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.

Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment. ~Ellis Peters

This is just a smile and wave to say that things are going to be pretty quiet around here for the next couple of weeks as I tend to the sweet business of living. Life’s been burgeoning with such glad persistence of late that something’s got to give to make way for it. Thus a little springtime quiet is in order as I replenish the wells with books and garden seeds and long talks with one of my very favorite people on earth (who happens to be visiting at present) and staring at my peacocks. And maybe a few house projects, to boot.

I leave you with this wistful poem of Christina Rossetti’s, one that I make a point of reading every spring. Not only do I appreciate its poignant warning, I cherish its gentle reminder of the joys awaiting outside my own window–joys as heart-breakingly fleeting as youth itself.

If I might see another Spring
I’d not plant summer flowers and wait:
I’d have my crocuses at once,
My leafless pink mezereons,
My chill-veined snowdrops, choicer yet
My white or azure violet,
Leaf-nested primrose; anything
To blow at once not late.

If I might see another Spring
I’d listen to the daylight birds
That build their nests and pair and sing,
Nor wait for mateless nightingale;
I’d listen to the lusty herds,
The ewes with lambs as white as snow,
I’d find out music in the hail
And all the winds that blow.

If I might see another Spring—
O stinging comment on my past
That all my past results in “if”—
If I might see another Spring
I’d laugh to-day, to-day is brief;
I would not wait for anything:
I’d use to-day that cannot last,
Be glad to-day and sing.

Another Spring, Christina Rossetti

And, just to let you know, the Bookshop will remain open, and I am hoping to have the England treasures listed very soon!

Happy Spring, my friends!

"And whoever wakes in England/ Sees, some morning, unaware,/ That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf/ Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,/ While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough/ In England - now!" ~R. Browning

Very jet-lagged and slightly muddled after an irresistibly impulsive flight to our beloved England and the sheltering hospitality of beloved friends. But oh, so happy and grateful to have been there…

"And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,/ All will be gay when noontide wakes anew..."

It was one golden day after another of early spring sunshine and snowdrops and daffodils, of long talks over guttering candles at the dinner table and rapturous drives through a countryside jubilant with its own loveliness…

Corfe Castle, Dorset, haunted for me by the shades of "Ivanhoe"

Romantic ruins and windswept hilltops and cream teas at the conclusion of bracing peregrinations…

Walking to Durdle Door in Dorset in time for the sunset

Pubs and picnics and plenty of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk in the field bag and friendly vicars and the evensong of wood pigeons…

From the top of Golden Cap in Dorset

Views reached only by foot and violets in the grass and bookshops and bits of early 19th century pewter to add to our collection…

Thomas Hardy country

And blessed, blessed beauty-laden England itself. My soul was fed in a thousand ways.

I am thankful beyond words.

And I did manage to procure some lovely treasures for the shop while I was there! Check back soon for the new inventory and an introduction to some English gems…

Laura Alice's table

I had been planning the menu for well over a month.

We’d set the date for a week after our return from a trip to England, and the whole time I was there I was taking notes for the dinner party I wanted to throw for these fellow Anglophile friends of ours at home. Friends with whom we share an uncanny—and rather rare—sympathy over most all things and whom we’d gladly have stuffed in our suitcase to go with us if we thought they’d make it through customs. I wanted to bring back a little of the Blessed Plot for them. I wanted to gift them with an evening that spoke my love to them all, and how beautiful it was to have such friends to come home to.

“England has everything I could ever desire,” I must have told my husband a thousand times while we were there, “everything—but my people.”

And so it was a gala affair, not only because we’d been gone for so many weeks and reunions were in order, but because it was the October birthday celebration of both of the wives of our triumvirate of couples. With my husband’s gracious permission—and assistance—I went all out: a champagne toast; artichokes with lemon-thyme butter for a first course; the loveliest cut of tenderloin, the ripest, richest Bordeaux, the most jubilantly-English flavors of Stilton and Cheshire for the cheese course and a silver compote of succulent dried apricots and dates to follow it round the table.

And the pièce de résistance: an absolutely decadent steamed ginger pudding that had been simmering maddeningly away on the back burner all afternoon in a little antique mold. If I’ve ever been proud of anything in my life, it was that pudding. And it was justified: the moment we opened the door to our guests everyone took a deep, intoxicating sniff and exclaimed, ‘What is that?”  

I smiled: it’s not polite to tell your guests what you’re serving, of course. But, propriety notwithstanding, I knew that I had an ace in my sleeve with that dessert.

The conversation that flowed around our table that night was just the sort my soul is fed upon. We talked of books and art and music, of faith and worship and what they ought to look like. Every eye was alight; elbows could hardly be kept off the table in all the earnestness and joy. It was gorgeous—it was fellowship, in every sense of the word.

