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- [00:00]
Adrian Tinniswood
Foreign.
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Cole Smead
You're listening to A Book With Legs, a podcast presented by Smead Capital Management. At Smead Capital Management, we advise investors who fear stock market failure. You can learn more@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.
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Welcome to A Book with Legs podcast. I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management. At our firm, we are readers and we believe in the power of books to help shape and form investors. In this podcast, we speak to great authors about their writings. The late, great Charlie Munger prescribed using multiple mental models and analysis. We analyze their work through the lens of business markets and people. Thanks for joining me today. In this episode, we will look back at another era of influencers who were royal famous among other aristocrats and could be wealthy too. Adrian Tenneswood is joining us to discuss his recently released book, the Power and the Life in the English Country House before the Great War. His work focuses on Britain and small pieces of continental Europe in the late 19th century up to about 1914. To give you a little background on Adrian, he's the author of many books, I think as many as 18 on English history, including what I noted was War and Madness in seventeenth Century England, which was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. He is a professor of British Cultural history at the University of Buckingham and an adjunct professor at Maynooth University. He was also, I will note, awarded an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth ii. He is joining us today from West Ireland. Adrian, thanks for joining me today.
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Adrian Tinniswood
Thank you very much. It's great to be with you.
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Cole Smead
Yeah. This is we were kind of talking about before why, you know, I kind of fell in love with reading your book and reading the story. It does obviously have some Americans, so I'm kind of selfish when I get to go through it. But we like studying wealthy people. It's one of the things we ask what is like in past eras, what did they do and what influenced them. But I'd love to start it out by just asking what inspired you to write this history in particular?
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Adrian Tinniswood
That's a nice start. That's a nice start. A few years ago I published a book on the country house between the two world wars book called the Long Weekend, which was a period of huge change for British society and British country house life. And I followed that up with a sequel, if you like, on the country house after the Second World War. Again, a period of great sort of change. And I just wanted to complete the trilogy, so going the wrong way around. But the Power and the Glory, although the last written is the first in this trilogy. I started off thinking this was the golden age of the country house. You know, this was the last great age of the British stately home. And I just wanted to explore some of those, some of those kind of orthodoxies, if you like, and see if we could sort of challenge some of the conventional wisdom about country house life before the Great War.
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Cole Smead
Sure. When to your point, you know, I don't think most people recognize it, But World War I was the end of the monarchies, the beginning of the end of the monarchies, and really World War II ended many of the European monarchies. So to your point, it was really a paradigm shift that begun, that was going to take many, many years to play out. But I always think of World War I being very important among wealthy and aristocratic families. But I want to start off because I think you give a really good context to really the history of what these country houses were, the families and the trust that they typically would sit in with trustees. I'm going to quote from early in your book. You said quote, the case of the owner of a landed estate is entirely different. He is bound to the estate and to a certain scale of expenditure upon it as long as he remains, end quote. Explain what this means to our listeners for the country house in the late 19th century.
- [04:13]
Adrian Tinniswood
Well, you've got, I mean for the traditional country house owner, the aristocrat, the established landed gentry, they've got a house, they've got an estate. They may well have hundreds, possibly even thousands of tenants. They, and they're tied into a community, they're part of a community just as their, you know, their forebears were part of a community. So you've got that traditional, almost feudal view of rural England at a time when England, and I do mean England rather than Britain, England is, is changing dramatically. You know, from 1851 onwards, England was predominantly an urban society. There were more people living in, as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, there were more people living in towns and cities than there were in the countryside. And you get this idealization of the countryside, this sense of being cast out of Eden, you know, cast out of paradise, when, when things were different back in the old, a mythic past. Everything, everyone knew their place, everything was kind of straightforward and that there's a sense by the end of the 19th century that something's happening, this is different, this is going wrong. And it's compounded, I think by some far reaching social and economic changes, the biggest one of which is the Agricultural depressions in Britain of the 1870s and 1880s, when cheap wheat imports from American Canada, refrigerated meat imports from, from New Zealand and Australia cause the agricultural economies in England to crash. And what that meant is that the country house, which had historically been the HQ of a large agricultural estate or a succession of agricultural estates, suddenly isn't. And there's a lot of soul searching about what the country house means at that time. What does it mean to be a landed proprietor?
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Cole Smead
Sure. When I think of land, I mean, land is still a big issue in the UK today. I mean, if you look at the total number of landowners that can pry most of the land, it's still a very landed gentry conversation, you know, in 2024, which is ironic to think about, but to your point, it's always been a representation of the wealth of society in the uk. Talk about the duties these estates, you know, began to receive. Obviously, you know, Parliament knew that these people owned these estates, they knew they had money. More typically, how did the taxation of these estates go down and how did that change over time?
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Adrian Tinniswood
That, that's crucial. I think you, you've actually put your finger on, on probably the most important change in the, in 100 year period between the 1870s and say the 1970s. In 1894, you start, you see the introduction of death duties of, you know, of attacks on the transfer of assets on the death of the owner. And they're really small. In 1894 they're a percent or two. By the 19, by the 1930s, on big estates, estates that are worth more than 2 million pounds. And in the 1930s, that really does mean big estates, you're being charged 40% of the value.
- [07:23]
Cole Smead
Wow.
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Adrian Tinniswood
On death by 1950, you're being charged 80% of the value on death.
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Cole Smead
Wow.
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Adrian Tinniswood
80. You've got to find 80% of the value of that capital asset. I mean, sure, there are lots of, you know, there are lots of clauses and byways and, and, and, you know, there are lots of fixes. But by and large, by 1950, death duties and estate duties are at 80% and that meant the end of the country house. There was a kind of social hierarchy, if you like. And sure, in the traditional hierarchy in Britain.
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Cole Smead
Well, yeah, the old saying is the more expensive something is, the less you use it. And to your point, taxes become a cost on use. These were gentry, these were nobles, some had money, some were the family money was getting fewer and fewer and fewer. But they were also just weird people, normal people. They were just a mix and hodgepodge of humanity. I loved learning about the 5th Duke of Portland's home, Wilbeck Abbey. Could you kind of teach us the oddities of this home? Because I think it's an interesting way of thinking about, oh, this is a great second, third or fourth home for someone. What did that actually mean? And how bizarre could that be?
