Memory in a House - part 1

Lucy Boston had led an adventurous life for a woman of her time. She had dropped out of Oxford University to become a nurse during WWI and worked in a hospital in Normandy. She had married her cousin, had her son Peter, divorced her husband, and moved to Germany and Italy to paint. When Peter started Cambridge, Lucy also moved to Cambridge and began obsessively painting King's College Chapel. Then in 1939, she bought The Manor, Hemingford Grey.

In Memory in a House, Lucy describes the two years that it took to restore The Manor as "which were by far the happiest of my life, even in spite of the war that broke out as soon as the builders began." (p. 19) In fact, she views her realtionship with the house as a love affair. She was aware that the house, which was built as a Norman manor in 1120 by Payne Osmundsen, was very historic, and she eventually documented everything she found and all the changes she made.

The forced restoration was brought about by the fact that the house was structually unsound due to cheap and unskillful renovations over the years. Faced with unsupported structural beams, walls cracking from top to bottom, and drastically sloping floors, Lucy was had no choice but to fix these problems. She was lucky enough to get honest and competent builders and architects to help her with the delicate job of historical renovation.

It becomes clear while reading the book that restoring the house was as much a creative endeavor for Lucy as painting a picture, or writing fiction. She was extremely sensitive to atmosphere, and accepted the physical imperfections of the house as part of the character that it had developed as it aged. She was also willing to change her mind about the alterations and restoration as she went along; the dining room, which she had thought was hopeless and would be used just as a corridor, became the center of her life, connecting the interior of the house with its equally important exterior garden.

Introduction to The Children of Green Knowe

My first exposure to Lucy Maria Boston's Green Knowe series came when my older brother took a an introduction to children's literature class during his first year in college. He was required to read The Children of Green Knowe. I found the copy that he had checked out of our village library, loved it, and worked my way through the other books in the series:

The Children of Green Knowe (1954)

The Chimneys of Green Knowe (1958) (published in the US as The Treasure of Green Knowe)

The River at Green Knowe (1959)

A Stranger at Green Knowe (1961)

An Enemy at Green Knowe (1964)

The Stones of Green Knowe (1976)

The last book was released after I read the series, and I remember how excited I was to find that the author was still alive and writing.

What struck me the most about the books was the strong sense of place that Boston was able to create. The house and the grounds were as alive as the people in the books, and the past of the house was as alive as the character's present.

Years later, I moved to Seattle and was able to take advantage of the wonderful collection of its original main library, which has subsequently been demolished. The library had copies of Boston's two memoirs Perverse and Foolish, and more importantly to me, Memory in a House. This second memoir is Boston's account of how as a 45-year-old divorced single mother whose son was at Cambridge, she heard about a house for sale by a river, bought it, renovated it, and began to write books influenced by the history and atmosphere of the house. The house itself is the Manor at Hemingford Grey, which is still open to visitors.

For those who have not read the books, these links will provide more information:

http://www.greenknowe.co.uk/index.html - Lucy's daughter-in-law still owns the house and gives tours of the house and gardens.

The Children of Green Knowe miniseries - this was a BBC production in 1980's which was never released on DVD. You can watch it on Youtube at :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdhiI8XmJQI&list=UULK5kbcKDbN_legADgNfX5g&index=54

Chimneys of Green Knowe was filmed at the Manor of Hemingford Grey. Directed by Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey) it was released in 2009 as From Time to Time.

