Word: budgerigars
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...inherited more than 90 paintings that hang helter-skelter in ill-lit confusion in the library and the drafty halls of Downton Castle. Ten years ago, the major wired the castle for electricity, and now a TV set sits smack beneath Rembrandt's Flight into Egypt. A caged budgerigar chirps beneath Rembrandt's The Cradle. In addition, there is a Van Dyck ("A lovely one of a galloping horse," says the major) Rubens' portrait of Grotius ("Actually, they tell me now it may be a Van Dyck"), and a painting by Rembrandt's pupil Dou called...
Major Lennox admits to a certain affection for his paintings, but once, when a Rembrandt fell off the wall, his chief concern was whether it had disturbed the budgerigar. "I'm not an artistic sort of chap," he says forthrightly. "Don't understand pictures at all." He sold the Rembrandt to keep up his 14,000-acre estate on which he farms, raises sheep, cattle and daffodils. The daffodils are his real passion. He grows 200 varieties, and says with greater pride than when speaking of his art collection: "I don't know where you could find...