- [08:44]
Adrian Tinniswood
I mean, the Dukes of Portland had had estates in Nottinghamshire, in the English Midlands, at Welbeck and around Welbeck for generations. I mean, for 2, 300 years, the 5th Duke of Portland, though, for reasons we still don't quite understand, he became increasingly reclusive. You know, it started. He had a townhouse in London, and he put up kind of frosted glass around the gardens so that neighbors couldn't look in, which is an odd thing for a duke to do, you know, because people just generally didn't look it. You know, that was weird. But then his main ancestral seat, Welbeck Abbey, that you mentioned, he started to go underground. You know, he. He started to build tunnels under the. Under the estate so that he could go to and fro to the station, the nearby station, in. In a carriage, which was then lifted onto a flatbed truck so he didn't have to see anybody and taken down to London.
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Cole Smead
Wow.
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Adrian Tinniswood
I mean, and. And it reached its kind of climax, I guess, when his heir, the 6th Duke of Portland, arrived after his death in the 1870s. He found that the private apartments that the 5th Duke had got, they all had big brass letter boxes in the doors so servants could shove food through and collect empty plates. They all had lavatories in the corner with ducal coronets on the top so he could, you know, whenever the mood and nature took him, he didn't have to move very far. But it was a very strange setup. And, yeah, he could. The thing is, he was a duke, and in a deferential age, people might kind of raise their eyebrows, but to be honest, you know, dukes did what. What dukes wanted to do. You know, you didn't. You don't find, apart from a few kind of Republicans and radicals, you don't. You. You find Britain, Even in the 1870s and 80s, a deferential society, one with cav, you know, careful social hierarchies which are observed and the rules that go with them are observed. So people kind of knew that the Duke was weird. But, you know, so what? There are lots. One of the things I found in researching the pound, the glory, is that there are a lot of weird landowners. An awful lot.
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Cole Smead
No, and that's the other thing. Is like, you know, I think. You know, I think people often would assume. Oh, you know, I think of them like pro athletes. They're good from far, but they're far from good. And I think that's what we can take away from your book as well. I loved. You know, you talk about the tunnels. I mean, he could. Two cars could go next to each, or two carts, I should say. Horse carts could go next to each other in the tunnel. And I think he had an elevator which would then lift his horse cart up into the home so that he never had to be outside and be seen. And it has almost kind of like use a movie, an Edward Scissorhands feel to it where he was a recluse doing whatever he wanted with also machinations of objects and tinkering that while open floorboards were in the floor of a nice house.
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Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, he. You're right. And he had. He actually built an underground ballroom and he had another lift so guests could arrive at Welbeck Abbey in their coach, in their carriage, and the lift would take them down to this underground ballroom so they didn't have to get out. But he never entertained. You know, he. He didn't. He didn't actually sort of. You know, he never had balls. It's the most peculiar setup.
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Cole Smead
Was it the duke's home where you commented. And I'm trying to go off notes here, but. And you commented the duke's home did host an event where obviously Franz Ferdinand attended, but it was for hunting, I think. And you joked around that, you know, history would have been massively different if events had played out differently. The duke's home. And really speaking to how important some of the people were that would attend these events in the English countryside.
- [12:34]
Adrian Tinniswood
Sure. I mean, the fifth duke's successor, who was a cousin, the sixth Duke of Portland, he was a great entertainer. I mean, he was a great sportsman. He had two or three shooting estates in Scotland, as well as a house in London and Welbeck Abbey itself. And. Yeah, I mean, Edward, Prince of Wales, who will become Edward vii, George V, they were regular visitors. And the incident that you refer to when Franz Ferdinand in 1930 was part of a shooting party at Welbeck. That's right. One of the beaters dropped his gun. One of the loaders rather dropped his gun and it went off and it just missed Franz Ferdinand's head. And the Duke of Portland, the sixth Duke, said, just imagine what had happened if. If we'd accidentally blown Franz Ferdinand's head off, there would have Been no Sarajevo, maybe there would have been no World War I. Which is a strange thought, isn't it?
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Cole Smead
Very, very strange thought. So you talk about this term, the nouveau rich. Can you explain when the nouveau rich would show up in the English countryside? How was that looked at? How was that accepted? Because you start to get into, quote, I'll call old money versus new money. And there was also this idea of nobility versus money. So how would the blue blood snobs, if you will, deal with the nouveau rich?
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Adrian Tinniswood
This, it's a bit of a, this became a kind of central part of my book. I think I was really surprised that, you know, your, the conventional wisdom is that the industrialist, you know, the engineer, the factory owner, having made his money, what he wants is social acceptability. So what he does, he buys a country estate where, you know, he can mix with the county set, where his wife can entertain, where his daughters can teach the local Sunday school and go sick visiting in the village. It's a kind of dream. It's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And there's a sense that again, the conventional wisdom suggests that people like this were looked down on by the traditional landed aristocracy and gentry, the establishment looked down on these incomers. In fact, you start to look, and it's much more complicated than that. For one thing, a lot of these incomers were so much richer than the traditional landed, you know, a money spoke, you might laugh at them behind their backs. You still wanted to get invited to their parties. Always.
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Cole Smead
Yeah, yeah.
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Adrian Tinniswood
You know, you've got, and you've got, you do have industrialists. I mean, I, I, one of the people I talk about in the book is William Armstrong, who started out as a lawyer, became an engineer, became a ship owner, became an inventor. He invented the breech loading rifle which made him, is an armor manufacturer, made him a fortune and he built himself a huge country house in the north of England, Cragside, one of the most wonderful houses in the world. And it's a crazy place because it, it kind of evokes the past. It's not a modern country house, it's, it, you know, it's got half timbering, it's got battlements, it's got Georgian bay windows and it's a lovely romantic house. But inside there are hydraulic lifts, there are, there are electric lighting. It's one of the first houses in Britain to be lit by electricity. You know, it's a modern house inside, but looking back to this softer past and Armstrong was accepted, and he's accepted because he's massively, massively rich.
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Cole Smead
Sure. Well, so I want to. I'm going to jump around here a little bit because you talk about this later in the book. But. But it reminds me of a question so that I think the singers would be my case study in going from nouveau rich to being what would be socially accepted in those circles. Because obviously Singer of the sewing machine fame. It took one generation to be fully accepted is my theory that I took away from your book. And so as I think about my own children, it's like, okay, I'm not the prize. They are the prize.
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Adrian Tinniswood
You're doing it for that. You're doing it for that.
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Cole Smead
Is that a fair assessment that it took one generation in each case to usually be fully accepted?
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Adrian Tinniswood
It depends, I think. I mean, we, we need to explore the singers who are among my favorite people in the entire book. I've got to tell you. Isaac Singer, as you say, he patented the sewing machine and made a fortune out of it. He amassed a huge fortune. He also amassed a huge family of the latest count is something like 24 kids by a variety of wives and mistresses. And he wasn't always particular.
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Cole Smead
Elon's got a number to shoot for now.
