Light, Bright, and Sparkling

A Family Ring

2012-02-07T03:47:00.000-08:00

My grandparents were married around 1921, and the ring my grandfather had made for my grandmother was a beautiful Trinity ring of three intertwined circles, one of old gold (signifying love), one yellow gold (friendship), and one white gold (loyalty). I well remember my grandmother wearing it when I was a child, and after she died in 1956, my mother put it on and said she would never take it off. She often said that I would wear it one day, and I always thought, yuck, an old dead lady ring, no way! Well, she never did take it off, and after she died at eighty-eight, the funeral director retrieved it and gave it to me in an envelope. I briefly felt that old distaste, put it in my purse and flew home. Then, a few days later, I polished it nicely, and slipped it on my hand to see how it would look and feel. To my surprise, it was not only a perfect fit, but it looked beautiful, and somehow felt right. I had put it over my very slim wedding ring, and showed it to Peter, saying that I thought I would wear it. He's the least sentimental of men, but he looked unhappy, and asked anxiously, "But - that doesn't mean you're going to take off mine?" I immediately said no, of course not! When I wore it (which wouldn't be every day) I'd wear it on my other hand!

My grandparents, Maurice and Naomi Finkelstein.

On shipboard, on the way to their honeymoon in Europe, 1921. (She must have been wearing the ring!) He became a law professor, and she was a teacher and president of Women's American O.R.T., working with Jewish refugees in the years after the war.

I realized then that whatever the ring had meant in the past - a symbol of my grandparents' devoted marriage (which showed me that such a thing was possible and therefore led directly to my own); or a symbol of my mother's loss and memory of her own mother - it had now taken on a new meaning. The symbolism that the Trinity now assumed, was that it represented and joined the three women who had worn it, and would wear it: My grandmother, my mother, and me.

The three who wore the ring, my grandmother, my mother, and me, 1956.

This picture was taken only weeks before my grandmother's death. She was only 58, but suffered all her life from rheumatic heart disease she had as a child, now preventable with antibiotics.

I told my teenage cousin Joanna that she could wear the ring when she got married one day if she liked, but she made that teenage face of disgust and said, "It's too big for me," just as I once might have done. Never mind. It may be that she will grow into it. As I did.

My grandfather, as I remember him.

On Cape Cod, early 1950s.

A four-generation picture, around 1948.

My great-grandmother Anna Koppelman, who emigrated from Lithuania in the 1880s, her daughter Naomi, her daughter Helen (Bunny) and me, Diana (Denny)

A Smooth Transition

2012-01-18T19:20:00.000-08:00

A story told in letters. To my cousin Alice, Wednesday:

Hi Alice, it looks like my mother is on the way out this weekend. She's unconscious with internal bleeding and zero blood pressure, so it won't be long. I spoke to her yesterday but apparently she's been asleep since we hung up the phone and David left. So it's peaceful. Paul and I will come to New York as soon as it's over, and we're organizing details now. If you were able to come down, I'd love to see you then, if that is possible. xx Denny

Helen Finkelstein Reeve, "Bunny"
October 15, 1923 - January 12, 2012
At 20, in 1943

My mother in 2008, blind, at the Hebrew Home for the Aged

(photograph taken by my cousin Judy)

To my cousins Anne and David, early Thursday morning:

Dear Anne and David,

Perhaps you have heard by now that my mother has passed away. The doctor called me at 11 PM our time. It was peaceful. Paul and I are flying out on Delta at 6 AM, and will arrive in Newark at 4:30 PM Thursday. We'll stay four nights at the Larchmont Hotel on 11th Street.

My cousin Anne Finkelstein reading her thoughts at the wake, while cousin Alice Chico listens

To the Piffle list, Friday:

Here I am in New York. Dark and rainy as the devil. Sleepless night spent packing and speedily getting an array of low carb food for Peter for while I'm gone (four nights). The cats cried with misery to see us go. Then two planes, changing in Salt Lake. Hate indirect flights, but what's the option? Direct LA-NY same day flights are $1000 round trip. Asked about bereavement rates, was told, "We can give you as a bereavement rate...$1000." Hell with that, the one-stop flight is $500, still bad but better. Luckily flights were expeditious and smooth, and Salt Lake's mountains and lake were a beautiful sight. Worked on the plane, finished reading and started writing up a manuscript. I could have turned it back, given the emergency, but can't sleep on planes and didn't like to leave them in the lurch, as there really wasn't time by deadline to reassign the work.

At the wake: David, Tom, Joanna, Anne

Paul and I landed in Newark, a mere $80 cab ride into the city but we were tired. Ensconced at our beloved b & b, the Larchmont, which gave us the fourth night free as it's out of season. Then we headed directly to my cousin Anne's house, to meet with the Cut Rate Funeral Director. The Hebrew Home had given us a list of places that charged $5000 - $8000 for a funeral, and I was absolutely, fiercely determined not to pay anything in that range. My mother did pay some funeral expense when she went into the Home, but it seems nobody can find a trace of it or what it was for (we're going up there to look into that today, and to pick up her pictures and books). She has a seat in the family plot, so that's good. I decided against having a service in a chapel in the city, which is what costs in the thousands; we'll do a brief graveside thing with my rabbi cousin presiding. I would have skipped it but my mother would not have liked that, and I want to strike the exact right balance between being respectful of my mother's Judaism and true to my own atheism and determination to be economical (which she would have appreciated). When I was informed of the death I did say the Shema in accord with childhood training, which I thought was quite remarkable of me to remember.

Alice and me at the wake

Bottom line cost is $1200, but a plain coffin, necessary in Jewish burials, is another $1000 (though the funeral director said he could do it at $500 "for me." (I'll take it up with my rabbi cousin; the standard one included in the $1200 is plain wood but has a little metal trim. Am I seriously obligated to pay $500 real live dollars to get rid of the trim? Come on.) Refused to pay various expenses like ritual washings and viewings and fancy hearses and Chief Mourner candles and other fal-lals which were thankfully optional. Limousine to the cemetery far out of the city is $350, but unavoidable. There are seven of us in the party (my two cousins Anne and David, their spouses Jim and Tom, Anne's 14-year-old daughter Joanna with her charming red metallic hair and boots, and me and Paul), and after all we can't be going on the subway.

David, Tom and Anne

But the $2100 won't be all. Oh no, not by a long shot. Today we'll find out the rest. There is Opening the Grave, which may rack up another $1000 or more, and who knows what other surprises lurk in wait. Hopefully we may find that some of it's covered by what my mother paid in advance. ($1500 I think.) The funeral will be on Sunday, but Saturday night a gathering of relatives will come to Anne's apartment in the city, and that will be the real deal, hopefully rather jolly and wake-like.

Joanna at almost 15

After concluding the business with the Cut Rate Funeral Director (who was very nice, and said He'd Seen Everything, but had never heard of Jessica Mitford, who, of course, I was channeling), Paul and I went to Viselka's, the all-night Ukrainian place on the Lower East Side for veal goulash and apple strudel. Paul then hit a gay bar and I returned to the hotel to finish my work. That done, I now get a week's Bereavement Leave which will be very welcome after all my efforts. Total cost, flight, hotel, funeral, will certainly not be under five grand. My mother will be rolling in her grave.

Joanna and cat, Anne and Paul

To Peter, Friday night:

Paul and I were so tired after our trip we slept in till nearly noon today, and then didn't have much time to get up to the Hebrew Home. Luckily, around the corner from the Larchmont is a branch of Murray's Sturgeon Shop, so I got an onion bagel with nova and Paul a bialy with whitefish. Took the train uptown to the Home. It looked beautiful on the Hudson, as we saw it for the last time. Things went expeditiously. Saw a Housekeeping man who ushered us into a little Bereaved Room where we sat and ate our bagels and lox while he brought in the five bins of my mother's things. She had a suitcase and carry bag so we could use them to take what we wanted. Most of it was clothes, which we donated. We just gathered up the books and pictures and put them in the carry bag. Then stopped in the financial office, where we were told she had $162 in her account which would be sent to the administrator. She had $3 in her wallet so that was our legacy and we'll toast her with a cappuccino. It seems possible that the $1500 she paid for burial she paid to the cemetery itself, so we may not owe them anything. Hope not.

My cousin Judy, with her grandson Haskell, daughter Leah, and Joanna

One of Joanna's cats.

It was around 5 when we left the home, toting the books and things, and we took the express bus down to 34th and Lex, and a cab partway to [Peter's] parents. It got stuck behind an oil truck so we walked from Lexington. Only had half an hour to see Rut and Vivian but it was nice and we told them all our adventures and showed them my new iPad. We'll go see them tomorrow for breakfast. Then we went to Anne's and enjoyed the evening with them, having Indian takeout food and enjoying Joanna and the cats. I painted my nails sparkly purple with her nail polish. Then we took the bags back to the Larchmont, and sallied out for a walk in the Village. Quite cold, and my knee was hurting, but the walk was nice and we went to Caffe Dante for lovely tea and sublime profiteroles. That place opened in 1915 and is the real thing. Then back to the room and internet. Tomorrow is the wake at Anne's - Alice is coming down from Syracuse and Judy is coming with her family, so it will be really nice.

The High Line

Paul on the High Line

Paul and me on the High Line

Bittersweet growing on the High Line

To the Dove Grey Books list, Friday:

Didn't bring anything to read - had to finish my work on the plane, after which I get a week's bereavement time off. When I've had a moment, have just been doing email. Lots of very kind messages, though I didn't have a normal relationship with my mother, and it's not the same sort of loss as most people have under the circumstances. However it is certainly an epochal sort of feeling. One of my cousins wrote "may you have a smooth transition to the older generation," which made me go "ugh," but I guess it's true! Anyway I put on some of my teenage cousin Joanna's sparkly purple fingernail polish...

Fabulous exhibition at the Met: "Infinite Jest"

To Peter, Saturday:

This morning Paul and I picked up more Murray's Sturgeon Shop bagels (don't worry, I will indeed bring Pindy and you sturgeon!) and went over to your parents' house to visit and have bagels-and-lox with them. Afterwards, we felt the need for some fun. Went to the Metropolitan Opera Thrift Shop, where I found a lovely little candle [Fire King Peach Lustre glassware, circa 1950] for $3, exactly my mother's legacy, so I put a candle in it to burn at the wake and it will be her memorial candle. Then we went to the Met where we vastly enjoyed a MOST fabulous exhibit, Infinite Jest, caricatures and grotesqueries from Leonardo to modern times, concentrating on Gilray and Rowlandson. It was so good we actually bought the book, so you can enjoy it too:

http://www.metmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/listings/2011/infinite-jest--caricature-and-satire-from-leonardo-to-levine

Obviously not everyone would go to an exhibit on Infinite Jest the day of their mother's wake, but we thought it was pretty much a perfect stroke of ironic genius. Afterwards there was just time to hurry back down the Larchmont and tidy up, then cab to Anne's. Well, I thought the wake would be good but it was way beyond expectations. No mean people there. Just nice warm sweet ones, all so kind and happy to be together and share memories and relationships. We old ones talked about the crazy ones that came before us and the young ones listened! My cousin Judy, who was very kind and often visited my mother, was there with her two daughters Nonie and Leah and one grandson, Haskell, all so warm and congenial. My cousin Alice came down from Syracuse with her husband Michael and son Jason. There were also David, Tom, Anne, Jim, and Joanna, so a lovely group. There was complete honesty and no saccharinity in the room, as we discussed and wondered not what made my mother crazy (that's easy: my grandmother) but why my grandmother, othewise a wonderful, sweet woman, acted like that, and the strange dynamics of the family. How damaged my mother was, but that because of Ezra, David, Anne and the Hebrew Home, she was able to collect her mind and lived a final mellow ten years, giving everyone the chance to get to know what she could be - for her heroism under blindness, indigence, and adversity, could only be praised. (I always tell how she read all of Trollope on tape in the first year of her blindness.) David talked about how he went to see her not out of duty but because he enjoyed her company so much, which is exactly what Josh (Ezra's son, who will officiate at the burial tomorrow) said Ezra says. Anne talked about some good times she had with my mother, how bright she was, how she kept her mind, and gave her advice about Joanna. I thanked them for taking care of her and making it possible for me to make friends and have a peaceful resolution with her; and ended by saying that what everyone said about her made me think I was not so unlucky to have her for a mother after all!

Afterwards Paul and I finished up at Veselka's where he had a Ukrainian meatball hero and I had matzoh ball soup and a bacon and egg sandwich. Now to bed, the limousine comes for us at 9:30 to take us to the burial. Paul is horrified that his little Tully is pining for him! Anne's cats are awesomely healthy and strong, all muscular like a pair of leopards; they could not be more different from our louche bohemian languishing cats.

Love, Denny

Me and Paul in Central Park

To the Piffle list, Monday

From Helen: "It's interesting that most people don't take up the prepaid funeral option, which is really one of the best investment returns available. My Dad, who was the epitome of organisation, organised and paid for his about 20 years before he died, paying about 30% of what the equivalent current cost was. Where else can you get that sort of return these days? [It] was easy compared to the problems Denny is having, especially when you have various family members putting their ideas forward. We were able to fall back on "it's what Dad chose", end of argument."

Oh, dear no, Helen. I'm thankful to report that it wasn't like that at all. This turned out to be the most absolutely beautiful funeral and weekend wake that anybody ever had, and it all ran like such smooth clockwork every single moment, that my mother could have paid and organized it decades ago and it couldn't have been better (and remember she was mentally ill and always struggling to survive, so pre-paying burial was probably the last thing on her mind at any given time. Actually, she did pre-pay $1500 in a burial account at the Hebrew Home, but it turns out she spent it over the years ;-)

The wake was an absolute delight, cousins laughing over memories and analyzing puzzling family influences, the warmest, kindest, happiest evening there ever could be. Then yesterday morning, the seven of us (me and Paul; cousin Anne her husband Jim and teenage daughter Joanna; and cousin David and his partner Tom), went via a smooth limo to the cemetery, where we met my cousin the rabbi's son Josh (also a rabbi). Oh, what a beautiful service he did give us! His father, Ezra, who couldn't come from Florida, sent lovely remarks about my mother's life, and Josh read those, did the Hebrew bits, and also spoke on his own about the life my mother led, as I'd discussed with him. She had essentially "gone sane" and had a most serene life in the Hebrew Home for the past decade, where David and Ezra each visited her weekly. It was all so perfect: it would have been exactly what my mother wanted, everyone there, everything done properly; it was solace to David and cheer to me, and we know that we got the most wonderful funeral and did not get rooked for it. Total charge: $2100, plus $1300 for opening the grave. Affordable; and priceless. What a feeling of rightness.

My mother's legacy - a vintage "Peach Lustre" candle bowl

I should mention that my aunts years ago arranged a place for my mother in the family plot, so that what would have been the really difficult business was indeed all taken care of. She lies where she wanted to be, beside her favorite aunt, Rae, who was a second (and possibly better) mother to her. So I guess it was pre-planned in a way. But we are certainly not going to plan anything for ourselves. Cheap cremation, over and out. I'd have done that for my mother too, only I wanted to respect her Judaism. And I did.

The limo took us back to the city and a lovely lunch, and then we went with Anne for a glorious walk on the High Line! It is one of her favorite subjects as an artist, and she even has a show going on right now with her High Line paintings:

http://www.sbdgallery.org/?portfolio=high-line-series-by-anne-finkelstein-on-march-26th-2011

Anne Finkelstein's work

Before leaving on Monday afternoon, we met my friend Laurie and had a brisk, bracing, exhilarating walk in the Central Park Ramble. She is a bird lady who goes twice a day to feed the red cardinals, snow or shine. Starlings and sparrows flock to her in a thick cloud when they see (or hear?) her coming, and they alight on her hands to be fed. Yesterday she counted 25 cardinals, and they are the most striking, brilliantly red sight in the bleak park. Today we saw about a dozen, which seemed like a lot to us, for how many people ever see cardinals in Central Park?

Paul and Laurie, Central Park

After that, we hurried to Chef Ho's Peking Duck to meet some of my dear Hunter friends, Marianne, Peter and Priscilla, for a bounteous and cheery Peking Duck lunch. From there back to Laurie's to pick up our luggage, and then another $100 ride to Newark Airport.

The first leg of the trip was fine, but then we got stuck with a four-hour delay in Minneapolis, where the plane was slow coming in from Denver because of de-icing. Turbulent flight across the Rockies, and we got home after a 14-hour trip door to door, beyond exhausted.

Paul exasperated at airport delay

A timeless expression. Netsuke.

(Sato Kagura Mask of Usofuki, courtesy of my friend Jennifer)

Dear Josh and dear Ezra,

I am writing to thank you jointly, because you were both there together, for my mother and for me, in the most wonderful and beautiful way possible. Josh, you took so much kind trouble to come and to give my mother a sensitive, understanding and absolutely perfect service. Ezra, you were there in spirit more than I have ever seen anybody be anywhere in spirit before! I do not have words in which to describe it or to thank you enough, but there was a sense of rightness and fitness, and tender respect for my mother, that seemed to shine down warmly over the whole occasion, and was epitomized when Josh spoke of her going to her rest.

For that is what she did. It was hardly even very sad, because she went so peacefully. She spoke to me on the phone last Tuesday as usual, and after David hung up the phone, she went immediately into a deep sleep, and never woke, but passed away without awareness the next day. We were told the news at 11 PM Wednesday Los Angeles time, and I remembered to say the Shema that my grandparents taught me should be said, and we were on a plane at 6 AM.

About my whole time in New York, there was a remarkable sense of peace and closure. The seven of us (me, Paul, Anne, David, Joanna, Jim and Tom) spent more time together than we ever have before, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we felt quite magically like a united family, a family of one mind (and it must be said, it felt pretty strange for me to now be the senior member!). We made a get-together at Anne's house, to which the Koppelman cousins, Judy (Celia's daughter), and Alice (Esther's daughter), their children and grandchildren came. It was a beautiful time, just as it should be, the older ones telling the younger ones about people and events of the past, and how they combined together to make the people who were here now. Everyone shared memories about my mother, and reflected on her difficult life and her serene end. Honestly, even though I keep denying religion for myself, I have to acknowledge that there was incontrovertably some divine plan about what happened to her in her last ten years. There can be no other explanation for how she was granted such grace and peace at the end of her life, which included, best of all, her reuniting with me.

