The Merry Hall Trilogy

The Merry Hall Trilogy

Merry Hall

By Beverley Nichols

With a Foreword by Ann Lovejoy

319 pp Oregon

Timber Press $24.95

Laughter On The Stairs

By Beverley Nichols

With a Foreword by Roy C. Dicks

257 pp Oregon

Timber Press $24.95

Sunlight On The Lawn

By Beverley Nichols

With a Foreword by Bryan Connon

264 pp Oregon

Timber Press $24.95

Reviewed by Burndett Andres

Lest we use our entire allotment of space for book titles, let us commence at once to employ a literary device used to great effect by our author, Beverley Nichols. When faced with the necessity for oft-repeated phrases, he would, with the reader’s permission of course, adopt the practice of substituting initials for names or phrases. Hence “nice balustrade” became N.B. and N.Q.S.N.B. would stand in for “not quite so nice balustrade.” You see at once the merit of this procedure. In our situation, Beverley Nichols will become BN, The Merry Hall Trilogy will be simply TMHT and MH, LOTS and SOTL should be obvious. I will endeavor to ease you into it.

The Merry Hall Trilogy, TMHT, is comprised of MH (1951), LOTS (1953) and SOTL (1956). Together they give some insight into life in Merry Hall, BN’s Georgian manor house in Surry, England, from the time the property was purchased in 1945 and throughout its reclamation. The animals of MH, human and feline, and the inhabitants of the village of Meadowstream all play important parts, but the flora has been given the starring role. The gardens are thoroughly introduced; in fact, each individual tree, shrub and plant is thoroughly introduced. Early on BN warns, “When I begin to write about flowers, I lose all sense of restraint, and it is far, far too late to do anything about it.” It’s not so much what he says, but how he says it that makes his writing so delightful. But before we get into matters of style, let me first tell you a little bit about BN.

I met Beverley Nichols (1898-1983) leaning out of a window on the cover of his biography Beverley Nichols – A Life by Bryan Connon. It was pictured in the Timber Press catalog and was being advertised as an adjunct to TMHT and others of BN’s gardening and cat books. He looked so fetching that I stopped to get acquainted. The promoter assured me that BN enjoys a secure seat in the pantheon of gardening gods. Generations of literate gardeners, I was told, have turned to him for wit and wisdom, for relief from prickling thorns and nasty nettles; for pure entertainment of the home and garden variety, he has few peers and his books are classics. After reading eleven of BN’s many books, I cannot dispute it.

In addition, I have found that just as a soberly health-conscious person can benefit spiritually from the occasional French pastry, so the joy of reading can be restored by taking up something light and refreshing, something amusing, a piece of literary candy from time to time. BN is a bonbonniere extraordinaire and TMHT is one of his finest confections. He is a master story teller and can transform trifling events into high drama. He takes impish delight in tattling on everyone, most especially himself. Fine sketches capture the essence of his characters, warts and all. Most are drawn sympathetically, even empathically. Although all the major characters reprise in all three volumes, they are presented most completely in MH, which was written first and should be read first for best effect.

But I was telling you about BN. The book jackets of the latest editions of TMHT describes his work thusly: “Beverley Nichols was a prolific writer on subjects ranging from religion to politics and travel in addition to authoring six novels, five detective mysteries, four children’s stories, six autobiographies and six plays. He is perhaps best remembered today for his gardening books,” etc. etc. etc. Obviously he was very erudite, but he wears it so gracefully in TMHT that it enhances the story rather than intrudes upon it. The gardening knowledge and plant lore he shares can likewise be enjoyed by gardener (G) and non-gardener (NG) alike.

One is even willing to take a scolding about one’s attitude, or be chastised for one’s general ignorance, or endure a dressing down because of one’s lack of appreciation for cats, just for the pleasure of hearing BN put the words together to accomplish it. Both his renowned felicity of speech and his famous charm spill over into his writing. Who could resist meek and mild Miss Mint? Miss Emily – the quintessential English countrywoman in her tweeds – and Our Rose – a neighbor and famous floral designer – provide most of the intrigue. Marius, a wise friend and neighbor is often called upon to help sort them all out and Gaskin, BN’s “omniscient and beatific factotum” acts as the safety net for the entire cast. And always there is Oldfield, the gardener, making us smile and making the gardens flourish. The author’s cats, One, Four, Five and Seven, romp freely through all the pages. The books read like novels.