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Adrian Tinniswood
You said that, not me. Okay, but, but yeah, he's, he's, you know, he has this enormous fortune, this enormous family, and he finds himself rejected by New York high society. He's American. He lives in New York. He's rejected. And his wife, they're rejected by New York society. They move to Paris and then to England and he builds himself a country house, an enormous country house. Now he dies quite. He's. He's accepted by local societies, looked down on a bit by some of the, you know, the more established landed types. But his son, his son Paris Singer. And we're in, we're in Brooklyn Beckham territory here. He's called Paris Singer because Paris is where he was conceived. It's. He makes the house even bigger. It's a place called Old Way, Old Way Mansion. And it's a wonderful, wonderful house. It's in. In need of a lot of love and care at the moment. It's. It's not in a good state, but it's fantastic. Fantastic. It's like a miniature Versailles. It's this vast French chateau in the middle of the. The Devon countryside in southwest England. And Paris, again, is so massively rich. Paris would. If he was around in the 1940s and 50s. We called him part of the. We'll say he was part of the Jeff jet set. You know, he's got apartments in Paris, in New York, in London. He eventually wanders down to Palm beach and decides to build himself a resort. I mean, Paris Springer start, you know, singer starts Palm Beach.
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Adrian Tinniswood
But while he's in England, he plays the part of a landed gentleman. You know, he actually adopts the role. And there's a sense in which these incomers, well, you know, they played the game, some of them. Sometimes they didn't want to and sometimes they would, they would sort of skip it, but most of the time they would play the game that would earn them social acceptance.
- [19:05]
Cole Smead
Sure, yeah. Because I also think, I mean he got his way, all the way to a role in the coronation of the King as well. So it wasn't just the nobles accepting him, this was all the way to the royal family.
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Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, absolutely right. And partly that's because Edward VII, when Queen Victoria dies in 1901, but for the last 30 or 40 years of her reign, Edward Prince of Wales is the, you know, is the public face. After her husband Prince Albert dies, she retreats into mourning and she, you know, and, and Edward Prince of Wales is the face of royalty. Now Edward, adult, accepts his set called the Marlborough House set because Marlborough House was where he lived in London. And his friends that he gathered around him, they're a different type. They're not the traditional courtiers. You've got bankers, you've got industrialists, you've got, you've got Jews, you know. In a fiercely anti Semit society, Edward Prince Prince of Wales and later as Edward vii, he surrounds himself with Rothschilds and Cassells and Baron Hersh's and the, these are people who traditionally are outsiders. They're not part of British society.
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Cole Smead
But if you're going to go for a big party, these people could throw quite a party. And if you're going to go out to all hours of the night, I mean, these are people that had the money to do that. Isn't that just kind of. He was, he was yoking himself to the lifestyle he wanted.
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Adrian Tinniswood
Absolutely right. And they paid for it, they bankrolled it. One of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons he surrounded himself with very wealthy Jewish financiers was because they could cough up when he was hard up and he was quite often, you know, he's in debt quite a lot. Ernest Cassels was acted as his banker and you know, when he made losses, Ernest Cassels sucked them up. When he made profits, Cassells gave him the money. You know, so there were practical reasons for it, but it did mean that it broke down a lot of those traditional social barriers.
- [21:04]
Cole Smead
Hi, I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management and.
- [21:10]
Host of this podcast.
- [21:11]
If you enjoy this podcast, I'd like to invite you to check out smeedcap.com at our firm. We are stock market investors. We advise investors who fear stock market failure with a discipline that has proven success over long periods of time. Learn more about our funds@smeedcap.com past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Speed Funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, llc.
- [21:46]
Not affiliated. How often was the wife a main cog in the social circle? You know, because you often had these patriarchs coming in, buying these estates, but then the wife had a role to play, either socially or with the tenants on the estate. Can you explain the wife's role in that?
- [22:06]
Adrian Tinniswood
I, I can, and I think it, the wife's role is, has historically been underplayed. You know, we, we talk about, we talk about, you know, Isaac Singer building Old Way or William Armstrong building Cragside, but you can't actually imagine their wives not having a part in that. You know, you can't imagine that at least them not choosing, choosing the drapes, for heaven's sake. You know, that they, they, they're involved in the creation of the house and they're also pivotal towards, towards the entertaining in the house. They, they would distribute arms to the poor. They would play kind of lady bountiful. They would organize charity events. They would sit on committees. They, you know, they played a part in the county, some of them in the nation. And we tend to think of, you know, we tend to think of the husbands doing that. Quite often the wives have been hidden in history and they had a much more pivotal role in country, in country, country house society. I think certainly when it came to entertaining, they did well.
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Cole Smead
Especially for the Victorians who believed in philanthropy, it was a, it was an ideal that, that they thought highly of. And therefore the Victorians really kind of dominated, to your point, the philanthropic endeavors. And, and that's one of the things I took away from your book.
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Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, I, I could absolutely. I mean, some more than others. But I mean, I've just been reading. He doesn't figure strongly in my book, but I've just been reading about Edward Guinness, who was from the Guinness Brewing family. And, you know, he had half a dozen country houses in the 1890s, early 1900s. He got shooting estate, he got houses in Dublin and London by the coast. And he was a really, really rich businessman. I mean one of the richest men in the world in 1900. But he's also, you know, he's a tremendous philanthropist. All the Guinnesses were. So he's, you know, he pays for and builds worker housing, he improves house, you know, tenement housing in Dublin and in London. He gives money to the poor, he gives money to the church. And he does that partly because that's because he's a good guy and that's what good guys did then. But also he wants peerage, he wants a peerage, he wants a title and he gets it.
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Cole Smead
Yeah.
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Adrian Tinniswood
You know, he doesn't actually buy it but he owns it, let's say.
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Cole Smead
Yeah. So when the Carnegie's came over, they rented with an option to buy their property for some reason I've always loved the idea of renting a place with option to buy. That way you kind of like you can figure out what you don't like about it and that way you know, when you buy. I guess my question is, was renting accepted or was the ownership really all that was accepted over time of these country houses?
- [24:49]
Adrian Tinniswood
Oh no, no, it was definitely accepted. I mean you've got it functioning different levels. So for example, the hunting season, fox hunting season in the English Midlands, you would find country houses being let for the season for three, four, five months and keen huntsmen and women would, you know, would just move into the country. They'd still go back to London at weekends because you've got the railway now and then you've got the motorcar. So they can, they're not stranded in the countryside. But you also have. As the agricultural depression starts to bite and as taxation starts to bite, you'll see country house owners that maybe can't quite afford to keep up their house. There's a, there's a kind of sequence. They try to let their house for a year or five years or 10 years, then they'll start selling off the library or something like that. They'll sell off parcels of outlying land.
