Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow... ~Tom Jones

In the old Victoria magazine, one of my most cherished departments (among a crowd of loved ones) was Favorite Things. I always saved Chimes for last, and I religiously denied myself so much as a peek at the main body of the magazine—with its ravishing spreads of Old Masters-esque photographs and seasonal quotations from the likes of Bronte and Keats flourishing across the pages in sinuous script—until the proper details of the setting were in order: tea, a favorite chair by the window and a little bite of something lovely. (If it sounds like I used to have a party for my new Victoria, then I can only say that it deserved it.) But Favorite Things was always fair game. I could lose myself in it on the way back up the driveway from the mailbox and stand propped against the kitchen counter while my family bustled their commotion around me in an oblivion of utter impunity. Favorite Things was always my gateway to the rest of the magazine, even more so than Nancy Lindemeyer’s lovely letters, which I usually read next. It set the stage, so to speak, and called forth a host of memories and ideas suitable to the season that approached. There was a magic in that column that threw a rainbow tint over the month in question, intentionally highlighting its unique little pleasures and joys, comforts to be indulged in, and the subtle shades of distinction that make a kaleidoscopic variety of a year.

(I am well aware that the new Victoria carries the same feature. But it is not the same. It’s lost the magic. For me, at least.)

It is in memory of this, and perhaps in token of the fact that the start of each new month is always a ‘beginning the world’ for me—and never more so than September!—that I have decided to commence a Favorite Things feature here at Lanier’s Books. There are so many miracles to celebrate as our year revolves: small wonders to mark and keep; mementoes to pocket in tribute to a month’s unique identity. Bits of lovely that happen to make my heart happy at a given time.

It’s all so blessedly new when we turn the page of a calendar. And even more blessedly familiar. I’d like to welcome the changes while honoring the unchanging rhythm that undergirds and makes of all our brave adventuring into a month, at heart, a homecoming.

I had the inestimable pleasure of hosting this lovely little lady for the past year as a memento of a dear friend across the sea. Her name is Mariette and her manners are just as decorous as one might expect. While I was more than happy to return her to her family upon their return from abroad, her place has felt empty, and I have been half-heartedly looking out for a replacement.

Imagine my joy, then, when I spied this dainty creature in an antique shop. She appealed to me so endearingly with that modest expression of hers that I bought her on the spot and brought her home. Her name is Babette. I just love the way that a new spot of pretty can make a whole room feel fresh.

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.

William Wordsworth, September

Amid the longed-for September rains and the sweet decay of leaf mold, the mushrooms always start popping up like magic overnight. I love all the little colonies and clusters along the drive, some so elegant with their slender, white stalks and velvet caps, and others squat and brown and droll to the point of being ridiculous. They are all friends.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

E. B. Browning—Aurora Leigh

I believe that for the rest of my life, September will always make me think of Maine, and one sunset in particular that seemed to sum up the full beauty and sacredness of a week of much-needed solitude with my beloved. We hid ourselves in a clapboard cabin on a remote, spruce-fringed bay, and watched the land turn mellow around us every day. And every night there was a display of fire and gold in the sky and its reflected vanguard on the sea that took my breath with the love of God. This one was at the Bass Head Light.

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.

John Updike, September

Was I the only one that gained serious wardrobe inspiration from the "Land Girls" feature in Victoria magazine, September 1998? I still go back to that one each fall just to stir up ideas for a favored look of mine. I call it "English-farmgirl-chic" and it's all tweeds and head scarves and sensible shoes and sweaters. The Land Girls were simply gorgeous to me, and Victoria honored them well, in my opinion. But it wasn't all about being absolutely stunning in overalls and Wellies. They were an amazing army of women that held the lines on the homefront during WWII and literally kept England from starving while most of the men were overseas. I spoke with a lady in her eighties once who had run away from her home (and her chores) as a girl to join the Land Army. After a few weeks of grueling labor in the fields, she ran away from the Land Army back to her mother's kitchen in Manchester!

How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare,
As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills
The bowl between me and those distant hills,
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!

Lowell, An Indian Summer Reverie

September is my favorite time of year to camp. Nights just chilly enough for a campfire and days long and languid enough to feel like summer and something sweeter. I always forget how many stars there really are until we take our Silver Turtle out under a September sky and remember what a staggering miracle of wonder it is just to be alive. I can never quite fully recapture that sensation under a proper roof.

Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Blessed September, my friends!

New York City, 1931

My car arrived in the darkness before dawn: a darkness that is never really quite convincing in this city that tolerates the night more than accommodating itself to it. I looked out my window on the quiet Manhattan street below. It seemed pent up with an unnatural energy, biding none-too-patiently for the first magic rays of gold that would break the spell and waken it to bustling, incorrigible, indefatigable life again. There is no press of humanity  like the crowded sidewalks of New York City, tourists and natives alike all going and being and doing with such a frenzied intention—and never for a moment forgetting the wild wonder of where on earth they are.

