BUYING A DREAM

Of all the things Freddie Harris's considerable wealth could afford, buying an original Lutyens house with a Jeykll garden was right at the top of his list. He remembered decades earlier his late father encouraging him to look closely through the pages of various niche books on the Edwardian architect Edwin Lutyens and his collaborator the horticulturalist Gertrude Jeykll uncertain as to what it was exactly he was supposed to be looking at. Of course, he was young and distracted back then and didn't really care about many things other than playing tennis on hot summer nights and attending parties where there would be many beautiful girls in attendance.

The irony was that since his late father died he'd now spend long summer nights actively avoiding social events preferring instead to pore over those same books desperately wanting to climb inside the vivid color photographs demonstrating the unique symbiosis of house and garden that Lutyens and Jekyll's collaborations had achieved to perfection. There was just something about the Elysian atmosphere of those images that reminded him of his father's spirit and whatever way he could find to get closer to that he would and at any cost.

And so naturally, wealth would undoubtedly help in getting Freddy to his desired destination of architecture and design splendor where he dreamed of spending weekend afternoons meditating on lily ponds, orchards, and lavender gardens and forgetting completely about the hyperactivity of the digital age from which he'd so successfully prospered. He also didn't fail to see that it was his expertise in navigating the choppy waters of the tech future that was enabling him to get back closer to a mythic past and in this sense, he was much a futurist as a nostalgist.

It was after winning the highest bid for one of Lutyens's most celebrated country homes that Freddy felt the first sense of peace since his dad died. By acquiring the dream of his late father he felt as if he had finally recovered some invisible link between them, one born from coffee table books now a reality in all its Tudor-style brickwork and arts and craft bespoke windows.

His father had often guided Freddy with mental tours of houses he himself had never visited simply by what he'd learned about them from those cherished books on the subject.

"Close your eyes Freddy and I'll talk you through how Lutyens mastered transitional spaces."

Freddy would close his eyes and listen to his father's voice as to his surprise the sound of classical music would slowly emerge and he could sort of see the spaces his dad described to him form in his mind's eye though in truth they never quite matched when he later looked back at the pictures.

A frustrated architect himself Henry Harris perhaps mistakenly believed he could pass on the baton to his son and he might just follow in the great lineage of Edwardian geniuses such as Lutyens and Voysey whom he so greatly admired and adapt their style for the modern age, but Freddy like most children who rebel against their parents wishes never bit on the bait and chose not to go into the family business.

Though he never chose architecture as his profession, Freddy had recently come to the conclusion that having a deep love and appreciation for the houses and gardens of Lutyens and Jekyll was just as important as their designing of them, for what was the point of their existing without someone to enjoy and revel in their excellence.

The first night spent in the hallowed space, Freddy blasted Elgar's 'Nimrod' on his portable Blue Tooth speaker filling the rooms with the life-giving music as if he himself were conducting the ghosts of the past to join him in a form of timeless reunion.

As he walked through the moonlit garden at night he felt an ancient sense of peace that reminded him that he was not alone in the universe. Every detail in both nature and in the house and garden designed by Lutyens and Jekyll was constructed from pressure over time; a reminder that order could be created from what others believed was simply arbitrary chaos.  

Freddy felt a sense of chaos when his father died as if the ground beneath his feet had fallen away and he could no longer feasibly believe so certainly in gravity. Buying this esteemed property was his own way of gaining control over that unsettled existential angst that had hung over him like a black cloud. Slowly but surely he was regaining his footing on more solid ground once again.

The resoluteness of past beauty in the face of an ever-changing future was not only priceless to Freddy.

It was immortal.