Exterior shots of the gardens from a  visitor who did not see the house:
http://prairie.typepad.com/my_weblog/photography-the-manor-house-hemingford-grey-lucy-boston-flowers/

"Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do." Aldous Huxley

"When a person rediscovers that his deepest Nature is one with the All, he is relieved from the burdens of time, of anxiety, of worry; he is released from the chains of alienation and separate-self existence. Seeing that self and other are one, he is released from the fear of life; seeing that being and nonbeing are one, he is delivered from the fear of death." Ken Wilber 

Ken Wilber is highly regarded by many contemporary thinkers worldwide, for creating an integration of unprecedented scope among a variety of schools of psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and religion. He is also the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages. Michael Murphy the co-founder of the Esalen Institute, and a key figure in the Human Potential Movement, maintains that, along with Aurobindo’s Life Divine, Heidegger’s Being and Time, and Whitehead’s Process and Reality, Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is “one of the four great books of this [twentieth] century.” Tony Schwartz, former New York Times reporter and author of What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America, has called Ken Wilber "the most comprehensive philosophical thinker of our times." Jack Crittenden, the author of Wide as the World: Cosmopolitan Identity, Integral Politics, and Democratic Dialogue, has said that the “twenty-first century literally has three choices: Aristotle, Nietzsche, or Ken Wilber.” Larry Dossey, who is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on mind-body medicine, and author of ten books on the role of consciousness and spirituality in medicine, has described Wilber's book, "one of the most significant books ever published."

When such praise is being offered by several credible authorities, it should be justifiable that Brooklyn Book Talk critically explore Ken Wilber’s thoughts, and evaluate their relevance for personal and cultural growth.  

So please join us here for a discussion of his best-selling book, A Brief History of Everything, which contains wide-ranging topics--from Big Bang to Postmodernism--and perennial issues, which concern us all: truth, goodness, beauty, consciousness, growth, and development. 

Water - the Sea Roads

"Invert the mental map you have of Britain, Ireland, and Western Europe. Turn it inside out. Blank out the land interiors of these countries - consider them featureless, as you might previously have considered the sea. Instead, populate the western and northern waters with paths and tracks:  a travel system that joins port to port, island to island, headland to headland, river mouth to river mouth. The sea has become the land, in that it is now the usual medium of transit: not barrier but corrridor." (p. 93)

 

 

 

Britain as a whole has had a long history of seafaring. Daphne du Maurier decribes in Vanishing Cornwall how Phoenician ships would trade with the earlier inhabitants of Cornwall for tin. The earlier Irish story of Deirdre described how she and her lover fled over the sea to Scotland to escape her unwanted husband, the King Connor Mac Nessa. An Irish monk, St. Brendan, legendarily sailed from Ireland to America on his leather boat. The early Celtic saints frequently sailed on boats to remote islands and founded monasteries. The Vikings invaded Ireland, Scotland, and northern England by boat, and Viking kings ruled England. Even the Norman king, William the Conqueror, was a descendant of the Vikings and invaded using longboats.

In the Water section, Macfarlane sails around the Scottish Hebrides with a seafaring poet named Ian Stephen. Ian, who thinks of and describes himself as a poet, also sails the sea roads in order to support himself and because he genuinely loves doing so. As well as being a good poet (I prefered the excepts of Ian's poems to those of Edward Thomas) he also seems to be a fascinating man. He knows a wide variety of people, is an excellent sailor, and is as knowledgable about the history of the sea roads as he is of sailing on them.

I found this section of the book disappointing as I was more interested in Ian Stephen and his life and writings than I was in Macfarlane's experiences on the boat and on an island. The narrative stalled and became dull when Ian was gone from it. I wished that Macfarlane, who is not a sailor, had focused more on his companion.

To me, the best part of the Water section was when Macfarlane suggested that we look at an atlas in reverse and concentrate only on the parts of the world that are connected by water. As a result, the Hebrides, for example, become no longer remote islands cut off from the rest of the world, but way stations in a busy sea travel hub. Reversing the map shifts the perspective to one that is less land-centric.

 

 

 

 





 



Snow

In chapter 13, Macafarlane and David Quentin follow the Ridgeway, a track over the chalk downs of Neolithic origin, using cross-country skis. They ski past two great Neolithic sacred sites, Silbury Hill (a giant mound) and Avebury, a giant stone circle that rivals Stonehenge. Macfarlane describes some vivid scenery - black horses against the white snow, a white horse that looks grey against its snowy white background. At the end of the trip, he and David Quentin meet a huge black cat with gold eyes that they are convinced is a panther as they are heading back to the Ridgeway. Since they are in a van and not on skis, they survive to tell the story.