Ezra, you presided over it all, and helped bring her troubled life that very real peace, and if you ever did good in your life, that was a big one. It was remarkable too that you used the exact same words that David did, separately - that you visited my mother because you really enjoyed her. She really was a bright and brave spirit, very much like her father, and both of you helped that spirit to shine and live for awhile, just as it always should. That was why I could not wear the rended cloth that spoke of terrible grief, for to me her ending was truly a joyful one, in which she regained her own self, that for so long had been effaced and in darkness. I believe you both could see this, because that is the wonderful thing about family - you were there always. And for being there at this poignant time, I thank you both, Ezra and Josh, very much.

Paul and I flew home to Los Angeles last night (long delays, 14 hours of travel, we got in exhausted at 3 AM!) but hope to get together with you again next time we are in New York, probably in October, when I'll be there for a talk.

Love, Denny

***********

A joyous reunion with Peter and the cats. Little Tully quivered with joy at the sight of her beloved Paul; Marshy was so excited she ran wildly around the house, hitting the walls; and Pindar firmly stalked to my bed, planted herself in the center, and slept with me all night.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Current Austen Affairs

2011-12-15T03:17:00.000-08:00

THE GOOD: Dr. Cheryl Kinney Speaks at JASNA-Southwest Conference

Our local JASNA-SW Jane Austen's birthday celebration at the Los Angeles Athletic Club was one of our most wonderful meetings in years. Great turnout, speakers, authors, food, good cheer. For many, the outstanding feature was a talk by Dr. Cheryl Kinney. She is a Dallas gynecologist as well as Austen scholar, who was co-coordinator of the Ft. Worth JASNA AGM, and is one of the best speakers I've ever heard. She's got it all: intelligence, wit, sparkle, liveliness, allied to serious knowledge. Listening to her you are learning while being diverted, and are aware that this is a remarkable woman as well as speaker. I took a few notes on her intensely interesting speech, and here are a few of the odd and alarming facts I learned about her subject, which was "A Dangerous Indulgence: Women’s Health in Jane Austen’s Time."

In Jane Austen's day, men used to make medical decisions for women. The women of the household did all the nursing, however. Women were not allowed to be trained to use forceps, yet midwives often knew more than doctors: for instance, in a cookbook of the era, in the back pages dealing with health matters, a midwife wrote about how bed linen should be changed to stop the smell of infection. This means that 50 years before Lister, women knew about infection.

Barber poles were white, and with a red stripe it meant the barber was also a surgeon.

Christie's auctioned off an 1810 condom recently, for L20,000.

Abortion medications were sold everywhere, and could kill you.

Douching could kill you too, as it was done with dirty water and could cause infection.

Mr. Woodhouse's medical advice was all good - London really was unhealthy! Bad water, typhus, plague, abounded. VD was everywhere, spread by upper class men.

The Royal Navy spread clap (gonorrhea) due to stowaway prostitutes.

A lovely young lady at sea
Who complained that it hurt her to pee
Said the brawny old mate
That accounts for the state
Of the cook and the captain and me.

Women in Jane Austen's day had menopause at age 44. Women were bled once a month for menopause troubles, by an apothecary. One treatment involved leaving leeches in the vagina for hours. With cervical cancer, women simply rotted inside.

Giles King-Lyford treated Jane Austen in her last two weeks, and she improved during that time. He was one of four sensible thinking physicians, and took excellent care of her, apparently until others were brought in. In Austen's detailed observations of her illness she described Addison's Disease 30 years before doctors did.

Dr. Matthew Bailey may have written something about her illness in his private diary - but it is in family hands and they won't release it.

To hear a podcast of a talk Dr. Kinney gave on "Jane Austen and the Body" at the Chicago Humanities Festival, click on this link. Her thesis is that “Austen-itis” as the recurrent use of sickness, health, frailty, and injury to develop Austen’s characters, drive her plots, and establish the comedic side of characters’ suffering.

http://www.chicagohumanities.org/Genres/Literature/2010-Jane-Austen-and-the-Body.aspx

"Jane Austen turned herself into a physician whose patient was society." - Dr. Cheryl Kinney

THE BAD: Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

Oh lord. I thought to write a regular book review, just like a proper book blogger, but really I haven't the patience. This book was very much anticipated, since to have England's surviving grande dame mystery writer take on Pemberley, sounded an intriguing, possibly amusing prospect. But it's a disappointment, and I think the book will fail to please both Austen-lovers and P.D. James lovers alike. As one of the former category I was shocked to see an egregious error smack dab in the middle of page one. James calls Mr. Collins a nephew of Mr. Bennet, not his cousin. This may seem a very minor detail, but it informs you right up front and center that you are not going to be in the hands of someone who truly inhabits the world of Austen or cares about the details, so you are likely to be ceaselessly irritated; and it also distracts you from reading enjoyment as you sit there gobsmacked that an author as eminent and best-selling as P.D. James does not have a competent editor or copy editor!

Still, I moved past that, as it would be absurd to let one error put the kibosh on an entire book. Although there were other errors (as her continually describing the Hursts as splendidly rich, when clearly they were spongers), the book didn't turn out to be distressfully messy in that respect. Instead, James fell into another grievous and more serious error - she proceeded to recap and summarize Pride and Prejudice for almost the next solid fifty pages. This was done in a stilted, stupefying way that is incredibly tedious to anyone who knows the book, but also does Pride and Prejudice a disservice by making it sound so tortuous and dull that the P.D. James fans who aren't familiar with P & P would hardly be moved to become so!

Once this section is over, the mystery begins, and James starts to write in a more natural style. Unfortunately the mystery she now unfolds is so dim and low-key, the book is anything but an exciting page-turner. Wickham is drunk in the Pemberley woods when his friend Denny is shot. He is tried for murder. There's a turgid, complicated explanation at the end which I won't go into, but I can't imagine a non-Janeite understanding the half of it, or a Janeite believing it. There are flashes of nice descriptive writing in the woodland scenes, with James wielding prose in a masterly way; and her depiction of early 19th century jurisprudence is well researched and well handled. But oh, dear. If a neighbor hadn't given me this, I never would have read it to the end. P.J. James has amused herself with a stab at being a sequelist, but she is unlikely to amuse very many others.

THE UGLY: "The Portrait" and Publicity

On December 5, The Guardian headline read, "Jane Austen Biographer Discovers 'Lost Portrait.'" It's a headline that's both sensational and misleading, as is much of the article. The facts are that this "new" portrait has been in a private collection for years, and was auctioned at Bonham's in March, when Dr. Paula Byrne and her husband acquired it. Deirdre Le Faye wrote about the portrait in the 2007 edition of the Jane Austen Society Report, calling it an "imaginary portrait," done perhaps as early as 1818, possibly by the Revd William Jones, who liked to portray authors he admired.

Byrne is quoted as saying, "When my husband bought it he thought it was a reasonable portrait of a nice lady writer, but I instantly had a visceral reaction to it." This seems extremely disingenuous. Byrne was not unaware of the Le Faye article, or that "Jane Austin" (sic) was written on the back of the portrait. Yet the Guardian present the sequence as: "when Byrne...with an Austen biography due out in 2013, was given a portrait of a female author acquired by her husband, Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, at auction, she was immediately struck by the possibility that it could be a lost drawing of Austen." This beggars belief. Her husband thought he was just buying a nice lady writer portrait? Of course they knew that the picture had been bruited about as a possible Jane Austen portrait, real or imaginary. That's why they were at the auction in the first place!

Byrne says, "The idea that it was an imaginary portrait – that seemed to me to be a crazy theory. That genre doesn't exist." Doesn't exist? What was Jane Eyre doing, for instance, but drawing "fancy portraits" of people from imagination? Obviously it was a thing people did do. In fact, Le Faye's 2007 article is illustrated with several other "imaginary" portraits of Austen. But Byrne says, "[Le Faye] "thinks it is an imaginary portrait. I did try so hard to find one single example of an imaginary portrait, but nobody could find one – they just don't exist." And she asks, "Why would someone have wanted to draw her from their imagination, when she was not popular at that time?" Well, maybe after Austen's death, those who lost her wanted to remember her. How about that for a reason?

Myself, I like the portrait; it does strongly resemble pictures of men of the Austen family, with their long noses, though her nephew and first biographer's description specifically says her nose was small. But what she was doing sitting near a cathedral with a cat (she didn't like cats), and wearing a lot of jewelry, simply seems to indicate that it was not drawn from life.

Byrne is also quoted as saying, "The previous portrait is a very sentimentalised Victorian view of 'Aunt Jane,' someone who played spillikins, who just lurked in the shadows with her scribbling." But what does a Victorian portrait (she means the altered and engraved 1870 version of Cassandra's original sketch) have to do with the case? A late, altered portrait is not pertinent. That the one Byrne bought is of a distinguished-looking author, "very confident in her own skin, very happy to be presented as a professional woman writer and a novelist, which does fly in the face of the cutesy, heritage spinster view," may fit in with Byrne's own (ironically imaginary!) vision of what Austen looked like, but has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether the portrait was taken from life.

Upon buying the portrait, Byrne approached the BBC and they started filming a documentary about it that will be aired later this month. The unavoidable conclusion is that Byrne and her husband bought the portrait to use as part of a campaign to build herself up as the author of *the* new major biography, in a bid for major league fame. The documentary is publicity to showcase "their" discovery. But it's not their discovery. It's their calculated purchase. To me this resembles the "arsenic" story in which a mystery writer recently hypothesized, as a vehicle for book promotion, that Austen was murdered. It's all about the limelight and nothing but the limelight - for the authors. Jane Austen doesn't need it; they do. Funny how both of these stories turned up almost at the same time; it's the way things are done in book promotion now. Find some manuscript or picture, hook your book to it, the truth doesn't matter, all that matters is what you make the public think. The public, not thinking about it very hard, now thinks that Jane Austen may have been murdered with arsenic, and that a brilliant scholar uncovered a new portrait of Jane Austen. Let's buy their books! And they may be good books, too; I'm told the mystery is excellent. This means more sales of good books, so where's the problem? Truth, inconvenient truth, is the problem. Mind you, I have nothing at all against book promotion, in fact I support it enthusiastically. And I have nothing against discoveries. But when people deliberately say they discovered things they didn't, in service of promoting a book, yes, it bothers me. The portrait itself is very interesting. It makes the subject look rather like an early 19th century Virginia Woolf.

"Ambition! Ambition! Cromwell, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels."

Quarterly Report: Thrift Shop Finds

2011-11-19T06:12:00.000-08:00

Seems to me as if I haven't submitted a summary of my Salvation Army Boutique finds lately, liberally admixed with cats, and with few words (unless a Jane Austen quote or two should occur to me). So let's get down to brass tacks.

First up: the mock Tiffany cat night light, here examined by Marsh-wiggle

Pindar takes a look

A Scottish water-colour, showing the village of Pittenweem. The little green vase (Royal Winton Grimwades) is new too. The picture makes me think of the song:

Oh, Pittenweem, Pittenweem,

She's every fisher laddie's dream.

She guts the herrin' doon by the quay,

And saves her kisses just for me.

I have them in my study on the Chinese chest I found last summer at the Salvation Army.

Now I must confess to you a slightly embarrassing problem. Because the Salvation Army Boutique is so rich in treasures, new ones coming in every day, and I've been haunting the place for over a year now, my crystalline antiquities have...accumulated. In fact, my dining table was becoming so cluttered that Paul started intoning warningly that he would get Dr. Zazio (the psychologist on the reality show Hoarders) after me! Here's an unsparing view of my table. But aren't the blue Bohemian decanter and glasses delicious? How could I ever resist them?

Note Catullus sitting amongst the bibelots. The cats often walk delicately around, over, and through the objects, and never break a one! That's not to say things haven't been broken (there was the time Marshy and Tully took a belly flop onto five Venetian glass goblets of Paul's and did a Full Strike...and Tully has deliberately thrown my watch in the trash and buried my glasses in the litterbox), but not one thing has ever been smashed on my table. Yet.

"To the Great House accordingly they went, to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour, with a small carpet and shining floor, to which the present daughters of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a grand piano forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables placed in every direction. Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themselves seemed to be staring in astonishment." - Jane Austen, Persuasion

Just as the old rabbi painting, which used to belong to Peter's grandmother, gazes down at my treasure table!

Speaking of which...well, actually, I've only shown you half the table. Here's the other half. The red (or Quadling) half. Aren't the red decanter and glasses pretty, too? The whole set was only $15! My other favorite new treasure on the Red half is this wonderful red lamp, Victoria china from Czechoslovakia.

About the clutter problem: We addressed it by acquiring three pieces of furniture and filling them up with the excess bibelots.

"Mrs. Grant, having by this time run through the usual resources of ladies residing in the country without a family of children—having more than filled her favourite sitting–room with pretty furniture, and made a choice collection of plants and poultry—was very much in want of some variety at home" - Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Here is the first piece, an antique wooden desk:

It holds many things (she said darkly), but even more of anti-clutter breakthrough was this mahogany glass-fronted chest:

It made a huge difference to the Hoard on the table! Why, you can even see the table's surface now:

An improvement, do admit!

You can see my little animal collection more clearly (if you should care to). The Japanese Zebra perhaps my favorite, but I love the little white running weasel from Carcassonne too. But perhaps my favorite piece of furniture ever acquired at the Salvation Army is this amazing antique Chinese hand painted red chest. It cost $75 and I've seen similar pieces online for ten times as much. (It holds a lot, too.)

Here it is from the side:

"How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open..." - Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey.

Now, here are some more pretty things, and cats, from around the house.

Tully and Marshy try to look fierce. The blue Chinese cushion is Salvation Army ($2)

A pretty dish from Italy.

Red and blue Czech crystal earrings ($4)

"Having now said enough to make his poverty clear, and to do away the necessity of buying a pair of ear-rings for each of his sisters" - John Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility

The lady shows what she thinks about being asked to wear a Halloween hat.

"I am to be Count Cassel, and am to come in first with a blue dress and a pink satin cloak, and afterwards am to have another fine fancy suit, by way of a shooting–dress. I do not know how I shall like it.” - Mr. Rushworth in Mansfield Park

A black Chinese shawl

"Fanny, William must not forget my shawl if he goes to the East Indies; and I shall give him a commission for anything else that is worth having. I wish he may go to the East Indies, that I may have my shawl. I think I will have two shawls, Fanny.” - Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park

Three pretty dishes (I love blue and white). Left, Derby Lily; right, Tettau from Bavaria; and French "Amitie" from Quimperle.

The English Wedgewood egg cups ($5) are new

"Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else -- but you need not be afraid -- they are very small, you see -- one of our small eggs will not hurt you." - Mr. Woodhouse, Mansfield Park

My little vintage pins - enamel animals, sparkly cats

"You see what a collection I have,” said she; “more by half than I ever use or think of. I do not offer them as new. I offer nothing but an old necklace." - Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park

A jewel of a cat

Fast Trip to New York

2011-11-16T17:06:00.000-08:00

On the roof, Hunter College Elementary School sixth grade class, 1957 (I'm in lower right corner)

Hunter reunion, on the roof in 2011

Thursday. Trip got off to a fraughtish start because the storm back East meant that cousins were without power in their Connecticut home, and had to stay at Ezra's Riverside Drive apartment - which meant Paul and I couldn't. So I called around frantically and got the last room at the West Side YMCA, convenient location just off Central Park West near Lincoln Center, $100 a night, with bunk beds. Decent flight, despite sardine seats and a threatened problem with the hydraulic system; but we got to New York safely and on time.

We headed to the Y, a handsome building with a nice lounge where there was wifi, and pleasant staff. But the room! One wild horrified look at the bunk beds, and it was perfectly clear we could not handle it, not for more than one night, and possibly not even that. But there was no help for it, it was already late, so I gamely said I would try and see if I could get up to the top, since I'm smaller. You'd think that wouldn't be so hard, but the thing was so constructed that you had to climb up the high frame, which swayed and wobbled like a weeping willow in an earthquake. It took delicate footwork, upper body strength and agility, all of which I used to have previous to the touch of arthritis in my knee, but now it was a challenge. I finally did ascend, and flopped like an out-of-breath fish on a wooden platter, which threatened to hurl me to the floor, six feet down. "I'll take the top, you can't," Paul said heroically, but the worst part of the challenge still remained: I had to get down. Couldn't get a foothold going backwards, so had to do a body twist and descend with arms behind me - very precarious and twisted my knee as I jumped the last few feet. Paul found it every bit as hard for his younger self to ascend, while his larger frame was completely incompatable with the wobbling-fish-plate-pancake effect. We concluded that of the two, it would be marginally less dangerous for me to sleep up there, but decided to put off thinking about it for awhile and go get something to eat. Found a really nice Indian restaurant (Moghli) for dinner (Goa fish curry; Hyderabadi chicken), and then retired to deal with the night on the rack of torture. Incredibly, the bunk bed was not even the worst thing about the Y. That would be the bathroom, which was completely communal! Divided by sex, yes, but that was the only amenity: there was no privacy. Only a tea towel sized shower curtain shielded each stall, which seemed not to be a problem for the large young women shaking their bottoms in thongs, but definitely was for one brought up in the Victorian age. So I limited my showers to thirty seconds at 3 AM, which is not ideal. The less said about the toilets, the better, and I won't say it.

Me on the roof at Hunter, 1950s. Miserable little scrap. Someday they will discover that sending night owls to day school doesn't work.

Modern version of the little play house, right (picture borrowed from Nancy)

Happily I was able to secure a cancellation at our favorite Larchmont Hotel on 11th Street in the Village, for myself, for our last couple of nights. It's so charming and inexpensive they're generally solidly booked, so I felt fortunate and never have I more appreciated my own room! and bath! and civil guests (the Y clientele, not surprisingly, was large, loud and graceless). We also hated staying near Lincoln Center, nothing but tourist restaurants for half a dozen blocks in every direction, and the Starbucks was so packed you waited on lines to get sloppy swill. Who ever thought that the coffee would be better in L.A.? We have Peets.

