Simple Pleasures

I walked to the library yesterday and found two of the Inter-War books I wanted.  Most are not available, but a few more are at other libraries in this area, so I have much to look forward to.

Another book I picked up was a small one titled Simple Pleasures - Little Things that Make Life Worth Living.  Anything that Makes Live Worth Living is worthy of consideration, surely.  I thought I'd find out what the National Trust's take on this might be.

The first chapter is "A Sense of Place".  In it are essays about 

a walking path along the coast of Wales

Seaton Delaval Hall (near us)

Exmoor

Deep sea diving

a copse near Bath

Lancashire

Combe

Lundy

Ramsgate Sands

British Rail

I was going to link you to all sorts from this list, but if you're curious you'll find out I'm sure.  From my brief perusal last night, the ideas around a 'sense of place' have to do with nature and solitude, a feeling of ownership or identification, a new and transforming experience, a sense of history or patriotic pride, a feeling of gratitude at being able to visit, inhabit or experience a place, a unique opportunity for observing - either nature or other people.  

I was thinking about when in my life I've enjoyed this 'sense of place'.  What came to my mind was

• The large stone path on the West side of the house where I grew up in the Village, where I served mud pies and hose water to my best friend, Mary Lou, on my dainty china tea set.
• My Grandmother's house on NW 31st Street in Oklahoma City, virtually every wonderful room in it, but particularly the front hall closet with the glass door.  It was my secret hiding place.
• Her house on 7th and Shartel in the same city, perhaps mostly for her large kitchen and for the large mantled fireplace with glass fronted bookshelves on either side.  I wanted to own something that grand; I still do.
• The first house I owned on 9th Street.  I loved it for its potential, which proves I am an accomplished fantasist.  I loved the 10 foot ceilings, the French doors between the living and dining rooms and the large front porch.
• My Grandma & Grandpa's 1940's house in Oklahoma City, especially the closets with sliding doors and built in cupboards; also the storage space where Grandpa kept his tools, under the dining room window seat; also the kitchen with the pantry cupboard, the large drawers, the cutting board that pulled out from under the counter and the French windows that opened into the large screened in back porch with the ceiling fan from the old Huckins Hotel and Grandpa's faded green wooden rocking chair with the wide arms.  A developer tore the house down a few years ago.  I visit the house often in my sleep.
• Driving at the coast on my way home and enjoying the sea views along the Promenade.
• The house where we now live.  I get a warm feeling when approaching from the North, seeing the long wall, the glassed in porch and the bay windows.  The front garden looks much more elegant with the new brickwork. My favourite places in this house are the front porch and the living and dining rooms where Grandmother's furniture has finally found a suitable home.
• When I lived in Salt Lake City, the first traffic lights of my daily commute faced East to the Wasatch Mountain front, sometimes snow covered, others snow topped, forest green or ablaze with autumn, the horizon unbroken by anything but treeline.  If I was lucky enough to hit a red light, that seemed to set me on a better path for the rest of the day.  (Sadly, some b@$+@£d playing King of the Mountain has stuck a large, ugly house above the tree line and I never want to look up there again.)
• The first time I saw the Gulf of Mexico I sat for hours in the surf at Galveston, enthralled by the grey-green colour of the water and the lacy white waves.  I wanted to take bolts of it home and make myself an entire wardrobe.
• I feel just the same when I ride on a train or on the London Underground as the gentleman who described his pleasure in watching other people and inventing stories about them.   Travel by train and ferry is just the best.
• The first time I stood on Westminster Bridge overlooking the Thames River, I thought of the many novels I'd read in the first 39 years of my life that were set in London, never dreaming I'd actually see the place.  I cried.  I've visited London's tourist area sufficiently often over the years that it is feels familiar enough for me to claim it as mine, particularly the Tower and the very spot where Anne Boleyn and Jane Grey lost their heads.

 Where are the places you've experienced that live on inside and bring you pleasure?

