Edward Seago: Brooke Lodge

"Study of HRH Queen Elizabeth II on horseback,
at her birthday parade in 1953" by Edward Seago

"At thirteen years old, the experience of working with a fine painter and absorbing his ideas was a tremendously exciting experience, and by that time the boy had an understanding companion with whom to share his new horizons. She was his governess, Miss Dora Daniels, who lived nearby and who over the years became his devoted support and a staunch friend to his mother on whom she was a calming influence.

Miss Daniels was small, neat and unfailingly cheerful. She was Edward's ageless ally on all the adventures he could cope with and on fine days, when he was well enough, she would shoulder his easel, take their lunch and they would tramp miles out into the country for a day's painting. There were days when he was too ill to see her, but afterwards, when he lay resting in bed she would take turns with his mother in reading to him, often from the book by Sir Alfred East of which he never tired, and also poetry including the works of Byron and Shelley and, time and again, the poems of John Masefield. She told him, 'No doubt, before you have finished, kings will be sending for you and, one day, one of them will say, 'Arise, Sir Edward, Knight of the Paint Brush!'

The doctor suggested that Edward's health might benefit from living permanently in the country. His father, a countryman at heart, was delighted with the idea and raised the money for the country house of his dreams. Brooke Lodge was a handsome, red-brick Elizabethan-style house about six miles from Norwich. Previously it had been the home of the great Jack Cooke, the legendary Master of the Norwich Staghounds of which Alfred Munnings was an enthusiastic member when he lived five miles away at Church Farm, Swainsthorpe. 

Munnings was a friend of Cooke's and had often visited Brooke Lodge and painted the horses in the sweet, warm atmosphere of the stables. So for Edward the new home represented an intangible link with the famous painter. Even if Edward did not know that Munnings had painted at Brooke, he too would find his vision sharpened by 'bright winter sunlight on clipped horses and scarlet coats; bare trees; stacks, on farmhouse gables, the riding out after a slight frost, the riding home with a frost beginning and a young moon in the sky; puddles already crisping over...'" 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Edward Seago: The Other Side of the Canvas" by Jean Goodman.)