My sister came with me to the curb to see me off and we hugged fiercely one last time in the murky gloom of the streetlights. Four days of laughing till we cried and breakfast at noon and comfortable silence and endless things to say. The long leisure of serious talk and the equal luxury of levity. Old inside jokes and new beautiful memories all heaped with such wealth I staggered under the glad burden.

“Who would have thought that four days in The City That Never Sleeps could leave me so rested?” I wrote her later.

And yet, it was true. Admittedly tired in body, a little sleep deprived and slightly over-caffeinated, yet I was restored and refreshed in so many ways by my time with my sister in her city. She loves it so much; it is evident in every gesture and every look, in the way she strides down the thronging sidewalks with a sense of modest possessiveness and threads the indecipherable maze of the subway. You can hear it in the way she speaks of “The Village” and “The Res” and “The El” without the least hint of affectation. Spurning what she calls the “transplant mentality”, she embraces New York frankly for what it is and with the candid eye of affection accepts its enigmas and frailties along with its towering, titanic superlatives.

“It’s not perfect,” she said, as we walked past a row of tree-shaded brownstones on the Upper West Side. “And it’s not better than home, or any other place people happen to come from. It’s just different—it is what it is.”

It’s New York—the most incomprehensible city on earth. I feel that the essence of all that is best and worst about American culture can be found here in undiluted intensity. Times Square, where I was cat-called, “Hey, Blondie!” and had something unidentifiable spilled in my shoe, is the most garish monument imaginable to a consumer society. Last time we were there I was so over-stimulated I was looking for the exit. Knowing how I feel about it, Liz took me through as a little joke, en route from Port Authority to the subway.

“I thought you needed a sensory overload,” she laughed.

One of the fairy tale bridges in Central Park

And yet, the real overload for me is always Central Park. I can never believe that it’s really that lovely, or that the original 1850’s designers would really have had the remarkable foresight to set aside 700 acres in the midst of what would become a city of eight million people.

“What would New York be without it?” I asked my sister as we sauntered along the Reservoir in the shimmering haze of a summer afternoon.

The rushes were gold-tipped along the fringe of the water and the buildings of Central Park West across the way glistened with silver like a celestial city. There was some exquisite fragrance abroad, and the old trees beneath which we passed were heavy with crabapples, heralding autumn. As at any other time I’ve ever set foot in Central Park, I felt I needed to be looking in all directions at once; there was too much beauty to rest my eyes long in any one place. Everything New York does, it seems, even a cultivated wilderness in the heart of a concrete jungle, is on the grandest scale imaginable.

The Reservoir

Liz had told me we’d need a month to do all the things she had in mind, but despite a rather languid pace, we managed to knock a good chunk off of the list she had composed for my visit. We hit her favorite coffee shop in Union Square and had a sidewalk brunch at the French Roast I love on Broadway. We had tapas in Hell’s Kitchen and ice cream overlooking the Hudson. An aperitif and appetizers in the rooftop garden of her building and a shared falafel under an awning in the rain.

At the Neue Galerie on 5^th Avenue, we had the most exquisite Viennese encounter with pastries and kaffee crème (she had the linzertorte and I put away a schwarzwälder kirschtorte) at the famed Café Sabarsky inside the museum. I thoroughly enjoyed the Klimts and the early twentieth century decorative art of the exhibit, but I have to wonder if the art of the humanity around us in the café was not even more interesting. It truly felt like a glimpse of Old World Europe, with a gentleman perusing a German newspaper on one hand and a party consuming a hundred dollar bottle of champagne on the other.

We also managed to do a considerable amount of damage in the shops of SoHo. I’m not a big fan of shopping in and of itself (my husband may respectfully disagree, citing the relative size and overflow of my closet to his), but shopping with my sister has always been a different matter altogether. With her it’s an adventure and an event; to the plebeian need of a brown cardigan or practical walking shoes has always been added the thrill of the hunt and the spice of triumph. Then, of course, there are always the things that you don’t need, and that’s when her gifts are really invaluable. There’s no one else on earth who will give me so devastatingly honest an opinion. But there’s also no one whose sense of style I trust more entirely. When I walk out of a dressing room and my sister greets me with an, “Ugh, no,” and a dismissing wave of her hand, I know there’s no use arguing. But when she tells me that a jersey frock with an impossibly ruched bodice and bishop sleeves looks like something Cyd Charisse would have worn, I know, amazingly enough, that it’s a go. Particularly when it’s ridiculously on sale.

“But you know you can’t wear it to a wedding,” she reminded me as we left the shop and reentered the throng of Broadway. “It’s white.”

You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl.