Even at its most neglected, Merry Hall is made to seem so appealing and the characters are presented with such charm and grace, cocooned in gentle humor and energized with such wit, well…one simply wants to leap into the story oneself and make their acquaintance.

That is just what BN’s conversational style, clearly drawn character portraits and finely chiseled place descriptions make possible. One actually gets into the act. One can feel the rich, soft loam, smell the fragrant lilies, taste the fresh garden produce and hear the soothing purr of the kittens. They all come to life in The Merry Hall Trilogy. It is a harmony of sweetness and sentimentality in perfect measure, which produces a light, simply delicious result. This fictional non-fiction could be just the mood-elevator the literary doctor ordered. Think of it as chocolate for the mind.

Published - July/August 2004 issue of Wolf Moon Press Journal – A Maine Magazine of Art and Opinion 
 Ref. Maine, At Last – Settling In  Vol. II, page 264

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Beautiful, misty, 'black and white' morning

Beautiful, misty, 'black and white' morning. I took some pictures of the garden from the attic window.

It looks like I used black and white film, doesn't it? Only the one brown tree trunk shows any color. I love the garden in all seasons.

I've posted the pictures here so I'll have the benefit of a link to share when I wax lyrical about the scene in the Narraguagus News later today. As usual, my pictures do not do it justice. Oh well.

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Blueberryland - Newpaper Article - 2003

"Blueberryland" Article by Burndett Andres

"Taming the Wild Blueberry - 90-Year-Old Author Keeps on Pickin'"

“I just love to be picking berries,” Walter Staples said during our visit at the Red Barn in Milbridge.  We were meeting to discuss his latest book Blueberryland, Taming the Maine Wild Low-bush Blueberry in which he admits he’s addicted to berry-picking.  Walter, who celebrated his ninetieth birthday on September 13^th, was in Washington County this weekend with his son and chauffeur, Jim, to deliver copies of his books to various gift shops Downeast and to Margery Brown for the Cherryfield-Narraguagus Historical Society.  She and my partner, Ralph Larsen, rounded out our party. 

 This is Walter Staples’ second foray into subsidy publishing with Peter E. Randall Publisher of Portsmouth, NH.  The second printing of his first book, The North Bay Narrative, One Hundred Years of a Newfoundland Outport Village is nearly sold out and Blueberryland has been selling steadily since being published earlier this year.  The success of both books is due in large part to Walter’s personal promotional efforts at book-signings and the subsequent word of mouth advertising these appearances generate.  

The “Author and Fly Fisherman,” as his business card describes him, was born in Eliot, Maine, in 1913 and is a graduate of the University of Maine.  For twenty-eight years he traveled extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe while engaged in poultry disease research for a major New England poultry breeding company.  He is presently retired, more or less, and lives in Tamworth, NH, but he still writes poetry, travels to promote his books and often comes to Washington County with his son for hunting and fishing...and blueberry picking.  Blueberryland is the story of how Walter Staples came to observe, and participate in a small way, in the taming of the wild low-bush blueberry. 

A deer-hunting trip first brought Staples to Wesley in 1937, and continued bringing him and his companions back every year until the early 1950s.  During those years he made friends with many of the natives and observed low-bush blueberry growing and harvesting.  He describes one early visit this way:      

“In early August of 1942, I took my bride of two years over the Airline Road to Wesley, as much to explain and justify my annual vacation being spent there, as in the hope that she too would enjoy the trip...We spent a night in a small cabin on the edge of a field just bursting with the blue of ripening berries at harvest time.  Picking from bushes just outside our cabin door, we had blueberries for breakfast...”

In the early 1970s, Staples bought a tract of land “just off the Airline Road, on the highway to Machias” that included about twenty acres of blueberry fields.  A series of circumstances conspired to thrust him willy-nilly into “the commercial aspects of low-bush blueberry production” and, ready or not, he began participating in the management of a blueberry field.  In Blueberryland, he describes with affection raking his field with family and friends. 

“Nothing takes the place of a field full of family...chattering...singing,” he told us with a smile.  Margery also shared memories of local businesses shutting down during the blueberry harvest fifty years ago and whole families participating in the raking, babies in carriages and playpens joining the children, parents and grand-parents in the fields. 