Friday. We spent most of the day visiting my in-laws, who are growing miserably embattled in their old age. Part of the problem was that Peter Cooper Village where they have lived since 1948 has lately decreed that residents must get rid of trunks that have been stored in the basement for decades. I've had one there since moving to California in the early 1970s. This disruption was understandably extremely difficult for elderly people, and made for a lot of tension. They didn't want the trunk in the house, so it had to be arranged for us to go down for an illegal basement peek, bribing a handyman. The man was late and I had to go to my reunion dinner, so I left Paul in charge of this volatile situation, and he performed very well under considerable emotional fire. The trunk was opened; he had five minutes to gather armfuls of old books and his own baby clothes and shove them in a bag, before the trunk was consigned to oblivion. Paul got out of there quickly and I returned from a lovely time at the reunion to hear the whole dismal story.

Fourth grade class (me on left)

Reunion at Roosevelt House

Watching the awards

Beth receives an achievement award from the head of Hunter College

The reunion was to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Hunter College Elementary School, and it was held at Roosevelt House at Hunter College, where a goodly crowd of people who'd attended Hunter from the 1930s to the present had a warm and wonderful time clustering into their own class groups. There were about ten from my class, some of whom are always kind enough to meet me when I'm in NY, so we've become real friends despite the initial 50-year gap since we last saw each other at age eleven. Beth came from New Mexico and she and her poet sister Rachel were among those honored at the reunion, along with a pioneering advertising woman from the class of 1938, the president of Brandeis, and the writer/composer of The Book of Mormon. After the ceremonies the Class of '57 members went out to a local steak house for dinner and had a jolly, sweet, and congenial time.

Happy Hunter dinner (picture borrowed from Nancy)

I always marvel at how vividly we remember being children together, our personalities so strong and distinct even then. Was that because we were "gifted"? I doubt it; I think it's just that we were together so long in a small group, two small classes. Most of us had nothing to do with each other for our entire intervening adult lives, and we lived them disparately - we are widely diverse in experience, viewpoint, and specialities, yet we are all so fond of each other and listen with great interest to all the varied life reports. Nostalgia seems to descend on one in the sixties, along with knee problems and love of cats and china painted with violets (speaking for myself obviously!). I think the professional tally was two psychologists, two lawyers, a book editor, a newspaper editor, a realtor, a political activist, a games expert, and me. Although I would guess most are comfortably off by reasonable standards, it is perhaps a mark of the recession that only one of the ten is fully retired at age 65, most have no plans to retire any time soon, and one of our most vibrant discussions was of a shared, intense love of thrift stores! Other lively topics included: a psychological consideration of why some people from similar backgrounds are survivors and some not; various political campaigns and the "Occupy" movement; methods of building a real estate practice; the joyful achievement that one of us has a grandchild in first grade at Hunter (even more difficult than in our day, as there are now 2,500 applicants for 50 places); and a host of memories of each other in our Hunter days and the eccentricities of our teachers. Who would not love a reunion such as this?

To be accepted at Hunter in the 1950s you had to have an IQ in the top percentile and your picture taken in a bathing suit. Mine was taken in Central Park.

We parted early enough for me to meet up with Paul and go to Veselka's in the East Village so he could have dinner - Ukranian stew and ambrosial apple crumble.

Saturday. This morning, on only 4 hours sleep, I got up early for the second phase of the reunion, which was a tour of our old school. The outside and the roof looked as they always had, and the lobby was recognizable, but the classrooms themselves were so changed and remodeled I don't think any of us got much of a real deja vu feeling; also it was all so long ago we found we really collectively didn't remember much. Memory, I have concluded, is not a reliable record. The great thing is that we all do still really remember each other, and it's perhaps the greatest part of our education to see what became of us, or what we became, after the elapsing of most of a lifetime.

The older generation looks at the work of the new

After the school tour they took us by bus up to the new school building on East 94th, for a light brunch and some more time to socialize in classrooms. From there "our ten" went to Chef Ho's for what is becoming our traditional reunion Peking Duck. Great fun. Shared a cab to the West Side, where I fell fast asleep for three solid hours, and awakened to find that by general agreement we weren't having the evening drinks party we'd planned: everyone was just too exhausted. I had a nice email from my bonhomious friend Jay, who mentioned a favorite restaurant around the corner from him and his wife Susan at Columbus and 89th, Saigon Grill, and we went over to see them at their fantastic, cultured-New Yorker, book-and-art stuffed apartment. A delicious dinner in the most delightful company put the capper on a thoroughly enjoying-New-York mood, topped off by dessert at Cafe Lalo (cappuccino and Frenchified cakes). Now I've caught up on internet and diarizing, and will hazard my last ghastly YMCA shower...Tomorrow we visit my mother.

Family visiting my mother

Youth and age. Beautiful New York girl cousin Joanna, age 14 1/2

Men of the family: Tom, Jim, David, Paul

Joanna, Anne, me

Sunday. Here I am comfortably ensconced at the Larchmont - my goodness, how this modest bed and breakfast feels like the lap of luxury! When I came in, the staff was polite and friendly, the other guests well behaved, there were flowers in the lobby and complimentary slippers and bathrobe...yet it costs the same as the Y! I simply hated staying right by Lincoln Center, awful tourist area, but it's just wonderful staying in the Village. Today, Paul and I took train and bus up to see my mother. She didn't look bad, just weak, and was so pleased we were there. Cousins Anne, Jim, Joanna, David and Tom all came, and it was a very warm, pleasant gathering, a real family party. Joanna has dyed her hair red and is a spunky beautiful teenager, enormous fun, now she's old enough to really get to know. It was a lovely time and we all then took the train back again, together.

On the subway going home

Tired out

Love this picture of Joanna (taken by Anne)

Me at same age...

I then met my JASNA-New York friends at Lincoln Center (had to pass through a horrendous crowd as the New York Marathon had just finished up right there), and we went out to an excellent Indian restaurant and had some delightful Janeite talk that got me even more excited about the upcoming Brooklyn JASNA-AGM a year from now. I was pretty tired after a day of such intense socializing (more than I get in several months in Los Angeles) but joined Paul at the Y, and waited till he finished his work. Then we packed up all the remaining bags and took them by taxi to the Larchmont. We walked from the Larchmont to Veselka's where he had a late dinner (stuffed cabbage and pierogies).

End of the Marathon

Susan's divine chocolate shortbread cake

Monday. Awfully nice day today, perfect weather. Dropped in to see the in-laws briefly in the morning. From there, took the Lexington Ave. subway up to see my Jane Austen friend Gene, who lives near my home building on East 86th St. Lovely time, she took me to the most exquisite Italian restaurant, Centolire, on Madison and 86th, for a taste of first class New York food. I had little grilled wild mushrooms in polenta cream, delicate and divine, then marvelous grilled sardines on risotto cream, and gelato and cappuccino. Ah, New York Italian! I also stopped by my old building and talked to a kind, chatty doorman, Angelo, who told me that if I wrote in advance, the woman who lives in our old apartment, Mrs. Furman, is very nice and would probably let me see the place! Ah, next trip. He also said that the mother of two of my playmates died only a couple of years ago in her 90s and her apartment was unchanged in all that time - wish I'd known, I could have visited her. Then I met Paul on Broadway and 114th, at Book Culture, a favorite bookstore, and we visited a retired librarian friend and Charlotte Yonge devotee whom I always see when in New York, in her beautiful, book-filled Riverside Drive apartment. Another librarian friend was visiting her, lovely lady, and Paul told them horror stories of modern library work situations and made their hair stand up on end! Then we went to the charming Jay and Susan's, and they made us the most delicious dinner - can't believe it was still the same day as the fabulous Italian lunch - the tenderest roast pork with endive, and a stupendous molten chocolate cake, the best ever. Paul and I staggered back to our respective hotels and I'm at the Larchmont now. On the way I found that Lafayette Pastry, a favorite bakery in the Village that I'd loved since I was a Music and Art student at 14, but thought was closed, is still in existence; they'd just moved. Though decidedly they've become a little strange. The elderly proprietor is dead, and his son, who does the baking with his elderly mother, has a few screws loose and got into awful public trouble, as well he might, for his Drunken Negro Cookies. There's been a campaign to stamp him out (he's had death and bomb threats), and the online restaurant review sites tear him apart. His mind may be scrambled but oddly there is still absolutely nothing wrong with his pastry; the Greek Cookies are still sublime. Perhaps it's his mother's hand there; how deeply miserable that poor old woman did look, I felt sorry for her.

Lafayette Pastry, what happened?

Tuesday. How pleasant the Larchmont is. Quiet and peaceful, and when I went downstairs with my three heavy bags, everybody simply leaped to help me. I checked out, left the bags, and walked over to 7th Ave. to take the subway uptown. Warm sunny day, must have been 70 degrees. Went to my childhood best friend Mark's psychologist office in my aunt's old building on West End Avenue at 10:30 but he wasn't there; clearly missed my message. He called as I was walking away and said he was a block away, so we met up! Just for 5 minutes but much better than nothing. I then went to Murray's Sturgeon Shop to buy my nova and bialies to take home, and took the crosstown bus intending to have a peek into the Met...but the crowds were vast and the day beautiful, so instead I went for a lovely wander in sunny Central Park, past Cleopatra's Needle where Mark and I played as kids half a century ago, and to Turtle Pond where we floated boats (it's all fenced in now, alas). So many self-conscious prosperous New Yorkers attitudinizing; it used to be just a park where kids played, I swear.

Me and Mark at 10...and when we met again, in our 40s

Me in a quieter Central Park, 1950s

Central Park on an unseasonably warm day in November

Cleopatra's Needle, where Mark and I used to play

Then I took the Fifth Avenue bus down to the building on 29th Street where my cousin Anne had an art exhibit - her meticulous architectural paintings were well placed in an executive office setting.

It was literally around the corner from "The Little Church around the Corner," where many theatrical people and journalists were married - including my grandparents, Onoto Watanna (the first Asian American novelist) and alcoholic reporter Bertrand Babcock. Then I took a cab to meet Paul at the Coffee Roast cafe across the street from the Larchmont, where he had a Croque Monsieur and we saw Austin Scarlett of Project Runway sauntering by, a doubly delicious New York moment. Then to the Larchmont to collect bags and take a cab to the airport...and home to Peter and the cats...

"The Little Church around the Corner" where my grandparents married in 1901

One of Anne's "High Line" paintings

Augusta in August: An Interview with Mrs. Elton

2011-08-24T05:09:00.000-07:00

"Mrs. Elton was neither handsome, clever, nor rich" - from In Defense of Mrs. Elton by Diana Birchall, illustrations by Juliet McMaster

Mrs. Birchall (notebook in hand): Hello, Mrs. Elton. Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice. I have come to Highbury to solicit your opinion.

Mrs. Elton: My opinion? Well! Only fancy. Few people, I think, can be less forward in giving their opinion than me. You will not find me eager to say what I think; far from it. If there is any thing I cannot endure it is a woman who gives her opinion too decidedly.

Mrs. Birchall: Well, if you are reluctant, I can go away and interview Miss Bates. I'm sure she'll have plenty to say.

Mrs. Elton: Stay. If I really must give my opinion, of course I will do so. I would not disappoint a visitor for the world. That would be extremely rude.

Mrs. Birchall: Very well, then. Here goes. My readers are interested in finding out how things are getting
along in Highbury. You seem to be just the person to tell us.

Mr. and Mrs. Elton, played by Alan Cummings and Juliet Stevenson in the 1996 Emma

Mrs. Elton (flattered): Do I? I do not pretend to be the patroness of the place. It would not be proper for a vicar's wife to take a leading part in society, and I do not at all aspire to such a state.

Mrs. Birchall: Certainly not. And we all know, don’t we, that Mrs. Knightley is the great lady of Highbury.

Mrs. Elton (bridling): Mrs. Knightley! Well, that is - Yes, she gives herself such airs, that any stranger to the place might be taken in, and believe she is the fine lady of title and quality she fancies herself to be! But I assure you, that is not the case. The truly genteel people of Highbury, the most select, consider her quite an upstart, I can assure you. We are not taken in by her presuming ways.

Mrs. Birchall: Oh! But I thought that she was from a very ancient family. Doesn't it say so, right there in Emma? Yes, I thought so..here is what Jane Austen says herself:

"He must know that the Woodhouses had been settled for several generations at Hartfield, the younger branch of a very ancient family -- and that the Eltons were nobody."

(Mrs. Elton ruffles like a partridge and starts to puff.)

The first sight of Mrs. Elton at church

Mrs. Elton: Nobody! Well, I like that! Miss Austen has an editorial way that is positively - That woman will say anything! She knew nothing of my husband's antecedents when she wrote that scurrilous book, not to mention my own connections. Emma, indeed! I do assure you that we are related to some very fine folks and move in quite another sphere. Why, my brother, Mr. Suckling, owns a great deal of property, and drives a barouche-landau, which Mrs. Knightley, who seldom stirs beyond her own park-paling, never does.

Mrs. Birchall: (Tactfully) Perhaps we ought to change this subject. I only meant to inquire about the various townspeople. We were speaking of Miss Bates. I always did like her. How is she?

Mrs. Elton: Upon my word! You are commencing at the bottom, are you not? Why, she is scarcely genteel. If she were not a vicar's daughter, she never would have been received in polite company. A sad, poor old maid, and with such manners!

Mrs. Birchall: I believe she is very kind hearted, and very well liked in general.

Mrs. Elton (disdainfully): Oh! Well, if you care for that sort of thing. Any way, since her old mother died, she has done very well for herself. You must know, she cast herself quite upon the charity of the Churchills, and you will hardly credit it, but Jane and Mr. Frank Churchill have actually taken her into their home, at Enscombe, in Yorkshire. When she was practically a beggar, too. Quite shameless.

Mrs. Birchall: Well, but that is very nice of them, and very nice for Miss Bates, too. I am glad to hear it. And Harriet - how is she, and all the good Martins?

Mrs. Elton: (swivels around to stare at her interviewer incredulously) I thought that you were to ask me about the ladies and gentlemen of Highbury.

The Eltons with Harriet
(illustration by Juliet McMaster)

Mrs. Birchall: Why, yes.

Mrs. Elton (pityingly): If you cannot tell gentry from common farmers…

Mrs. Birchall: (gently) I only want to know how they are.

Mrs. Elton: Oh, very well I suppose. Mrs. Martin has got another child, I’ve lately heard. Six or seven of them now. Quite shocking the way they breed, but I will say that at least they are not upon the parish.

Mrs. Birchall: My readers will be glad to hear it. And of course we know that the Knightleys are all doing well, since the sad passing of Mr. Woodhouse, and the Westons are prospering…

Mrs. Elton: Oh, certainly; good creatures they are, though hardly people of elegance or fashion. The Westons are well enough to associate with in a little country place such as Highbury. They would be nobody in Bath.

Mrs. Birchall: Now I come to a more modern question. What do you think of all the sequels to Miss Austen’s stories, that have lately appeared?

Mrs. Elton: Why, to say the truth, I am sadly affronted.

Mrs. Birchall: And why is that? Do you disapprove of them?

Mrs. Elton: To be sure I do. Most of them are finishings of Pride and Prejudice, which I consider quite unfitting. Such a coarse novel, with that young girl running off before her marriage. Dreadful. We do not have such happenings in Highbury. And there are worse things, I know (nodding wisely) in Sense and Sensibility.

Mrs. Birchall: Do you think that is why there are so few sequels to Emma?

Mrs. Elton: Perhaps. You know how the vulgar mind doats upon scandal.

Mrs. Elton and her housekeeper

Mrs. Birchall: Then you would like to see more sequels to Emma?

Mrs. Elton: I? I should say not. Why should that arrogant upstart of a woman receive even more fame and attention than has already fallen to her lot, quite undeservedly? She always gets more than her due, and has from a girl.

Mrs. Birchall: Do you mean Jane Austen?

Mrs. Elton: No! I mean Emma! Why should I want to see her get more glory than ever, films and all that sort of thing, when sterling characters are passed by?

Very few pearls like Mrs. Elton's.

Mrs. Birchall: (slyly) Such as yourself?

Mrs. Elton: If you must speak of me, why, yes, as a matter of fact.

Mrs. Birchall: But don’t you know that I have written a sequel, a novel, that is all about you?

Mrs. Elton: No, I didn’t know. (Tosses head disdainfully) It cannot be much of a best-seller. Mr. E. and I read all the reviews in the London Times, and we have never heard of it.

Mrs. Birchall: Yes, well you see, I am an American.

Mrs. Elton: Exactly so! Then how could you presume to take it upon yourself to write about an English person – especially one of good breeding?

Mrs. Birchall: Perhaps I have as much fortitude as you have yourself. Be that as it may, my first “Mrs. Elton” story, In Defense of Mrs. Elton, was published by the Jane Austen Society of North America, as well as in Australia, and sold in your own England as well. It is now collected into a volume with other stories, called Mrs. Elton in America. Sourcebooks publishes it. Would you like to read a copy? I believe you would like it. Here.

Mrs. Elton: A book? All about me? Is that so?

(she grabs the volume and starts devouring it greedily)

Mrs. Birchall: Well, it looks like I have made one sale, at least.

I had to bring Mrs. Elton in America to its eponymous heroine via imagination only; but you can order the book on Amazon. Which is almost as miraculous!

From an advice column Mrs. Elton wrote for the Jane Austen Today blog a couple of years (or centuries) ago! http://janitesonthejames.blogspot.com/2008/07/mrs-elton-sez-governess-presents.html

If you wish to ask Mrs. Elton a question yourself, you may send it to birchalls@aol.com, and I will certainly see that she gets it.

Chawton Then and Now

2011-08-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

Flowers at Chawton, 1985

It was as long ago as 1984 that I first attempted to write in imitation of Jane Austen's "voice" (which I hasten to fervently and categorically state is not a possible thing to do), and in that first attempt, won a writing contest in Persuasions, the journal of JASNA (the Jane Austen Society of North America). I channeled Miss Bates, and though I wince at a youthful effort, I'll attach it at the end.