What I found fascinating about the snow chapter is that although Macfarlane is walking over an extremely ancient landscape and he sees animals - hares, horses, buzzards- that have existed in that area for centuries. He also sees hawthorns, ancient bushes that have been used for hedges for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Their red berries not only nourish birds but are supposed to guard witchcraft and evil. Macfarlane does not fully concentrate on this timeless landscape, but instead muses on the career of British painter Eric Ravilious.

Ravilious, who died in WWII, spent much time walking the Downs, which he depicted in his watercolors and woodcuts. He was fascinated by paths, which appear in many of his paintings. I had never heard of him, and searched online to find images of his art. I find his woodcuts to be charming depictions of country scenes- snow, birds on wires - but his paintings to be disquieting due to his choice of color and depiction of light. Macfarlane describes the Down light as a flat light like the light of the polar regions (p.297). Ravilious, who was fascinated by the poles and the extreme north, loved the light and tried to show it in his art. I find the flattening effect to be a little eerie.

Silt Part 2 - Fighting the sea

On October 29th, 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the tri-state area. I was lucky enough to be unaffected as I live on a hill in a central portion of Queens but I had two family members who lost power for a week. I also had co-workers who live in some of the most hard-hit areas of Brooklyn and Queens. Rereading Macfarlane's "Silt" chapter after Sandy was a sobering experience as I wondered what such a walk in parts of Queens or New Jersey would involve.

In the aftermath of Sandy, I've listened to radio interviews with Dutch engineers who have advocated sea gates and houses on stilts. I've read proposals about sea walls.  In the past week, Governor Cuomo has suggested a buyout of homes in areas likely to flooded again in the future. Once the state buys the land, the homes will be demolished and the land left empty. To quote Governor Cuomo, "there are some parcels that Mother Nature owns...She may only visit once every few years...but she owns the parcel and when she comes to visit, she visits."

However, people who live in flooded and devastated areas such as Freeport, Breezy Point or the Rockaways are reluctant to say goodbye to their communities and shore-based lifestyles. Mr. Cuomo accepts that man cannot ultimately defeat nature, which is why, for example, parts of the English coast are crumbling away without the UK spending billions on sea walls or sea gates (although London is protected by the Thames Barrier). Inhabitants of New York and New Jersey seem more willing to fight nature with man-made barriers, artificially-created natural shorelines, and architectural changes such as in the Netherlands. In the end, residents of NYC will have to decide how much money they wish to spend to protect and maintain their current lifestyles and residences.

Silt Part 1 - land and time under the sea

Warning: The Broomway is unmarked and very hazardous to pedestrians.

 

Warning: Do not approach or touch any object as it may explode and kill you.

 

 

The "Silt" chapter of the book contains some of Macfarlane's most hypnotic writing. It is also the chapter that made me realize that I am not innately the adventurous type of person. Unlike Macfarlane, I'm just not going to walk over unmarked mud paths at low time while running the risk of accidentally being sucked into the undertow and drowned(since he did the walk on a Sunday, he didn't have to worry about being accidentally shot by the Ministry of Defense). But I admire him for doing so.

 

The Broomway is called the deadliest path in Britain. It gets its name from 400 brooms which were used to mark the path to Foulness. When the tide comes in twice a day, other markers are swept away. Until compasses were affordable, people who walked the Broomway carried thread with them. As they passed a broom, they tied the end of the thread to the broom and continued walking. If they felt they had missed the next broom, they could follow the thread back to the previous broom.

 

Macfarlane walked the Broomway with his friend David Quentin, a book dealer turned tax lawyer who prefers to walk barefoot. In the end the mud was bad enough that Macfarlane also walked barefoot to save his sneakers. He left them at their starting point and was able to refind them when they doubled back to the beginning of their path.