Walter Staples’ involvement with low-bush blueberries goes back half a century.  In Blueberryland he provides thorough documentation as he traces the taming of the wild blueberry during that time and the evolution of the big business that has been made of it.  He laments the loss of family involvement and the loss of the personal satisfaction that comes at the end of the day when “you can look at what you’ve picked, you can count it.”  His son, Jim, who plans to continue raking berries for his own use for many years to come, echoes his feelings.  Last year he personally raked over four hundred quarts of berries to share with family and friends. 

We all agreed that there is a mystical connection between growing, harvesting and preserving one’s own food, a connection we have all felt at one time or another.  Walter and Jim expressed the pleasure they derive from blueberry raking; Margery has looked with satisfaction at some five hundred jars of home-canned fruits and vegetables on her shelves; Ralph has known the thrill of growing prize-winning kohlrabi in his Long Island victory garden.  Like them and many of you, I have done a little raking, canning and growing myself and could appreciate their quiet, little introspective smiles.

Staples did a lot of research over the two years it took him to write Blueberryland. He offers hope that even as the blueberry industry grows and becomes more mechanized and monopolized by large growers, pockets of small growers will continue to preserve the old ways and the old satisfactions; they will find ways to make small farms profitable.  One example of alternative management he uses to illustrate the point is Chris McCormick and his family in Cooper, ME, who are producing organic, wild low-bush blueberries for the retail market.

Blueberryland will be of interest to the old “blueberrying” families of Washington County because it’s likely their friends and relatives are mentioned within.  It’s also of great interest to those from away because it explains the discrepancy that exists between the name of our native product and the practice of cultivation we observe.   Irrigation, applications of herbicides and fungicides, systematic burning, fertilization and pollination would not normally be associated with “wild” blueberries.  Blueberryland explains how the industry has grown away from its wild beginnings and will relieve any consternation that may exist in the minds of the uninitiated.

Mostly though, Blueberryland is a story about a man who just loves picking berries.  You can share his passion by asking for a copy at your favorite gift shop or bookseller.   Both of his books are also available from Margery Brown at the Cherryfield-Narraguagus Historical Society, 546-7979.               

This article appeared in the Downeast Coastal Press of November 18-24, 2003
Ref: Maine, At Last - Settling In, Vol. II, Page 231

See Maine, At Last - Settling In

                     

Falling In Love With Maine

Falling In Love With Maine

by Ralph Larsen as told to Burndett Andres

September, 2003

In the autumn of 1946, I was fifteen years old, about five feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds.   I had lived in foster homes under the aegis of Catholic Charities for more than a decade and got into a lot of scrapes because I was a “home kid.”  I also got into scrapes with bullies.  They didn’t pick on me because I was a home kid; like all bullies, they picked on me because I was small and not so good at defending myself.  I was little for my age; I was really cute, with black curls and the girls loved me, but I was a shrimp. 

 

I had picked up a slim volume, probably in the candy shop or the drug store, about a number of sports figures.  One of them was Jack Dempsey.  When his trainer, Doc Kearns, had wanted to toughen up Dempsey’s hands he had taken him to a lumber camp; he said there was no better place to toughen up.  I wanted to get tough fast, so I decided to take a page out of this book, so to speak.

My brother Johnny and I were living with the McAllisters on Long Island at the time, in Howard Beach, on a canal that went out to Jamaica Bay.  Our house was built on pilings right at the water’s edge; at high tide we could dive out the second story windows into the water.  We were dirt poor, but so was everyone around us, so we didn’t really know it.  My foster mother had just died and there was no one else around who cared if I stayed in school or not, so one day I just packed up an old cardboard satchel I’d found in the house, said good-bye to my brother and left.   I was heading to Maine to be a lumberjack.

I don’t remember what I took with me.  A shirt perhaps.  Some underwear, I guess.  Everything I owned would have fit in that satchel.  I had my hunting knife for protection.  Mr. McAllister was a truck driver and managed to get our clothes from the U.S. Army at Fort Hamilton by one means or another, so I imagine I was wearing my olive drab Eisenhower jacket and I surely would have had on my paratrooper boots with high tops and laces.  I was very proud of those boots; they were very macho and considered to be quite a trophy at a time when I had precious few trophies of any kind.