Husband Peter at Chawton Great House, long before it became the Chawton House Library

Faulty and feeble though the effort might have been, I was encouraged by its success, and it was the beginning of my attempts in that direction, which culminated in my writing full blown Jane Austen sequels, Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma and Mrs. Elton in America. The following year, 1985, was not the first time I attended the annual general meeting of the English Jane Austen Society at Chawton, but it was the first time I took pictures.

Peter walking toward the Great House...much quieter place then!

At that time, I believe Lord David Cecil was still Hon. Chairman, and Tony Trollope and the Countess of Huntington were much in evidence; it was very much the old guard. These long-ago meetings were perhaps the most quintessentially English occasions I'd ever intruded upon; my husband and I were, I believe, the only Americans present, and it was a smaller and more low key affair than the meetings are today.

The tents, as they were then. Smaller.

Maggie Lane, Lyndall Gordan and her husband, and Brian Southam, 1985

This was many years before Sandy Lerner conceived of turning the "great house" into Chawton House Library, and the whole place, achingly lovely, was in a state of summery sleepiness and old world ways. I remember the Countess introducing Lord David Cecil, and using an upper class old world trill, she intoned, "Will the Chairman please r-r-r-ise." Fortunately I still have some pictures from that day, and will share them here. And, having just returned from the 2011 meeting with more pictures, I invite you to contrast and compare the difference between Chawton meetings, a quarter century apart.

Alwyn Austen, family descendant; Professor Gaye King, and me

Later, Professor Ed Copeland and I examine the famous painting of Jane Austen with her back turned, done by Cassandra. It was at that time kept in a drawer in Alwyn's house! Nowadays it's under lock and key in a museum, you may be sure!

Jean Bowden, long time curator of Chawton Cottage, with Lord David Cecil

Lyndall Gordon, myself, her husband Siamon Gordon, Gaye King, and David Nokes

And now, some more up-to-date pictures. Below, members of our panel at the 2009 Chawton House Library conference, "New Directions of Jane Austen Studies."

Phyllis Bottomer, Marcia Folsom, me, Laurie Kaplan

A larger tent, more people...and they do seem younger. Many more Americans, too.

An Austen icon, Deirdre Le Faye, 2009

Chawton farm, 2009

And now up to days present, here I am at the Chawton meeting once more, in July 2011, in the lovely, mature garden.

The garden

Professor Janet Todd delivers the address on the reality of Mr. Darcy, to a larger audience in a bigger tent

Interior of the remodeled stable block

Nosegay at Chawton Cottage in 2009: always a tradition

And now, my first essay in Austen-sequelizing! From Persuasions, 1984.

An Oxford Meeting

2011-08-02T03:28:00.000-07:00

Friends' Meeting House, St. Giles, Oxford

Saturday, July 23

To my surprise, I slept like a top in the Cornish Riviera sleeper train. I’d been anxious about it, thinking it foolhardy to get no sleep on a train the night before having to give a talk, but Jan thought it would be an adventure and she was right – only I slept, and she didn’t! She knocked on my cabin in the morning to say she was off, and departed for Cambridge, having to take a cab to King’s Cross. I was more fortunate, just stepping off the train into the middle of Paddington, where I had only to buy cappuccino and pain au chocolat, and board the next direct train for Oxford.

St. Hilda's College

The garden by the river at St. Hilda's College

Arrived in Oxford about 8 AM, and took a taxi the ten minute drive to Jean’s house. She and Tony were up and about, and we enjoyed tea and a happy reunion together. Then Jean had to go in to St. Hilda’s for a meeting about the Pym conference, and I stayed back, to do email and perhaps nap. We agreed that I’d take the bus into central Oxford to meet her at the old Quaker Friends’ Meeting House before my talk at 4 PM, but to my delight Jean phoned and asked me to come to lunch at St. Hilda’s! I had a chance to refresh myself with a look at the river and gardens which I remembered so well from past conferences, and then was kindly welcomed by the redoubtable organizer Eileen Roberts, and by Clemence Schultz, chairman of the Charlotte M. Yonge Society, whom I remembered from attending the conference of the centenary of Yonge's death, at St. Hilda’s in 2001. Pleasant Yonge talk and shared memories, and then they had to go back to their meeting, while I had a couple of hours free to wander around Oxford before my talk.

A crowded Oxford

This was of course a treat, but I admit to being taken aback by the immense crowds of summer students – clearly not regular university level students, but masses of teenagers from various countries (Japan and Italy seemed the main ones) taking some sort of language classes. Oxford has always been full of summer visitors, students and tourists, but this was at another level. The narrow streets were so thick with kids that you could hardly thread your way, and they were not space conscious, so you were constantly bumped and jostled. The Bodleian quad was almost surreal, with hundreds of kids all taking pictures of each other; walking to the shop, I probably ended up appearing in twenty different shots. All I managed to do in a couple of hours was a peek at Blackwell’s, a look at an intriging sounding exhibit called Eccentricity at the Museum of the History of Science, which turned out to be rather dry and disappointing, being more about inventions than genuine eccentricity. But I got to the Meeting House in good time.

My talk at the Friends' Meeting House

After my talk, with Alison Boulton, Jean Harker, Helen Rappaport

Finally I reached the Quaker Meeting House in St. Giles. I’d passed it many time before but never been inside, and was very excited at being asked to speak to the Writers in Oxford Group in such a place. Built in 1660, it is a lovely old building with such a welcoming feeling. As I was early, I greeted people as they arrived, and it was such a warm and wonderful group – which I was happy to see included several old friends, which made me feel very comfortable! I did my talk in a charmingly informal and peaceful setting, a room looking out onto the garden, where chairs were placed all around against the walls, in a very friendly “Quaker meeting” fashion, much nicer than the usual audience/lecturer setting.

A friendly welcome, indeed

The talk was called “A Life in the Story Department: Reading My Way Through Hollywood – Part Two,” since I gave this group a very similar talk a few years ago, and this might be regarded as an update. I talked about my work, and as the group members are all published authors they had lots of questions about what a Hollywood story analyst looks for in submitted novels. I also talked about having been the third of four generations of story analysts in my family, dating from my grandmother, who was story editor of Universal Pictures in 1924, and about her books and mine. It was fun, but as always a great relief when it was pleasantly over! Afterwards, Jean, the group’s treasurer Sheila Cameron, Helen Rappaport, and Christine Finn, took me out for drinks at Brown’s. I had perry, and felt a bit wobbly, which I attributed to having slept on the train! Afterwards went back to Jean’s where Tony prepared one of his famous curries.

A country footpath, near Oxford

Sunday

Lovely warm sunny day, went for a walk with Tony and Jean in the morning; I had never realized, in all my visits to their house on Cumnor Hill, such a short distance from central Oxford, that merely around the corner was open fields and countryside. This was a revelation, and I so enjoyed the ramble that gave me glimpses of green meadows, thatched cottages, and fast ripening apple trees.

Jane's Tea Shop, near Kirtlington

Jane at work in her tea shop

Me and Simon at the tea shop

Then Simon of Stuck-in-a-Book fame and his housemate Debs picked me up at 11 and we drove, as planned, to the eccentric, hidden, wonderful riverside tea shop called Jane’s Teas near Kirtlington. Only open on Sundays, it’s run by a lady who lives on a Thames riverboat, and originally started serving teas to other boaters, but now serves to the public, if you can find your way there and stroll down a long country lane on a Sunday! It’s a unique, charming place, and the food is delicious, as well it might be as she grows all the fruits and vegetables on her own freeholding, with cream from her own cows.

Debs and Simon

Me on Jane's riverboat

A riverside table

I had a seafood pie and cream tea, and bought some of Jane’s chutneys to bring to friends tomorrow. Lovely chat with Simon, who I know from the Dove Grey Books list (devoted to Persephone books and early middlebrow fiction) and have met before, and I felt as if I’d known Debs for ages. But Simon has written about this idyllic afternoon, as well as my talk, on his own blog, one of the finest book blogs in England; if you’ve never visited, it is my honor and pleasure to introduce it to you:

http://stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.com/2011/07/day-out-with-diana.html

Was in such a mellow mood on leaving Oxford (Simon kindly drove me to the bus station) that the three-hour bus ride between Oxford and Cambridge only seemed like a mellow winding about the countryside. The bus stopped right near my Cambridge friend's house, where I passed the best evening of the whole trip, at an elegant family dinner, which, being in the bosom of a friend’s family, I will not blog about. But it was the perfect end to a perfect trip, and could only leave me saying, like Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, “I do not deserve it. Oh! Why is not every body as happy!”

Pear trees in Cambridge garden

The pleasure lasted a little longer, when my friend Christine from the Girls Own list met me in the morning, for tea in a little shop not far from King’s College, and then a dip into The Haunted Bookshop, my favorite, still reassuringly piled as high as ever with old books, particularly children’s books. I splurged on a beautiful first English edition of Charlotte M. Yonge’s The Cunning Woman’s Grandson (1889). I thought 20 pounds was a lot, but I now see that I was lucky to find this extremely scarce book and the price was excellent. I gave Christine the pretty copy of What Katy Did Next that I bought in the Scilly museum, as she is a Susan Coolidge scholar, and she gave me a lovely book called From Norfolk Knobs to Fidget Pie: Foods from the Heart of England and East Anglia.

The Haunted Bookshop, Cambridge

The journey home, train from Cambridge to King’s Cross, tube to Heathrow, several more movies (for some reason I watched Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits for the first time, quite fascinating, think it must always have been underrated). A journey marred only by the confiscation of my Jane's Tea Shop precious jam and chutney at Customs for being a few milliliters over the allowed amount!

Probable view behind the scenes at Customs. Greedy beasts!

England 2011: An Uninhabited Island

2011-08-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

Samson, Scilly's largest uninhabited island

Thursday, July 21 – At last, a fully, brilliantly sunny day, the first and most beautiful of all. In bright sunshine the sea magically transformed into the piercing, heart melting Scillonian turquoise color that I’d kept promising Jan, so, over the enormous English breakfast, we decided among our many choices to take the 10 AM boat to the uninhabited island, Samson. After a short ride on a small boat with a dozen or so other people, we were landed on a white pure beach of very fine sand shot through with silver flecks that glittered in the sun. Everyone gasped and laughed to find themselves in such a beautiful place.

Starting to climb

Samson is only half a mile long by a quarter mile wide, but possesses two hills that are famously said to look like “paps” from the sea. We quickly climbed the north hill, past a ruined stone house or two, up to the high point for a truly spectacular view of the islands all around. Then we walked along a brackeny tract on the spine of the island, and dropped down to an equally silvery beach on the other side.

Brackeny tract

From there we climbed again, up the south hill, past some picturesque ruined houses – the last few people were removed from the islands in the 1850s and the frames of their stone cottages are left, through which you glimpse the turquoise water. On the high far end was a long stone wall almost across the width of the island, joined up with stone structures and extensive burial cairns.

Old stone houses

Glimpses of sea

Looking back over the whole island

From the burial cairns

Views from the top

The views were beautiful, and after reveling in them we completed the circle and returned back along the other side, down to the series of white beaches where we’d landed, to wait for the boat. We had a pleasant hour there, sitting on a grassy dune and taking shoes off for a walk in the fine sand and bright cold clear water: it was all very Narnian. The boat was a little late, having to maneuver a long way around sand bars.

Jan's daughter's comment on seeing this picture: "You got my mother to wear a baseball cap. Wow."

Pure clear water - and sand so fine it used to be shipped to the mainland to use before blotting-paper was invented

Officially Scilly

The return boat approaches the beach

Gaily flying the Union Jack

And now for the lesson, some interesting things I learned about the islands. Samson’s history is outlandish, like that of much of Scilly. It is named after St. Samson of Dol, one of the seven founder saints of Brittany, who lived in the fifth century.

Earlier, the Greek historian Strabo described the island inhabitants as wearing “an undergarment that reached down to their ankles, and over that another, both of the same color, which was black, girt round a little below the breast with a girdle, and walked with staves in their hands. The riches of the islands were tin and lead, which with skins of their cattle, they exchanged with foreign merchants, the Phoenicians from Cadiz.” Hard to picture, with modern trippers scrambling over the islands in light summer clothes!

Figurehead recently retrieved from the Colossus, wrecked off the north reef shore of Samson in 1798. There's a museum of figureheads on Tresco called Valhalla.

Traditional Cornish working women's dress. Spalling seems to mean exfoliating rocks.

In ancient times, the islands were apparently connected, and people could walk from one island to another at ebb tide. “We have not the least notice of anything that regards [the islands] from the fifth to the tenth century,” says the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1823, "though it is conjectured that during this time they were in great measure destroyed by an earthquake, attended with a sinking of the earth.” There is a tradition in Cornwall that an extensive tract of country called the Lioness [the Lyonesse of the Arthurian legends], lying between that country and Scilly, was lost." And the account concludes with a quaint spelling of Tresco, and a depiction of lonely Samson: “West from Trescaw, is Samson, in which there is not above one family, which subsist chiefly by the making of kelp.”

Here are some pictures that help to imagine these scenes in days past.

Cornish women's costume in the fishing village of Newlyn. Painting by Walter Langley of the Newlyn School of plein air painters.

Another Newlyn painting of fishing people by Walter Langley

Women picking daffodils, on the mainland (as you can see from St. Michael's Mount in the distance). Daffodil picking was and is a staple industry on the Scilly Isles. Notice that the men don't seem to be doing much...

The Slip by Walter Langley. The dock in Penzance still resembles this.

View of Penzance from Newlyn by Stanhope Forbes, 1885.

To continue my own narrative, back at Bryher – such a short distance by water – I lingered on the way back to the hotel, and stopped at the island teashop, the Vine, to rest my sore knee, and treat myself to a truly superb cream tea. The Cornish cream was from St. Agnes, from whence the very finest cream comes, and the strawberry jam was from strawberries grown at Hillside Farm on Bryher. Just fabulous, and I was thirsty and drank cups and cups of tea. Rested at the hotel until the usual magnificent dinner, finished off with apple and rhubarb crumble with cream. Long hot bath, good sleep.

The Vine tea shop, Bryher

Just look at the texture of that cr-r-r-eam!

Friday

After breakfast, we walked from 10 to 1 around Rushy Bay, in the other direction from Gweal. Very beautiful, the white beaches fringed with the island's signature purple agapanthus and bits of pink campion, sea-holly and pink thrift.

Sea-holly at Rushy Bay

Agapanthus. Common to both the Scilly Isles and Santa Monica, California. Painting by Lesley Newman.

Pink campion (picture from the Healy Dell Nature Reserve website)

Last walk up Gweal Hill

Last look at Gweal Island

Horses below Samson Hill, above Rushy Bay

Last morning at Hell Bay Hotel

Paintings in the lounge

Leaving Bryher, turquoise water in the channel between Bryher and Tresco

Passing the "paps" of Samson Island

Then we returned to the hotel, and were driven down to the quay with our bags to take our departure on the boat to St. Mary’s. Reaching St. Mary's around 2, with time to spare while waiting for the sailing of the Scillonian at 4:30, we had time for a lovely lunch at the café we liked so much. I had a plump crab sandwich with salad, followed by a freshly baked Victoria sponge and pot of tea. Then we boarded the dear old Scillonian, where I sit now, just having passed Land’s End.

Approaching the mainland, past Land's End at approximately the spot where the Minack Theatre is carved into the cliff.

Smooth sailing, sunny, cool, a bit windy, but very little rolling. On arrival at 7 PM came the hard part, hauling our luggage to the rail station. Left Luggage was annoyingly closed, so we had to drag the bags again to a restaurant. Found a fish and chips shop called Catch which was just a fast food place but the fish was cod caught fresh at Newlyn and the potatoes were local grown and unusually flavorful. Then we boarded the famous Cornish Riviera Express sleeper train, and were charmed with our little cabins, well fitted out with everything, toiletries, complimentary tea, coffee, biscuits and newspapers in the buffet, etc. We chatted awhile in the buffet car, and are now tucked up in our berths, rolling through the cozy night back to London.

In my cabin on the Cornish Riviera Express sleeper train.

England 2011: Bryher on Bryher

2011-07-31T13:08:00.000-07:00

Hell Bay, Bryher

Wednesday, July 20

Another wonderful day...Bryher is producing a unique mellowing peaceful effect. It rained heavily all night and in the morning, though Jan assured me it would clear up by afternoon (which it did), so there was no reason to rush out early anywhere. After a gigantic leisurely breakfast (this time I had excellent Cornish smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, with fresh croissant, Brie and Stilton and strawberries; oh my), we relaxed in the lounge, computing and reading. It gradually grew lighter, so in the afternoon we ventured eagerly out. First we climbed Gweal Hill, and then decided to continue on the track to Hell Bay itself. So we tromped along the spectacular coastline path. A little hard for me as my knee was protesting after all the walking it did the day before; but it was exhilarating despite (or because of) occasional slight misting, and we walked far out on the Hell Bay headland. It’s often the scene of famously huge smashing waves, but was peaceful today.

Trail to Hell Bay

Approaching Hell Bay

Hell Bay

Looking out from Hell Bay

Back at the hotel the sun came out fully, lighting up the islands and sea, so after a little rest and reading I went out again, and walked all the way round the Great Pond by the hotel. Very soft gentle walking, on grass and spongy machair – absolutely beautiful.

Beach near Gweal Hill on the way back

When I got back we sat in the pretty lounge and enjoyed the hors d'oeuvres provided before dinner. Dinner is always a stellar event in the lovely dining room gazing out at the idyllic view, water and islands. I had grilled mackerel for starter, then a sublime duck. Dessert was brownie, ice cream and cherries. And THEN you have tea or coffee and petits fours! Such stuffing as goes on here, but it’s made viable by the energetic walking all day, or so I tell myself.

Great Pond, looking toward Hell Bay Hotel

Tomorrow we have the happy perplexity of too many places to choose among...could go to St. Agnes, a beautiful island where I’ve stayed before, with moorland and ruins; or there's a trip to an uninhabited island, Samson which I've never seen, and always wanted to visit but never managed to accomplish, as the boats don’t visit it often. Or there’s a motorboat trip around the islands to see seals and puffins, so we’re spoilt for choice!