Inter-War Reading

I've just finished a book I really enjoyed, The House at Riverton, by Kate Morton.  It might or might not be 'chick lit' but let's just call it a historical novel.  I will read it again, of that I'm certain.  Not only that, but at the end, the author lists some of the resources she used to recreate the period and I'm planning on finding as many of those as I can.  Just in case this sort of thing interests you, I thought I'd share the book list:

The Rare and the Beautiful by Cressida Connolly

1939: The Last Season  and










The Viceroy's Daughter

by Anne deCourcy

Vita: The Life of V Sackville-West by Victoria Glendinning (I've linked the hardback version because of the image, but there are far cheaper paperbacks






The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell

Life in a Cold Climate by Laura Thompson

Channel 4's The Edwardian Country House television series

The Bronte Myth by Lucasta Miller

Voices from the Trenches: Letters to Home by Noel Carthew

The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen

Paris 1919 by Margaret Macmillan

Forgotten Voices of the Great War by Max Arthur

A Punch History of Manners and Modes by Alison Adburgham

Reader's Digest's Yesterday's Britain

The Repression of the War Experience by W. H. River  (Apparently a paper published in The Lancet, a British medical publication)

'Flapper Jane' by Bruce Bliven 

(There may be music playing on this site; I wouldn't know, as my sound card is out of order...).

'Moving Frontiers and the Fortunes of the Aristocratic Townhouse' by F.M.L. Thompson (apparently a widely quoted article published in a 1995 issue of The London Journal - back issues $120 each...)

Michael Duffy's website: www.firstworldwar.com

Secondary sources:

Sweet and Twenties by Beverley Nichols

Child of the Twenties by Frances Donaldson

(far cheaper in the UK than in the US)

Myself When Young by Daphne du Maurier

The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosley

Punch magazine

Esther Wesley's account of 'Life Below Stairs at Gayhurst House (on the Stoke Goldington Association website)

The Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette by Professor Thomas E. Hill

Manners and Rules of Good Society or Solecisms to be Avoided, published by 'A Member of the Aristocracy', 1924.

Authors: 

Nancy Mitford

Evelyn Waugh

Daphne du Maurier

F. Scott Fitgerald

Noel Coward

H.V. Morton
Michael Arlen

(I'd never heard of the last two).

Films

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Gosford Park by Robert Altman

UK television production Upstairs Downstairs

Guess that's my reading list for 2011 sorted!

Wine and Cranberries

No, this isn't a punch recipe, it's the colours I've chosen for November.  Wearing burgundy always feels so rich, it is one of my favourites for autumn and almost makes up for the cold of winter.  Sadly I don't have a great deal of it in my wardrobe.  There are a couple of cranberry-coloured tops that I will call 'close enough' and I'll be on the look out for wine coloured pieces.

I found a dark red crushed velvet dress from the days when I was thin.  Owing to its stretch-icity, I was able to get into it, but just; I don't foresee a time when I'll ever want to wear anything so clingy around the hips, but I thought I'd try it as a top, so it's been whacked off serged / overlocked.  I'll turn it up and hem it next Tuesday at the sewing group if not before.

I also found a large dolman-sleeved long sweater, a la 1980s over leggings, in a burgandy, navy and dark green stripe.  I've read somewhere that small horizontal stripes are OK as they create a 'ladder' effect and draw the eye upwards.  Rather than try to figure out if these stripes are sufficiently ladder-like, I've cut the pieces apart to have a go at re-fashioning it into a slightly more tailored style.  I'm sure I bought it at a charity shop 20 years ago, so it's no great loss if the project fails.  I figure the only way to learn is to try these things.  

I'll let you know how it goes.   

What do you look forward to wearing when it gets colder?

Obsessed

I'm sure I've bored everyone rigid every time I say 'We don't watch much TV'. We watch quite a bit of BBC I-Player and loads of select videos; I'm a movie buff and can watch my collection repeatedly if I just space them a bit. The time when we're most likely to channel surf is after a video has finished and we can't quite rouse ourselves off the chaise lounge. I was doing just such a thing last Sunday when I stumbled onto Downton Abbey.

I'm aware that the romance of the whole Upstairs-Downstairs thing is a bit naff, like the way of life on Southern Plantations is dressed up in fluff.  I know fine well that had I lived in those times I would not be amongst those wearing the elegant ballgowns, nor would most of us.  I might just manage middle-class, but for women in those times it was all about whom one married and from what I've told you thus far, you'll know my record in that area isn't great.  Nevermind, TV is about escapism, right?  So, these are the reasons I'm loving Downton Abbey:

• It's a costume drama - the clothes have me drooling.
• It is set in 1912-14, not quite interwar but an interesting period nonetheless.
• The setting is a breath-taking Edwardian country house in an English village.
• It has Maggie Smith in it, which alone would make it wonderful.
• There are other stars I recognise, such as Elizabeth McGovern. I must admit I've never thought that highly of her acting but she's excellent in this role. Another main character is Michelle Dockery, whom I recognise as the grand-daughter in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather video, which we have to watch every Christmas along with White Christmas. Anyone who make Pratchett more palatable must be extraordinarily gifted.
• Last and probably the most important is the screenwriter for this series is Julian Fellowes, the screenwriter who created Gosford Park, which I've also professed to love in every 4th post here. 