I had a little money from caddying at the North Hills and the Glen Oaks Country Clubs and from doing odd jobs, raking leaves and such, and I believe I must have taken a Greyhound bus to Bangor, or perhaps to Portland and then hitchhiked the rest of the way to Bangor.   I really don’t remember how I got there; it was fifty-seven years ago.  I do remember inquiring around about where to apply for work and being told to go home, that the only work available for kids in a lumber camp was sweeping out shacks and such.  Well, I hadn’t come up here to clean house, so I started hitchhiking south. 

I remember walking along country roads and getting rides for a few miles off and on.  They were all country roads; I didn’t have a map, so I don’t know exactly where I was.  I know I was out of money; I had expected to get a job so hadn’t allowed money for getting home.  I subsisted entirely on apples for a couple of days.  The trees where I walked were laden with them.  They were so crisp; I remember the snap when I bit into them and the juice running down my chin.  I often think of that experience at harvest time as they spoiled me for apples forever; store bought apples are unbearable by comparison and the farther removed in time the experience becomes, the greater the difference seems to grow. 

A few times I stopped at farmhouses.  “I’m hungry,” I would say and the woman of the house would take pity on me and give me some cookies and a glass of milk.  Like I said, I was a cute kid.  I don’t remember getting a meal although I might have done.   I slept in the fields in the grass; the air was so cool and fresh.  One sunny afternoon, I remember just lying down in a field by the roadside and taking a nap.  You could do that then.

I remember sitting on a hill somewhere along the coast, under some pine trees, just gazing in awe at the crashing surf and the jagged shoreline covered with evergreens right down to the water’s edge.  That sight is etched in my mind till this day, even though I don’t know exactly where it was.

By the time I got to Portland, I was dead broke and very hungry.  I hung around, looked around and walked around, trying to nose out some sort of lumber jacking connection.  When the hunger got beyond bearing I would go to this little drugstore/luncheonette in Congress Square and order a hamburger.  After I ate, I’d go into the bathroom and crawl out the window.   Hamburgers were five cents then and I didn’t even have the five cents.  Some indication of how hungry I was can be gleaned from the fact that I had the nerve to go back there more than once.  Looking back, I think the waitress must have liked me because she never squealed and a few times she gave me pie and coffee, too. 

When I finally accepted the fact that I was not going to become a lumberjack, I decided to return to New York.  I started hitchhiking again and got a ride just south of Portland.  The driver dropped me off in a little coastal village.  It was late at night and only one street lamp eerily penetrated the fog.   I remember walking to the water’s edge and sleeping there that night huddled up against some building.  I’ve always called that place Wales by the Sea, but since there is no such town on the coast (or anywhere else for that matter), I have come to believe it must have been Wells Beach. 

The next day I got a ride with a trucker into Boston.  I remember being outside Fenway Park that night; the Red Sox were playing St. Louis in the 1946 World Series.  I eventually hitchhiked back to New York.  The truckers loved me because I helped keep them awake; I never shut up.  I grew another foot before all was said and done, got into weight lifting, personal training and even some professional boxing and ceased being a target for bullies. 

I have vacationed in the state many times over the years and finally moved to Cherryfield in 2002 at the age of seventy-one, because I fell in love with Maine in the autumn of ’46 and never did get over it. 

Originally Published in the Downeast Coastal Press of October 14-20, 2003

Reference Maine, At Last - Settling In (Vol. II) Page 197

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New Lifetime Reading Plan - 2003 Book Review

The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Paperback

by Clifton Fadiman & John S. Major

378 pp. New York

HarperCollins $14

Reviewed by Burndett Andres

One prominent online bookseller offers thirty-one million titles. An extraordinary bibliophage might expect to read ten thousand books in a lifetime.  Quot libros. Quam breve tempus!  How can the average person know which books are worthy of his valuable reading time? 

Allowing that each individual will discover what they prefer to read for pleasure and circumstances will conspire to indicate what reading must be done to acquire specific information, how does one select books for general erudition?  At a tender age and quite by chance, I discovered a way to improve the odds of reading the crème de la crème of western literature; I could seek the advice of experts.  The New Lifetime Reading Plan is the condensed wisdom of men whose lives have been devoted to reading and culling the best from the rest.  They know the territory and act as guides; their input demystifies the esoteric, illuminates the obscure, inspires the overwhelmed and instructs the bewildered.    

