King's College Cambridge 2008 #4 The Holly and the Ivy arr Walford Davies

A Sheep's Ruminations on Those Who Made it Safe to Hang Out and Graze

Grave of William Wales, a Revolutionary War veteran, in Mexico, New York

Today is Veteran's Day.  I have not generally been a solid observer of the occasion.  Flags, poppies, salutes.  All good, but they never got in deep with me. They were as the headlines of distant disasters are to your average teenager. (And I am not making myself superior to average teenagers.  I think I still have a lot in common with them).

With age, however, and more particularly with the experience of writing this book, the centrality of a fighting force to all of us lucky enough to live in one of the world's great democracies has come home to me.   I read a lot about World War One as part of my research (there's a blog post down there that gives some of the statistics) and while the soldiers in that War, and in others since, fought for their own reasons, big or small, they did fight.  And defense was necessary. Their sacrifice has benefited in innumerable ways those of us who, for instance, sit at our computers in quiet corners of a green and pleasant land and write what we like, untrammeled by government censors.

They can't defend themselves...

There is so much jingoistic, militaristic, nonsense that comes trailing along with this kind of observation I almost hesitate to make it.  But I know it to be true.  The pacifists have their point, but I wouldn't want to live in a world of their making - at least not among human beings as they are currently constituted and especially not if the ones who fought against us in the World Wars had been handed victories.  (I showed up in upstate New York in 1965.  What life might have been like in this world in 1965 if the Nazis and the Japanese militarists had taken over in Washington and London in 1945 hardly bears thinking about).

Of course, there are still threats looming. They come from without and, we are learning, from within. (No government censor for my little blog, but perhaps a government snoop)?  There were some pretty good jokes made at Richard Dawkins' response to having his honey confiscated by the TSA ("Bin Laden has won!") but of course he was making a point. Something has been taken from us all in the name of Security and it isn't just Richard Dawkins' honey.  Veterans of the future are now in the making and they won't all in uniform. I think we might all bear that in mind on Veterans Day 2013.

 Today, though, is properly "Remembrance Day," as they have it in the Commonwealth and it is right to remember those who fought in those terrible, if straightforward, wars - especially that first World War which gave rise to the holiday.  In Up, Back, and Away, the War is an ever-present shadow over England in the 1920s.  Partly it is manifested in absence: the head of the Peppermore family was lost in the Somme. The two sons of Lord and Lady Fisher, great in promise, are in Flanders Fields.  Thinking about these fictional creations actually (I'll admit it) brought me to tears on more than one occasion as I was writing.  There are wounded men, like Doctor Slade, who have survived but who are marked forever. There is a man shortage that has left a generation of women in England without much hope of finding a mate. Over it all, there is a mourning for the lost world of Edwardian England.

One of the most useful resources I found in my research for Up, Back, and Away, and one of the most enjoyable was Siegfried Sassoon's famous Sherston trilogy.  It's a set of three books that chronicle the life of George Sherston, a fictionalized version of Sassoon himself, as he moves from pre-World War One England, through the War, and back out the other side into a changed world as a changed man.  The most famous and my favorite of the three is  Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man. 

Here's an excerpt from the book that just left me gaping.  It comes just near the end as Sherston is thinking back to his time on the Western front.  It is so beautifully written (Sassoon was the great poet of the War as well, of course) and conveys so powerfully the plight of the World Warrior that I typed it out for my own edification. Here it is for any passersby, with thanks to Sassoon and all the rest who gave all, including their very souls. We who can still safely graze are grateful.

I can see myself sitting in the sun in a nook among the sandbags and chalky debris behind the support line. There is a strong smell of chloride of lime. I am scraping the caked mud off my wire-torn puttees with a rusty entrenching tool. Last night I was out patrolling with Private O'Brien, who used to be a dock labourer at Cardiff. We threw a few Mills' bombs at a German working-party who were putting up some wire and had no wish to do us any harm. Probably I am feeling pleased with myself about this. Now and and again a leisurely five-nine shell passes overhead in the blue air where the larks are singing. The sound of the shell is like water trickling into a can. The curve of its trajectory sounds peaceful until the culminating crash. A little weasel runs past my outstretched feet, looking at me with tiny bright eyes, apparently unafraid. One of our shrapnel shells, whizzing over to the enemy lines, bursts with a hollow crash. Against the clear morning sky a cloud of dark smoke expands and drifts away. Slowly its dingy wrestling vapours take the form of a hooded giant with clumsy expostulating arms. Then, with a gradual gesture of acquiescence, it lolls sideways, falling over into the attitude of a swimmer on his side. And so it dissolved into nothingness. Perhaps the shell has killed someone. Whether it has or whether it hasn't, I continue to scrape my puttees, and the weasel goes about his business. 

A Great Anglo Wallow

Just stopping in with a top tip for those of you (like me) that can't really get enough of pictures of the beauty spots of England.  The National Trust runs a great Facebook page.  They encourage trust property visitors to post photos and many of these are wonderful, amazing, what have you.

