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Oh, Brothers When trouble came to the happy but peculiar Isle of Sark, it took the form of twins Although, as it turned out, there are far better reasons for going to the Isle of Sark, I admit that the Barclays’ brand-new castle first drew me there. Sark, a three-mile-long but nonetheless formidable island, a high tableland surrounded by impressive cliffs, lies about 20 miles off the coast of Normandy. In 15 centuries of recorded history, David and Frederick Barclay, 62-year-old identical twins, started their working lives as housepainters in England, amassed a fortune in real estate, and now own, among other things, the Barclay hotel group and several newspapers, including the European and the Scotsman. They also hold a minority interest in the In 1993, for 梅2.3 million, the Barclays bought a Sark landholding, the 160-acre, treeless, but majestic island called Brecqhou (pronounced BRECK-oo), separated from Sark proper by a narrow and treacherous channel. The twins let it be known that they intended to build a grand castle on Brecqhou, and they have done so, spending upward of 梅25 million on a turreted But far worse, in the eyes of the Sarkese, was the Barclays’ next move. The brothers, who fly to Brecqhou from London by helicopter (they spent Christmas there en famille), have sued for independence from the larger island. The residents of Sark resent this challenge to the integrity of their island, and they wonder what the brothers are really up The Barclays for their part maintain that they object to the legal restrictions imposed on their island as a landholding of Sark. These indeed prevent them from selling the isle to a noncitizen of Britain. But in particular, the brothers say, they seek to divide their estate equally among their four heirs, something they cannot do now. On Sark, primogeniture applies: The One takes a deep breath before trying to describe the uniqueness of the Isle of Sark, which in many ways still lives in the sixteenth century, though as I was to discover, it has made some happy accommodations with the twentieth. Its laws are not a bad place to start. All the Channel Islands, of which Sark is one, maintain an independent status within the United Kingdom. But Sark, in fact, is the last remaining feudal state in the Western world. It is a fief, whose lord, or seigneur, owes fealty directly to the queen and to the queen alone. Some of the island’s laws, such as primogeniture and the prohibition of divorce, can seem medieval to outsiders. “And yes, yes,” women will say impatiently, “it’s true that husbands can beat their wives as long
Being lord of this happy place seems, on the face of it, not a bad deal. You live in the Seigneurie, a sixteenth-century stone structure surrounded by formal gardens that, in Sark’s temperate climate, yield roses until Christmastime. You, and you alone, can keep doves. You can banish any visitor you choose, a singularly attractive power on a small island, where things after all “I still do collect tithes,” the current seigneur, whose street name is Michael Beaumont, said recently. “I am entitled to a certain amount of wheat, in cabots [sheaves], from each tenant. We have the old deme cart in back. The cart was sent round at harvesttime, and every tenth cabot was the seigneur’s. People pay in cash now, but I still collect a bit of wheat. I don’t The seigneur has a mild laugh. A tall, slender man of 69 with a rather tentative step, he could scarcely be less imperious in voice or gesture. I met him in the kitchen of the Seigneurie, the only contemporary room in a house rich in Victorian furnishings and the room in which he and his wife, Diana, spend most of their time at home. He was wearing a green sweatshirt The seigneur was taking me through his personal history and the history of the island. He had been working in England as an aircraft engineer, he explained, when he inherited the place and the title in 1974 from his grandmother, Sibyl Hathaway, the famous Dame of Sark, who had governed the island for 47 years, outliving her son. (It was the Dame of Sark who inspired the 1974 “I had never given (the inheritance) much of a thought,” Beaumont says today. “When it came, it came; I didn’t have much choice. I’m just glad it didn’t happen sooner or I don’t know what I would have done. But…there are worse places to inherit.” His fiefdom became rather less congenial last year, though. After agreeing to permit the sale of Brecqhou to David Barclay–who, as the elder twin, is the tenant of record–the seigneur saw the brothers turn on him and sue. Officially the Barclays were requesting the return of the treizi猫me they had paid him at the time of the sale. But no one seems to think that the The seigneur plainly brings an air of British bafflement and forbearance to many life situations. “I don’t know what their endgame is,” he says. “They seem to want me to relinquish Sark’s claim to Brecqhou, but I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to, which