 

As Macfarlane walked, he recollected that the land under the Broomway had once been called Doggerland, the home of Megolithic hunter-gatherers. This in turn made him recall the fact that the sea coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk in England are being eroded. Entire towns are being swallowed up by the sea, and houses that were once inland are now being abandoned because they are too close to the shore.

 

Although Macfarlane remembers many historical and geographical facts as he walks, he is also sucked in by the queer atmosphere of the The Broomland. Not entirely land, not entirely water, it exists in a liminal state. To Macfarlane:

 

"These borders do not correspond to national boundaries, and papers and documents are unrequired at them.Their traverse is generally unbiddable, and no reliable map exists of their routes and outlines. They exist even in unfamiliar landscapes: there when you cross a certain watershed, treeline or snowline, or enter rain, storm, or mist, or pass from boulder clay onto sand, or chalk onto greenstone. Such moments are rites of passage that reconfigure local geographies, leaving known placed outlandish or quickened, revealing continents within countries." (p. 78)

 

Space, distance, and direction become distorted because of the light over the sands, the movement of the tides, and the constant erosion of the land. A simple walk over the sea shore is a trek that could easily end in disaster where Macfarlane joins the dead of a drowned country.



The Old Ways and the Supernatural

Macfarlane's journey begins on the Icknield Way, which runs over the chalk downs of Sussex. He starts out on a bicycle along an old Roman road that runs past an Iron Age hill-fort. As he cycles past the hill-fort he falls, damages his bicyle, and breaks a rib.However, Macfarlane gets up and continues his journey. He views the accident as

A warning, I thought superstitiously, had been issued to me: that the going would not be easy and that romanticism would be quickly punished. It was only a few miles later that I remembered the letter a friend had sent me when I told him about my plan to walk the Icknield Way. Take care as you pass the ring-fort, he had written back. When I mentioned the fall later, he was unamazed."This was an entry fee to the old ways, charged at one of the usual tollbooths, " he said. "Now you can proceed. You're in. Bone for chalk: you've paid your due." It was the first of several incidents along the old ways that I still find hard to explain away rationally." (p.43).

Throughout the book, Macfarlane risks meeting the supernatural. He spends the nights camping near Iron Age barrows. He sleeps in circular Pictish shielings. Finally he decides to sleep in Chanctonbury RIng in Sussex because author Laurie Lee had slept there while walking over England in the 1930's.

I first learned about Chanctonbury Ring when I read about called Sussex Cottage written by Esther Meynell in 1936. The ring contains a temple built by the Romans on a previously inhabited Bronze and Iron Age fort site. According to legend, Julius Caesar and his legions ride around the ring. It is also possible to summon the devil by running around it a certain number of times. There are a number of internet sites with chilling stories of uncanny experiences in Chanctonbury Ring:

http://www.sussexarch.org.uk/saaf/chanctonbury.html#folk

http://www.delcoghosts.com/chanctonbury.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/outdoors/6454719/Devils-Dyke-is-not-for-the-faint-hearted-walker.html

http://ufofreeparanormal.com/node/62


Oblivious to the possibility that he may be rousing some kind of supernatural being, Macfarlane spends a night in Chanctonbury Ring, but gets little rest. First he walks around the ring, then beds down for the night. He is awoken by  human-sounding voices moving around the ring until two voices meet directly over his head. Eventually the voices go away and he is able to go back to sleep although he does not feel rested in the morning. Later in the day Macfarlane meets up up with an archaeologist friend and they discuss why it was a bad idea to sleep in the ring. However, it is not until he gets home that Macfarlane researches the folklore of Chanctonbury Ring and realizes that it is one of the most malevolently haunted spots in England.

What's interesting is that while Macfarlane is aware of the many centuries of human history that his paths have run through, and of the theories that the paths exist throughout time, he does little research on the supernatural history of the places where he travels. These places seem to do their best to make him aware of their history and their special qualities. The supernatural seems to forcibly come to him although he does his best to remain ignorant of its existence.