- [25:43]
Cole Smead
Then they'll was another that you talked about.
- [25:46]
Adrian Tinniswood
Absolutely, yeah. Then they will start to sell off the art and eventually they will sell off the house. But letting the house was. And being a tenant was perfectly acceptable. Absolutely was. You know, there's not a kind of any gradation between owning and renting. So if you want to rent a house, you're up there.
- [26:07]
Cole Smead
Yeah. When and so the social history of this though, I, you know, as you're talking about the American wives that start to show up among these gentry in these country houses, an American wife was very accepted by society, but an American husband wasn't necessarily accepted. Is that a fair way of understanding the social history?
- [26:28]
Adrian Tinniswood
It's quite fair. But the American wives weren't all that accepted quite often either. I mean their money was people wanted to send a check, not to bother coming themselves. One point, Consuelo Vanderbilt is the famous example. You know, she was basically sold to the Duke of Marlborough by her socially ambitious mother. And she was very unhappy and not just because her husband was a bit of a creep. She was unhappy because she wasn't accepted at all by local society to start with. But that, you're right, those kind of bartered brides we know about, there's something like 128American heiresses who marry into the British aristocracy round about the turn of the century. The men we know less about and they are accepted, but again, they tend to come with a fat bang balance. So Andrew Carnegie at Skibo, you, you mentioned William Waldorf Astor at Clifton and Hever Isaac Singer at Old Way. These are, these are very rich people indeed. And sure there might be a few kind of sneers behind people's backs, but by and large they actually assimilate into, into British society very well indeed. Occasionally, occasionally there are mistakes. I mean, one of my favorites is Andrew Carnegie you mentioned at Skiboo, and his wife Louise. They, they having rented Skiboo and then buying it and then extending it massively, they found out one day in 1902 that Edward VII was going to pop in and see them. And they had like an hour's notice of a royal visit. It happened to be in the neighborhood it heard and he was, you know, he just kind of, you know, he's got to go and see that they were petrified. They're running around like mad things. And then for some reason Edward VII turns up and Carnegie invites him into the library and proceeds to recite a massively anti British poem by called Joachim Miller. And there's this line in it which is something like, you know, hail to thee, fat Edward. And at that point Carnegie stops and says to the king, that's you sire. The king is, is really sensitive about his weight. You know, he really is, he's quite fat. His friends used to call him Tum tum behind his back and he really is not impressed. And I don't know what Carnegie was thinking of, but I'd love to have been a fly on the wall to see that.
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Cole Smead
Yeah, Well, I think his daughter bailed him out by blessing him with flowers. And then he also said, you know, here's flowers for the queen as well. And kind of like taking the cutest thing in the world and causing what was said prior to go away. Let's also talk about. You have kind of a few pages on the real estate agent. So if you're the agent at Knight Frank and you got a country house to sell because someone eventually has to sell it, you are obviously going to wealthy people in London, but you would be appealing to Americans, too.
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Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, yeah. And you can see in some of those turn of the century advertisements in magazines like Country Life, which was Country Life then and now, was where you went to for your big, you know, country house, your house for sale. And you can see in some of those turn of the century advertisements for country houses, they are direct appeals to wealthy Americans. And they say that, you know, this, this, you know, this house might. This. How must be well suited for an American in search of his past, in search of his ancestry. They, they aim their advertising at Americans.
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Cole Smead
So under the heading, you talked about this a second ago, but I want to come back to it, you talked about how there was anti. Semitism in England and British society. Let's use the Sassoons maybe as an example. They were not necessarily accepted at the beginning, but that would change over time.
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Adrian Tinniswood
To a certain extent. You know, I mean, they were, they were accepted in the end because they were a very close part of Edward VII's circle. Reuben Sassoon, Albert Sassoon. You know, these, these guys are, they're part of a Baghdadi Jewish banking family, an import family that with interest in Bombay and in Persia as it was then, they're immensely rich. They are part of Edward VII circle. And that, that helps. But then you've got Philip Sassoon, who is a little bit later than my book, but Philip Sassoon, who's the, the next generation. And yes, he's accepted. I mean, he's part of the government. He's. Everyone wants to go to his parties, but there's still this kind of coded racism. He's still, you know, he's referred to, he's, he's exotic, he's oriental. And what they mean is he's Jewish, but, but they don't like. And then again, you get, you get this crazy notion, a constant reminder that history doesn't work like you expect it to work. So, sure, I don't know if your, your listeners, your viewers will know of Oswald Mosley. Oswald Mosley was the leader of the British Fascist movement in the 1930s. He was a pig. He was horrible. However, he was a big friend of Philip Sassoon's. In fact, he met his wife at one of Philip Sassoon's parties. Now, you're not supposed to get kind of, you know, this neo Nazi hobnobbing with, with a Jewish banker. And that's because, you know, people are people, never mind the ideas or the ideologies. You see somebody socially, you get on with them and, you know, you just go for it.
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Cole Smead
Yeah, that's funny. So on this, by the way, when I was reading your book and you started bringing up the Orientalism, I did a full year of Islamic civilization in college. Orientalism plays widely into a lot of the study of Islamic civilization and, and the Ottoman Empire and things of that nature. You talk about the orientalization and also that through the lens of India and how it really affect the architecture of certain parts of these country houses or these estates. I think you used an example of one of the billiards room was effectively designed in an Indian fashion with very beautiful woods and carvings. And explain how that affected the country house.