Back in the hotel lounge, which contains the art collection owned by the Darrien-Smiths

Lounge terrace facing Great Pond and Gweal Hill

I spent the evening reading the writer Bryher’s memoir, The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoir, which seemed eminently suitable for a visit to Bryher itself. Born in 1894 (died 1983), Bryher, born Annie Winifred Ellerman, took the name of her favorite island. "As one would," said the friend who recommended the book, not realizing that I myself am named Winifred, after my grandmother! Well, yes, I changed my name, too, to my middle name. As one would. Though after I wrote her biography I wished I could change back, in tribute...but it was a bit late!

She (or he, as she preferred, but I'll stick with she) wrote in invigoratingly vital prose about her repressively Victorian upbringing, her rebellion only lifting during the family’s trips out of England, to France, Italy and Egypt, which she rapturously enjoyed. I was completely absorbed in the narrative, until about halfway through it had a sad falling off. Bryher, who hated her conventional upbringing with its backbone of religion and codes of behavior, found a new religion in Freudian psychiatry, and became what can only be called tiresome about it. And her account of life in bohemian circles in Paris in the 1920s ought to have been at least as evocative as the description of childhood, but it devolved into annoyingly heavy name-dropping of all the famous personages she knew (admittedly, they ranged from Joyce to Hemingway).

The author Bryher

I found her oddly and disappointingly disingenuous, considering the book was written in 1960 and she was supposedly a free spirit; but here is a famous lesbian who looked like Radclyffe Hall, was the lover of the poetess H.D., yet there's no insight into this important aspect of her life, nor does she mention (I had to find the information elsewhere) that the basis for her free spirit life was that she was the heiress of a shipowner father John Ellerman who, when he died, was the richest Englishman who ever lived! Not that she didn’t use her privilege well…Bryher was one of the founders of Sylvia Beach’s famous bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, financially backed many artists and filmmakers, practiced a fine poetic and historical novelist career herself, and during the war famously made her home in Switzerland a receiving station for Jews escaping the Nazis. A life well lived…but somewhat skewed autobiographical writing, especially marred by the worship of Freudian analysis. Most disappointing of all from my viewpoint is that even though she took the name of her favorite Scilly island, she hardly ever mentions the place. Still, it was an interesting choice for island reading, and I had an eerie feeling, sitting in the Hell Bay lounge, occasionally looking up at the scenes the author must have loved a century ago, that I was almost certainly not the first person to read Bryher on Bryher.

Gweal Hill and Gweal from Samson Hill, Bryher

Painting by David Rust, at the Tresco Gallery

Cromwell's Castle to Hangman Island and on past Bryher

Painting by David Rust, at the Tresco Gallery

England 2011: The glories of Tresco

2011-07-29T18:48:00.000-07:00

Tresco Abbey

Quite a journey to get here! Woke up at the pretty Victorian hotel overlooking the harbor in Penzance, to a rainy day. Enjoyed an excellent English breakfast - poached egg, English bacon, "hogback" sausage, black pudding, haddock, beans, and brown toast, butter and honey - despite Jan pointing out that given the notorious choppiness of the crossing on the Scillonian, it might end up more out than in. We hauled our suitcases down the quay to the boat.

The Scillonian

"In the morning of Saturday, the twenty-seventh of March, 1852, I stood upon the old Quay, Penzance. In my place, a Roman would have abandoned the enterprise. The Iron Duke would have gone on." - Henry John Whitfeld

Approaching the Scilly Isles

The Scillonian is a big flat boat, and even though the crossing was somewhat rough, the rocking wasn't really enough to be a bother. The sun gleamed out once or twice, and we sat out on the deck, having a lovely restful time and talking of Jane Austen. However, when we arrived on St. Mary's, the largest of the Scilly islands, it started really raining hard. And the boat for Bryher which ought to have met us, couldn't come until 3:30, due to tides (it was then noon). Never mind, we left our bags, walked into the town, and had excellent hot potato leek soup, tea and a most frangible, delicious Victorian sponge cake at a nice tea shop, the Kavorna. Then we went to the museum, always fun to visit, one of my favorites with its extensive historical exhibits of the hundreds of shipwrecks in the history of the Scillies, plus quaint old displays of island life, birds and flowers. I bought some daffodil-and-narcissus post cards by a local artist and a first edition copy of What Katy Did Next for a pound.

Then we returned to the quay. The boat finally turned up at 4, in a heavy downpour. The small boat was way overcrowded with people, and knocked about a bit alarmingly, but the journey was short and we were on beautiful Bryher by 4:30. Surprisingly, nobody met us at the quay, but a pair of efficient retired schoolteacher ladies also going to the hotel called and got the truck to come, and so we were at the hotel in a trice. And oh, it is lovely - redecorated, posher than my last visit there (probably ten years ago), but still the beautiful, peaceful place I remembered. Jan’s room was a veritable two-storey suite, and my room with its huge king sized bed and inviting patio looking out at ocean and hills, was simply gorgeous, and so, so peaceful! Internet is only in the lounge, which is just right, as it limits one’s obsessive usage and allows you to actually enjoy the island. Phones get no signal, except on top of nearby Gweal Hill (literally). And there are no cars on most of the islands, only a necessary truck or two, which contributes to the blessed peace.

My room at the Hell Bay Hotel

My patio

In the early evening the sun came gleaming out and I took a brisk hour's walk before dinner, climbing up Gweal, the little mountain near the hotel, and remembering how I used to do that morning and night on previous visits…and how much stiffer the climb seemed now! The view over Bryher was stunning, and then I came down and had dinner with Jan in the lovely dining room. The views from the window are beautiful too, and the food was superb – I had roast guinea hen and was, as Tom Bertram said about Dr. Grant, “plied with good things,” before resting in my fleecy cloud of a bed.

Climbing Gweal Hill, looking back at the hotel

View from the top, looking out at Gweal Island

Tuesday

Full English breakfast at 8, in the pretty dining room looking out at the hills and water, with a constantly changing array of colors - so wild and fresh and beautiful, it makes you almost want to run outside. Very good food, English bacon, Cumberland sausage, little black mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, fried egg, blood pudding, toast. Then we went down to the quay for a 9:45 boat to Tresco. Skies were grey but it didn't rain. Only a 5 minute ride, then we were on Tresco and walked up to the Abbey gardens. Much better than I remembered - gorgeous terraces with ever more fabulous flowers rising up to a little barbarian chapel with a wrecked ship's figurehead, the God of the Thames. After reveling in dahlias and palms, Chinese pheasants and exotic blooms, we repaired to the cafe for tea and ice cream, after which we decided to try to walk all the way around the island.

Flowers in the Tresco gardens

Chinese pheasants - very showy boy, dull girl

Loved this little fellow!

God of the Thames, figurehead from a wreck

Leaving Tresco Gardens, we headed for the wild side of the island, walking on the rugged, heathery trail to Cromwell's castle and climbing to King Charles's ruined fort up on the moor above it, both very picturesque. We’d been told about Piper’s Cave, where people put candles by the side of its underground pond, lighting the place up magically, but we trying to climb down there on a damp day would have been just too much. But we did accomplish walking around the island, with its wildness and beautiful beaches, and stopped in at the charming art and glassware gallery near the quay, getting back just in time for the 4:30 boat back. We must have walked 5 miles briskly, and I was sore, being out of shape, plus the pounding on arthritic knee. So we planned on staying on beautiful Bryher tomorrow, for a (relative) rest day.

Walking toward the old Cromwell fort

Climbing up toward the ruined King Charles fort

Looking back down at the castle

After the walk I had a hot bath and cup of tea in my glorious room, did internet, and then another lovely dinner. The food is terrific here! Today's meal was foie gras followed by tender lamb, and a nice berry dessert. Then I sank into my giant luxury king size bed with divinely soft duvets and sheets...I so feel that I'm in some kind of Heaven, I'm only reminded that it isn't one, by there not being any cats.

Tresco beach

Typical Tresco cottage

Back on Bryher, the Hell Bay Hotel lounge

Bryher, 1849

There's quite an art collection at the hotel, owned by the proprietary landowning family, the Dorrien-Smiths. This is one of the oldest paintings ever done in the Scilly Isles, and it's of Bryher, painted by the islands' doctor, J.G. Moyle, of Bryher, in 1849. You can see little carts, and imagine the primitive way of life. In a book called Scilly and its Legends by Henry John Whitfeld, I found mention of Moyle:

"My friend, Mr. J. G. Moyle, the resident medical man here, must pardon me if he is the unlucky exception to my general rule of mentioning no names. His great talent, as an artist, is so well known to his friends, that any praise of mine would be superfluous. But as an act of gratitude, I must say that he has presented me with a work of his, which I value as much for the kindness of the gift, and for its intrinsic worth, as for the associations it recalls. It is an oil-painting of Tresco Abbey, taken at sunset. The building, and the landscape round, are bathed in the purple haze of twilight, while its soft glow is caught and fixed upon the canvas, with a spirit, and a dreamy poetical beauty, the effect of which it is hardly possible to describe."

I'd like to see that one - wonder what happened to it! And I was amused to read Whitfeld's description of his journey to Scilly, which was certainly extremely adventurous in those days. His account of leaving Land's End and pulling out to sea, though written in flowery Victorian language, exactly conveys the feeling of what it is like, to this day.

Approaching St. Mary, a view not much different than Whitfield would have seen in 1852

"A person by my side inquired, when the packet would sail for Scilly? The reply was, 'Tomorrow morning, should wind and weather permit.' 'It is not, then,' said I, 'a steamer?' 'No, sir, it is a sailing boat, that goes with the mails, twice a week from Penzance.' So there was actually, within the British dominions, a place, not only without a railway, but also without a steam packet...I am already, thought I, in a land where a man who builds a wall is called a 'hedger,' and into which 'Punch' never penetrates; but I am now about to venture into a pays barbare, a still wilder spot, into a spot fabulous and unexplored, the dwellers of which recently petitioned for a communication with England once in six weeks, and to which the lady of the chaplain went in full persuasion that she would have to milk her own cow, and to perform all the usual little domestic offices entailed upon emigrants in the Australian bush, or amid the backwoods of Canada. There was a delightful vagueness and uncertainty in the future..."

"St. Mary's is a low dark speck...scarcely visible to the naked eye"

"We passed in turns Mousehole, famous for the Spanish blood, and beauty, of its women; and Boscowen Carn, giving a name and title to the house of Falmouth; and then came the Lands'-End; and then the everlasting deep, with its broad unwrinkled brow. The tremendous power of ocean slumbered like a child. One thing living only was in sight. It was the back fin of a shark, that played around our bows. At last it dashed away for Penberth Cove, and we were alone upon the waves....We ought now to be at St. Mary's, and St. Mary's is a low dark speck on the larboard bow, scarcely visible to the naked eye. The passengers gathered together, and told tales of passages extending over many days, and the hardships thereby entailed upon unwary travelers, as the vessel carries no provisions....It was a trip beyond steamers, with a vengeance!"

Shipwreck off Land's End, 17th century

England 2011: An easeful entry

2011-07-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

Osterley Park

Friday July 15, 2011

I’m always anxious before flying, but this was one of the smoothest flights ever. An hour shorter because of tail winds, with nary a bump. Air New Zealand’s the best airline I’ve ever flown on – the planes have been redesigned with relatively large seats even in coach, so comfortable. Sat in emergency exit row with nice young English medical researcher working in New Zealand, who encouraged me to try New Zealand films. I watched four entire movies (oddly much more of a distracting diversion from fear-of-flying than reading is for me), and only one, An Education, wasn’t from NZ. That’s the one about the teenage Oxford-bound girl seduced by an older man; I thought it was rather overrated and unconvincing, but at least it kept the attention. The NZ movies were much more alive, particularly Boy, a glowing, feeling story about a Maori boy who idolizes his criminal father. There was also one about a Maori Jesus-like madman, which sounds awful but was sweet, and then a charmer about a Chinese girl secretly marrying a white NZ boy and her family’s disapproval (My Secret Wedding). Didn’t sleep a wink on the flight, but was quite well entertained.

Buddleia in Osterley Park

As the flight got in an hour early, my friend Ron hadn't arrived yet. That gave me a chance to change money and use the internet, and then Ron turned up and whisked me off. Even something that may sound as ordinary as the drive to his house in Peckham Rye was great fun. It was a summery English day, with Constable clouds decorating the sky, and extra-green foliage and purple buddleia everywhere. Our route wound around south of the river, and Ron stopped to show me Osterley Park, a great house I’d never seen. Walking in the extensive park like grounds, with their pond, ducks, swans and weeping willow trees, was ecstacy after nine hours on a plane, and provided a piquantly refreshing contrast to Los Angeles. I felt I'd been magicked into an English country estate, only 20 minutes from Heathrow and on the way into London, a sleight-of-hand conjured by Ron!

Water-lilies at Osterley Park

Jet-lagged at Osterley Park

Ron and Helena live in a lovely big high-ceilinged Victorian house that opens onto a picturesquely overgrown garden, and we sat outside relaxing in the long golden English afternoon. I was introduced to the cats, whom I’ve known since their birth by email and pictures, and quickly made friends with the exquisitely pretty Tiger Lily, our Pindar’s doppelganger, and her long-legged, elegant grey son Max.

Max

Max's beautiful young mother, Tiger Lily

I also caught a glimpse of Max’s dad, a pretty russet boy with a sadly bad leg, who lurks around the shed. While I feasted my eyes on cats and English verdure (a la Fanny Price in Mansfield Park), Helena feted me with a dazzlingly delicious home made tea, a revelation, infinitely better than you get even in the fanciest restaurants. There were small scones, Cornish cream, and homemade jam; cucumber and ham and salmon sandwiches; and an airy, orangey, flavory Clementine cake. After that, we all needed naps, to get up strength for a beautiful dinner for a summer evening – a delicate whole salmon trout with boiled new potatoes, avocado cream sauce, zucchini, and a beautiful summer pudding. I sipped elderflower and enjoyed chatting about their English lives and my American one, as much as I could while going in and out of tyrannical waves of jet lagged sleepiness. Never was there a more easeful entry into England!

Helena's High Tea

Saturday. Slept only from 1 to 5 AM, woke up and was too excited to get back to sleep. A grey day, 60s. Breakfasted on lovely granary toast, sweet English butter, homemade marmalade and blackberry jam. Then we drove to Chawton, a couple of hours away. Ron showed me the sights along the route: Dulwich, where the actor Edward Alleyn lived and founded a school, and William Blake claimed to have seen the Prophet Ezekiel under a bush; Clapham, associated with the evangelists; Wimbledon. Soon we were out of the city and driving along grassy meadow flowery fields to Chawton. On arrival, the heavens opened and I had to pull out my flimsy little Californian umbrella. The grass was a bit muddy, but the tents kept the happy crowd dry, and the enjoyment of being at Chawton was undimmed. Examined the books for sale and the Women’s Institute cakes and handmade goods in the church, and chatted with some of the great and the good of the Jane Austen world, Patrick Stokes, Maggie Lane, Elaine Bander, Deirdre LeFaye, Maureen Stiller, Gillian Dow.

Me at Chawton

The Chawton House Library gardens

Then Jan arrived in Maureen’s car, and I was amused at my being able to welcome her, ironically, to Chawton. After the short business meeting, Jan had lunch with the committee and I picnicked in the church pews with Ron and Helena, who had packed a gorgeous curried Coronation Chicken with rice into a French picnic basket. Oddly, the lunch served by the Chawton caterer was also Coronation Chicken, but was no more like Helena’s than a lamp is like sunshine (as Emma compared her playing to Jane Fairfax’s). Helena’s was real chicken curry, while Chawton’s was more mayonnaise with a little curry in it. Then back into the tent to hear Jan’s lively talk about Mr. Darcy and the romantic role he plays in the female imagination. (The “real” Darcy, as written, is not so charming as his property and power.)

Janet Todd gives the Jane Austen Society address

Elaine Bander at Chawton House Library

Visiting scholars' quarters in the remodeled stable block at Chawton

Afterward, Jan left for London, and Elaine showed me the beautifully remodeled stable block where she and the other fortunate visiting fellows stay. The Chawton day closed with Evensong, and then we drove back, me and Helena dozing in the car. Reviving, I went for a walk with Ron who showed me Peckham Rye Common, which was uncommonly beautiful; after which we were ready for what Helena called a “light” dinner, but which was a symphony of more of her beautiful cooking: homemade gazpacho, garlic croutons, salami, mozzarella, granary bread. Played with Tiger Lily, who seemed to understand that I have a cat much like her at home, and cleverly adapted herself to behave just as Pindy does, asking for luxurious pattings of her clever, pretty little head.

Peckham Rye Common gardens

Rainbow at Peckham Rye Common

Sunday

Up at 6, some sunshine, nice day. After coffee, I bid farewell to sweet Helena and sweet cats, was presented with a ravishingly pretty little glass dichroic vase, and then Ron drove me to Paddington. He was so kind – never was such kindness, as Miss Bates said, and he was very much indeed the Mr. Knightley to my Miss Bates, for he actually parked, came inside the station, helped me with my bags, waited as I got food, and helped me look for Jan, who got on the train while we weren’t looking. We had a jolly ride all the way to Penzance, which took a little over 5 hours, arriving at 4:15. Penzance cool and grey, with a lamentable weather forecast for the Scillies. We dined at the Admiral Benbow, a cozy, attractive historical pub that had been highly recommended (you know who you are!), but the food was a terrible rip-off - appetizers (crab, scallops) so miniscule that Jan, who ordered two starters, would have starved if I hadn’t shared my fish and chips. Then we walked back to the Beachfield Hotel, a classic white Victorian hotel on the promenade overlooking the sea. The rooms were overpriced (though the sea views were beautiful) and we felt rather annoyed as there turned out to be a much cheaper annex next door that they don’t tell you about while booking. Still, it was very comfortable and served its purpose, and I went to sleep with the happy sense of a trip begun, and adventures to come.

Penzance, St. Michael's Mount

Beachfield Hotel

Window view

The Twenty-ninth Trip

2011-07-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

Scotland, 1980s

Twenty-nine trips...It's not as excessive as it sounds. Consider: if you are a person who loves another country at least as much as your own, and make it a lifetime priority to visit as often as you can get your money and your body together, then by the time you’re my age, a visit every year or two will easily add up to some number like twenty-nine! The perspective that comes with time, like verdigris flopping out of a whale, operates here too. For it's interesting how my trips to England have varied, according to my age, cumulative experience of the country, and the deepening of my English friendships and literary interests.

