CHEQUERS

Evening Star, Issue 16627, 9 January 1918, Page 2

CHEQUERS

GIFT TO THE NATION. . * To all who have the good fortune to fcnow Chequers (says a correspondent of tha bunday Observer'), one tiought must have occurred when first they heard of Sir Arthur and Lady Lee's gift of Chequers to the nation: "How appropriate! How (as we say) happy!" The fitness of it all is so much more -qompleto than that which usuaJuy attends human beneficence. In the first place, who .are the donors? Sir Arthur Lea is an Englishman, and a politician of tie best English kind; and Onequors, since be lived there, has struck and bald the note of its fcjgh and responBible political temper. Lady.Lee is a lady of New England, who has loved and valued Old England with the fineness of perception and the filial affection shared by her great compatriot Henry James; and iu years to come the country home of the Prime Ministers of Great Britain will gain in interest and charm through, its - association with" the United State of America. Between them, Sir Arthur and Lady Lee have made the Chequers that is i. very different thing from the Chequers ; that was before their reverent hands cleared away the rubbish that obscured md defaced it. Next, what is this place which iU owners have given to the nation? To get lit what it is, we must go back to what it was. King Cymbeline had a castle on the' site, and_ the remains of it are still to be seen in the park. Caraotacus is reported to have been born there. But' the name has nothing to do with. Caractacus. It dates from the reign of Henry 11.. when Elias De Scacarrio (or, in the Old French form of theword, Escheqnier), the keeper of the . King's Exchequer, lived there. Prom the family of Be Cbekers the estate was handed on by descent for 800 years or so, with never a sale until Sir Arthur and Lady Leo bought it, to give it to the nation. It is easy to imagine the surprise of old Elias, of the*Ex:chequer, if his shade should haunt the place, at seeing how any futuro Chancellor of the Exchequer, who may be living at Chequers, does his work. Where, he will ask, is your chequer board, with its black-and-white squares for calculating on? But Elias De Cbekers is unlikely to haunt the present house. That is (to his thinking) an ■ upstart affair, built three centuries after his death by the family of De Alta Ripa, d'Haufc-rive, of Hawtrey. The Chequers of Sir Arthur and Lady Leo is the fifteenth and sixteenth century house ' restored to its old loveliness, a beautiful work of Tudor domestic architecture, neither too big for convenience nor too small to be stately—again, therefore, appropriate to its destiny. Wheire is Chequers? Appropriately near to London—only 38 miles from Hyde Park Corner, within easy reach by train or car. It stands sheltered: amid the ChUtern Hills, but higli above sea-level. The air is invigorating. Chequers is the kind of place, .•it has been said, in which a man believes in his own principles, It would be hard ; to find a climate more likely to suit tho varying constitutions of varying Prime .'Ministers, not one of whom will find any ', excuse for declaring it too bracing or too ■ relaxing. To take a walk from Chequers 'over Coombe Hi!, which is tho highest [point of the Ghilterns and part of the ; Chequers estate, is to be refreshed with J fine air, fine wide views over England, tho ouiet beauty of English woods, and ,the immemorial activity of English farming. Chequers is old ; Chequers is beautiful; Chequers is English. During the past few hospitable years its value' as a week-end Tesort has been tested by many a worried Minister and politician, overworked editor, .and over-driven public man. There has -beerf'high and eager talk in the hall, . in the, lovely gardens, among the -woods and hills. _ There have been blessed, restful hours in the famous library, recreative distraction among tho pictures, tho-relics of Cromwell and Napoleon, tie pathetio record of little Lady Mary Grey, whom Queen Elizabeth shut up hero in a single room for nearly two-'years. And aE this—house, books, -pictures, relics, gardens, park, and estate, touching an Englishman ■on a score.of his, sensibilities.—is to pass ' to the nation for.the use of its Prime Minister. The dwellers tlierevwill find themselves in an atmosphere of; continuity, peace; energy, and beauty.