- [32:34]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, I mean, you've, you've got a couple of things going on there. One is that in whatever it is 1870 or 1880 odd, Queen Victoria is formally announced as Empress of India. That is her title. She becomes Empress of India and it's a, you know, it's a means of unifying the various states in, in India that have basically been been taken by the East India Company and by the Brit, by the British Army. But that, that, that, that moment when she becomes Empress of India causes a, a growth, a renaissance, if you like, of interest in all things Indian. And the period room that you refer to, the Duke of Connell's period room at Bagshot park, it didn't just contain Indian motifs and decoration. They sent Indian craftsmen over from Lahore. It was, I mean, it was now Pakistan, isn't it? It was then India. They send craftsmen over to create this thing. Queen Victoria herself, she likes it so much that at her own, one of her own country houses, Osborne on the Isle of Wight in the south of England, she has a durbar room built by an Indian architect and designer, Bayram Singh. And you know, it just drips with wonderful, wonderful Rajput architecture and decoration. And you've got, you know, one of the most intriguing and sad figures in all this is Duleep Singh, who was the Mahar, the last Maharaj of the Sikh Empire. And Duleep Singh had his, his, his empire taken from him by the East India Company in the mid century. He's then, he's only a boy. He's brought over to England, he's given a pension, he becomes friendly with the Queen Victoria's kids and having rented a succession of houses, this goes back to your point earlier on. He re a succession of houses, many for shooting, because he's a great sportsman. And eventually he buys a shooting estate in the east of England, Elverton it's called. And he has a, a rather ordinary Italianate block of a country house built for him by an architect called John Norton. And you look at it, you think, that's all right. You step inside and he just drips with Rajput decoration and carvings. They writhe all over the walls and ceilings. It's the most fabulous, fabulous house. It didn't bring Dulip Singh happiness. He, he went bankrupt. He left his wife and went off with a barmaid called Ada and eventually died quite young. He had a stroke. But there was a time certainly, you know, it's I, I hesitate and I stutter because it's so difficult. He's accepted and yet he's not, you know, Queen Victoria accepts him. But he's ultimately, he's a Peter, he's a pet, you know, he's a curiosity, he's fun.
- [35:25]
Cole Smead
When in some ways he was societally jailed because it's like, you know, to your point, he's accepted because the Queen accepts him, not because everyone said, oh, I really like him, you know, he's fun. It was kind of like, you know, by way of Queen is how I read into your book. And also again, his children, he had one of his children that were more accepted in society than he was. So again, he's caught in that. I'm the first generation and therefore I'm still awkward. Another thing so media wise, because all the media you were talking about, the magazines or the gazettes or whatever, was being used to publish this. So how did you determine who kept the roles of who was noble or not? How would you determine who had peerage, for example?
- [36:14]
Adrian Tinniswood
Well, you've got, I mean this is quite a complex issue. You've got the college of arms, who, you know, who give arms. You've got, you've got, you know, bibles like Burke's Peerage and Debrets which, you know, give a long lineage of who's who. So it's, it's, you know, it, it's, it's not a case of keeping, keeping the, the information like you, I'm in a library or anything. People just knew who was who, you know, there's no question. And, and who's invited as well. That's the other thing, you know, who, who.
- [36:47]
Cole Smead
Yeah, who is part of the parties.
- [36:49]
Adrian Tinniswood
Exactly, exactly.
- [36:51]
Cole Smead
So at that time would, because there were obviously publications tied to country houses, though. So they would document whose house is owned, whose house is being remodeled. Teach us about those publications.
- [37:06]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, I mean, you've got magazines like Country Life, which weren't. I mean, they're not actually aimed at landed society. They're aimed at people that aspire to be part of founded society, you know, and that.
- [37:22]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [37:22]
Adrian Tinniswood
And they will, There's a difference there, I think. And of course, landed society reads them because it's nice to read something about yourself which is saying what a great, a great person you are.
- [37:32]
Cole Smead
It's the influence of that era.
- [37:33]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, it is, it really is. And they also, they also conjure up a very romantic view of the country house and the past. You know, a lot of the, a lot of the writing around the turn of the century on country houses is about houses that are, you know, that are 400 years old, 500 years old houses with moats and swans gliding on the moat, you know, and, and tall chimneys and, and, you know, long galleries filled with kind of carvings. It's a mythic view of the past. And it's a, it's a view of the past which gains strength as English society starts to disintegrate, as traditional values start to go as a, as a, you know, in Marxist terms, as a rising proletariat start to challenge the old feudal ways and indeed the bourgeoisie seek to challenge those feudal ways.
- [38:27]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [38:28]
Adrian Tinniswood
And you know, they, they. It's interesting that I think in the 1920s you have the first British Prime Minister Bona Law, who didn't have a country house of his own. He's the first one in all the history of Britain.
- [38:42]
Cole Smead
And that's very telling, the architecture of these houses. So if I'm going to walk into a country house, what would be typical rooms that I would run into if I was going to do a tour of someone's country house on a Saturday morning, what kind of rooms would I be seeing in that house?
- [39:02]
Adrian Tinniswood
So if we're looking at a Victorian or an Edwardian, you know, a new build, you would typically go into a great hall. And by the beginning of the 20th century, that great hall is turning into something of a living hall, you know, it's got sofas in it. People gather around the fire in these things. Oh, they gather around the fire because that, because the room is so damn cold. I mean that's one reason behind the fire. But you would have a great hall which is a kind of quasi public introduction to the house. Then typically you would have male and female zones. You would have a boudoir and a drawing room which were essentially female governed areas. You would have a library and study, which are male areas. A morning room is female. And you'd have a dining room which is kind of an in between area.
- [39:48]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [39:48]
Adrian Tinniswood
So you'd have a, you know, a typical Victorian abortion country house, great hall, drawing room, morning room, library, study, dining room. And then you would have a servant swing. The bedrooms are all upstairs, which they hadn't been in the 16th or 17th century. But now the bedrooms upon my first floor, your second floor, they're, they're upstairs anyway. And then the, the, the servants of whom there may be half a dozen or 10, there may be 20 or 30 indoor servants depending on the size of the house. And they will be in a self contained wing. They will, they will. There's a kind of a cultural social apartheid going on. The upstairs and downstairs there is a green base door, literally a green bay's door because it's a soundproofing device which separates the two communities. Now you can only do that because you've got, now got an efficient bell pull system which allows you to summon servants at a distance. Before you had a bell pull system in the 17th, early 18th centuries, you had to yell, you had to yell for a servant. You have to lean over the banister rail and shout. So because of that, servants tended to be in the main body of the house waiting to be summoned. Well now you put them in a separate block and they are predominantly lower middle class and working class or laboring class that draw, drawn from there. Not all of them. I don't know how far we want to go into the, the, the composition of, of the, the downstairs side of the house. But in a big house you would have a chef who was maybe French or Belgian or Swiss, a male chef. You would have. The woman of the house might have a Swiss lady's maid. The man of the house would have a valet. And then we've got kitchen staff, we've got housemates. As I say, we may have. The Asters had 28 indoor servants around about the end of the First World War. That's a lot of people.
- [41:46]
Cole Smead
We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at SMEAD Capital Management. At smead, we believe in disciplined investing, which is why the SMEAD funds have a proven track record of long term outperformance. If you're an investor who fears stock market failure like I do and want to invest in wonderful companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit smeedcap.com Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. SMEAD funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services llc.
- [42:29]
Not affiliated. So what I, what I'd love to go to next is how problematic was a castle. I mean, I, the thing I took away is like the last thing I want to get for a country house is a castle. Because it seems that that was a very tough building to work, live in, do anything with, to modernize. Is that pretty fair?
