Questions

 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.

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From my book "Half a Pair of People" yet to be published.

 

                            Chapter 1

 

August 24^th, 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.

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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