Punting in Oxford, 1980s

In my early trips I did standard first-trip things, and each was wildly exciting. London theatre, my first trips to Bath and Oxford, first glimpses of the countryside, first stately home (I think the first I saw was Hatfield). Later, especially after starting to make friends, our trips developed into epic adventures and purposeful odysseys: island-hopping trips in the Hebrides; road trips in search of ancient ruins in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall; book shopping orgies; lush stays in castle hotels; seeking-out of writers’ homes, from Dafydd ap Gwilym to Charlotte M. Yonge. Later still, my trips tended to center around Jane Austen, academic conferences, and visits to old friends. The excitement level never diminished: only grew.

Paul and Peter at Hay-on-Wye, early 1990s

This latest trip was my first since the New Directions in Jane Austen Studies conference in 2009, and it was a glorious synthesis of all the things I love about England. The delight of being there, which has never left me, was mellowed and enhanced by the richness that comes from the burnishing of old friendships. This trip was about renewal, the recapturing of joy after Peter's worrisome health crisis. But, as ever, there were also new discoveries to be made. Johnson's old saw about if a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, never seemed truer: one could go on for a thousand years, and always find something new and wonderful in the gentle old beauty that is England. My journal will follow, in installments, as a five-part series over the next few days.

Peter at the Standing Stones of Callanish, 1990s

For this introduction I've scanned an array of pictures from the richness of our trips dating back to my first in 1969, and then from when my regular trips began, in 1980. I have 25 huge fat photo albums! Maybe someday I'll get a decent scanner and digitize them all. And just think, without photography, all these would be only dim memories. Looking at the pictures, I see how our trips were our crowning joys, and how happy we were, on every single one.

The first Jane Austen seminar at St. Hilda's College, 1983. Peter with Jean, the organizer, who became a long time friend - we had lunch last week!

Romantically on the steps in Lyme where Louisa Musgrove fell, in Persuasion. 1990s.

An early trip to St. Agnes, the Scilly Isles, 1991. Our old friends Keith and Anne, and Keith's son Steve.

Me driving a riverboat on a family vacation on the Norfolk Broads, 1990s

Peter on Iona, 1990s

Peter and Paul at Tingagel, 1980s

The Hill of the Witches, a hard-to-find ancient tomb in Ireland. 1990s.

Skara Brae, Orkney. 1990s.

Paul with sheila-na-gigs, Northern Ireland

Peter and his mother, Vivian, the time we stayed at the Royal Crescent Hotel, Bath.

Peter and his mother in the Burren, Ireland

Peter salutes W.B. Yeats. "Horseman, pass by..."

Happy times at Wellwood Farm, Keith and Anne's home in Kent (1990s)

I had a thing for chickens...

Boxing Day, Wellwood Farm. With Keith's family, 1990s.

At the pub in Kent

First Pifflefest in Oxford - online friends with "noms" from the Dorothy L. Sayers list. Miss Layton, Miss Snoot, Vamping the Senior Common Room, My Gracious Silence, and me, Miss Schuster-Slatt!

House in Dorset, where we lived in 1969

Pink sea-thrift on an early trip to Scilly Isles (Bryher, 1990s)

With a very small pony in the Lake District

The touristy thing to do in the Aran Islands - but it was fun!

Devonish Island, Northern Ireland

Bodmin Moor

Paul and Andrew with dinner

We always had fun on Wellwood Farm!

More fun at Wellwood

A castle. Somewhere...

Bardsey Island, where a thousand monks are buried. The sheep looks suitably forbidding because the channel is nearly impassible due to currents

Mother and son on holiday in Kent

Trebrea Lodge...a favorite hotel in Cornwall

Bluebell woods, Wellwood Farm, Kent

Grace O'Malley's castle, Ireland

Hotel in Wales

Two silly English friends, the Lake District, 1980s

Early Voices: Portraits of Canada by Women Writers, 1639-1914

2011-06-27T01:10:00.000-07:00

Light, Bright, and Sparkling has never been a book blog, as my day job is so close to book blogging that writing book reviews after my week's work is done is far too close to a Busman's (or Bookman's) Holiday. But it's hard to resist telling about any especially interesting book I read, and I'm inspired by this wonderful new book from Canada, Early Voices: Portraits of Canada by Women Writers, 1639-1914 (Dundurn Press) edited by Mary Alice Downie and Barbara Robertson, with Elizabeth Jane Errington.

Baroness von Riedesel and her children

Having an interest in pioneers and frontier life, in the beauty and history of Canada, and in women's lives, for me this book came together as nothing less than a brilliant evocation and illustration of all three. There are of course many anthologies of women writers, Canadian and others, but what makes this one so satisfactory is the exceptionally judicious, felicitous, happy selection. Not growing up or being educated in Canada, one learns shamefully little about Canadian history or literature in school, and I only developed an interest because my grandmother and great-aunt both happened to be pioneering Canadian women authors. My grandmother, Winnifred Eaton (1875-1954) was the first Asian American woman novelist, though she took on a fake Japanese identity and pen name (Onoto Watanna) to write her romantic novels with Japanese settings and titles such as The Heart of Hyacinth and The Wooing of Wisteria. She also wrote two memoir style novels of her early life in Montreal, Me (1915, republished by U. of Mississippi Press) and Marion (1916, reprint forthcoming from U of McGill Press), and two novels of Calgary prairie life in the period between the two world wars, Cattle and His Royal Nibs. Her career was flamboyant and fascinating, and the greatest professional joy of my life was researching and learning about her, and publishing my biography Onoto Watanna (U of Illinois Press, 2001). But even my partisan delight in my fabulous granny cannot blind me to the fact that her older sister, Edith Eaton, is generally seen as the more noble character and arguably finer writer. Both sisters were among the fourteen children of an Englishman and his Chinese wife, and sensitive, idealistic Edith was very sympathetic to her mother's plight as a scorned ethnic minority. Both sisters suffered from prejudice as being "half-caste," but where "Winnie" took the veiled method of creating some sympathetic Asian heroines, Edith fought for justice and equality for the Chinese community in her writing, her journalism, and her social work. Writing under a Chinese pen name, Sui Sin Far, she is now called "the spiritual foremother of contemporary Eurasian authors."

Sui Sin Far, my great-aunt

What ancestors for a nice Jewish girl to have, and I am inordinately proud of them! It was Sui Sin Far's inclusion in this collection that led me to it, but that's not the only, or even the main reason for my very great enjoyment of the book. For that matter, the book is rather cavalier about my grandmother ("We regard the discovery of half-Chinese Sui Sin Far, also known as Edith Maude Eaton, as a triumph. The novelist and journalist, Onoto Watanna, looked promising, until we discovered that she was Sui Sin Far's sister Winnifred, masquerading as an exotic half-Japanese"). No, it is because it serves an introductory purpose better than I have ever seen any related anthology do. As a non-Canadian, I had heard of a few of these women authors, and had even read the books of arguably the most famous, Catherine Parr Traill. I wanted to know more of these remarkable early-Canadian stories, but most selections give you only a thumbnail, so you're left not really "knowing" the author. Or else they give you dull excerpts, so you don't want to know more about the author! Not so here. Each of these excerpts is vital and alive, intensely vivid journalistic prose, that has a "you are there" effect of putting you in the picture. You start reading and the modern world disappears, and you're back in 19th century Canada, with refined and educated women who have been put down almost in the middle of nowhere, and who respond in a variety of fascinating ways. You could seek out and read the full versions of these women's writings, and I have no doubt that I will, but this book also feels quite complete in itself. The selections are so inspired that the reader becomes absolutely rapt in the stories, and when you lift up your head and close the book, you find that you really have learned a great deal! To paraphrase Mr. Eliott in Persuasion on his idea of good company, "that is not a good book, that is the best."

Anna Brownell Jameson

And who are these women? They are nothing if not diverse. The editors have not chosen a group who all sound the same, a collection of Catherine Parr Traill clones, but women of different backgrounds who had very different experiences in early Canada. Elizabeth Jane Errington writes, "We still tend to see New France, British North America, and 19th century Canada as worlds inhabited by strong men and silent women." Nothing could be farther from the case than this eclectic collection, in which we find such voices of vitality.

There's Mary Barbara Fisher (1749 - 1841) whose husband fought in the American Revolution, and as Loyalists they fled to Nova Scotia. A manuscript by her daughter details the settlers' first cruel winter and shows a certain anti-American animosity, for she writes, "There were no domestic animals in our settlement at first except one black and white cat, which was a great pet. Some wicked fellows, who came from the States, killed, roasted and ate the cat, to our great indignation." This depredation seems less horrific when you read the account of how stunningly little the settlers had to eat!

I liked the description by Baroness von Riedesel (1746-1808), wife of the general in command of the Hessian troops, of an 18th century freezer:

"At the beginning of November people lay in their winter provisions. I was very surprised when people asked me how much fowl, and particularly how many fish I wanted and where I should like to have the latter left, since I had no pond. In the attic, I was told, where they would keep better than in the cellars. Accordingly I took three to four hundred, which kept very well through the winter. All that had to be done when a person wanted meat, fish, eggs, apples, and lemons for the midday meal was to put them in cold water the day before. Thus the frost is thoroughly removed, and such meat or fish is just as juicy, even more tender than that we have at home. In addition to this, poultry is packed in snow, which forms such a crust of ice that one must chop away with a hatchet."

A little later the Baroness tells a story of some Indians who kept coming to a settler named Johnson saying they dreamed he gave them rum and tobacco. He gave them all they wanted, but one day went to them and said he dreamed they gave him a certain large piece of land. They held council and told him, "Brother Johnson, we give you the piece of land, but dream no more."

Baroness von Riedesel

Anna Brownell Jameson (1794-1860) the Irish-born wife of the Attorney General of Upper Canada, left him and returned to England where she became a critic and champion of women's rights, but her Winter Studies and Summer Rambles (1838) seems to be a charming account, in which she tells of a tempestuous, wet night spent on a rock in Lake Huron. Later, reaching an inn in Toronto, she rejoiced in a luxurious little bedroom with white curtains, but adds, "but nine nights passed in the open air, or on rocks, and on boards, had spoiled me for the comforts of civilization, and to sleep on a bed was impossible: I was smothered, I was suffocated, and altogether wretched and fevered; I sighed for my rock on Lake Huron."

Indian lodges sketched by Anna Jameson, 1837

Toronto Harbour sketched by Anna Jameson, 1820

It is Anne Langton, from an educated family connected to the Brontes and the Stricklands, who perhaps most graphically details the constant chores of pioneer life. She ran the first school and circulating library in Upper Canada, but after being delivered a load of tallow that she (already with a great deal of work on hand) must form into candles, admits, "I have sometimes thought, and I may as well say it, now that it is grumbling day - woman is a bit of a slave in this country."

Anne Langton

I will tell some more about this fabulous collection of women's writings in another post, but in the meantime, suffice it to say, that if you are inclined to read one book about women writers in Canada: this is the one.

The Birchalls and the Bears

2011-06-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

Birchalls

Bear

Two months after Peter's near-death experience, with him nearly fully recuperated, we spent a long weekend at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. Here, Peter astonished and delighted both of us by his regained ability to hike, and we enjoyed visiting some of our old favorite spots in these parks which have been our home wilderness to us, for many years. The visit was further enlivened by sightings of five bears, all young but past the cub stage, and I was able to photograph three. We came home refreshed and uneaten, and here are our pictures as proof.

Peter reading on the porch of Cedar Grove Lodge, Kings Canyon. A lovely spot looking over the river, with Steller's Jays swooping down on your food.

Steller's Jay

Peter looking jaunty by the river

Me by the river

Snow Plants at Kings Canyon, found near the river, nice bright specimens

Owing to a heavy snowpack, the Kings River was in some places torrentially wild

And in other places, calm

A young blond bear picks away at a late spring meal

Intrepid Peter in the land of the Bears

Another young bear, light brown, at Crescent Meadow, Sequoia. Prime spot for bears in June.

Nose in food, beady eyes watchful

Contemplative bear

Getting down to business

Portrait of a busy young bear

Not sure what was the attraction...grubs or ants, perhaps.

And some flowers...lupines, in this case

Pussy paws. (My only allusion to cats in this post)

And the final bear...a young black one, to speed us on our way, while he went his.

Peter and the Devil

2011-05-10T02:37:00.000-07:00

Notes from the hospital. A tale with a happy ending, as told on Facebook. Illustrated with pictures of my celebratory Salvation Army finds after the event.

Peter's debate with Yama, Chinese god of Death

April 15. Peter's in the hospital. Sudden mental confusion (he couldn't remember the names of the cats - that's when I called 911!), brought on by a bad kidney infection, high blood sugar, and now they've found very high calcium levels - which is the most likely cause of the mental confusion. The doctors seem good and we'll certainly be here all weekend, so that's where we are.

April 16. Peter's condition unchanged this morning. Semi-conscious and confused, but he does understand what I say, and smiled when I said his cat Pindy missed him. He'll have an MRI today to see if it's been a minor stroke (nothing showed on the brain scan). It's the acutely high calcium level that's causing this, and he should come to himself when the level is brought down. High calcium usually comes from hyperparathyroid, which he doesn't appear to have, or from advanced cancer, which he doesn't appear to have either. Mystery wrapped in an enigma in a puzzle...don't you love it when six specialists agree on that! But when the tests come back we'll know more. The care here is superb. Our religion is stoicism and I am strong, but it has been very comforting to know that so many good people care about me and Peter and Paul and our three little cats (who are VERY angry at me for leaving them alone for such long, long days...).

Pindar, up to mischief in our Indian Bathroom

44 comments. Ellen Moody: I hope you've had some diagnosis by now so as to plan for the future and at the same time Peter has begun to improve. Think of that stoic, Mrs Sophia Crofts. As long as she was there with him ...

Thank you all for good wishes - you don't know (well, at least I didn't before) how they help. Even little FB messages are like the stubby beating of dwarf angel wings all around. Ellen, I don't think we'll know till Monday what caused the high calcium. If it's a benign reversible thing there's a future and I will soon be steering Admiral Croft around again. If not; not.

Vera Nazarian: Here all the angels, fae and powerful creatures of Faerie sent Peter's and your way to assist, encourage, strengthen, and HEAL!!!

Vera: I fear all the angels, and faeries you own, / Cannot heal a cancer that's gone to the bone. / I'm not a believer, a pragmatic cat; but we hope for an outcome that's better than that.

Blue glass plate

April 17. "Peter on Sunday."

Tests are not back yet but the internist says it's not hyperparathyroidism, the commonest cause of high calcium and easiest to treat. It doesn't look like the spread of prostate cancer, either. However, Peter's kidneys are in very bad shape. They're not coming back yet, although all his vital signs returned to normal today. The calcium is coming down nicely, and he's becoming more alert every hour and asking why he's in the hospital and what's the matter with him. Eating solid food. The neurologist says the MRI shows his brain is fine. But his kidney function is way down and not improving (which is very bad). And we still don't know the cause of the high calcium. Renal failure doesn't cause high calcium. It's usually some kind of secondary cancer, but they'd need to do a full body scan to find any at all, and there's certainly no obvious advanced cancer. So the mystery continues. At least there are things they can do for kidney failure, and it beats a terminal prostate cancer diagnosis; but they just don't know yet. Monday tests will be back and more doctors around (though three specialists so far on a Sunday is pretty darn impressive). He's in good hands, and the doctors all say he won't be checking off the planet imminently. So here I sit and wait. Peter's private room is so large, I can do six pique pirouette turns across it. At home, his smart little cat Pindar lies on Peter's bed with the most tragically anxious expression on her sweet face, waiting for her love to come back.

Alice Chico: Ugh! Peter has battled many health problems for a long time. I'm hoping that this is one more that he and you can manage. This is when I'm sorry that I don't live closer --to offer meals, company, errands etc. You, Peter and Paul continue in our thoughts and prayers

Thank you, dear friends and cousin. We are equal to managing life with renal failure if that's how it has to be. Peter has started talking about his cats again, yay!

"Carnival" glass, marigold color

Mary Katherine: Diana: many thanks for the updates. Will not pester you with calls or emails at this time, as there are no doubt many folks who want progress reports, but please continue to post here as you are able, so that I'll know when to stop chewing my fingernails. And let me know if you want an Amelia's delivery!

Mary Katherine, I'm stopping at Amelia's every morning on my way to the hospital. Warm buttered cinnamon bun, cappuccino, and kind sympathy. However, you will all gauge the severity of this situation by the fact that I have not been to the Salvation Army in three days! :-O

Abigail Reynolds: Thinking of both of you... and of the time my son (age 8 at the time) was in the hospital and I smuggled his cat in so he could see her...and his doctor walked in and pretended not to see. That was when I learned that cats can be in duffel bags. Sending good wishes to poor Pindar too.

Abigail: You take the prize! I have not laughed so much (or at all), all day! Gee...wonder what the Six Specialists would say if they heard a little Mew from a duffel under the bed! "Hm...this case of renal failure has something distinctly feline about it..."

JASNA NY: Just as long as Pindar doesn't play with the intravenus lines, I'd be tempted to smuggle her into the hospital. You two need to book some "girl time" together and comfort one another.

(Struck by appalling vision of what Pindar's three-inch dagger claws would do to the tangle of IV lines surrounding Peter - not pretty!)

Blue and marigold

April 18. "What is there of good to be expected?"

"Well, and what news does it bring -- good or bad?"
"What is there of good to be expected?"
- Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice

No news today, and likely won't be for a few more days. They are bringing down Peter's calcium levels and he is improving; his brain is fine, though he is still confused, and believes that when he was unconscious he was being held in a terrible hospital in Mumbai being experimented on by sadistic Indians. He has kidney damage from his Indian excursion but the kidneys are expected to recover somewhat. The difficulty lies in discovering what caused the whole episode. (One thing is for sure, it's not likely to have been triggered off by an excess of good health.) The parathyroid having been ruled out, the probable cause is still some kind of cancer. It's very bizarre, though, since Peter has been clear since his prostate surgery and a spread of that to the bone would be slow, hardly come on in such a dramatic sudden incident. Speculation, however, is useless at this point, and whatever is the culprit, it will be known fairly soon. I'll be at the hospital 15 hours a day for the duration. Pindy continues to grieve terribly, it's heartbreaking to watch, poor little thing. But at least, whatever the diagnosis proves, Peter should be home once the calcium is lowered, and she will see him again.

