Each Little World

Paying homage to Mary Tyler Moore

Mary Tyler Moore — aka Mary Richards — was right there with me as I started my first job out of college. She was there a few year later when I moved half way across the country and tried on all sorts of careers until I found the perfect one in a newsroom. Her spirit, her style and her fabulous apartment were my guides to grown-up life. The two Marys — Moore and Richards — were an inspiration to all of us who joined the work force during the second wave of American feminism in the 1970s. We've tossed our hats in the air and into the ring and we're not going back. Thanks for showing us the way. 

Me and Mary in Minneapolis in 2007.

Home Fires

I've been watching the  Masterpiece TV series, "Home Fires," which is ostensibly about the Women's Institute and WWII. Mostly it seems like a soap opera centered on a group of rural women and set in Britain at the beginning of the war. I'm only getting a vague sense of the changes in people's lives and that's mostly with men going off to war. 

If this period interests you and you want to read about it from a woman's point of view, I'd highly recommend Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson 1940-45. Hodgson is pictured below. The book is another of the many excellent titles published by Persephone Press, whose London shop is pictured at the bottom.

Hodgson lived in London during the war and this is her diary — where women play a leading role. In one sense it is a long, boring book: endless bombings and destruction, shortages of every imaginable item including food, fabric, soap, coal etc. Difficulties of traveling to see family and friends. And yet, it was equally enthralling.

From the warmth and safety of my living room it was hard not to be overwhelmed with respect and admiration for the way the Brits just carried on, especially when it looked in the early days like they might be invaded and they stood alone against Hitler. 

And it was hard not to compare the Londoners to the Parisians in When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 by Ronald C. Rosbottom. Their situation was unique among all the cities the Nazis captured and Parisians — mostly women and children — responded in widely differing ways. Overall this was a disturbing and demoralizing read, filled with moral ambiguity.

But both books are well-worth reading if this period interests you, especially from the point of view of women's experiences.

 

Tea House update: Shutters

Because Wisconsin can be pretty buggy in the summer, Mark made screens for three of the windows. That way we can have the views, cross-ventilation and no mosquitoes. We want to be able to leave the screens in-place for the summer but keep out rain, so Mark is making shutters to solve that problem. The glass windows will slip back into openings before winter and then the shutter will add another layer of protection for that season. The following pictures show this progression.

Looking out before the shutter was installed.

The shutter in place but raised so you can see out.

Looking out through the glass with the shutter raised.

Another view through the same window but looking slightly to the left of the view above.

The shutter secured down for protection from wet and snowly weather.

Here are a some views of the shutter he made for the window on the opposite side of the building. For this shutter he worked with a friend who has more tools and was therefore able to construct this one using the tongue and groove technique.

In this photo you can see the support boards on the back/interior side of the shutter.

This side of the teahouse faces the pool at the top of the stream that feeds into the big pond. You can just see a faucet that has been temporary for 16 years. We were't sure if we would run a water line into the tea house or just electricity, but we wanted to have the option. We are going to keep it as an exterior source for watering cans and hoses. 

This view shows the large door opening on this side of the building. It's for days when our backs or knees don't want to bend down to enter via the traditional low door on the front. The small window on the right side of the picture is the window that wraps around from the front. 

This view is from our deck toward the teahouse. You can see the round window and the shutter-covered window on the same wall. If you enlarge the picture you can see part of the window with the bamboo detailing on the outside. The plastic square below it is a future door. 

For a complete history of the design and construction of the tea house, click on Tea House in the category list.

Upstairs, Downstairs redux

I'm anticipating — with a fair amount of trepidation — the upcoming sequel to my favorite television series of all time, "Upstairs, Downstairs." I adored Hazel Bellamy (Meg Wynn Owen), the middle class secretary who married the son and heir of the house. We all thought she should have married James' father; he was a better match and would have been a much better partner. In my eyes, no other character over the years of the show — except parlormaid Rose Buck from downstairs (series co-creator Jean Marsh) — could hold a candle to Hazel, with her crown of gorgeous red hair, delicious wardrobe and sensitive air. 

It took me weeks to get over Hazel's death from influenza at the end of WWI. But the story — and the family — went on. Hazel more or less disappeared from the screen for years. When she reappeared, I did not recognize her, but I knew her voice the moment she opened her mouth in "Gosford Park" and "Possession." 

