The old Art Deco theatre in my hometown has recently been restored, and Friday night Philip and I went to a movie there. The fact that it was a favorite of mine, based on one of my all-time favorite books made it even more special: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, set to the screen by Robert Mulligan in 1962. The critic that introduced the film for us that night said that Ms. Lee had already turned down several movie deals, but that after being on the set of this film for just a few days, she was so convinced that the director and the actors had captured the spirit of her book that she went home content.

It’s an immortal book, and it’s an immortal film. We were also told that Lee was so pleased with Gregory Peck’s portrayal of the quintessential Southern gentleman, Atticus Finch, that she gave him her father’s own pocketwatch as a mark of her gratitude, an act significant in the light of the watch’s role in the movie. Some have said that Lee actually based Atticus on her father, and, frankly, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Almost fifty years after the book came out, Atticus is still revered to the status of a living person for his integrity, his “Christ-like goodness and wisdom”, his courage. When I first read the book as a young teenager, I saw my own lawyer Daddy in Atticus (and I still do!). And I have every reason to think that he saw his Daddy—not a lawyer, but the manager of a Coca-Cola bottling plant in South Georgia. And a living witness to the God-given dignity of every man, woman and child.

I pictured the town that my Daddy grew up in when I read this book—the yellow brick house across the street from my grandmother’s was Miss Maudie’s, and the decrepit old Victorian at the end of the block, complete with creaky boards on the porch and a yard full of weeds, was the inevitable lair of Boo Radley. My sister and I used to dare each other closer and closer to it. It was with something of the sadness of a lost era that we watched it be bought, renovated, turned into a respectable business. I can hardly pass it now without a shivering memory of the delicious terror with which we used to loiter past it on our walks, hoping and dreading to see a wan face peering out from behind the tattered curtains.

There is a level in this book to which I feel myself a participant. I can literally feel the dust and heat of those sweltering summers, and identify with the ladies whom, “by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum”. I can hear so many of the characters talking in my head for I have known them—or known their types, and the perpetual slamming of screened doors is like music to me. I know, by long association, what Atticus’ law books smelled like and what those mustard greens he dips out in the movie, limp upon the spoon and dripping with “pot liquor”, taste like.

But there is another level altogether in which I can merely receive and digest some very heart-breaking and devilish facts. I grew up in a world in which, thank God, segregation was a thing of the past; a historical fact that I could hardly conceive had ever been a reality in a free nation. But I see the scars of it yet upon my beloved Southland: ugly, jagged wounds that sometimes can hardly seem to heal for all the probing and revisiting of institutions many steps removed from humanity. The scars will and should remain, lest we forget, but I hope and pray that the world in which my children grow up in will find even this day’s painful reminders hard to believe.

Harper Lee did her South and her nation a great service in the gift of this beautiful book. Everything in it is not beautiful, certainly, but there is a beauty in the truth that no amount of sugar-coated moralizing could ever approach. And I believe that only the eyes of Love could look upon a loved land with all its charms and sorrows and faults and paint such a dispassionately accurate picture of a time of such great innocence and such great injustice. I really think it a shame that To Kill a Mockingbird has become such standard fare for high school English classes, subject to all the critical analysis which should only be reserved, in my humble opinion, for dissections in the biology lab. This book is so honest, so straightforward and truthful, that a thirteen year-old girl can stumble across it and open her heart effortlessly to the appeal of it. And twenty years later, still be moved to tears by it.

When we walked out of the theatre that night, I sensed an extraordinary vividness in every little thing: in the spent storm clouds tearing and shredding across the sky and the benevolent moon shining down on our old-fashioned Square; in the wet bricks of the well-known sidewalk, glinting in the sheen of the street lamps and the brisk wind the storm had left behind. Such is always the hallmark of great art upon my soul, this keenness, this love for the things around me, all the more remarkable for their familiarity. Be it film, novel, poem, painting or song—anything that has the gift of life in it, escorted into being by a human creator and yet bearing the stamp of divine originality—they all have a life in them that is re-creative. That, in turn, yearns and pleads for expression.

I suppose that is what is meant when someone says that a book ‘lives’. For me, in that little hometown theatre Friday night, To Kill a Mockingbird lived all over again, in glorious black and white upon the silver screen. And in even more glorious black and white upon a printed page.