- [42:52]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, but, but it's old. It's old. And because it's old, it's attractive, it's. Right. Yeah, it's cool. Exactly, Exactly. And people put up with a lot. I mean, there are, there are a number of castles that are built or modernized in the period. One of my favorites is Cardiff Castle, which is not a country house, but it was right in the center of Cardiff in Wales. But it's, it's a huge medieval castle, which is, it had been remodeled in the 18th century. And then the Marquis of Bute and his architect, William Burgess, they modernize it again in the 1860s and 70s and they turn it into what they think a castle should be. So they fill it with paintings and statues of damsels in distress and knights in armor. And the fireplaces, the chimney pieces have battlements on them. It's an exquisitely romantic house. It really is. It's also slightly weird. William Burgess had a drug habit. The architect. It comes out every now and then. Cardiff is the only house I know where the duck bill platypus is used as a decorative motif. You see them crawling all over the library. There are monkeys everywhere. Monkeys everywhere. In the dining room at Cardiff Castle, there is a frieze of monkeys going around the paneling. And one of those monkeys has. They're carved in wood, but one of those monkeys has a real ivory teeth and he has a nut in his mouth between his teeth. And the Marquis of Bute used to have to ram this nut down his throat. And that was the way to summon the Butler to bring. To bring the servants to get the food into the dining room. It's so weird, so eccentric, but it's a wonderful house. Really wonderful.
- [44:43]
Cole Smead
I was going to pivot to the garden because you talk about the garden. I thought the most interesting question tied to the garden and you pose, I think this is from a publication that you quote. The question at issue is a very simple one. Is the garden to be considered in relation to the house and as an integral part of the design, which depends for its success on the combined effect of house and garden, or is the house to be ignored in dealing with the garden? End quote. Didn't it just depend on the owner's view of that question?
- [45:18]
Adrian Tinniswood
Well, yeah, but it. It's. There's a battle in the 1890s between architects and plantsmen. The plantsmen, led by figures like William Robinson, who is a plant, was a plantsman. You get the plantsman saying it's all about flowers. It's all about plants. You get the architects saying it's all about structure. You. You know, if the structure's all right, yeah, you could put in a few flowers here and there if you like. But basically, it's about the terracing and the steps and the ornamental pool. And this was a really vicious battle. It took, in a way, it took two of the most famous garden designers of the period, Edwin Lutyens, the architect, and Gertrude Jekyll, the garden designer, who worked together to create some of the finest gardens in Edwardian England. So they would work, you know, Lutchens would work on the structure together with Jekyll, who worked on the planting. And they, you know, they came up with some beautiful, beautiful things. But it was a real live issue in the 1890s, 1900s. And if an architect remodeled your house or built your house, you know, he may also, you know, design the garden and leave the. The plantsman to just kind of fill in the gaps, which the plantsmen used to get really annoyed about.
- [46:37]
Cole Smead
Sure. Well, so I also. I thought a lot about the amenities because you discuss, you know, various amenities. So, for example, you know, gas used for lighting, and you commented on one of the houses, it used sewer gas, and you thought it was just for lighting and. No, it was actually to just get rid of the sewer gas, which could be a problem to the house.
- [46:56]
Adrian Tinniswood
This was 10 hall towers in the English Midlands, where a guy called Thornycroft, he had a. To be fair, he had a thing about sewer gas. He was really worried about sewer gas. He thought sewer gas was going to kill us all. So He. Yes, he invented this elaborate system of chimneys and towers which took the sewer gas up from the sewers and burned it off. He thought every street in London should have some kind of sewer gas outlet. He was, he was more than little crazy. This is the guy who wanted to pipe fresh air from the English coast into London so that Londoners could have fresh air. Not surprisingly, you didn't find any takers.
- [47:38]
Cole Smead
Sure. That's funny. How about hot and cold water? Because you talked about some of the issues that depending on the estate, you know, how do you get water uphill, for example, could be an issue. How would they get hot water though?
- [47:51]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, I mean you've got coal fires, you've got copper, you have sort of tanks that you could heat, you've got boilers that you could heat. And of course you've got servants who could bring buckets of hot water, you know, to fill the bath in your bedroom. Some of the older families are quite slow to adopt new technology like hot and cold running water, like bathrooms. And that's because they've already got labor saving devices. They're called servants, you know.
- [48:22]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [48:22]
Adrian Tinniswood
You're. You're not carrying the coal up and.
- [48:25]
Cole Smead
Down the prehistoric machine.
- [48:26]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So they're quite slow and you tend. Go on. Sorry.
- [48:32]
Cole Smead
Oh, I was going to say. And you get into the. There's the tension, right. There's the tension of. It's like I put, I literally put in my notes in your book, Luddites, right. You get the Orwellian tension of, well, do we upgrade to the newest machine because it might cost Bob his job.
- [48:51]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And you know, this goes back to something you were talking about earlier, that, that social noblesse oblige, if you like, that social obligation to your employees and to your tenants and to the people on your estate is really strong in a lot of cases. And so, yes, they were quite strong. You tend to find. Not always, but you tend to find it's the nouveau riche industrialist who is the early adopter of new technology. Cause he or she. But usually he, he's found out what it will do in his factory. It will make him a lot of money. New technology will. So he's happy to bring it into the house. He's happy to light the house with gas or electricity. Of course, he's happy to get a motorcar and do away with his stable hands and his horses because he's seen what technology can do for him.
- [49:40]
Cole Smead
Sure. You also talk about the tension though of what it's like to have all this help in the house. So, for example, you obviously would have a very close relationship which, you know, got more departed as they were, you know, more removed. But they would know a lot about the families that are in these houses, their wealth, their jewelry, everything like that. Can you kind of talk about the problem that could come up with, you know, staff that weren't very trustworthy and the crimes that could come off that?
- [50:09]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, I'm. I mean, the servants were generally regarded as being dishonest. They weren't a lot of them. But if ever there was a theft, you know, you. You blame the butler. And, and there are lots of cases as well of, of, you know, the butler did it or, or a footman stealing or a housekeeper leaving a window open so that a burglar can come in in the night and take stuff. There is a tension there, certainly between servant and master and mistress, but by and large, I think, you know, they were. I mean, I made quite a lot of them in the book. And that's partly because I think it's, you know, there are. There are some strange stories there about. There's one about a footman who, who he thought he was so clever, he stole his mistress's jewels and then he sent a letter down to his mother, a sealed letter down to his mother in London asking his mother to send this letter back to the house offering to give the jewels back for a certain if a ransom was left. The trouble is he used the note paper. He used the note paper from his employer who. And the anning that his employer had used on the note paper. So the employer took one look at this and thought he did it quite rightly so.
