield Court, in greenest England.
Madresfield is a striking, ugly-beautiful stately manor that has been home to the Lygon family for nearly a millennium. The Lygons, you may know, were the inspiration for the Marchmains in Evelyn Waugh’s sublime Brideshead Revisited, a book I was once obsessed by.
On a travel junket for a newspaper, I visited the Brideshead most know, Castle Howard, in Yorkshire, the one from the terrific 1980s television adaptation. Its beauty, but also its magical gardens and grounds, were quite overwhelming – and overwhelmed by tourists, too.
I also asked to see Madresfield, the original Brideshead, though at that time it was closed to the public for renovations. Somehow, I was given permission to walk the grounds (though not the house), and I did so completely alone.
The Lygons’ ancient home, a 120-plus room red brick and stone affair blending Tudor and Elizabethan beginnings with Victorian additions, is also a manor with a 26m-wide moat, home to golden carp and kingfishers. It is enchanting, something like a Victorian castle.
However, the grounds have the sense of walking through a Victorian dream. There are avenues of oaks, cedars, poplars and cypresses. There are gardens of giant hollyhocks, hostas and fragrant pink roses. There is a huge, beautifully shaped hedge with Roman busts on pedestals in specially cut recesses. There is a yew maze and, in a topiary garden, a bronze sundial bearing the epigram “That day is wasted on which we have not laughed”.
Behind the house, under trees, I think near the maze, I came across a row of a dozen or so small headstones. “Max Monckton Dec 1949 to Feb 1963”, read one. Another said “Fritz, a faithful and loving dog, 1955”.
Next to him was another Fritz, who lived from 1956 to 1967, but had no commendation to rival his namesake; there was also Dillys, an Angel and a Manfred Monckton, too. The most recent was Twinkle, who left this life in 2006.
It was a small, sad place, though somehow comforting, too. Still, I think it would be a little much to do the same for our dead rabbits.
The headstone said “Fritz, a faithful and loving dog, 1955”, next to another Fritz, but with no commendation.