Dear reader,
We all needed a little comfort this week to shield us from world news. I did anyway. So we decided to watch the film of The Mayor Casterbridge, one of Thomas Hardy's very famous books. He wrote it in 1845 and it depicts a rural England of that time. It is a marvelous intricate story of a man, Michael Henchard, who starts life as hay trusser and eventually ends up as Mayor of Casterbridge, the local town. At the beginning of the book, at a local fair, he gets drunk ans sells his wife to a passing sailor and this is the story of Michael's rise to fame and his downfall.
In the film the photographs of Dorset are so pleasing and for me nostalgic. There are lots of scenes where hoses and carts take various characters to their destinations, which remind me of my childhood. ( I do wish we still had horses and carts on our roads instead of cars.) When I was thirteen or fourteen I had a pony and trap, the pony, called Joey, trotted me through the lanes of North Norfolk and took me into the village to shop for my mother. Of course I understand that there were lots of things that wouldn't have suited me in the 19th century, medical health for one, but in my heart I long for the simplicity and peaceful days of those times.
*
From my book "Half a Pair of People" yet to be published.
Chapter 1
August 24th, 1981 was the memorable day I moved into my own
house to start the single life. During my days of married life, in an
unruly house in Hampshire, I had often imagined the kind of house I
would like for myself one day. Now at last, unbelievably, here it was
– a small, terraced house in Oxford full of future potential and
present, strange silence.
I have always loved small Victorian houses. My beloved nanny,
Agnes Ellen Turner, lived in one in Canterbury. There were nine
members of her family, three rooms in the house. Unfortunately, I
never saw inside it, but imagined what it would have looked like
from my voracious reading of Victorian novels. I saw the familiar
inside was filthy. Masses of newspapers and circulars everywhere,
windows you couldn’t see through, electricity meters in every room
and graffiti on the walls. The garden was full of old bedsteads,
curious pieces of rusty ironware, empty beer cans and empty bottles.
However, in the hall a shaft of sunlight shone through the dusty
haze. I glimpsed Anna, Paul and Mrs Morel, and Fanny Price (before
she went to Mansfield Park) flitting about; and I fancied I smelt the
beeswax. At that moment I fell in love with it, made an offer that
afternoon which was accepted and settled in the day after. A good
choice, as it has been the most constant and supportive lover I have
ever had; always warm, always welcoming, always loving and always
there.
Plumbers, electricians, and painters during the intervening four
months worked long and hard on improvements making the house
habitable. Four small downstairs rooms were made into one large
sitting room, and a large kitchen with a door to the garden. Both dry
and wet rot had spread happily and freely everywhere and needed a
stay of execution; a hot water tank had to be installed and radiators
fixed to the walls. Cupboards were fitted and the house rewired.
(Little reference is made by Victorian novelists to cupboard space. I
suppose it lacks romance as a subject, nevertheless I always wonder
where the characters put their clothes since nineteenth century
street houses appear to have been built without them. Ditto modern
houses).
The day I moved in there were no carpets, no curtains, no
electricity, and the telephone had yet to be connected. However a kitchen from Sons and Lovers where Paul Morel and his mother
could sit; Anna Tellwright’s back parlour with its bentwood rocking chair
and an engraving of ‘The Light of the World ‘over the mantelpiece
and the small black fireplaces as discussed in various Dickens’ novels.
These would, I knew, radiate a cosy, settled, all-embracing feeling
coming not from luxury, but from love. There would be the smell of
beeswax, sparkling blackened grates, and according to season, jars of
wild flowers, bluebells or dog roses picked on Sunday rambles. In
front of the fire on winter afternoons there would be buttered
muffins, honey, and numerous cups of lemon tea. The street itself
would be tidy, uniform, and predictable, like Coronation Street, with
small front gardens behind spruce hedges.
That image was my Utopia, and I recognized it immediately in the
small, dilapidated house I found in East Oxford. The outside
resembled a squat, with flaking paint and dirt-grimed walls;
until the builders, who incidentally had become my first friends in
Oxford left that evening, I was euphoric. All day I boiled saucepans of
water to make cups of tea and I made jokes. The unreality of
dreaming of a house of my own had become a reality. Unbelievably,
this small part of the universe belonged to me, somewhere to root
myself. Ken and Eddy left at 5 o’clock wishing me goodnight and
hoping that I would enjoy the first evening alone in house. But, as
with most anticipated events that fall short of expectations, this was
no exception. The much sought-after silence in the house seemed
oppressive rather than peaceful. Putting away china, hanging the
pictures, and generally straightening the muddle, lost its appeal as a
solitary pursuit. The excitement of being solitary, of being free (that
freedom so sought after, so much discussed, so often) and the single
life for which I had fought and now attained, diminished, it seemed
on acquaintance.
*
Questions
Were the summers different then,
did the sun shine more, when
wet and cloudy days were few, when
butterflies took wing, and warm winds blew?
Did the bees collect more honey,
did we laugh more, were more things funny,
was the sea less rough, more azure,
did finer shells bewitch us on the shore?
Did roses fade so soon, wind or rain blown,
or were hedgerows so rich and pretty grown
when all the summer days were bright,
not awash with rain, but drenched in light?
Were the day so cold and dreary,
and did we ever feel so weary
of days of heat and sun and sea,
picnics, sandcastles, flasks of tea?
Did dreams then, sometimes, come true,
when love would find us, hold us too,
and make our whole world seem completely new,
when butterflies took wing and warm winds blew?
*
With very best wishes, Patricia