I was to think of these days many times. Of Jem, and Dill, and Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson, and Atticus. He would be in Jem’s room all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Sharing a loved book with a beloved person is one of the sweetest pleasures I can imagine. That’s why reading Jane Eyre with my husband this past month has sent my cup of joy spilling over the edge. Though I could never forget my first passion for this masterpiece—my initial reading was at fourteen and I flew through the second half in one night in an absolute fever of impatience to see how it ended—I felt its majesty dawn on me afresh after all these years as a wholly new thing.

Jane Eyre is an untarnishable, unfading beauty of English literature: this I knew right well. But to hear the mighty words slipping off my own tongue, hanging breathless in the air between us for a fraction of a second, was to give them a life even I scarcely imagined. I found myself alternately amazed, shocked, delighted; “surprised by joy, impatient as the wind…” We have spent some lovely winter evenings over this book, sitting by a crackling fire. And equally lovely Sunday afternoons, a tea tray before us bearing a pot of the much-cherished tea room blend my mother brought me from England—reserved for only such worthy occasions. (Philip said he loved my ‘St. John voice’—I infused it with all the pomposity and cold dignity I could muster, almost looking down my nose at him as I read!) And now that we’re done, I think we’re both a little let down. I’ve about stopped dreaming about it at night. But we haven’t stopped talking about it yet. And this weekend, both of us being subject to nasty colds, we holed up and watched 5+ hour 1983 BBC movie version, in my opinion the definitive as far as accuracy to the text, however lacking it may be in cinematographic beauty. But the various film renditions of Jane Eyre, and my very decided opinions on them, are another post altogether and will have to wait for another day.

Last week I had the privilege and delight of attending a ‘drawing room’ lecture on this most beloved book and the excitement of it all still stirs my heart. I listened—first to a brief sketch of the lives of the Brontes and then to a discourse on the Biblical allusions of the text, the magnificent and brilliant super-structure of the plot—with a soaring mixture of elation and aspiration. It seems such a humbling thing, a thing to be cherished and grateful for, that Charlotte Bronte should have given to the world a gift such as this book most surely is. That there are books like Jane Eyre in the world seem to me a token of God’s love: in his liberal bestowing of both the creativity to write it and the eager minds to feast upon it. His riches are everywhere, truth and beauty and goodness shining out in radiant gleams from art and music and literature. I feel almost giddy at the thought of all there is to see of him in all that I love in general and in English literature in particular. It makes me want to lift my own little voice, like a wren among nightingales and larks. 

God forbid that there should ever come a day that girls are not reading Jane Eyre. Men and women, too, for that matter, but I think primarily of its noble influence upon young minds. I know its ideals somehow became a part of me back when I was fourteen, without my even realizing it. And as a woman I’ve had my faith immeasurably strengthened by it. I feel simpler, broader, more resolute for the time I’ve spent pondering its verities. Thank you, dear Charlotte…with all my heart.

I hope that y’all are having a lovely summer! It’s getting too hot here to go out and garden past ten o’clock in the morning, but there are plenty of pleasant indoor things to put one’s hands to. Not the least of which is a good book when all (or almost all ) the pressing things have been attended to…

Here’s a list of some of my favorite summer reads from years past that I compiled for the Young Ladies Christian Fellowship.

One of the books I’ve read this summer that I didn’t include there was Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer. I found myself so tangled up in it that it’s a good thing it didn’t take me long to read it! Rumer Godden writes with great beauty and poignancy…and the fact that the action takes place in an old hotel in the Champagne region of France in the 1950′s certainly appealed to me. Five English children are cast upon the mercy of the haughty proprietress after their mother is taken suddenly ill. When a mysterious and dashing English gentleman intervenes and makes them his charges for the month of August the children embark on what they imagine will be an idyllic and magical summer. Which it is–you feel like you are there, experiencing it with them–until Monsieur Eliot’s behaviour takes a sinister turn. It’s a coming-of-age story, with many of the inuendos and expressions that such suggests, but nothing untoward actually occurs–in that respect, at least. In other respects…it’s amazing what can be hidden beneath the quiet facade of a sleepy French village…   

I usually keep Philip abreast of the plot line of whatever book I happen to be reading. The day that I finished this one, we went out to dinner and I was polishing off my narrative in rather intense tones when Philip cracked a smile and nudged my elbow. The waiter at the neighboring table was listening in with unconcealed interest–apparently he thought I was talking about real people. Perhaps he was even wondering if he should call the police!

