Green Knowe - norman window

[mary_j_59]

Green Knowe - norman window
Originally uploaded by maryj59

Well, we are back from England, and back at work - but what a wonderful trip! We got to Green Knowe! Also to Cambridge (Deirdre's first time), to Oxford where we met the lovely Anne Arthur, saw a book binding exhibit at the Bodlean, and went to an incredible concert of early Baroque music, among other things. We also met two old friends again, called our favorite English teacher, and went to the theater.

The plane tickets to England were a gift to us from our family for our birthday. What a fantastic week! High point after high point, but I've got to say Green Knowe was even more beautiful than I'd thought it would be.

Comments

[anne-arthur.livejournal.com]

Lovely photo! It was great to meet up, finally, and I'm glad you had such a good time. I had very good intentions about trying another of those concerts, but things just seem to have got out of control, time-wise, lately! I hope I might be able to make it over to the US another year!

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I hope you will, too1 It really was great to meet up, and we'll certainly want to do it again. Somehow, August has been crazy, though, and just seems to be getting crazier - for example, I did myself a (minor, luckily) injury scrubbing my parents' bathroom, and seem at the same time to have inflamed a couple of old weaknesses. That's why I haven't been online much lately. Best of luck with the book, etc., and let us know when it's done. )

[parenthesised.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd love to go, but at the same time I'm so very afraid to. I believed in these books so intensely as a child (and still believe so much of their philosophy) that I would hate to be unable to recognise things I thought I knew, and not to hear Linnet laughing at me. Stupid, but true...

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I can understand how you feel, but, for us at least, it wasn't like that. The house was smaller than I had imagined, but the garden even larger - it seemed endless! And, along with another rabid fan, my sister and I were going through exclaiming things like "Oh, look! the Witch ball!" and (about one of the cherubs) "He looks exactly like his illustration; those drawings are so accurate" and (about another large painting by Peter Boston) "I haven't seen that before. Was it ever in one of the books?" Diana Boston really seemed to enjoy our responses, and it was fascinating to see how her mother-in-law's reconstruction of the house and garden influenced her fiction - and vice versa. We got to see a part of the manuscript (fourth draft!) of The Children of Green Knowe!

And two more things. Diana Boston is a mother and grandmother herself. When we got to the children's room at the top of the house, she let the younger of the two young boys on the tour pick up the sword that was in the toychest there. "Is that a real sword, do you think, or is it plastic?" she asked. "It's real!" the little boy exclaimed, his eyes shining. "Yes. Well, don't do what Tolly did with it, and stab the pillows," she said. She also told us that she has begun reading the books to her own grandchildren, who grew up running in and out of the house and never took much notice of it. Now, she said, they are seeing their family home with new eyes.

All of this is just to say that, even if the house didn't quite match your imagination, I don't think it would be a disappointment. It certainly wasn't to us!