I think Liz is always secretly amused by my gaping admiration of her city, but something about New York awakens a shameless wonder in me. I can’t ascend the steps of the Met without a thought of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and her two young friends that once lived there so ingeniously. I can’t cross Park Avenue without stopping in the median to admire it, or walk down 5^th without remembering Judy Garland in her diaphanous bonnet, promenading on the arm of Fred Astaire. Bleecker Street always gives me a turn, and I still think that Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh made a hot dog lunch by the seal pond in Central Park seem like the most romantic date in the world.

“I know I’m a dork,” I said one night, coming back from a late dinner with Liz and her husband Marshall, “but I can’t see 42^nd Street on a signpost without geeking out a little.”

“Miracles happen here every day,” Marshall quipped in feigned profundity.

“That’s 34^th Street, silly,” my sister rejoined. “42^nd Street is where the stars are born.”

“It’s even got its own song,” I added.

One never quite knows how such things happen, but the next instant we were all singing and dancing our way down the sidewalk to a 1930’s show tune. I can’t be sure, but I think Marshall even broke into a harmony.

Which only goes to show that, though my life and my sister’s are as different in externals as that of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, there are some things that will never change.

“You could never live here,” she laughed one afternoon after a full day of adventuring together.

No, I’ll admit that. And I could never make the success of it that she and Marshall have. Our callings call for settings as distinctive as our personalities. I need my wide green spaces and my friendly beasts and long stretches of unbroken silence. I need to hear Southern accents in my ears every day and, strange as it seems, I think I might even just need our humidity.

I couldn’t live in New York.

But it certainly is magical to visit.

I can’t wait to go back and retrieve the part of me that I left there with her. For that, of course, is the greatest charm in a city of enchantments.

My sister is there.

"No friend like a sister..."

"Mrs. Miniver", 1942

I have read and re-read the entries for the giveaway of Mrs. Miniver, and I am just marveling at the sheer goodness of the dreams submitted here. The range of compassion and aspiration–from farming to homemaking to artistic initiatives to the mastery of musical instruments–is really astounding, and the particularities of your visions are nothing short of breathtaking. (If you want to be inspired, or to be reminded of the exquisite uniqueness of individuals, then have a look at the comments section.) Thank you all for your candor in sharing such treasures of your hearts. As I’ve perused them, I’ve felt like I was looking into a box of precious jewels.

And I am pleased to announce that the winner of the drawing is Erin Henry, whose dream is to adopt a child.

(Erin, if you will send me your address via my secure contact form or via email to laniersbooks AT gmail DOT com, I will package your book and drop it in the mail post-haste.)

Thank you, all, again, for joining the celebration with such generosity and joy. I am still so dumbstruck that you take the time to stop in and read here, much less leave such gracious words of your own. I wish that I were able to respond personally to each one of your comments, but I do want you to know how much I appreciate them.

God bless!

August 2, 2010

One year ago today my dream of an online bookshop went live. I remember the excitement of messaging computer to computer with my husband and a dear friend on the west coast who had been helping us as we tweaked the final details behind the scenes and prepared to fling open the virtual doors of Lanier’s Books. And, suddenly, after years of waiting and an all-nighter or two, it was real. With a click of the ‘publish’ button, I was a proprietress.

In the moments that followed, I wondered what I had done. Would anyone come—would anyone care? In a world of e-books and high-speed everything, was there even a place for such an old-fashioned establishment as I sought to create?

You settled my fears, once and for all, that first day. I was so overwhelmed with orders that my mother and my husband both had to help me pack books. And in all the days that followed you have blessed me with the priceless gifts of your friendship and your trust. I really wish that I could tell each of you personally what your goodness has meant to me—that you would even take the time to come by and read my words and have a look at my shelves is wonder enough. But your kindness, in word and deed, has nearly undone me at times. I can’t tell you how often I have said to Philip, “The nicest thing about having a bookshop is being reminded of how many truly lovely people there are in the world.”

Back in the spring, I wrote a piece for the Art House America blog about my motivations and experiences as an online bookseller, and I could not handle the subject without talking about you:

In the months since Lanier’s Books opened its virtual doors, I have been astounded by the beauty of the people who have wandered into my shop. Almost every encounter has carried the fragrance of Kingdom kindness, and the generosity of my customers has put as much hope into me as the reading of my beloved books. I have sent out orders and received gifts back in the mail: lovely handwritten letters and recordings of original music and even a watercolor painting freighted with gracious sentiment. One reader actually sent me a book she knew I’d love! It’s been the happiest of occupations, this quiet connectedness and sharing, and I am grateful beyond words for the grace-laden intersections my little shop has afforded me.

You can read the rest here, if you like.

I’m celebrating a crop of friendships today, along with my little shop, and in token, I’d like to host a giveaway of one of my favorite books, Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. To enter, leave a comment telling about a dream of your own–one that’s either materialized or in the cloud castle stage. The comment form will be open until midnight EST on Wednesday the 10^th of August and a winner will be selected by the old-fashioned method of name-drawing.

Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for being the reality behind this dream of mine. You have shown me that the community I dared hope for all those years ago is not only possible, but unspeakably precious.

Grace and Peace.

in a world which is doing its best,
night and day
to make you everybody else

means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight;

and never stop fighting

e. e. cummings

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in world’s storm-troubled sphere.
I see Heaven’s glories shine,
And faith shines equal,
arming me from fear.

~Emily Bronte

I wish I could say that I always share dear Emily’s indomitable confidence, but the truth is, fear is a foe I have to take arms against every single day, and never more so than when I sit down at my desk to write.  Last week, for the first time since the end of February, I put new words on my book. Life has been full–richly and intensely–but it wasn’t the busyness that was keeping me from picking up the threads of Story once more so much as the awful resistance of my own apprehensions. It’s always such a miracle to find the grace of words waiting patiently on the other side of that mountain.

I’m writing over at The Rabbit Room today, on art and fear and how faith works on this cowardly soul of mine:

Fear. The giant Apollyon that halts me in my tracks and sneers down all my hopes and aspirations. The paralyzing dread of failure; the horror of being misunderstood that stifles my voice and freezes my fingers above the keyboard. Fear of man’s opinion. Fear that when I open my heart’s treasures to the world, the world will be unkind and trample them underfoot. That morning I felt ill at the thought—I often do. But that’s exactly what it is: a feeling. My desire to write, to communicate and create, is not a feeling but a God-given passion; a relentless yearning that, quite frankly, at some times I rather wish would lie still, but in sublimer moments overspreads my life with the gilt and purple of love’s ambition.

If you care to read on, you can find the rest of the article here:

God’s Own Fool

And thank you, a thousand times over, for reading and caring and praying. Thank you for letting me throw my cap over the fence and thank you for making me brave by your gracious words–I’ve cherished them all. Heaven bless you for it.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. ~James Russell Lowell

When I was in England visiting friends last month, I picked up some gems for the bookshop (and maybe one or two for myself ). It’s taken me a while to get them listed here, but I so enjoyed scouting in some of the most fertile book-county in the world for titles I knew my customers would love. And I am very excited to share them here in the shop.

I am always on the lookout, at home and abroad, for small, slender ‘pocket’ editions of the classics. There is just something so charming about a great book on a diminutive scale. I managed to turn up some lovely little editions, including Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in one volume, a very pretty Nicholas Nickleby, a hard-to-find Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (you just don’t find many older copies of her books on this side of the ocean) and Kenneth Grahame’s Dream Days.  There is also a copy of the 1924 classic Precious Bane by Mary Webb, and an edition of Cranford that includes two shorter works, The Cage at Cranford and Moorland Cottage, not to mention titles by Charles Lamb and Thomas a’ Kempis.

Not all of the books are dainty, however. I have a nice cache of Goudges, including a readable copy of the extremely rare A City of Bells. I had a lovely conversation with a kindred-hearted shopkeeper in the Cotswolds over the merits of our dear Elizabeth, and she was delighted to hear that Goudge still has an ardent following in the States and around the world. Indeed, few authors speak to the condition of our age like she does, n’est-ce pas? (And if you are ever in Stow-on-the-Wold, do look in at Evergreen Livres, tucked in an alley off the market square. You will thank me. )

I also found some nice ‘Folio’ editions of Jane Austen, some Bronte and a couple of George MacDonald…but I’ll let you have a look and welcome. Just remember to sort by ‘Date Added’ to see the new offerings on the shelves!

Perdita

We’re delighted to announce that Hermione has a sister.

Hermione, aka Her Majesty

Hermione is delighted, too.

And she was only too happy to teach Perdita how to kick up her heels.

Perdita is exactly one week younger than her sister, (one week old today!) and she hadn’t had as much experience with the joy of life as Hermione already had at her age. But if anything’s catching in this world, it’s goat joy. Hermione doesn’t walk–she bounces or bounds or springs or capers. And after watching her curiously for a few days, and a couple of tumbles on the slippery wooden floors, Perdita has finally found her legs and is cutting a caper with the best of them.

Hermione in flight

I was talking to a dairyman the other day and he was expounding on the various virtues of the caprine milkers. He told me about the hardiness of the Saanens and praised the quality of the LaManchas.

“But the Nubians–they’re different than all of them,” he told me. “They’re the only ones that’ll love you back.”

I believe it.

"Let all things their Creator bless..."

We are so glad and grateful that these little girls have come to live with us.

O God, who created all beasts and cattle in a wonderful order and gave them into our care: Bless these animals, that they may be a joy to humankind and sharers in the feeding and nurture of the world. Make us good shepherds of all your creatures, we pray, in the Name of our merciful and Good Shepherd, your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.