A couple of weeks ago we were sitting on the front porch of our dear friends in Birmingham, savoring a cup of tea and fresh scones with them and a new friend from across the street. How effortlessly does conversation flourish upon the common ground of our fellowship in Christ! We womenfolk had kept up a steady stream of it—all through the morning’s occupation of canning just-picked strawberries into preserves and the afternoon’s job of painting siding. And now, with our work wrapped up, we were idling in comfortable chairs and on the porch swing, thrashing out the implications of the simplified life we’d been espousing in our talk all day long. The variance between balance—which is what we all seem to begin with in our search for simplicity—and complete surrender to God and His purposes for us—which, in the end, is the real answer and essence of what we’re longing for in the first place. God’s call on our life shouldn’t stress us out; it’s all of the personal expectations we add on top of it, all of the ‘ought to’s’ and ‘should have’s’. And the ‘yes’s’ that needed to have been ‘no’s’.

I happened to have with me an essay by Thomas Kelly which addressed this very thing, which I’ve read over and over and am still trying to digest, and which seemed to both express and underscore all we were groping to articulate. I was only too eager to comply when my friend suggested that I read it aloud. And so, with babies bouncing on laps and children squealing on the swing in the yard below, and with many an exchange of knowing looks among ourselves, I shared these words from a great Quaker saint of fifty years ago. It is staggering to realize that our ‘modern’ problems of haste and hurry are really nothing new…        

Here are a few choice selections from The Simplification of Life. This essay in its entirety can be found in the jewel of a book A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly, which I highly recommend.

One can have a very busy day, outwardly speaking, and yet be steadily in the holy Presence. We do need a half-hour or an hour of quiet reading and relaxation. But I find that one can carry the recreating silences within oneself, well-nigh all the time. With delight I read Brother Lawrence, in his Practice of the Presence of God. At the close of the Fourth Conversation it is reported of him, "He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted composure and tranquility of spirit. ‘The time of business,’ he said, ‘does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.’ "

Our real problem, in falling to center down, is not a lack of time; it is, I fear, in too many of us, lack of joyful, enthusiastic delight in Him, lack of deep, deep-drawing love directed toward Him at every hour of the day and night.

I think it is clear that I am talking about a revolutionary way of living. Religion isn’t something to be added to our other duties, and thus make our lives yet more complex. The life with God is the center of life, and all else is remodeled and integrated by it. It gives the singleness of eye. The most important thing is not to be perpetually passing out cups of cold water to a thirsty world. We can get so fearfully busy trying to carry out the second great commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," that we are under-developed in our devoted love to God. But we must love God as well as neighbor. These things ye ought to have done and not to have left the other only partially done.

One can live in a well-nigh continuous of unworded prayer directed toward God, directed toward people and enterprises we have on our heart. There is no hurry about it all; it is a life unspeakable and full of glory, an inner world of splendor within which we, unworthy, may live. Some of you know it and live in it; others of you may wistfully long for it; it can be yours.

It is because from this holy Center we re-love people, re-love our neighbors as ourselves, that we are bestirred to be means of their awakening. The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God’s recreating, loving peace. Peer into poverty and see if we are really getting down to the deepest needs, in our economic salvation schemes. These are important. But they lie farther along the road, secondary steps toward world reconstruction. The primary step is a holy life, transformed and radiant in the glory of God.

This love of people is well-nigh as amazing as the love of God. Do we want to help people because we feel sorry for them, or because we genuinely love them? The world needs something deeper than pity; it needs love. (How trite that sounds, how real it is!) But in our love of people are we to be excitedly hurried, sweeping all men and tasks into our loving concern? No, that is God’s function. But He, working within us, portions out His vast concern into bundles. and lays on each of us our portion. These become our tasks. Life from the Center is a heaven-directed life.

Much of our acceptance of multitudes of obligations is due to our inability to say No. We calculated that that task had to be done, and we saw no one ready to undertake it. We calculated the need, and then calculated our time, and decided maybe we could squeeze it in somewhere. But the decision was a heady decision, not made within the sanctuary of the soul. When we say Yes or No to calls for service on the basis of heady decisions, we have to give reasons, to ourselves and to others. But when we say Yes or No to calls, on the basis of inner guidance and whispered promptings of encouragement from the Center of our life, or on the basis of a lack of any inward "rising" of that Life to encourage us in the call, we have no reason to give, except one–the will of God as we discern it.