Walking & Depression

In his starting section, "Path", Macfarlane admits that not all walkers are benign or appealing. While I think he is a little hard on Morris Dancers and people who walk in sandals (p. 23) he does mention that trampers can have more sinister motives than mere enjoyment of nature and movement. He mentions people who walk because they are delusional or racist.

He also discusses two writers who walked to stave off depression -  19th-century walker George Borrow and poet Edward Thomas, who was killed in World War I. Borrow, who rode around on a black Arab stallion when at home, walked over not only England but also France, Spain, Portugal, Russia, and Morocco. He knew twelve languages and was acquainted with another forty. The activity of walking exposed him to new people and allowed him to exercise his mind as he exercised his body.

Edward Thomas and his poetry had the most influence over Macfarlane. The author admits that Thomas is the guiding spirit of his book (p. 24) and his first walk in The Old Ways is one that Thomas took a hundred years earlier. Macfarlane says that while Thomas

"was drawn to the romantic figure of the self-confident solitary walker, he was more interestingly alert to how we are scattered, as well as affirmed, by the places through which we move" (p. 25).

Thomas appears throughout The Old Ways, and Macfarlane gradually tells the story of Thomas's life in the "Ghost" section of the book. Thomas suffered badly from depression and moved frequently in the hopes that his new house would help him battle it; walking was a similar way to stave it off.

Interestingly enough, American poet Robert Frost knew Thomas. The famous Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken", was inspired by a walk that Frost and Thomas took together. When Frost sent Thomas a draft of the poem, Thomas decided that it was a sign that he should enlist in the British army. He was later killed in France in 1917.

Paths & Time

Macfarlane begins the book with a brief overview of writers who wrote about walking and a short listing of different types of paths around the world and throughout history. He mentions that some paths, such as those in Ireland left over from the Famine, were created by people who had no choice but to walk, and who ultimately found nothing at the end of their path except death and loss.

After the massive slaughter of British men in World War I and the resulting death of the civilian population from the Spanish flu, there was a renewed interest in 1920's and 1930's Britain in walking the old ways (p. 21). Walking the roads of the past were a way to connect with people and events from the past. The liminal quality of the path, which existed to connect two places and was not of these places, gave it the ability to connect its walkers with other times.

The author himself has had experiences on paths where he has felt close to the past. At one time he had explored the sunken "holloways" of Dorset with Roger Deakin, paths so worn into the soil by time and use that they could be twenty feet below the surface of the land:

"In the dusk of the holloways, these pasts felt excitingly alive and coexistent - as if time had somehow pleated back on itself, bringing discontinuous moments into contact, and creating historical correspondences that survived as a territorial imperative to concealment and escape.

Two years after that visit, Roger died young and unexpectedly. Four years after his death I returned to Dorset to re-walk the same holloways and found myself tracking our own earlier traces...and experiencing startingly clear memory-glimpses of Roger himself, seen at the turn of a corner or ahead of me on the path." (p. 22-23).

My own first exposure to the British belief in the ability of paths to contain past events is one that is familiar to anyone who has read the books of Susan Cooper. In her book The Dark is Rising the child hero, Will Stanton, spends much of the book wandering around the snow-covered landscape of his small English town just around the winter solstice. His local old way, known irreverantly as "Tramps Alley" but truly called "Oldway Lane" saves his life by calling on the power it has stored through its use for centuries by people fighting against the dark. Will is able to move between the present and the past when he walks Oldway Lane albeit in a more concrete fashion (since he is a fictional character) than that of Robert Macfarlane.

Rudyard Kipling also explores the ability of a path to move between time in his poem "The Way through the Woods" from Rewards and Fairies. The poem comes just before "The Marklake Witches" story in the book. The story is a supposedly true historical tale told to Dan and Una, the two main characters based on Kiping's own children, by a teenage girl who had died of consumption over a hundred years earlier. The girl, named Philadelphia, loved to ride and appeared to the children dressed in a riding habit. Just as Puck gives her the ability to move forward in time to talk to the children, the overgrown woodland path contains the sounds of Philadelphia's rides out on her horse.