- [51:23]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [51:24]
Adrian Tinniswood
And of course you get. You get all kinds of burg of. Of crime prevention devices. You know, you'll get bells on windows, you'll get chains, chains on doors. The advice was, if you have a dog, have a small dog rather than a big one, and keep it sort of tied up in the house so it barks, but doesn't actually attack an intruder. One of the reasons for keeping it tied up was that burglars were known to put poisoned meat through a letterbox so the dog could eat it and then pass out. So it was safe to get in there.
- [51:58]
Cole Smead
Sure. So because I think at the peak, you talk about the staff, or maybe it was 1901, you said there were 1.3 million staff working in country houses. So this was a massive industry in the sense of population that were doing some sort of role in those houses. So, I mean, Even if you had, let's just say you had, I don't know, 5,000 events that were crimes relative to the people that are working in these houses. That's a pretty good success rate that the wealthy are dealing with. Let me take it one step, because I also. The other relationship is, I mean, you talk about the houses that burned down. I think you talked about gas explosions or electricity problems before we had fuses being a common issue. And I think the one I remember the most was Ragley hall, where the owner had a list of rules to do. And it was like, stay calm. First off, don't be frightened. And you use it in the book as a way of understanding kind of what the fire rules in that house were.
- [53:05]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah. And I mean, some houses didn't bother, but some houses like Ragley were really well prepared in that. You're right. You got. You had regular drills. Some of the big houses have their own fire brigades, you know, that firemen drawn from estate workers and their own fire engines as well. Merriweather and company kind of cornered the market in small fire engines, which were, you know, by today's standards, they weren't very effective. And also, you needed to get a water supply. It's an amazing number of houses I came across that burned down in a winter because the fire brigade got there and then couldn't break the ice on a nearby lake to get the hose in to. To put the fire out. But that's funny. You. Yeah, and it's. It's. At one point, I was reckoning that that at least one country house a week was either burning down or being badly damaged by fire. It was, you know, it was what worried people most. You know, in a world still lit mainly by fire, accidents happened. You know, the. The Duke of Portland's house, Welback Abbey, nearly burned down in 1900, and that was because a maid was ironing, was pressing one of the daughter's sashes for a party. She plugged the electric iron in. There was no current because current came and went. She went downstairs to do something else. The current came back on and the iron heated up and then burned the house down. The Duke of Portland said after that, he threw all the electric irons he could find in the lake because the safest place for them.
- [54:41]
Cole Smead
Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on the show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and even number one in the business category in several countries. As you may know, this show is brought to you by SMEAD Capital Management. Smead Capital Management understands how frustrating and illogical the stock market can be. If you are searching for funds with a proven track record, give the SMEAD funds a look. Or better yet, reach out@smeedcap.com and don't forget to mention that you're a fan of the podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. SMEAD funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, llc.
- [55:32]
Not affiliated. The other thing that I really, because I think, I think this is maybe one of the featured moments in the book and you could tell me if I'm wrong in that, but let's say I'm going to entertain for a weekend and I'm going to do that for the royals. I think the Cavendish family, their weekend entertainment was kind of a perfect picture of a noble, wealthy estate hosting folks. So could you kind of walk us through what that weekend looked like for the Cavendish family?
- [56:04]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a great honor and it's a massive chore at the same time because you know, you, when the King and queen, or the prince and princess in this case, come to visit, you really want to give them a good time. But there are certain expectations, you know, as, as they drive, as they arrive at the station, the railway station, they're met by crowds cheering, you know, flags that they're cheered all the way to their carriage. They carry their people line the streets. It's a really big deal. I mean, and it's hard for us to imagine that in a much more kind of media savvy age that people, you know, to see the Prince of Wales and the Princess of Wales was a tremendously big thing. And from, from, you know, as they arrive at the house and the Cavendish family, Dukes of Devonshire's house is Chatsworth was still there, still owned by the Dukes of Devonshire, still lived in mother Duke of Devonshire. As they arrive at Chatsworth, you know, everything is laid on for them. The shooting. There are, there's a ball for 400 of the local gentry and aristocracy. 400 people. I mean that's quite, and special trains are laid on to bring guests into the, into the neighborhood. The, the ball doesn't go that well because the trains are late and people don't get there till about 11:30 at night. But it's all, there's a firework display for the tenants in the park, there's visits to neighboring country houses, and the whole thing is choreographed all the time. You've got the Prince's private detectives. Not private detectives, they're. They're Scotland Yard detectives, but the security people keeping an eye on things. There's one great story I came across where for another visit to Chatsworth Royal visit, the police found this foreign guy wandering into the house. And they. They sort of interrogated him, said, who are you? You know, this is just before the Prince of Wales arrives. And he says, I am. I am Deband. And they think. They. They don't know how on earth. It turns out he's a member of the band. He was actually one of the musicians who was playing that night, and he wasn't an anarchist at all, which is what everybody was worried about. But yes, so you've got visits to local. You know, the Prince and Princess would receive loyal addresses from local people. They would see school children. I mean, it was quite a tiring business being a royal on a. On a visit like that. But they also got to, you know, to play cards. There's a. A great little vignette of the Princess of Wales playing billiards. You know, she loved. She loved a kind of quiet game of Billions at night. It's. And once the Prince and Princess of Wales have gone, you know, you heave a sigh of relief, but if it's gone, well, that's great, but you're a lot poorer for it. I mean, it would cost thousands and thousands of pounds to put something like that on. But you didn't say.
- [59:02]
Cole Smead
No, it was common that. That hunting would. Hunting would be part of that weekend as you got later into the weekend, too.
- [59:08]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, usually shooting rather. I mean, yeah, shooting rather than fox hunting with. With me, I tend to think of hunting being fox hunting horses. But yes, shooting on the chassis with the States was always, you know, was. Was usually part of. Of that kind of setup. And in fact, by the end of that set, by the end of the 19th century, you know, you've got some of the big shooting estates. That's what they're for, you know, that's why they're bought. That Edward, Prince of Wales, Edward vii as he becomes. His estate at Sandringham is primarily shooting estate. Elverdom, where Duleep Singh lived, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire. Elverdon is a shooting estate and he sells it to Edward Guinness, Lord Ivy, and Ivy buys it because he wants a shooting estate, you know, and. And Grant, you know, land is. Is preserved you know, game is preserved on it. It's, it's, it's, it's not there to provide pasture. It's not there to provide, you know, to grow wheat or anything like that, to graze cattle. It's there to provide cover for the pheasants and the grouse. That's what it's for. Over thousands of acres.