Here's the link.  Have a look.  You might even stumble over a picture I posted of Erddig Hall in Wales.  (Here's a fresh one for now).

Bring on the castles!

Bring on the gardens!

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

October leaves in Vermont have a half life of about 10 minutes.  The "red-red rose that's newly sprung in June" outlasts our leaves.  We may have hit the very peak of excellent fall leaves today here, and lucky me, I was home.

My daily-rider is a dull modern bike, but I have a garage (and barn) full of old bikes

Today was also very like the October day I imagined for that opening scene of Up, Back, and Away.

Sooooo, what could I do but get on my bike and take a bit of a ride through the Vermont woods with my little point-and-shoot camera in my jacket pocket?

I am glad I recorded today's ride because it was as beautiful as any I have ever taken. And when I say "recorded" I mean it.

Lucky for you, you other residents of the Universe, I have this new MacBook as well as the aforementioned cheap camera.  I used the computer (and YouTube) to turn the bit of video I took into a very short movie.  My first iMovie manages to be dull and irritating, all at once, which I think is a kind of achievement.  It will give you an idea, however, of why I chose the Vermont woods as the place where magic happens in the book.  That's the movie, right down there.

I wish there was some way to give you the scent of these autumn leaves along with the pictures. It's a big part of the whole fall thing.  Maybe you had better visit...

Would You Want to Live Here?

Erddig Hall, Wrexham Wales

Seems like an easy answer, but (for my purposes today) it's a trick question.  The lawyer in me (and your inner lawyer) would want to know, in what capacity? and in what time period?

In Up, Back, and Away, I really wanted to explore the response that a young, privileged, contemporary American kid would have to English class structure in the early part of the 20th century, just when the Bolsheviks and trade unionists were giving it what-for, but while it was still firmly in place.

Coachman's livery in a closet in the Butler's Pantry

When I was researching the English social history of the early 20th century, I learned that Erddig Hall was a particularly rich repository of information about below-stairs life.  The letters and poems and other bits of history preserved here were helpful in getting some insight on the reality of big-house life.

The laundry at Erddig

There were only a handful of owners down the years.  They were wealthy, for most of the time at least - things got bad at the end - but none of them were real grand aristocrats.  Maybe that's why they all demonstrated an interest in the lives of the people who worked on the estate.  My "Lady Fisher" shares some of that democratic impulse, as a wealthy woman only two generations removed from the advent of family wealth through her pottery manufacturing grandfather.

The Quarter Sessions that I imagined after studying Erddig was somewhat different from the real thing, as I know now, having visited the place last week.  The main house at (the fictional) Quarter Sessions is grander and more vast than the one at Erddig - closer to Blenheim Palace, for instance, but the spirit was Erddig.  The gardens and parkland at Erddig, were, however, every bit as beautiful as I had imagined

View over park from west front of the house

And it was an absolutely great place to see the Upstairs/Downstairs worlds in real life that we have all seen on TV for such a long time now and to see in person the places I had imagined.  I only wish I'd had more time to wander around the park and soak it all in.  I guess I'll have to go back.

Housekeeper's Office - Where "Mrs. Grimwald" would've conducted business

Back From Blighty

It has been a wild two weeks, featuring a back-and-forth across the Atlantic for yours truly.  I went to England and Wales to see friends and to see some of the places that inspired the book.  When I catch my breath, I'll say a little about it all here.  Many a magic moment.

In the interim just stopping in to say Cheers! or Hidey-ho! or whatever (this was a neighbor's greeting to me yesterday as we were picking up the kids from school - she was searching for "Cheerio").

Also a word to the winners of the Bookreads Giveaway that ended on September 15.  The books are now in the mail - one to Illinois, one to Oklahoma, and one to way down under in South Australia.  Sorry for the delay but I was just starting my trip the day the Giveaway ended and it has been madness around here in the few days since my return.  They are in the hands of the Postal Services now, though, so I hope you'll have your copies soon and that you'll enjoy them.

Strange, Fun Fragment of a Lost World

I know eight minutes is a lot of time to commit to anything from the Internet, but for those who like an odd little window on the past, I've got one for you that I especially enjoyed.

A couple of things that jumped out at me from this old movie short.  In addition to my affection for the look of the animated scenes of the brothel-cum-nightclub featured here, where sinful elephants, bears, and cows sway in time to the music with their rubbery limbs,  I was taken with how they cleared the dance floor so Betty Boop could present the evening's entertainment. (I have a similar scene in the book  set in the fictional London nightclub, The Ginger Jar- dancing ends, floor show starts, there's sin at the back of the house).  I liked the odd little confirmation of my research.  So hard to imagine the young people of today in tuxes and gowns out for a debauch...

Also of particular interest to me is the way this urged the audience to sing along to "Just a Gigolo."  This sing-along business has a long history (which I also mined for the book) and is not altogether dead.  Adele's concerts feature them, which is one reason I  view her, in part as a modern day iteration of the grand girl singer of the music hall.  The DNA, at least, is there...

So, for your viewing pleasure: