"Literature is the orchestration of platitudes." ~ Thornton Wilder (1897 - 1975) American playwrite, novelist, three-time winner of Pulitzer Prize.

 

 

 

 

One of the best-loved children's classics is The Wind in the Willows

"This has been a wonderful day!" said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again.  "Do you know I've never been in a boat before in all my life."
   "What?" cried the Rat, open-mouthed:  "Never been in a boat ~ you never ~ well I  ~ What have you been doing, then?"
   "Is it so nice as all that?"  asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.
   "Nice?  It's the only thing,"  said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke.  "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing ~ absolutely nothing ~ half so much worth doing as  simply messing about in boats.  Simply messing,"  he went on dreamily:  "messing~about~in~boats;  messing~"
   "Look ahead, Rat!" cried the Mole suddenly.
  It was too late.  The boat struck the bank full tilt.  The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.
   "~about in boats~or with boats," the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh.
   "In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter.  Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it.  Whether you get away, or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not.  Look here!  If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?"

~ Kenneth Grahame (1859 - 1932)  created  the adventures of Ratty, Mole, Badger & Toad for his nightly bedtime stories with his only son, Alastair.  The stories were published in 1908.

PICTURE-BOOKS IN WINTER

SUMMER fading, winter comes ~
Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone
Nurse and I can walk upon;
Still we find the flowing brooks
In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,
Wait upon the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books.

We may see how all things are,
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture story-books.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson (Nov. 13, 1850 - Dec. 3, 1894)  Scottish novelist, poet.

"I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers."

~ Andrew Lang [1844 - 1912] Ballade of True Wisdom.  Stanza 3 


"You can cover a great deal of country in books."

~ Andrew Lang [Scots poet, novelist, Nobel Prize in Literature] To the Gentle Reader, Stanza 5

On Hand-writing ~

"The handwriting of Robertson Davies, the Canadian whose magical novels moved an American critic to call him 'the white-bearded magus of the North,' was neat, elegant, and supremely legible but, while composing fiction, he used a typewriter.  'I type because writing by hand I find to be a very great betrayer,' he said in 1989.  'If you try to write [by hand] legibly, as I do, you finish a page and think, That's a handsome page.  This absolutely wrong.  Also, you can only write so long with a pen before your hand becomes tired, and then your invention begins to tire.  If you type. . .you have what you've written there before you--cold and bare.  Then you can go over it, and it is as though someone else had written it and you can edit it with great severity."

~ Harry Bruce, Page Fright, Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2009.

Favourite Love Stories

Journals Serve Many Purposes

Fishing Diary recording, "Best day's fishing I ever had!  Played salmon about 1/2 hour.  21 lbs; pike 7 lbs. "

From THE JOURNALS OF ANNE LANGTON:  A GENTLEWOMAN IN UPPER CANADA

Tuesday, January 15. [1839] Another brilliant morning, but severe frost.  John had one trip for hay before breakfast, and afterwards took another walk with me -- not a very long one.  We bent our steps in the contrary direction to yesterday.  The wolves and foxes had been enjoying themselves as well as ever;  I shall begin to be acquainted with the tracks of the beasts of the forest.  I looked back at our own tracks, and wondered whether mine would be recognised as that of a woman, enveloped as are my feet in two pairs of stockings, a pair of socks, my house moccasins, and another pair over them.

Wednesday, January 23.  This was the very coldest day we have had.  The thermometer was 20 below zero, with a strong wind.  It blew very hard during the night;  the mercury stood only three degrees above zero in our room whilst we were dressing.  At noon it rose to five, and once we contrived to raise it to eight, which is what a good fire has been able to do for it.

Tuesday, April 16.  Springtime makes busy work, notwithstanding the men and women about the house.  John was to-day chopping firewood, I kneading bread, and the other ladies also busily occupied.  This department of mine I intend now to resign, but to-day I had to pay the penalty of mismanaging matters so as to have to bake on a washing day.  There is no unmixed good in this world.  A wash-house, a boiler, and an oven are great comforts, but they consume an immensity of wood.



~ Edited by H.H. Langton.  CLARKE, IRWIN & COMPANY LIMITED. 1950.

There is in my old picture-book

A page at which I like to look,
Where knights and squires come riding down
The cobbles of some steep old town,
And ladies from beneath the eaves
Flutter their bravest handkerchiefs,
Or, smiling proudly, toss down gages. . .
But that was in the Middle Ages.
It wouldn't happen now; but still,
Whenever I look up the hill
Where, dark against the green and blue,
The firs come marching, two by two,
I wonder if perhaps I might
See suddenly a shining knight
Winding his way from blue to green ~
Exactly as it would have been
Those many, many years ago . . .

Perhaps I might.  You never know.

~ A. A. Milne WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1924

"je suis Charlie"

 



Oh for a book and a shady nook,
     Either indoor or out,
With the green leaves whispering overhead,
  Or the street cries all about,
Where I may read all at my ease
     Both of the new and old,
For a jolly good book whereon to look
Is better to me than gold.

~ John Wilson (1785 - 1854)  Scottish poet
[pseud. Christopher North]

Oh for a book and a shady nook,
   Either indoor or out,
With the green leaves whispering overhead,
   Or the street cries all about.
Where I may read all at my ease,
    Both of the new and old,
For a jolly good book whereon to look
    Is better to me than gold.

~ John Wilson 1889

[My source doesn't ID the poet as John Wilson; however, seems logical.  If anyone can verify, please do.]

The Book Lady

We lost a dear friend, Dorothy Brown, The Book Lady.  Dorothy was well-known in the CircleM/Mizeners Flea Market, Hwy. 5 in Flamboro.  She came to Canada in 1946 as a war bride. She was  in her 91st year.

Dorothy and her husband, Roy, opened a bookshop and collectibles thirty years ago.  We will miss you, Dorothy.

"A poor book that furnishes no quotations is, me judice, no book ~ it is a plaything."

~ Thomas Love Peacock (1785 - 1866) Engish poet, novelist.

[Think Spring! lbw]

Jane Austen ~ "lived through an eventful period in English andEuropean history, and her own life was also eventful and resonant with the interaction of personalities within and without her own family circle.  For her, people mattered more than art, family more than literature.
When a friend whom she was to visit asked her what books she was going to bring with her, she received the following typical retort:

You distress me cruelly by your request about books;  I cannot think of any to bring with me, nor have I any idea of our wanting them.  I come to you to be talked to, not to read or hear reading.  I can do that at home;..."

[Letter to Martha Lloyd, 12 November 1800]

~ Jane Austen, Brian Wilks, Galley Press, 1988.

Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) English novelist.

Diaries ~

Fanny Kemble 1834

Authors often draw on diaries or journals when writing books.  British actress, Fanny Kemble, published eleven volumes of memoirs as well as her poetry and plays.
In the bookshop we are intrigued with the stories we hear ~ family histories, local tales.  "I could write a book," is a common pronouncement and often the information indeed is worth recording.

Published books are obviously not every one's calling.  However, jotting down facts in a scribbler ~  information, anecdotes, personality traits ~ facts that will fill in blanks for future generations or even amateur historians is a worthwhile past time.  Journals don't require great writing skills.

~ Reference:  A Book of One's Own People and Their Diaries, Thomas Mallon
Fanny Kemble (1809 - 1893) Portrait:  Wikipedia

Commonplace Books ~

"One forerunner of the diary has historically been used more to regard art than create it.  It was the practice of making a record of one's reading, or of whatever information came one's way, that gave rise to those diaries still known as commonplace books.  The special interest of those kept by artists is obvious:  What piece of reading or news may have triggered a particular line of verse, or perhaps a whole painting?  For writers, especially, commonplace books are the records of influence, but they have for centuries been kept by blocked writers and non writers as well."

~ A Book of One's Own People And Their Diaries, Thomas Mallon, Ticknor & Fields, 1984.

Note:  English Poet, John Milton (1608 - 1674), kept a commonplace book.  He drew on these notes for his later work.  Milton's commonplace book is now in the British Library.

Mark Twain *~ "I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way:  by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. . .
We have no permanent habits until we are forty.  Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins.  Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up ~ and that is one of the main things.  I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to.  This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity.  It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person.
In the matter of diet ~ which is another main thing ~ I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it."

~ * (1835 - 1910) "A Severely Moral Life," a speech at a dinner, Delmonico's Restaurant, N.Y., Dec. 5, 1905. Mark Twain, An Illustrated Biography, Geoffrey Ward, Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns, Knopf,2001.
Image:  Wikipedia

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.  Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage.  They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them.  Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind."
~ Henry D. Thoreau, Walden, Life in The Woods.  American author, poet and philosopher (1817 - 1862)

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from reading a book?  The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.  The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.  These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.  Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality."

~ Henry D. Thoreau (1817 - 1862) Walden, Life In The Woods, Ticknor & Fields,1854.

"It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.  There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us." ~ H. D. T.
Photo:  Rock Glen Falls, Ausable Gorge, Ontario, L. B. Walker