The World Examining Works

Bookish

 

Rosie said, "You should read Barnaby Rudge." So I got it down off the shelf where it had resided in untouched splendor amidst all the other Dickenses that I had had shipped out from England long ago.

The spine was much faded but the illustrations were lovely. The pace of the opening was somewhat slow  --as it could be before Twitter and all that -- but the typeface was tiring so I went all 21st century and downloaded the novel for 99c onto my Kindle....

Then I started looking at all the illustrations in all the other hitherto untouched volumes.... Note the fug of smoke and wonderful long pipes.

 

and came upon poor Little Nell looking pretty damn abject. In my laziness, I had always sort of assumed that the books came from my father's family who lived in Kent so was surprised to discover who had really been the first owner.

Here is the rather grand bookplate of my grandmother Gretchen's favorite brother Leslie who died young of diabetes as people did in those days.

So I turned to my greatgrandmother Sarah Bayley's little date book where she recorded his life. 

I half wondered if I should give all the Dickens away, but realise now that I probably won't even though I doubt I'll ever read them.

 

Stuff We Keep and Stuff We Throw Away

 

 

A friend brought me this cotton boll from Alabama. I think it is very beautiful though I rather doubt I would have thought so if I had to pick cotton. I digresss.

On Saturday we were helping with a stall at a flea market and I was looking round our spare apartment for stuff to get rid of.

This character, Mr Samuel Worsley, who has lived in my desk for some years, had this  miniature done in 1821 . He seems to have lived in Orwell in Suffolk and looks a little like Wordsworth.

He was almost certainly married to poor Sarah ( above) who died aged 55 years. Where he looks bland beyond bland, she seems rather pinched and miserable. I cannot imagine how they came into my mother's possession unless they were relatives of some distant sort. However, I do not feel I can ditch them to the tender mercies of people who will feel even less connection to them than I do.

Item: two slightly sentimentally sweet French prints of children playing with animals. Kate Greenaway meets toile, much beloved by my grandmother.

I can't ditch those either.

 

 

Wet Day in Hampshire

 

A day of teeming, interminable rain

which reminded me of the opening line of Jane Eyre......"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day"

 Even a local rabbit looked damp and despondent.

So we sat in the drawing room and played Scrabble as Spring looked on

as did Summer

and Autumn. History does not relate what happened to Winter.

 

The next day the rain had abated enough to allow for a walk in the woods

though everything was terribly soggy.

London Skies

 

After the sweltering heat of New York (100'F) yesterday

 

the cool of England is a welcome respite --other than geting soaked to the skin in a downpour sans raincoat. The "Shard" which is just being completed near London Bridge Station is not quite as exciting as the "Gerkin" --extreme right.

Tower Bridge looks much as ever above the rather dull 1950's housing in the foreground.

I put this picture in because of the aeroplane up above the clouds. I hate planes. 'Nuff said.

Here you get two Shards and a roof deck......

and a bit more of the same.....

It is meant to rain on and off for the next week.

I feel quite at home.

 

The Uses of Enchantment: A Collaboration

Snow in the woods on the sort of day when wet clumps of it fall down your collar. The artist's hand is sprinkling the snow.

When I knew I was going to do this post, I asked Susanna to send me several photos she partucularly liked. When they arrived I asked her if she had read Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment which is all about C.G.Jung and fairy tales and archetypes and things like that and she said she hadn't. Gosh!

We were talking last summer about the children's stories I was writing and how they could be illustrated. Here her niece Annabel stands at the edge of the water.....

Here Annabel stands like a wood nymph on the stump of a very old tree whose gnarled roots stretch deep into the earth. The stuff of fairy tales indeed.

This is a photo of Susanna's that I hadn't seen before where the old lady conceals her face behind the wisdom of the owl.

And last  Annabel's little sister Ellie dons the mask of a wolf......

Susanna and I have the same sort of sensibility, I think. The same love of myth and mystery. Her photo is on the cover of my story Jane and the Essex Serpent.

 

We'd like to give two copies of the book away in conjunction with this post and Susanna's post. If you would like a book, leave a comment on one of our blogs. If you visit both blogs you double your chances ....

 

Looking Up, Reflecting and Up Rather Close

 

A left over photo from a morning spent wandering in the City of London. 

I was reminded of it yesterday afternoon as the thunder clouds were reflected in a new building on 7th Avenue. It was humid but the big billowing clouds came to nothing.

Taking photos of reflections is very odd indeed. What you see and what the camera sees are quite different things.

 

Among all the other places I would like to live (you will have gathered that there are quite a lot of them....) is a house in the Seminary Garden on 20th Street. So ivy-covered and garlanded with roses....

.....instead I content myself with mint and sage which are very excellent herbs. 

Ingrave and Herongate on a Wet Afternoon

A long time ago  Mrs. Dickerson lived in Rose Cottage. In those days it wasn't the least bit bijoux or charming but very dark and damp; it certainly wasn't equipped with a burglar alarm. 

Now the 'cottage garden' is neatly tweaked to look natural: then it was a tumble of vegetation tending towards potatoes and carrots.

The pond is the same -- a very modest muddy sort of place-- here with a solitary moorhen.

St. Nicholas, Ingrave is a very ugly red brick church which somewhat resembles a water tower. The eminent architectural historian Sir Nicklaus Pevsner said it was a very fine example of something or other. We preferred the idea that it wasn't the least pretty because Lord Petre, A Roman Catholic, was obliged to build a C of E church and this was the first thing he came up with.....

I think it looks a bit better from the side.

The hours I spent wandering in the graveyard reading all the fascinating stuff on the tombstones! All good stories start in a graveyard: think Great Expectations, think  P.B. Shelley and  Mary Godwin hovering over Mary Wolstonecraft's grave.

In my story Jane in Winter, Jane meets a very old lady here on the  path by the allotments that border the churchyard. I think they have cut back the trees.  It  used to be a great deal gloomier, darker and drippier.

   

 

Wiltshire

Sun peeping through clouds.... 

in the distance a white horse is carved into the chalk. 

In the garden, the little blue house holds croquet mallets and the unmown grass is wet and filled with buttercups.

A little stone lion sits to the right of the steps....

 

....and here a much larger one.

 

Now we peer into the house.

Wisley and Water

You can read all about Wisley here. Suffice it to say that the Royal Horticultural Society does not disappoint.....how could it? All the other visitors were taking photos like mad, especially of the vegetable gardens.

Of course it was chilly and brisk, which deterred no one...

from contemplating water...

 or ignoring it....

...  swimming in it...

...or sitting beside it. If you get out of the water, you might as well hit up some old ladies for lunch.  

I was still feeling a little jet-lagged...

and could not decide whether the pansy tree was quite the most wonderful thing I had ever seen or altogether too much of a good thing.

 

  

Domestic Details Abroad

A little bit unmoored on a grand tour of other people's houses. Here in Kentish Town flame colored tulips warm the fireplace. I remember this vase in the house next door to the one in which I grew up.

A fixation with hearths since the weather in England is so beastly cold. This kitchen fireplace is in Wiltshire .....and yes, my friend  lit the fire......

 

A warm chair in Berkshire...........