CHAPTER SIX
American Friends
ackham’s habitual costume was a navy-blue suit with a stiff white collar and a blue-and-white spotted bow-tie. His tailor made him a new suit now and then of exactly the same cut and colour, and the old one was then relegated to his studio. In the last twenty years of his life he ventured a few concessions to the rôle of the well-to-do country gentleman, and even for a while sported a tweed suit, but those who knew him best felt that this never seemed quite in character.It was in 1920 – a year of almost fabulous prosperity for Rackham, when his earned income, with the help of the proceeds of American exhibitions, touched seven thousand pounds – that he acquired his first country home, a Georgian flint farmhouse at Houghton, near Arundel. Houghton House, warm, dignified and beautiful, faced the village street immediately opposite the George and Dragon Inn. The garden offered wide views over the Downs and the Arun valley, and gave on to fields sloping to the River Arun, where Rackham used to fish. He was fond of fly-fishing, a sport unknown to that river, and sometimes collected an incredulous crowd to watch him casting over the water. The only fish he could catch there with a fly were small, rather muddy dace. He taught his daughter to clean and cook these in the ashes of a bonfire on the bank.
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