Then we have begun to live in guidance. And I find He never guides as into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness. The Cosmic Patience becomes, in part, our patience, for after all God is at work in the world. It is not we alone who are at work in the world, frantically finishing a work to be offered to God.

Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It takes no time, but it occupies all our time. And it makes our life programs new and overcoming. We need not get frantic. He is at the helm. And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well.

The Scottish-American preacher Peter Marshall is one of my heroes. Not only for his robust faith and his imagery-laden sermons that read like poetry. Not only for his distinction as one of the most respected chaplains of the United States Senate. And not just because his beloved Westminster Presbyterian was right here in Atlanta.

I absolutely love the picture of a truly happy marriage that his wife Catherine gave me in her shining biography, ‘A Man Called Peter’. And I deeply respect a man whose view on women and marriage was old-fashioned enough to be unorthodox, even in the 1930′s. My family and I read this book aloud together, and I remember that upon hearing the following quote from one of his sermons, I grabbed the book as soon as we were done for the night and scribbled it madly in my journal. It was like a bright standard, a ray of light shed upon my future hopes…

Marriage is not a federation of two sovereign states. It is a union–
     domestic
          social
               spiritual
                    physical.

It is a fusion of two hearts–
     the union of two lives–
          the coming together of two tributaries,
which, after being joined in marriage, will flow in the same channel in the same direction… carrying the same burdens of responsibility and obligation.

Modern girls argue that they have to earn an income, in order to establish a home, which would be impossible on their husband’s income.

That is sometimes the case, but it must always be viewed as a regrettable neccessity, never as the normal or natural thing for a wife to have to do.

The average woman, if she gives her full time to her home
     her husband
          her children…

If she tries to understand her husband’s work…
     to curb his egotism while, at the same time, building up his self-esteem
     to kill his masculine conceit while encouraging all his hopes
     to establish around the family a circle of true friends…

If she provides in the home proper atmosphere of culture
     of love of music
          of beautiful furniture
               and of a garden…

If she can do all this, she will be engaged in a life work that will demand every ounce of her strength
     every bit of her patience
          every talent God has given her
               the utmost sacrifice of her love.

It will demand everything she has and more.
And she will find that for which she was created.
She will know that she is carrying out the plan of God.
She will be a partner with the Sovereign Ruler of the univers.

And so, today’s daughters need to think twice before they seek to make a place for themselves
     by themselves
          in our world today…

Dr. Peter Marshall

I first made the acquaintance of Alice Van Leer Carrick many years ago by way of a fat, red book of Christmas stories.  Though delighted by most, I was completely enchanted with the one entitled simply Christmas in Our Town.  In her treasured reminiscences of a New England holiday over eighty years ago I found echoes of my own personal nostalgia…indeed, it is hard for me at times to read it and remember that she lived and wrote so long before me. She seems like such a friend and peer. The whimsical turns of phrase and witty allusions, coupled with the sheer sentiment of the writing went straight to my heart, and I can hardly think of a Christmas since of which reading this dear old story over again has not been a part. 

Wanting to know more of this already endeared author I did a search for her on the internet this year, turning up the fact that she wrote many books and articles in the early twentieth century and that she became a contributing editor to Antiques magazine in the 1930′s.   She was also an expert on the art of silhouettes, and her collection–considered to be one of the four greatest American ones–which she describes so lovingly in many of her writings now resides in the Smithsonian.

I’ve already described the little gift I made to myself of four of her books from the Advanced Book Exchange, and no well-versed collector could be happier than I am with the smooth, bright covers and glossy pages amply supplied with black and white photographs.  Three of them, in the ‘Collector’s Luck’ series, describe delightful journeys abroad with family and friends on antiquing expeditions.  But the last–and most dearly anticipated–was a little volume entitled ‘The Next-to-Nothing House‘.  It is the story of her very own home, the house whose walls I saw dancing with firelight and whose rooms rang with childish laughter in the precious account I first discovered.  ‘A wonderfully warm story of old-home ownership’ ran a bookseller’s description, and I was sold.  How we love our old farmhouse, and how much fun we have scouring junk shops and antique stores for tokens and treasures to make it even more of a home!  I knew it would be delightful to read of someone else’s similar joys.

The house that Alice Van Leer Carrick occupied with her husband and three children in Hanover, New Hampshire is yet known as the ‘Webster Cottage’, owing it’s fame to the fact that Daniel Webster roomed there when he was a student at Dartmouth.  When her husband became a French professor at neighboring Wellesley College, the tiny cottage was offered to them for rent.  The Next-to-Nothing House chronicles the restoration and refurbishment of a late eighteenth century dwelling at a time when such was quite uncommon. 