I emphatically do not. I’m rather like piggy-in-the-middle.” Never in the past 400 years had the authority of the seigneur been so challenged from within. The Barclays threatened to take their suit to the European Court of Human Rights. The Crown, which stood to lose its last feudal state, joined the case on Sark’s behalf, occasioning a flurry of stories in the mainland British press. The brothers then appealed to have the Crown removed It all began to seem a tragedy, because the seigneur is a self-evidently reasonable man, scarcely a tyrant despite his vested powers. At least one might have hoped that the Barclays would exhaust the legal options available in their new home. David, as a leaseholder, has a seat in Sark’s ancient parliament, called Chief Pleas in anglicized French, where he might have worked I settled in for a few days on Sark. a little hotel called the Dixcart provided lodgings, a pub, a dining room, and a huge and ancient fireplace. “Dixcart” is pronounced DEE-car, with a heavy accent on the first syllable in that marvelous, imperial way the English have with French. Thus “seigneur” is SANE-yer, and the French names that abound on the island are similarly The hotel sits on the edge of a footpath, just wide enough for a cart, and from here I set out walking each morning. This is the great thing about Sark–the walking. The island reminds you what a settled landscape can be like if it remains innocent of cars. We tend to walk in the city and in the wilderness, or in what might be called designated nature. Walking on Sark is It helps, of course, that temptation is banished here. Temptation is strong where cars are involved, as the presence of a few tractors on Sark demonstrates: Those entitled to them often drive into the village to go shopping. In any event, I walked. I had been told that to better know the island I should see La Coup茂e, Sark’s most beautiful view, and also Elizabeth Perr茂e, “beautiful Elizabeth,” and that the one was on the way to the other. La Coup茂e is also the entrance to Little Sark, a point of land connected to the greater island by a narrow isthmus–if, that is, an isthmus can Elizabeth Perr茂e, French of face and English of intonation, runs the elegant La Sablonnerie hotel. It sits adjacent to her father’s farm, which provides the ingredients for much of the restaurant’s menu. Setting out a tea featuring scones with Sark’s bright yellow butter, she remarked that she was proof that, whatever the Barclays might claim, primogeniture needn’t prevent She went on to explain a bit about Sark’s system of raising revenue. Tourists, who appear here by the thousands in the summertime, pay the bulk of the bill, without ever knowing it, through a tax on ferry tickets and alcohol. The rest of the revenues, for relief of the poor and elderly, are raised by an annual assessment based on what an administrative committee of 12 thinks My affection for feudalism was certainly growing. Seldom in my walks, though, did I hear a friendly word about the Barclays. Comments were often scathing. “We’re a community of 500 happy people. Why should the rules be changed for two?” “The buggers are paranoid. You know they have night-vision cameras trained on all the landing spots and a control room full of consoles.” “They could snuffle up the whole island.” I began to internalize the threat. Sark is one of those places toward which even casual visitors rapidly feel proprietary. One splendid wet afternoon I walked alone to the Gouillot Headland, from which one has a good view of Brecqhou and its castle. I found myself thinking that we live at an enlightened time, a historical moment when, in the West, nations turn to violence You can spend a fair amount of time on Sark, rambling, talking, before the question asserts itself in your mind: What exactly goes on here? What sustains this place? Is it the dozen sheep over there? That quarter-acre of brussels sprouts? Well, no. Sark, it turns out, has a bit of a secret life. I was sitting in the lounge of the Dixcart Hotel one afternoon at teatime and a fellow appeared in a black suit and glossy black shoes. He sat down. We were both reading in silence, but after a time I asked him, “What brings you to Sark?” He looked at me for a long moment, long enough to ensure that I would ask no follow-up question, and said, “Business.” Then he went back to his newspaper. There is no outward sign of business on Sark, apart from the two groceries and the little shops on the village’s main street. But there is indeed business on Sark. The local government’s rather noble incuriosity about the affairs of the citizenry makes Sark a very comfortable place to be an entrepreneur. Companies do not pay taxes, nor are they required to register. Sark may be Not a few people have found the way to have the best of both worlds: maintain a residence in London or Geneva or Des Moines and a business “headquarters” on Sark. One way to accomplish this is through the device known as nominee directorships. In these, Sark citizens are