If you've never read his book, Snobs, you've missed a treat. 

(While I'm at it I'll recommend Hunting Unicorns by Bella Pollen, as the two seem to go hand in hand). 

In my usual fashion, I've discovered this series halfway through its next-to-last episode; I never discovered the TV series M*A*S*H until it went into re-runs.  (I'm the same way with new fashions - I learn to like them just as they are going out...). British TV series are only for 6-7 weeks and I've never adapted to the brevity. Last I knew US series tended to run 12-13 weeks, don't they?  Ironically, the show airs on Sunday at 9pm, our usual bedtime. 

I understand the DVD set for the first series is or is about to be released, but I'll not put it on my Christmas list for now (I'd rather wait a while for the price to drop).  In the meantime, I can feed my addiction to the clothes on YouTube.  'Periodxdrama' has posted 8-9 minute clips that just about satisfy...but not quite.  I'm hoping that you can see these in the US if this sort of thing appeals.  I'd be amazed if it isn't available in the US; Fellowes is no fool.

If anyone hears about the next series coming up, please let me know!  I'm just going to have to stay up late on Sunday to get my last fix before it disappears!

Margery Allingham

I've been fortunate in my selection of books the past few years, discovering new authors and topics of interest, most relating in some way to the inter-war years.  All aspects of history, fashion, politics, personalities, fiction and writers from this era appeal to me.  One exception stands out, sadly, and that is the Campion books written by Margery Allingham.

I like the Campion TV series, starring Peter Davison.  Bill thought to acquire these as we'd enjoyed the Peter Wimsey DVDs so thoroughly.  It was the DVDs that led me to  purchase a couple of Campion novels for Bill's Christmas gift one year.  Even though we've collected most of the set, they don't get any better (you'd think we'd learn).  We decided it was that Allingham somehow managed to avoid telling much about Campion's lifestyle or about him as a person at all.  It's a clever trick to both make him the solver of the crime and an almost incidental character, but I'd be the last to say she's not clever.

For this reason,  I really enjoyed reading about Allingham's life (Margery Allingham: a Biography by Julia Thorogood -  her biographer apparently revised the book and married a Jones since publishing the library book I read.)  

It's been a while since I read it, but I remember that both her parents were writers and an aunt was a publisher.  She wrote from an early age.   Though 'middle class', her family lived on the financial edge, a writers income always being uncertain.  This seemed to get continually worse the older she got and I got out of sorts with her about it.  


She seemed to have settled on the man to marry without much consideration of alternatives and the lucky man was Philip ('Pip') Youngman Carter.  His career was apparently illustrating the dust covers (most of which have not survived) of her published books; that and spending her money.  I never could warm to him, frankly.  


They lived in a grand house in small village in Essex, or rather she did.  

 

Carter spent a fair amount of time (and money) in London, with other women.  I gather he had rather a chip on his shoulder about her success.  Perhaps had he married someone less gifted his own, supposedly substantial, talent would have shone and he would have been a better person, less indolent.   I see from Carter's biographical sketch that he did in fact illustrate some of the Wimsey and Maigret books and wrote several of his own, largely autobiographical, ie Drinking for Pleasure (Is there any other reason?)  His section of the Margery Allingham Society website provides a fascinating sketch of the man, and draws this conclusion about his personality:

The main source for a view of Youngman Carter's personality is his autobiography, All I Did Was This, published posthumously in 1982 in a limited edition. He writes with impressive recall of his early life and admits that much of his character and outlook was determined in his boyhood. Throughout his life he appears to have divided his fellows into 'good chaps and stinkerinos', and how one regarded him must clearly depended on how one was regarded by him. He is variously described as cynical and sardonic, forthright and formidable, and 'appallingly selfish'. He had 'uninhibited prejudices' in which he delighted, 'a bee in his bonnet about trespassers' and a boyish relish for 'private games', often at the expense of others. To those who incurred 'the full and scabrous vigour of his distaste' he was an implacable and 'vitriolic' enemy.