And, of course, the house itself in "Upstairs, Downstairs" was as much a main character in the series as any of the family or staff. I'm sure I could walk blind-folded through 165 Eaton Place, I'm so familiar with every room. In this new incarnation, the house will remain but the family will be entirely new. Whether I can still fall in love with them remains to be seen.

James (Simon Williams) and Hazel Bellamy (Meg Wynn Owen) in the drawing room at 165 Eaton Place.

A familiar facade

Last night found me watching the second episode of Downton Abbey. How could I resist a Julian Fellowes production with Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter and Brendan Coyle? But the real draw for me is the array of houses and gardens I get to vicariously visit.

That means that when the first episode premiered I instantly recognized the majestic Cedar of Lebanon trees outside the fictional abbey — and knew the stand-in for Downton was Highclere Castle. The trees were planted from seeds brought back from Lebanon in the 18th Century and are unmistakable.

Other gardeners and Anglophiles may have recognized Highclere as the embodiment of Mistlethwaite Manor in the 1987 Hallmark Hall of Fame television version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic story, "The Secret Garden." I loved that particular version of the story and have written about it in an earlier post. 

 

Highclere's ancient trees and turreted exterior have made it a popular location for many productions over the lat twenty years, including "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," assorted Jeeves and Wooster episodes, and "Eyes Wide Shut." But if you want to see Highclere looking moody, brooding and Gothic watch the scenes where Mary Lennox arrives at a snow-dusted Mistlethwaite at night. That imposing front door and layered balconies are terrifying in the dark.

 

Alas, the real castle is in a serious state of disrepair verging on disaster according to this article.

Late news: Apparently on Saturday ITV and Carnival Films announced a special Christmas 2011 production of Downton Abbey. It is designed to continue where the second series, an eight-part run scheduled for autumn 2011, ends. Be warned, however, that here in the U.S. we are just now watching the first season. When season two or this Christmas special will appear here is anyone's guess.

Lost in Austen

I'm not sure if anyone can pinpoint the moment when Jane Austen changed from an early 19th Century author to a contemporary one. Austen's new-found popularity has thrust her into the position of a media celebrity whose life is no longer her own. What Austen might have done or thought or written has spawned a whole genre of books and movies, like "Becoming Jane" and "Miss Austen Regrets." I found both heavy-handed and ultimately unsatisfying. 

  

Playing with Austen's stories is so much more fun than playing with her life — and allows for true creative license, whether one is using her novels as the catalyst in modern love stories like "The Jane Austen Book Club," or re-imagining them the way Amy Heckerling transformed "Emma" into the brilliant "Clueless."

As someone who enjoyed both of Laurie Viera Rigler's novels about Austen addicts and time travel, I was pre-disposed to like "Lost in Austen," the four-part 2008 British television series for the ITV network. Though released on DVD in the U.S. last spring, I just heard about "Lost in Austen" from a friend who'd also read Rigler's novels. 

The story centers around a young woman, named Amanda Price, who is so enamored of Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," so steeped in its plot, characters and classic love story, that she conjures up Elizabeth Bennet in the bathroom of her London flat. Lizzie shows her the door connecting that room and the attic of the Bennet family's home in Regency England. In a flash, Amanda's gone through the door — which closes while Lizzie is still on the wrong side. 

Amanda (above) explains her sudden appearance by telling the Bennets that she's a friend of Lizzie's, who has come to stay while their daughter spends time in the city; a more plausible and interesting set-up than the two merely exchanging lives. Knowing "Pride and Prejudice" almost as well as Miss Price, I found "Lost in Austen" a thorough delight.  Part of its charm is that while Miss Price knows the story intimately, no one else does. Indeed, they don't even know they are just characters in a novel — iconic though they and it may be. 

As a lover of the book, Amanda is thrilled to find herself in the midst of it — but her mere presence begins to affect the story. Without Lizzie, the Bennet family has lost its equilibrium, its center. Without her, the lives of Austen's characters begin to spin out of control — threatening the outcome of the novel that's held us in its spell for almost 200 years. 

George Wickham (Tom Riley, left) with the Bennet family: Lydia (Perdita Weeks), Kitty (Florence Hoath), Jane (Morven Christie), Miss Price (Jemima Rooper), Mary (Ruby Bentall), and Mrs. Bennet (Alex Kingston).