invited, for a fee, to serve as directors of far-off companies. The institution, which has come to be known In her little cottage just outside the village, one young woman with a liking for anonymity–“I have another business to run and I like to keep things separate”–explained how easy it is to lark. “They send you a document, and if you like what’s being proposed, you sign.” “They will give you an idea of what they want you to do?” I asked. “They will,” she said. “And you are inclined to agree with them?” “You are.” For some corporate enterprises, nominee directors won’t suffice; they require the security of an actual Sark address. This, too, can be arranged. One morning I knocked on the door of a quiet cottage across the street from the village’s nursery school. Nothing about the place suggested that it was a business, though I had been told an inventive bit of larking went on here. A charming woman named Samantha opened the door and took me in to see her boss, B. M. J. Cooper. Mr. Cooper, with limp gray hair and a craggy face, “I don’t really want to talk to you about my business,” he said, pleasantly enough. “We don’t generally talk about business on Sark.” He said, though, that he actually had several businesses. I became aware of sounds to my left and noticed a bank of answering machines on bookshelves. From time to time they would beep, thunk, whirr, go silent. “Your business?” I asked. Mr. Cooper, it turned out, provided “business services” for people who might like to live on Sark but were constrained to live elsewhere. The essential service he provided is what’s known on the island as an accommodation address. Thanks to him, an entrepreneur anywhere in the world may receive and send mail through the Sark post office and have calls answered on Sark or routed Many Sarkese who have no objection to the nominee directorships balk at accommodation addresses, and indeed, sometime soon Chief Pleas may move against them. But for the meantime, on this afternoon, the answering machines were beeping merrily. What an industrious little island, I thought as I left. What a complexity of life behind those simple stone facades. It is as if the people of Sark have discovered alchemy. An island of Rumplestiltskins! They live in harmony with their glorious patch of earth, and they pollute neither the air nor the soil nor the view. The feudal order is maintained, and millions of pounds zing Now I began better to understand why the Barclay twins were so upsetting to the people of Sark. Anything that threatened the status quo on this happy island would be upsetting. I felt concerned myself. If the Barclays did manage to overthrow feudal oversight, what then? Might the whole edifice here crumble–and with it not only a lovely, centuries-old tradition, but as Mr. The time had come for a closer look at the redoubt of the brothers themselves. But getting there was a problem. Swimming the frigid Channel waters to Brecqhou was a dubious proposition. And landing on the island was not recommended in any case. The Barclays had warned the Sarkese that anyone attempting or abetting a trespass would be prosecuted–even though Sark itself, in its Still, one gusty afternoon I persuaded a fisherman to take me out in his boat for the longish trip to Brecqhou from the harbor on Sark’s east coast. As gray seas rolled across the Channel, piling up around the point, the boat slammed into them, making conversation impossible. Silently, I watched the castle grow larger on the horizon. A lone figure in oilskins stood on the landing, and his tiny silhouette provided a sense of scale. The castle belongs to that category of things, like aircraft carriers, that are measured in football fields. I could see the helicopter resting on its elevator, which descends into a hangar blasted out of the stone. But the owners were not on the island, else their family banners Up close, in the lee of the island, the place began to seem less forbidding. The wan afternoon light reflected from the windows, some 40-odd of them, stretching across the seaward facade. It looked suddenly like a human habitation. I take the point of those who say a softer Norman design would have been more appropriate to the region. But a Channel Islander would feel this sort The truth is, I was softening on this enterprise. I could see how the Barclays, having come so far in life, might not want to defer to the lord of any manor, might want to be seigneurs of their own fief. And I could see how you could call this castle home. If you were a bit jumpy about security, well, you’d be less jumpy behind those 100-foot granite walls, with some competent automatic-weapons guys in black anoraks stationed in bunkers on the moors. Here at last, with ten-foot logs crackling in the fireplaces, you might have a feeling denied to you elsewhere in the obeisant Richard Todd, a writer and book editor in western Massachusetts, teaches writing at Smith College. Photograph by Dan Burn-Forti |
Oh, Brothers
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