At one point I pulled myself away to the kitchen to dish up a second round of creamed peas and to give my pudding a peek. The fragrance was so heady my home seemed full of Christmas. I lifted the lid and wafted it towards me. Then I looked in, and, noticing that there was a little bit of leakage, I grabbed a nearby spoon by its bowl and used the handle to gently raise the mold out of its water bath, intending—incomprehensibly—to nestle the two pieces back together.

What followed was so surreal I’m still rather hazy on it. But somehow, between handling a scalding hot mold and pouring half-cooked batter off the water bath, the two halves separated and my lovely, delectable pudding dissolved into a dismal mess of un-rectifiable glop. I blinked stupidly, and with all the hopelessness of dismay I turned the pot on its side in the sink and stood watching the remains of my pudding slinking down the drain.

When I came to myself it was with a shot of panic. What was I going to do? What was I going to serve my friends for their birthday dessert? How was I going to clean up that mess? I was praying frantically, gazing round my kitchen as if I expected to find a chocolate layer cake I had forgotten about sitting on the counter.

But suddenly, quietly, a firmer hand seized me.

What would Laura Alice do?

Laura Alice. I saw her there, dainty domesticate in her organdy apron and pearls, hostess extraordinaire and a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen. My grandmother, the one everyone has always told me I am so much like and with whom I enjoyed such a glad kinship while she lived. When I think of her now, it’s not as the wasting Alzheimer’s sufferer, or even as the dashingly beautiful young woman I knew from the photographs and aspired to emulate as a girl. I see her most as I saw her that night in my kitchen: in her element with guests around her table and all the best she could offer for their delight. Exhausted, perchance, from a day’s tireless preparation but not showing it by so much as a drooping of an eyelash. We lost a great breed of hostesses when my grandmother’s generation died out, and certainly our dinner tables, if not our culture as a whole, are the poorer for it.

I knew what she would say; I knew exactly what she would do, just as clearly as if it were her kitchen and not mine.

And so I did it: nothing. I let it go. I put the lid on the now-empty pot and I rinsed out the sink. Then I put a smile on my face—not a fake, plastic affair, but a genuine joy at the sight of my friends celebrating Life and Understanding around my table (and not unmixed with a little thankful prayer for that cheese course which might quite civilly be considered dessert). I paused at my chair to make sure that no one needed anything and then I took my seat and resumed the feast of conversation.

Nothing very heroic, to be sure, and perhaps even a little insincere at first glance. But one does not have to look far into the guiding principles that ruled my grandmother Laura Alice’s life—and that of so many like her—to see the torrents of almost heavenly courtesy coursing like an underground river beneath the surface of things. Our enlightened age likes to poke fun at the Golden Rule, as if beneath even the distinction of outright ridicule. But my grandmother knew what it meant to place other people before herself, whether it was a china-and-crystal affair in the dining room or a pimento cheese sandwich and pudding cup with her granddaughter at the kitchen table.

It was the same self-management that made her hold her tongue when she saw a kleptomaniac lift the lid of one of her favorite teapots across the room and drop it into her purse, knowing well how mortified the old darling would be if called to account. It was the same spirit that bade her mother before her lay the table with the best Havilland and a fine lace cloth every Sunday in preparation for whatever friendless stragglers her husband would bring home from church. It was the same high rule that guided my mother to make ours a home in which our friends wanted to congregate growing up, cheerfully doling out sumptuous fare and high-end coffee to oblivious teenagers and as cheerfully submitting to the rearrangement of her living room furniture for our dances and frolics.

I felt its appeal tugging at my sleeve that night as I stood in my kitchen. Alone, and yet not alone, surrounded, as we all are, by that Love that will make a tent for itself in even the most trifling of instances. The whole evening had been for love, down to the little paper ribbons on the bloomy plums at the birthday girls’ places. To have given in to my very natural inclinations, to wail and thereby summon everyone from the table in a very selfish false sense of duress would have ruined it, if even temporarily. It was too great a price to pay for the loss of so much as one of those golden moments.

My grandmother knew that instinctively. Love had taught it to her early on.

I hope I really am like her some day.

This article was originally published August 2010 on the Art House America blog and is reprinted by the gracious permission of the editor.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

Made it.

Exhausted but happy. A lovely celebration dinner and the sweet taste of a shared victory.

She finished. I made my stout word-count goal (literally gasping over the finish line with about an hour-and-a-half to spare).

Six weeks of writing frenzy and roughly a third of a first draft under my belt and some characters that I really care about.

(We’ll be doing this again and soon. As we agreed last night, there’s no ‘good time’ to write (or re-write) a novel. Only days and hours and moments intentionally whittled out of full lives. I can only think of about 1000 reasons why this would not have gotten done the past six weeks, much as I’ve dreamed of it, if I didn’t ‘have to’.)

And it would not have happened, even with all the daring of the dare, without the real, tangible, practical love of my husband. I’m all out of words. But thank you, darling.

And thank you to all of you who have been so gracious and kind to remember me in your prayers and to cheer me along. I’m really overwhelmed. God bless you for it.

The only thing standing between you and your dream is a deadline. ~Chris Baty