Writer Guy Andrews ("Prime Suspect," "Poirot," "Lewis") has crafted a witty, imaginative, intelligent — and very funny — take on Austen's beloved classic. The presence of Miss Price in "Pride and Prejudice" has set both the story and the characters adrift in uncharted waters. That means that the people we thought we knew well — Lydia Bennet, George Wickham, even Bingley — become alive and engaging in ways we're unprepared for.

Mr. Collins (Guy Henry).

Some characters appear to be the same as they ever were; Mr. Collins is as foppish and obsequious as always. But as this story unfolds, there is an undercurrent of malevolence to him that is new and unnerving. Lindsay Duncan, however, may be the best embodiment of Lady Catherine de Bourgh committed to the screen: intelligent, cunning and deliciously domineering. She offers neither caricature nor star turn; her Lady Catheine has passion and purpose.

And, yes, there are anachronisms and inconsistencies but I did not let them trouble me. Instead, I enjoyed the bits of trivia, references to Colin Firth and Miss Price chiding Bingley using the words of Mr. Knightly in "Emma." I watched the entire three hours in one go and then did it again the next day! 

Elizabeth Bennet (Gemma Arterton), Amanda Price (Jemima Rooper) and Mr. Darcy (Elliot Cowan).

Available to buy, to rent through Netflix or to reserve through the South Central Library System which currently has ten copies and 82 hold requests. 

All Passion Spent

What if Knole, that fairy tale of a castle given to Thomas Sackville by Elizabeth I in 1566, had not been entailed? What if it had passed on to the little girl who grew up there — Vita Sackville-West — instead of going to a distant male cousin who inherited it from Vita's parents? 

KNOLE HOUSE/COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG

Knole, with its seven courts, 52 staircases, and 355 rooms, is the largest private house in England. It sits there still, surrounded by a deer park of 1,000 acres. It is its own world; a world apart. When she lost Knole, Vita — like a jealous lover — left, never to return.  

Instead she spent her life writing about the land, about houses, about home; creating fictional embodiments of the dream of Knole. Until she finally made it flesh at Sissinghurst: her own world apart, surrounded by what may well be the most famous garden of the 20th century.

KNOLE HOUSE/COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG/BRITANNIA ILLUSTRATA 1709

Virginia Wolfe transformed Vita and Knole into "Orlando," while Vita herself used the historic house to great effect in her 1930 novel, "The Edwardians." But it is in "All Passion Spent," the story of the "quietly defiant" Lady Slane and the house she's held in her memory for thirty years, that Vita creates a home suited to the rest of us. She calls that little house "an entity with a life of its own." 

The life of the house and the old woman who retreats there after the death of her diplomat husband, make "All Passion Spent" a charmed tale. Vita's subtext, as always, is a subtle anger at the way her world treated women. But mostly this is a book full of irony, humor and warmth; the traits of the engaging Lady Slane.

"When can one please oneself if not in old age?" asks 88-year-old Lady Slane? 

My mother-in-law is exactly that age, which may be one reason why the book resonates with me; that and having come of age during the second wave of feminism in the 1970s. I've clearly crossed that invisible line where I find an old lady more fascinating — and more worthy of my time — than the young women who populate so many contemporary books and movies.  

And certainly if that lady comes to the screen in the person of Dame Wendy Hiller. Yes, she of the elegant diction and the gorgeous cheekbones, played Lady Slane in the 1986 BBC production of "All Passion Spent." The performance earned Hiller a BAFTA nomination as Best Actress. The production was seen here in the U.S. on Masterpiece Theatre, though I don't recall it. 

But I am currently in a Hiller phase and watched the film twice: the first time to enjoy Hiller herself; the second to enjoy the marvelous triumvirate of Lady Slane's admirers: Mr. Bucktrout, Mr. Gosheron and Mr. FitzGeorge. One could equally concentrate on her awful children and their spouses; but it's Lady Slane's attitude to life — and death — that makes one think that reaching 80 may be something to anticipate rather than fear. 

The film is quite faithful to Vita's book; the main departure it makes is giving Lady Slane's great-granddaughter more of a role than in the book. Here she serves to convey much that Vita offered in the book as inward commentary. And perhaps the producers were concerned that there was not a young person among the remaining cast members!

The back of the DVD calls the film "a beautifully realized portrait of a complex woman reflecting on choices made, lost, and regained." It's a perfect description of both the film and Vita's book.