The house was sufficiently big and she sufficiently hospitable that it was always full of visitors and this put an awful strain on her writing.  Carter was known for his parties and  seemed to think it fair to invite, send or bring the herds to 'his' country castle and drop them on Margery to entertain.  Of course she was also required to keep churning out the books to pay the bills.  I started to say 'and to give him a dustcover to illustrate' but it turns out he actually did this for many noted authors.  


Her Society's website describes more of Campion's world than hers, but does say:  

Youngman Carter's touching account of his wife in his preface to Mr Campion's Clowns (1967) gives a picture of a gay and generous woman, with kindness and courage and a rare gift for friendship. Though not an orthodox Christian, she was 'deeply religious' with her own tenets of belief. She was greatly attached to her house and garden and loved to share them with her many friends. Her publicity invariably implied that her marriage was entirely satisfactory but, in fact, it was threatened by her husband's restless philandering and extreme social ambition. Both took their toll; and continued ill-health and serious tax problems compounded her difficulties. Youngman Carter designed the wrappers for most of her books and he helped to plan some of the earlier ones. After her death he achieved in Cargo of Eagles and his own two sequels a lively pastiche of his wife's characteristic mode.

She struggled with her debts, her weight, her health and her writing.  She died relatively young at the age of 62.   If there is any justice, Carter only outlived his famous wife by 3 years (I acknowledge that I am rather hard on him).   In thinking about Allingham's interesting but less than happy life, it led me to think more about the author of the amazing Wimsey stories.  It turns out that Dorothy Sayers had a pretty interesting life as well...but that would have to be another post.

Happy Halloween

 

I think Mom really enjoyed making these costumes this first Halloween we had Johnny, who was 2 and a bit at the time.  He sure enjoyed wearing his, too, though the face paint was apt to get smeared pretty quickly.  There was a Papa Bear outfit as well, but you'll have to take my word for it. 

Do you see good costumes on Trick or Treat night?

Fire, Rain and Faith

My computer is broke for the moment.  Fingers crossed, Bill's diagnosis of a broken on/off switch is the whole problem and I just need to find a repair shop.  In the mean time, other people's photos will have to do.

The last part of our trip took us to what I refer to as the Burnt Church, the Church of Agia Mavra.  Bill pointed out the cracked patina on the front doors [which I could have shown you...] was similar to the finish on one side of my Grandmother's china cabinet, which was also involved in a fire in about 1944, I believe.  I would never have that refinished as I see it as part of the furniture's history - a special form of 'distressing' if you will.


Inside the church were both the new icon with jewellery and the old icon with the melted jewellery around it.  Bill pointed out it was brass, not gold, which I thought was a relief.  I'd hated to think about already poor people giving up what they could little afford.  Giving up something of sentimental value would be sufficient, I should think.  Interesting to read that the divide between the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches included arguments about whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used at Eucharist and that the respective leaders of both each excommunicated the other.  How adult of them...

There was one last stop for another ice cream and some scenic photos of the bay below, only the scenery was more about storm clouds than shore line.  When one of the umbrellas took flight and a potted plant was shattered, we hurriedly finished off our cones and headed for the coach.  

One of the other bus trip stories that stuck in my mind was the tradition of having the local priest bless any new endeavor:  a new business on opening day, the first launch of a new fishing boat, a new home, etc.  Sometime around Easter was a good time to have each room in your home blessed, even if it wasn't new (I wondered if this was a religious version of 'spring cleaning').  You could even have the priest bless your cat if you wished.  Well, that's the tour operator's story.  I'd have to learn a bit more about the Greek Orthodox religion and perhaps live among the locals a while before I swallowed all that.

On our last before leaving day, it was good to have long trousers and a sweater to hand.  I was amused by the Brits' determination to have a holiday in spite of cooler weather.  A few even toughed it out by the pool during a brief rain storm.  Most were from the North of England, obviously, and so their temperature perceptions were different to mine.  As I said, on our last day the sun blazed so perhaps our Welsh neighbours would have a good second week.  I don't think I could have entertained myself sufficiently for a second week, so I was pleased to be headed home to my own bed, sunshine or rain.


I'll update this with photos when (I refuse to say 'if') they become available.