- [60:19]
Cole Smead
When the shooting. It seems like the other debate that would go on among these people is what makes you a greater shooter, how, how good you are at shooting or how many pheasants you took down. Because it seemed like part of the, the, I'll call it the, the, you know, the fish's tale was really, you know, what were your numbers, not how good of a shot you are.
- [60:42]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, yeah. And people complained about this even at the time that all, all, you know, the, the, the really, really kind of convinced almost professional shooters. All they cared about was their score, if you like. And that wasn't quite the thing. It wasn't quite what, yeah, decent gentlemen did. But you're right, I mean the, the extent of the slaughter was terrifying. I went at whole Barn in what, 1913, I think George V, who was loved shooting George V. There's a story about when he, he got a telegram from his wife from, From Queen Alexandra. Sorry, no, from Queen Mary saying that his, her mother had just died and would he come back to London. And his response, he was heard as it came back in the car from the shooting estate. He was, he's saying, well, that's not my shooting of the head now, hasn't it? He was really hacked off because he had to stop shooting. But yes, he, he, he and the Prince of Wales.
- [61:46]
Cole Smead
Was he also the one that he skipped a, he skipped a wedding to stay out?
- [61:50]
Adrian Tinniswood
That's right, yeah.
- [61:52]
Cole Smead
He just all out said I'm, I'm not going to be there.
- [61:55]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, I'm busy, basically. That's quite right. But he and his son, another Prince of Wales who will become Edward VIII, the Wallace, the Simpson. Wallace. Simpson over the eighth. But he and, and his son Hallburn in 1913, I mean they, on a single day. I can never remember the figures. It's something like 3,000 birds they shot, you know, I mean the King George V said to his son afterwards, I think we might have overdone it today. And you know, it's, it wasn't sport, it was slaughter.
- [62:23]
Cole Smead
I would have never thought that they, I mean those pheasants weren't there naturally. They had to in many cases procure them, feed them Treat them and effectively. It was. They're like stocking a lake. I mean, they had to stock the fields with pheasants just to be hunted.
- [62:39]
Adrian Tinniswood
Absolutely right. That's. That's exactly what it was. They were brought. Birds were brought in. I mean, at Hall Barn, they were sad at the time that there were so many shots that they were convinced that the owners had actually, you know, had bought in thousands of birds because they couldn't have, you know, the estate couldn't have. Sustainable.
- [62:56]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [62:57]
Adrian Tinniswood
And again, not quite the thing.
- [62:59]
Cole Smead
Yeah. So there's a lot that we didn't cover, Adrian. We didn't touch on the effect of automobile on the weekend parties. I'm looking here. Else. We didn't talk about the infidelity, which, if you want a little bit of fun and sexuality, you can find out there's pages of it in your book. There's a lot of. I mean, the eccentricities to all these characters are just one of the real treasures and make your book such a fun read. But I just want to throw it back to you, Adrian, and ask if there's a story that we haven't talked about or something of the book that you really think is special to you. What would that be for our listeners?
- [63:40]
Adrian Tinniswood
I mean, we've covered the two big things for me when I was doing the book. One were the incomers, the Rothschilds and the Isaac Singers and the Duleep Sings and the important role they played. And indeed, you know, even people that didn't. People who were native Britishers, if you like, but not part of that social milieu. I mean, I was fascinated. One of my favorite characters is Belle Bilson. Belle married into, but married the Earl of Clancarty. Well, he married. He was Viscount Dunlow. He became the Earl of Clancarty. And she was a musical, you know, she was a burlesque actress. And she shouldn't have been accepted in landed society at all. In fact, she was, you know, she became. She became a countess. She did all the things that countesses did. She hosted charity things. She presided over dinners. She. She, you know, distributed arms to the poor. She did everything they should do. And yet this is a, you know, this is an actress. The. The other thing that, that. And again, we have covered it. I think the other thing that intrigued me was the impact of new technology. Like you say, the motor cars, the electricity, the gas lamps, the. The steam laundries. You know, the. The. The Duke of Hamilton installed a steam laundry at his lodge in Scotland. And the reason for that steam laundry, I was amazed was that it speeded up things because every week that laundry had to wash 1800 pieces of linen. That's an awful lot of laundry for a country house and not even a big country house. And I guess the, the, you know.
- [65:19]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [65:19]
Adrian Tinniswood
One of the things that we struggle with a bit is hindsight that, you know, you look at that summer of 1914, and we know what was coming. We know what was coming. We know that a lot of the people attending those garden parties, it was a lovely summer, 1914. I know a lot of the people there, a lot of the men there would soon be dead in Flanders. You know, they would. They would. They wouldn't come back. But of course, they didn't know that. As far as they were concerned, it was just, you know, just another happy summer. And looking back, that gives an added poignancy to it, I think, to. To. To the loss, the sense of loss and the sense of change. You know, something big was happening.
- [65:56]
Cole Smead
Yeah. It reminds me of watching Gone with the Wind where everyone's excited for war, knowing that, you know, in hindsight, no one should have been excited for the Civil War here in the United States either. Adrian, where can people follow you going forward? I see you have a website out there. Are you active in social media?
- [66:14]
Adrian Tinniswood
I am. I'm a Tinniswood. A D E Tinniswood on Twitter. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. I haven't quite got around to tick tock yet, but that's because I don't do the dances, you know.
- [66:26]
Cole Smead
Yeah, but.
- [66:28]
Adrian Tinniswood
Yeah, but if people want to follow me, if people want to follow me on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, they're very welcome.
- [66:38]
Cole Smead
Well, it's been really fun, Adrian. I will say for our listeners, I will say that the part of the book that I think you really will have fun with like I did is learning about Earl Russell and how you can go from being part of nobility in England all the way out to getting a divorce and a marriage in Reno, Nevada. So I'll leave that little breadcrumb out there for our listeners. Our podcast listeners should go out and buy a copy of the Power and the Glory to understand how wealthy or aristocats of another gilded era dealt with their weekends, vacations, and social events. It also reminds me that money can change wealth, but time doesn't change what the wealthy do and the problems they try to fix. If you enjoyed this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to a book with legs, give us review, tell others about the books and the great authors like Adrian that we get to have the opportunity to understand and share the world with and through for our tribe. If you have a book that you'd like to recommend, email podcastmeedcap.com that's podcastmeedcap.com you can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is meedcap. Thank you for joining us for A Book with Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode.
- [67:54]
Thank you for listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice. You can learn more about Smead Capital Management and its products@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.