Alice–for I must call her by her first name, we are such friends–describes each room with the unaffected pleasure of a delighted homemaker inviting a new guest into her abode.  She tells the stories of her acquisitions, and lists the prices she paid for the various ornaments and furniture.  This was surely intended as an encouragement for the more timid lovers of old things in a day when the collecting of early American antiques was more of an oddity than not, but I must confess Philip and I found it rather depressing.  Hand-woven rugs for twenty-five cents!  Six circa 1815 stenciled chairs at a dollar a piece!  An Empire secretary for forty-five!!  Oh, dear.  When I think that with all of our tramping cross-country and bargaining and haggling we’d be lucky to come across a find like that once in a lifetime–even counting on inflation–I feel a bit daunted.  But I love my old furniture, just as she loved hers and made much of the artistry of a bygone day.  It’s still worth it…

Here’s what she says of that dear patina of age that makes our old things so much more beautiful:

Time…to me isn’t a brusque, white-bearded man, with hourglass and terrifying scythe, but a mild and elderly lady, who brushes away the ugly newness from our possessions, who fades gaudy colors and folds memories away in rose-leaves and lavendar and lays them in prim old drawers.

Reading The Next-to-Nothing House has sparked my fervor to create a haven of beauty and taste within the walls of my home, to avoid the temptation of the cheaply-made and hastily-bought.  To purchase wisely and well for my dear old house, to strive for an interior palate that won’t change with changing trends but will only ripen like a gracefully aging woman.   

 

Is there any more delicious treat than a mailbox stuffed with a manilla envelope containing a much-awaited book?  As a little Christmas present to myself this year I located four of the published volumes of a new favorite author, Alice Van Leer Carrick.  At 3 to 6 dollars a piece–one of which was inscribed by the author herself in a gorgeous angular script–I consider myself to have done quite well!  They’ve been showing up over the past few days (the third arrived this afternoon) and the pilgrimage down the winding drive to the mailbox has become a thing of enchantment.  I’ve been reading my favorite, The Next-to-Nothing House, out loud to Philip since it came on Saturday, and as he doesn’t seem to mind I guess he’ll end up getting the whole thing…

Look for a review coming soon–I’m half-way done at this posting.  And if you love old houses and old furniture and old ways, I urge you to lay your hands on anything by this 1920′s era kindred spirit.  “A room without books is a dead thing,” she writes.  Nothing could fall more perfectly in line with my decorating scheme than this!

Has anyone else heard of Alice Van Leer Carrick, or am I championing a resurgence of appreciation for her works?

My mother read me a passage from the newest Jan Karon book the other day; it was actually a quote from an old and somewhat obscure volume of sketches that we both love very dearly: Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther.  It was like hearing good news of an old friend and a warm sense of pleasure filled me at the thought of a new generation of readers discovering this remarkable woman by way of a modern author’s hat tip.

Jan Struther created Mrs. Miniver, the indomitable English housewife, in 1937 for her Times column.  As the situation in Europe deteriorated, Mrs. Miniver’s courageous allegiance to the beauty of everyday life and steady assessment of new dangers and challenges made her a national symbol of Britain’s resolve, and in 1939, the columns were published in book form.  Her fame traveled to America, where book sales were higher than ever; she stirred the sympathies of the public to such an extent that Winston Churchill declared she had “done more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships”.  The 1942 movie, starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, was perhaps one of the most famous propaganda pieces ever to reach American audiences, and though it bears little similarities to the book was a tremendous boost to the war effort in its own right.

More than fifty years after its release, Mrs. Minver’s reflections are as inspiring as ever.  Perhaps the 21^st century woman is spared the problem of hiring a charwoman or the torment of an unpleasant county house visit, but Mrs. Miniver’s underlying observations in these and other matters are surprisingly relevant in our own uncertain world.  These beautiful little gems of ‘eternity framed in domesticity’ are worth perusing again and again.

Mrs. Miniver became a real person to me when I read her book.  She stands before me yet, upholding so many of the responsibilities and privileges I cherish as a woman.  She was a heroine for a whole generation; there are few role models so worthy today.  I most emphatically encourage anyone who has not had the pleasure of this lady’s acquaintance to find a copy and settle in with a good stout cup of tea and maybe even a notebook for favorite quotes.