Penny Klein: no news is good news

More marigold carnival glass

April 20 "The Incident of the Hallucinatory Dog and a Deficit of Delight"

Peter continues to improve and will go home soon. The scan showed that his kidneys are now functioning normally, and no kidney cancer either. The nice Pakistani kidney specialist says that the more things they don't find, the better. He's mentally improving, too, though it was hard for me sleeping at the hospital because he talked about his global political theories all night. He talks the ears off every nurse and every doctor, trying to discuss Chinese literature with the most unlikely people, and when I told him that the Armenian woman drawing blood really didn't want to talk about Li Po's invented structures of poetry, he said, "But that is what you must do in these situations. You must try to personalize yourself to the hospital staff - and they to you - so they see you as a person and more than a hunk of meat." Couldn't argue with that, and it shows his return to his characteristic kind of self-preservational functioning, though he hasn't quite matched the speeches to his audience yet. He was regaling two husky young orderlies with tales of clubs he knew in Turkey, and they perked their ears right up and asked, "oh really? Were they strip clubs?" Later he wanted to give a copy of his poetry book to a nurse, and started writing an inscription that seemed to be turning into a treatise on world literary history. Finally he handed it to me to read, and it was all chicken tracks! Fortunately we're assured this is transient...

There was one funny moment. Peter was gazing vacantly at the wall and said, "I see a dog." He doesn't have his glasses, and I said, "no dear, that's the wallpaper." "No," he said vaguely, "a dog." I figured it was another hallucination, like when he said we were fishing in Kamchatka last weekend, but about ten minutes later I saw this woman walking in the corridor with a POODLE. She was a volunteer bringing the patients animal therapy. So he did see a dog!

Beautiful Russian Rooster (gift from Vera, who is moving)

Later the attending physician said he was looking good and they've found nothing so far, but the main cancer marker test isn't back yet. The high calcium episode had to come from somewhere, so he'll have to go to an oncologist for scans and tests to find out what is lurking. No doubt, a cancer, and maybe a nasty one, but since they can find no sign of it, hopefully it'll be something that's treatable, and at least he does have kidneys left to fight with. He'll be able to do the tests as an outpatient. So he really will be going home to see his cats soon, which seemed almost impossible a few days ago. He is desperate to come home. Even though it's such a state-of-the-art great hospital, he says that having to be there leaves him with a complete "deficit of delight."

Alice Chico: Great news. I more than 'like" it, I love it. Also, you may find that just being at home in familiar surroundings will help Peter be less confused. Good luck with the next phase of this medical adventure.

Alice, he's really returning to strength physically, but the stronger he gets the more obvious the confusion is. He's very adamant and angry that the hospital has taken over our home and he keeps trying to leave! The nurses can't do anything with him, I have to be there 24 hours a day, and we spend it arguing about what's delusion and what rational. It's all a conspiracy. I am not equipped to handle this and I'm getting more worried and exhausted.

A crystal star

April 20 "The news is good!!!"

The news is good! After extensive cancer marker tests, the oncologist says they have found NOTHING!!!! Kidneys are good, the mental confusion is expected to clear 100%, and Peter is expected to completely recover. He will still have to have a full bone scan to be sure there are no abnormalities, but if they do find anything the oncologist says it would have to be small and treatable. This case remains, rejoicingly, a Riddle wrapped in a Puzzle wrapped in an Enigma. I won't say Hallelujah quite yet, not wanting to jinx it, but to everybody who has held us in their Quaker light, recited Jewish prayers, lit Catholic candles, stirred Episcopal churches into action, and just wished us well with all their hearts - THANK YOU.
---------

Mary Anderson: Excellent news. I'm sure you have a strong and loyal support group, but if there is anything I can do to help, don't hesitate to call.
Mary, this is my support group and you're in it (grin)

Curzon Tussaud: Elaine (Dove) and I met for lunch today in Spitalfields and were saying how brilliant Peter's recovery was! Onwards and upwards.....
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April 22. I managed to write my Austen Authors post while in the hospital and made it all about cats and Peter. He's going home today (they kept him an extra night to watch his hemoglobin) after eight days in a $4000-a-day hospital! The incident is thought to have occurred because of a combination of being dehydrated, having lowered kidney function, and taking Tums.

April 22. Peter is home. With his cats!

Cally Perry, Claire Bellanti, Anne Finkelstein, and 53 others like this.
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Peter comes home
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April 24 It may be Easter to you, but it is Thanksgiving to me and my family, and I am roasting a big turkey with all the trimmings, to celebrate! Andy, if you wanna come have some turkey and Brussels sprouts (low carb), it comes out of the oven at 11 PM.

April 25 I asked Peter what it felt like to be dead, since he was in a coma for three days. This is what he remembers: "I was in what seemed to be an adversarial position in a courtroom. My opponent, much like Yama the King of Death, was dressed as a playing card. While both of us considered the matter at hand to be trivial, this did not stop us from taking it very seriously. I was losing what seemed to be a string of arguments, and became very angry, saying, 'You just used an argument you have already proved is specious!' To which the sneering Devil replied: 'Fool! I wrote the laws. I am always right.'"

May 3 Today I got a $67,000 hospital bill and a $13 book royalty. Lucky I don't have to pay the former or live on the latter.

So it's back to the Salvation Army as usual, and here are my latest finds and acquisitions!

Beautiful Limoges vase, with sweet peas

Beaded lamp, left, gift from Vera. In the aftermath of the Devil incident, nervous energy led me to dust every book in the house...and get all the books off the floor of my study!

Chinese slippers, with mother-of-pearl inlay

Fabulous "Suffragette" bags made by my friend Penny Richards. Her website:

http://www.zibbet.com/Pennamite

A Chinese philosopher king of the Tang dynasty, reduced to $3 at Goodwill

Pindar, a cat who knows what she wants (and gets it). In her own chair, having just devoured her own specially sauteed chicken liver.

Marsh-wiggle and Tully comfort each other during the trauma (which may have passed rather over their heads)

Cats and Crystal

2011-03-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

First, cats. Here is a poem Tully has written. (Sung to the tune of "There's a Man Who Comes to Our House Every Single Day.")

Catullus, the Lowest and Last

Catullus, the aspirant Alpha, seems to have been taught in kittenhood by some catly Mrs. Norris (as Fanny was in Mansfield Park), "Remember, wherever you are, you must always be the lowest and last."

An Ode by Catullus the Cat

I wanna go to Paul's house every single day
Paul goes to work and I get to play
Sometimes he leaves me all by myself
I curl up and go to sleep right upon the shelf.

The other cats can't bother me, the way they always do
They won't let me eat, 'cause they don't like how I chew.
When the big ones give out treats, the others get them first
It's always been like this, I'm the littlest and the worst

But there's a secret place where I'm the best of all
I'll give you just a little hint: it's not far down the hall!
In my own special household, I'm the only cat
And you can imagine how much I do like that!

I do get rather lonely when Paul goes to work
Marshy is a fat cat, but Pindy is a jerk
Pindy is the first cat, I am number three
But I'm going to change that, you just wait and see!

I've been scheming, and I've come up with a cunning plan
I'm backed up by Paul, you know he is my man
I'm going to be Alpha, I'm going to be queen
And the others will be sorry they ever were so mean!

Pindar is a bad cat, she hisses very loud
She thinks she's so smart, she has stripes and she's so proud.
Marshy is much nicer, she likes to lick my face
She's the finest example of the Tortoiseshell Race.

"Pindy is a bad cat, she hisses very loud"

Pindy has some Bengal blood, it makes her tail curled
And she has the longest claws ever seen in all the world.
When we were only kittens, she used to like me
But now I'm sad, cause she's my Great Enemy.

Marshy gets along with her, but Marshy's pretty kind.
Everyone's nice to Marshy, cause she is fat and blind.
But I've had to fight hard for everything I've got
And I won't give up to Pindy, I certainly will not!

"Everyone's nice to Marshy, cause she is fat and blind"*

(*poetic license, she's just nearsighted)

I've hissed right back at her, and made it very clear
That the line between our houses is drawn exactly here!
She can have the big apartment, that's absolutely fine
But Paul belongs to me, and his house is all mine!

Oh, I wanna go to Paul's house every single day
When Paul goes to work, that's where I wanna stay.
The other cats can visit, I'm not so mean as that,
But when I'm at Paul's house, I am Tully, Alpha cat!

- Catullus Cat Birchall

The beautiful eyes of the Marsh-wiggle

And now for the latest update on the thrift store addiction, er, habit! 

Golden leopard kitten. Thai, perhaps? $3

Tiffany-style lamp for my study

Where the lamp sits (over Pindar)

Two bamboo chairs with Indian velvet cushions, and two cats (Pindy and Marshy)

Pindar sleeps

A carnival horse with ruby eyes. Ceramic on metal. Secret compartment under the saddle.

A French weasel (made in Carcassonne, $3) chases the horse

Old framed print of tortoiseshell mother and kittens. Pindy and Tully? $9

Gold-trimmed glasses and pitcher.

Crystal candy dish, a gift from Peter's mother, with pretty gold highlights.

To go with it, a crystal dish, with flowers cut in the crystal

I have a theory that crystal pieces like these are out of style. Perhaps younger people think of it as old lady stuff, and the older people who liked it are dying off so it's flooding the thrift stores. In any case, you can pick up pretty crystal for a song.

Glass salad bowl

Starry platter

Purple beaded shade on white Chinese lamp, keeps my desk from looking boring

Metal cat and Thai Empress cat, on Peter's bookcase

Where the crystal sits. Near the spring flowers, white and purple iris and daffodils.

Marshy on a new Pakistani 100% wool rug

Letter from New York: Part 3

2011-02-14T13:36:00.000-08:00

Cat in fireplace, National Arts Club

Thursday
Up early and wrapped up well to go out into the piercing cold, walking up Riverside Drive at 9:30 AM. Temperature was lower today, in the teens, and Riverside Drive is probably the coldest place in the city, I remember from childhood, and the sharp wind off the river hasn't changed. But I only had eight blocks to walk to my cousin Judy's apartment. Another cousin, Alice, came down from her home in Syracuse for this occasion, and the three of us planned to go up to Riverdale to visit my mother. Alice and Judy are both daughters of sisters of my grandmother, and we don't see each other very often, so this was an event. Judy made us a delicious New York breakfast of sausages and challah French toast, and we embarked on the long trip up to Riverdale together. It was made short and delightful by our family chat, in which we compared our childhood memories of beloved people, some matching up, some new revelations. Deeply fascinating for those involved! Alice is close to my age but we have lived our lives far apart, and it is actually Facebook that has made our friendship blossom in our sixties. We all enjoyed our nice visit and lunch with my mother, and it was certainly a big day for her. Then the trip back to Manhattan, and after parting from Judy and Alice on the Upper West Side, there was just time for me to get downtown to my next event.

Me, Alice and Judy, visiting my mother

That's the thing with my New York visits - they lurch from highlight to highlight! At home I might have a special occasion maybe once every few months; here, I cram in two or three a day, every day. This evening I was invited by a friend who is a member of the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, to have dinner with her there. Well! This was a stellar event, and no mistake! One of the effects of my leaving New York so early, in my mid-twenties, was that I didn't have decades to explore places I'd have gotten to know if I'd lived there as an adult. So I find that the Arts Club is very well known, but it was brand new to me, and a huge thrill.

http://www.nationalartsclub.org/

Interior, National Arts Club

Haughty lady of fashion, National Arts Club

The club was founded in 1898, and is in the 1840 Tilden Mansion in Gramercy Park, filled with the most eclectic assortment of gorgeous artworks and antiques, including a magnificent stained glass ceiling. I don't know what in New York could be lovelier than sitting in the armchairs in the high bay-windowed nooks looking out at the park; it was all so evocative of a past, fin-de-siecle, gracious, and artistic era. Well, I simply had to see everything, and after a lovely dinner (French onion soup, delicious salad, warm chocolate souffle and cappuccino), I did. It's quite an exclusive place, with an intricate membership process, and the other members and diners looked most posh. I probably imposed on my friend's kindness by staying from 6 to 11 PM and examining every single piece of china and painting! I didn't dare take pictures until late in the evening, when a man started taking flash pictures, and then I whipped out my camera, but I don't like flash so they came out dark. Still, a few came out to remember this magnificent experience by!

Amazing glass ceiling, National Arts Club

Pictures of famous members

One of the bay windows

Many things to covet...but it wasn't the Salvation Army!

Friday

My plane home was at 6:30 PM, and the car was to pick me up at Ezra's at 3:30, so I had to cram a lot into the morning. To my joy, my High School of Music and Art friend Denise and her partner Serge were able to meet me for breakfast at our favorite Veselka's, the Ukrainian restaurant (open 24 hours) in the East Village. Denise, daughter of a famous sculptor, was the most free-spirited girl at M & A, which is saying something! She's had a fascinating life, moved to Alaska and worked on the pipeline in the 1960s, married a Tibetan Buddhist monk (who sadly died). Denise spends part of the year in Alaska, and part in East Hampton, and I've visited her in both places - as well as at Veselka's. Bottom line is that one thing I would never pass up is any opportunity to see Denise. We had a delicious breakfast of fried egg sandwiches and happy talk, and then I walked back with them to see the friend they were staying with in a lovely apartment in St Marks Place, an 1870 townhouse building with original moldings - wider than a brownstone, with a very "Washington Square" feeling. Here is Denise with one of her friend's cats.

Friend and friend

Veselka's, Second Avenue and Ninth Street

Ukrainian Fried Egg Sandwich

I'd promised to get Paul cookies at Veniero's, which is only a couple of blocks away, so I stopped there and incidentally had a cappuccino and an eclair. Then took a cab to the New York Public Library, for a brief visit to the Pforzheimer "Shelley and his Circle" collection, specifically for a glimpse of the shard of Shelley's skull.

Veniero's (immediately after the fried eggs)

Shelley's Skull Shard

And then a saunter through Bryant Park, which I remember years ago as being a quintessentially dangerous "needle park," now changed into a lovely skating rink ringed by skyscrapers. I'd never seen the lovely statues before (as it didn't used to be a place you could walk in), and photographed Gertrude Stein with snow in her lap. Then a dash up Broadway to get a pound of nova from Zabars to take home. On the bus I chatted with a woman about my age who was carrying a brown silk evening dress she was going to wear to a friend's daughter's wedding, and she mentioned that her son had gone to Hunter - for one day. Why? I asked. "He came home and said that he couldn't listen to being called 'special' even one more time." Since that is a devastatingly accurate and pithy comment on the school, I ended my New York trip on a laugh. Returned to Ezra's, to pack and wait for the car to take me to the airport, and home...

Bryant Park

Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park, more uncomfortable than in life

Farewell to Riverside Park

Letter from New York: Part 2

2011-02-14T02:44:00.000-08:00

Central Park

Tuesday

Not that much sleep. Hurried down to Yeshiva University, at Lex and 33rd, the women's college, where I found the new Regional Coordinator of JASNA-NY in her lovely office-with-a-view. We had a delicious Japanese lunch with lots of interesting chat, before heading to the Pierpont Morgan Library. I was eager to see the exhibition of three centuries of literary diaries, but first I was halted in my tracks by the Shakespeare portrait. This is the newly discovered portrait, that hung in obscurity in an Irish country house for centuries, on which many later, familiar portraits have been based. The copies don't begin to capture the magic. What's fantastic is that Shakespeare's eyes are manifestly so intelligent; and one has a slight cast. He looks young, prosperous, well set up, curious, satisfied, all of that, and so, so intelligent! Copies of the later replicas are in the exhibit too and you can clearly see how badly they distort the original image. This was the only portrait painted by someone who actually saw him, and I was mesmerized; to see it is really spine-tingling.

Swooning over Shakespeare

http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=44

I was also very taken with a portrait of his patron Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, also recently identified, and fascinating to study. This is obviously a young and gay pretty boy with lip rouge and long hair, dressed as a woman. The exhibition text diplomatically tries to play down the effeminacy (not gay, oh no, it's just the period), but there it is, plain to see. The two portraits together are more than enough for a fabulous dip into Shakespearean England in the heart of New York.

His pretty Patron

The literary diaries were wonderful too, a very rich exhibit that I could have studied for many hours. I particularly loved a touching little entry by Queen Elizabeth I, written in her exquisite handwriting at age 15. The whole thing was a fantastically eclectic collection of what seemed like everybody famous who ever kept a diary, from pioneers to magnates, Thoreau to Bob Dylan, Charlotte Bronte to a heartbreaking piece by a cop describing rescue efforts on 9/11. It was extremely absorbing, but this being one of my compressed New York visits, I had to tear away to meet my friend Laurie, who was waiting for me at the Ramble in cold (temperature had dropped into the 20s) but sunny Central Park.

Belvedere Castle

Laurie is a former MGM friend who moved back to New York years ago, and now feeds the cardinals in Central Park every day. We walked in the cold bright sunshine, in this very quiet and snowy part of the park, where you might think you were in the country. Amid a lot of assorted birdsong, Laurie suddenly said, "Oh, I hear a cardinal!" - she can identify one squeak from another! And we ended up seeing an assemblage of nine of them, six bright red boys, three more subdued females. It was truly glorious and exhilarating, seeing these little red things flitting in the trees and against the snow, but they're almost as fast as hummingbirds and photographing them was next to useless. I missed the best shot (of course), a red boy sitting on the snow right at my feet, and these unsatisfactory ones with their little heads turned and eyes closed is all I could get!

Cardinals

After an hour, with the sun going down (my green fur-trimmed down jacket from the Salvation Army cost $10 and turned out to be the best coat I've ever owned, light, but kept out all cold), it was pretty chilly, so we warmed up at EATS, the East Side Zabars, where we had a sumptuous spread of chocolate cake, cookies and cappucino. From there I took the bus back down to my mother-in-law Vivian's house on 23rd Street, stopping at the Metropolitan Opera Thrift store, which had some very nice things, though again, prices were higher than at home. At Vivian's we ordered in Italian food, and then I made the long trip back up to Riverside Drive and 106th via crosstown bus and subway.

At EATS

Wednesday

Slept in, till 10. Ate the last of the Zabars lox. Cold, sunny day. Subway down to Sheridan Square and a cappuccino at Cafe Reggio. After a short wander around the Village, took the subway back up to Riverside Drive to visit my friend Barbara, American secretary of the Charlotte M. Yonge Society, as I do every year. A couple of hours of lovely book and travel chat, over tea and sandwiches, flies like ten minutes. Then I dipped into a favorite bookshop near her, Bookculture on 112th Street, http://www.bookculture.com/
before meeting my childhood best friend, Mark, at a Starbucks on Broadway near his office. Then I went back to Ezra's to tidy up for dinner party, which wasn't far away, at another Hunter friend's beautiful, rambling 4-bedroom apartment with the most stunning panoramic view of Central Park and the reservoir that I have ever seen. The gathering was small and select, all writers, warm and friendly, and the dinner was beautiful. I am particularly fascinated by people who stayed in New York instead of emigrating as I did, and seeing what they and their lives are like today...genuine dyed-in-the-wool sophisticated New Yorkers!

Love, Denny (P.S. No More Cheese for Marshy, Please!! We do not need that cat vomiting up curds.)

Squbble (as I called them as a child) in Riverside Park. Food dish or litter box?

Letter from New York: Part 1

2011-02-12T22:51:00.000-08:00

Despite dozens of Facebook warnings the night before my flight, like this one: "Why are you travelling in this mush? Be safe. I would cancel and wait for spring if possible!" plus agitated calls from both mother and mother-in-law begging me not to make such a "dangerous" trip into a New York paved with lethal Black Ice, on February 5 I did indeed take flight. Here are Excerpts and Embroideries from my emails home.

Central Park in February

Sunday

Not a bad flight on Jet Blue, but I only had a couple of hours sleep and am an anxious flyer, so it's always an ordeal. Plane left an hour and a half late because they lost a lightbulb. Then there was heavy mist at JFK and we had to circle for another hour because of "congestion," which wracked nerves further. But the car I ordered was waiting for me, and I was at my cousin Ezra's house on the Upper West Side by 10 PM. Felt tired and muddled (accidentally left reading glasses on plane, automatically adding $300 to the $250 airfare), but went out to a neighborhood Indian restaurant and had delicious curried goat, which restored equanimity. Whatever it took to get there, I was in New York!

View from the window

Slept well and woke up to a beautiful soft sunny day, temperature 49, and out the window a glorious view of Riverside Park, the Beaux Arts mansions, and the snow-fringed river. Just a little snow was left in the gutters; the streets were dry, and my big thick Salvation Army hiking boots seemed like an overstatement. So I sauntered out into the New York streets, securing a creamy cappuccino and a Metrocard, before meeting my Hunter friends for lunch at Chef Ho's Peking Duck on 89th and Second. We were eight: Marianne, Mickey, Priscilla, Te, Debbie, Barney, Nancy, and me. And what a wonderful, warm, chatty lunch of old friends it was. (We celebrated the 50th reunion of our sixth grade class at Hunter College Elementary School a few years back, and the party's still going on.) We ate Peking duck, dumplings, sesame noodles, minced chicken lettuce leaves, and spicy string beans. Afterwards, several of us went to the thrift shop next door and had a revel. Not such great prices as in Santa Monica, however, and I bought nothing; but it was fun.

Hunter lunch

Then I took the Second Avenue bus down to Peter Cooper Village, where Peter's parents live. Everything has looked the same there since 1948, when the family first moved in, though his mother at 88 is now more bent over and has more trouble walking than last year. Spent a pleasant hour with them, then took a cab crosstown for a lovely Indian dinner with my first cousin Anne, her husband Jim, and daughter Joanna, a bright personality who keeps me in touch with the current 13-year-olds of this world.

Joanna, cat person

A very warm and happy evening, and then I took the subway back uptown, to the apartment on Riverside Drive that is the scene of so many childhood memories. Then it was the home of my dear great-uncle Louis, who lived there since time out of mind (probably the 1930s), and we always went to seders there. It's been modernized, but the original seder chairs are still there.

Seder memories

Monday

Another lovely day, still warm, in the 40s, sun and clouds. Bad dreams from the horror thriller I was reading for work, and got up too early (a rarity in my life, that), but repaired self with Starbucks. Crosstown bus to 96th and Third, then caught the bus to Riverdale, in the Bronx, where my mother is in the Hebrew Home for the Aged. I'd thought it would be snowier, because reports are that there's more snow and ice outside Manhattan, and the Hebrew Home's grounds on the Hudson are country-like; but it was dry, and I was fine without the boots. My mother was very glad to see me, and we had a very pleasant time, talking over news and memories of various members of our once large, now smaller, clan.

View of the Hudson River from the Hebrew Home

Took the 4 PM bus back, and got off at Central Park West and 81st. From there I had a lovely West Side wander, past the Museum of Natural History where I bought a New York salted pretzel with some anticipation, only to find that, like so much in life these days, they have been denatured and now taste like they were baked by MTV. Infinitely more satisfying was a visit to Zabars, mercifully unchanged, where I bought some truly divine nova. Reached Epices du Tratteur just in time for dinner at 6:30 with two Hunter friends, Te and Eva. We had a lovely warm wonderful chat for more than 3 hours, while enjoying Moroccan/Algerian food - started with a bric, which is a thin fried filo pocket filled with egg, potato and tuna, followed by lamb curry. Great evening, great talk, ranging from Tunisia (where they'd both been) to New York life, and of course school reminiscences - my favorite was Te telling about how she, Marianne and Debbie were once in a play based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's thumpingly cloying 1860 poem The Children's Hour. I have no recollection of the event, but apparently Marianne played Grave Alice, Te was Laughing Allegra, and Debbie was Edith with Golden Hair. Hilarious, though I cannot imagine what inspired any Hunter teacher to make this part of our education. Here are a few stanzas to jog your memory:

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
......................

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Bishop of Bingen being devoured by mice

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

Damned sinister. Another one of these things that would probably have the poet arrested as a pedophile today. But, good heavens, how I do love the Internet. I just looked up that Bishop of Bingen story. Do you know he was a greedy man in the 1300s who hoarded food during a famine, until everyone died and the mice ate him up in his Mouse-Tower? Nice story, I don't think!

But I digress. How does the city look to me this trip? There doesn't seem to be the level of fashion and luxury goods you used to see, but that could be because it's winter and everybody's wearing down jackets. A few stores have desperate sale signs, but not as many as at home, though I was shocked to see a really high number of closed stores and big sale signs emblazoned up and down Madison Avenue in the 80s. Of course the rents are astronomical there, but I have never seen such a sight in my lifetime and never imagined such a thing - Madison Avenue! Still, no hordes of homeless people, unlike in Santa Monica, but that may be because people can't sleep out in such cold. I've only seen one homeless man so far, in a sleeping bag near Zabars, talking on a Blackberry. Incidentally, that's another social change - seems like every third person, whether sitting on the bus, walking, or whatever, is using a smart phone. Reminds me of two visits to Dublin I made just a few years apart, one before cell phones, one after; it was like a different century. Here, it's not something new - but the proliferation is astonishing.

Fashion statement for New York:

Salvation Army down jacket, $10, and hiking boots, $15

Buying the Queen

2011-01-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

Well, she is mine - after a long Facebook thread of argument back and forth over the wisdom or unwisdom of the purchase, I bought this porcelain collectible doll of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at the Salvation Army ($10) and she is mine, hair net, invisible corgis, and all! Is she not a truly amazing artifact?

Look at those blue, blue eyes!

And how effortlessly, and graciously she presides over my home. A good many people have made the "does she have a glass of gin in her hand?" joke, and I regret to say that she does not. Perhaps she had a little bit too much of a tipple, and that is why she has lost her hat.

As it happens, I saw The King's Speech last night, and was not expecting to be delighted, as I have heard nothing of the movie but good, which automatically makes me suspicious and gets my contrarian back up. But it was wonderful, and Colin Firth's acting is beyond all praise. Actually, one of the few weak points in this very fine film, I think, was the performance of Helena Bonham-Carter playing Queen Elizabeth. She was made to look the part very well, but it was a wasted opportunity - there would seem to be so much you could make of the Queen Mother (before she was Q.M., of course), either straight or satirically; but she just twitched and moue'd and didn't do much. Of course, the problem may have been playing alongside Firth doing the performance of his career, which might overpower anyone; but then Geoffrey Rush held his own extremely well. In any event, here is Helena in the role:

And here is the real Queen, at age 100, dressed very much like my doll!

And now the Queen will hold a review of all my latest Salvation Army acquisitions.

A pretty cobalt-and-gold Limoges plate ($5)

A hand-painted, spade-shaped cobalt blue glass dish - provenance unknown.

More cobalt and gold - this is a little Bohemian glass candy dish ($12)

The three cobalt-and-gold "precious treasures," gathered together

The Queen benevolently indicates her approval of the collection.

Sadly, I must close this post far sooner than I wanted to, because I am now reliably informed that I have used up my 1 MB of Blogspot Photo Storage. As I've written 75 posts since starting my "Light, Bright, and Sparkling" blog two and a half years ago, and I use a lot of pictures, I suppose it's not surprising. I have signed up for more space, but it will take a day or two to process, and in the meantime all I can do is say "Adieu" with a regal little wave.

I think I have photo space left enough for just one Salvation Cat picture. Here's me in a Brooks Brothers cotton striped top ($8) and purple felt hat ($10), holding the struggling Marshy.

Christmas Dovefest in Santa Monica

2010-12-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

Me, Sherry and Robin at the Salvation Army boutique

A rainy day in Christmas-week Santa Monica, with a few gleams of sunshine and a double rainbow. Sherry from the Dove Grey Books online group flew in from snowy Maine last night, so today we got together with her sister Robin for our "Dovefest." The Dove group was originally formed for the celebration and discussion of Persephone Books, those lovely grey-covered new editions of old but rediscovered English women's fiction. Persephone Books are based in London, but our list probably has as many American members as British (and some from Other Places). We've been friends for several years now, and it's a lovely, bookish, gentle list, with lots of book bloggers as well as civilians.

Persephone Books in London

We had food and Dove chat at Tudor House, which is shaping up to be our annual meeting place. Sherry and Robin seemed to have been eating since Sherry arrived, so they merely took to themselves tea and hot buttered crumpets, but I admit to a full English high tea (sausage rolls, small turkey-and-cranberry sandwiches, salad, scones, cream, and jam, with a mince pie to take home). And we talked, as Doves do:

about "traveling and staying at home" (a la Elizabeth Bennet), the atrocious weather on the East Coast and Europe (not that the rain in Santa Monica was anything for Sherry to write home about), families and work, and then such pressing subjects as the Duchess of Devonshire, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Eva Ibbotsen, the much-coveted Lost Gardens of England book, cats, Christmas cards, low carb diets, and our various modes of celebrating Christmas! All great fun. Then we stopped at the Salvation Army for a quick browse.

On the way back to Robin's house we saw a double rainbow - here it is, disappearing.

Robin and Sherry in Robin's lovely garden

Sisters

Me and Sherry, neither of whom had slept particularly well the night before

The garden

On my way back home, the setting sun pinkened the sky, despite the clouds. So I took a few pictures. This is my street, Montana Avenue, with the Pacific Ocean at the western end of it.

I walked the block from my house to the ocean park, where the sunset could be glimpsed beneath the wet clouds.

View from the park at the top of the bluffs

Looking down

Wet park

And then home for a comfortable pre-Christmas coze with family and cats, perchance to read and write.

Peter and friends

The two "brownies," Martial (Marshy) and Catullus (Tully)

Pindar

Mammoth Birthday

2010-12-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

It was a pretty big birthday (if not exactly mammoth), and I wanted to go away somewhere nice, so we decided to spend the weekend at Tamarack Lake Lodge in Mammoth. The three of us haven't gone on a trip together since the Adoption of the Cats two years ago (December 10, 2008, to be exact), and we've missed our family vacations. We brought along our friend Cathy, expecting to relax by the fireplace, have a nice meal, maybe putter around on cross country skis. Unfortunately when the time came to leave, I had two 500-page work manuscripts, Paul had 300 papers to grade, and Peter wasn't feeling well. Never mind: it was my birthday, and we went!

Me and Peter, dinner at Tamarack Lake Lodge

Cathy, me, Paul and Peter

Working in the cabin

Paul outside the cabin

I'd managed to frantically finish writing up the first manuscript the night before, getting to bed around 4 AM. Up at 11:30, and then spent a couple of hours trying to herd Peter and Paul toward the inevitable moment of cat separation. We picked up Cathy and departed at 2. Beautiful drive through the Mojave Desert, clouds, a little rain, a beautiful rainbow that lasted an hour. Refueled at Mojave but didn't stop for anything else. It was dark by the time we reached Lone Pine (sunset is at 4:30 up here), and we stopped at a coffeehouse in Bishop, the Looney Bean, for a quick fueling of cappuccino. The road continued dry, and we reached Mammoth in record time - 4 hours 45 minutes. It started to snow just as we approached town, and was whitening the road, the temperature falling below freezing, as we pulled in at Tamarack Lake Lodge/ We were thrilled to have arrived just before the big snowfall, when chains would be needed!

Chilly by the lake

Me and son Paul.

Warming up with French onion soup

Cabin at night

The lodge looked beautiful and we sat by the fireplace for awhile. Hardly anyone is at the lodge (it's true it's before Christmas season, but I think the real problem is that Mammoth is a ghost town due to the recession). Then we went into the restaurant for my birthday dinner. The French chef (from Alsace-Lorraine) made us an exquisite meal. Paul and I had a delicious garlicky shellfish broth, Peter had escargot, Cathy a spinach salad. Then I had a most succulent cote d'boeuf steak, so savory, with roasted garlic in a bit of bearnaise sauce, with lovely side vegs (creamed yam, a little beet, bok choy, polenta, etc.). Peter had pork and scallops, Cathy had lamb, Paul had a special fish dish, baramundi in papillote, which melted in the mouth. And dessert! It was the first time Peter broke his low carb diet since April, and he did it for his favorite dessert - grand marnier ice cream with Belgian dark chocolate sauce. Paul had that too and I had a delicate chocolate mousse with whipped cream (and a candle in it) and cappuccino.

After digesting by the fire with the internet, we had to break a trail back to our private cabin, since a good foot of fresh snow had fallen since we arrived! It made us out of breath and frozen but was fun.

Paul and Cathy on the bridge

Convict Lake

Me at Convict Lake

I spent the whole night - well, till 5 AM - writing up the second book, and then slept till noon. Peter stayed in the cabin and Paul and Cathy and I drove into town (the roads had been plowed) for bagels and omelets at the New York Bagel deli. It was a bright sunshiny day and the roads were dry, so we took a little drive past Mono Lake to Lee Vining. No sign of the scientific research involving the sea creatures and the arsenic. Then back to the lodge where Paul and I had some French onion soup at the restaurant, to round out our deli take-out dinner. Spent the evening in our cozy cabin, internetting and finally starting Deborah Devonshire's memoir, Wait for Me, reading it more or less simultaneously with Mackerel at Midnight, about the first Jewish family to live in the Shetland Islands.

The Birchalls at Manzanar

Our cats wouldn't have lasted a day at Manzanar

Cranes

The Eastern Sierras

Next morning we took a little walk by the icy lake in bright sunshine, then started toward home. Breakfast at the bagel place, a little detour to show Cathy Convict Lake (where there was a shoot-out of outlaws in 1871), and a stop at Bishop for cheap gas at the Indian casino. Just before Lone Pine, we took a detour to see Manzanar, the Japanese World War II internment camp. A beautiful place, in the shadow of the spectacular but cold Eastern Sierras, near Mt. Whitney. The landscape's so inhumanly bleak, it makes you shiver to think of people being forced to stay there, cold winter and hot summer alike.

With only two more quick stops, Lone Pine for cappuccino, and Mojave for a rest and a snack, by evening we were back home with our cats, who welcomed us warmly.

Half Mast for Herbert

2010-12-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

Our long time (25 years plus) family friend Herbert Enderton passed away on October 20, and today his wife Cathy and I went to the UCLA campus where the flag was to fly at half mast in Herbert's honor. Herbert was a mathematics professor and editor of The Journal of Symbolic Logic for many years, and his devotion to his work at UCLA made this a particularly fitting tribute for him. However, going to half-mastings has never featured before as an experience in my life, so I didn't know quite what to expect.

The weather was perfect - it's been chilly, but warmed up to a sunshiny 75 on campus today, so that the flag, although posted amidst a jumble of campus construction, nevertheless appeared to its best advantage.

On the pole itself, they posted this lovely tribute, also to two other faculty members who had passed away at about the same time.

Cathy, standing by the tribute to her husband

Cathy and me

A breeze attempts to open up the UCLA flag.

Then we visited Herbert's office - lots of books and papers to deal with.

His jacket, hung where he left it.

Afterwards, we went out to a cheery lunch with Paul (lentil soup and cappuccino at Amelia's, and some much needed retail therapy at the Salvation Army.

Now I will share some pictures of Herbert, from over the years in our long family friendship.

Herbert meets our cat Martial (2009)

Cathy and Herbert at their son Eric's wedding

Herbert making the toast

Herbert and grandchild - Eric and Elaine's daughter Evelyn (2009)

At Bearpaw (Sequoia National Park)

Both families - me, Peter, Cathy, Herbert, Eric, Bert, in the 1980s on Bearpaw porch

Two couples at Bearpaw, 1980s

Peter and Herbert near Tamarack Lake

Paul, me, Herbert and Cathy at Tamarack Lake

Peter and Herbert on the Lakes Trail at Sequoia in winter

Me and Herbert at Bearpaw, 2007

Herbert at Bearpaw

Christmas

Paul and Herbert

Herbert