The first book list I ever saw was “One Hundred Best Books” given chronologically and included in a 1946 publication of the Personal Improvement Guild of New York, NY.  It had been compiled by Henry Seidel Canby, Hugh Walpole, Albert Shaw and Edwin Mims, all unknown to me, but all recognized as “authorities in literature” I was assured.  Since I greatly desired to improve personally, I took this matter of broadening my mind very seriously.  The first book on the list was The Bible with which, being the daughter of fundamentalist Christians, I was more than usually conversant.  Books two through thirty-three, roughly Homer through Shakespeare, were totally unknown quantities; Pilgrim’s Progress, number thirty-four, was familiar, having been bedtime reading in my extreme youth, but the balance was again a mystery.  Interesting note: George Eliot was the only female writer included on this list, unless we accept the possibility, lately advanced, that The Odyssey was written by a woman. 

I met some of the writers on this list during my school years.  It’s probably safe to say that most students learn something of Hawthorne, Melville, Dickens and Twain.  Surely every college student at least hears of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman and some of the great Russians.  Much attention used to be paid to the poets Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Tennyson, etc. as well.  Thus we all glean a little knowledge of “the classics,” and there the matter often remains for the balance of a lifetime.  We’re often comforted by the knowledge that they are there, but who reads them?

Circa 1970 I came into possession of another book list.  This one had been prepared “by the Editorial Advisory Board of the Easton Press for the 100 Greatest Books Ever Written...” Clearly their purpose was commercial, but I was interested to note what books this list had in common with my original one and how the advice of the experts might have changed in thirty years.  Only Virgil remained of the Romans; all the English poets except Keats and Robert Browning were now considered non-essential or at least unsalable; the great novelists roughly from Hawthorne through Twain, chronologically, remained; of the later novelists, only Stevenson, Kipling, Shaw and Conrad were again included.  The ladies were coming on strong; Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe joined Ms Eliot.  Times, they were a changing.

By 1998, Clifton Fadiman and John S. Major realized that a worldview was needed and they seriously revised Fadiman’s previous offering.  A lifetime reading plan directs the investment of a portion of our reading time so that at the end of the day we will have read, and hopefully absorbed for our betterment, the best of the available literature of our culture.  This has traditionally been regarded as being advantageous in creating well-rounded persons and thoughtful citizens.  The New Lifetime Reading Plan suggests that in today’s world, it is not enough to be conversant with the classics of western literature.  In our global neighborhood, they submit, it may be wise to incorporate the best of diverse cultures as well; after all, in today’s world, a reference to the Koran may be as likely to appear in your Sunday paper as any Biblical reference. 

To this end they recommend a multicultural lifetime reading plan and include works from the Oriental traditions, plus what they consider the best of African, Indian, South American and Latin American literature as well.  This presents many implications that could be considered at length.  For example, The Bible is absent from The New Lifetime Reading Plan with the explanation given that “we assume that nearly every reader of this book will own a Bible and be at least somewhat accustomed to reading it; and there is nothing we might try to say about it that would not seem presumptuous.”  The Koran, on the other hand, is suggested.  It is very interesting to note how these plans evolve over time, how they change as certain ideas and authors go in and out of fashion. 

Although the new list replaces The Bible with The Epic of Gilgamesh, the early Greeks survive and the Romans, Virgil and M. Aurelius.  The Arabian Nights made all three lists and Dante, Chaucer, Montaigne, Cervantes and Shakespeare are still considered “required” reading.  Wordsworth is the only surviving English poet and now two Japanese ladies writing in the late tenth century, upstage Jane Austin as the first female writer included.  The great early Americans are all on the list - Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville and Twain – and the all time favorites, Flaubert, Dickens, George Eliot and Hardy as well.  The Russians Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and the German, Nietzsche, continue to be favored with Shaw and Conrad as the most modern of the writers still uneclipsed.  Harriet Beecher Stowe has given way to the now popular Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf.  In fact, nine of the one hundred thirty-three writers on the primary list are women.  The new view is western with a noticeably global flavor.

There are two additional features of this book that make it even more useful.  The first is the addition of a section called “Going Further” which presents and briefly annotates one hundred (fourteen are women) twentieth-century writers of interest.  The second, the bibliography, is hugely helpful as it presents preferred translations and editions and suggestions for further reading under each writer.

The American writer and theologian, Henry Van Dyke, said, “There are more than a hundred good books in the world.  The best hundred for you may not be the best hundred for me.  We ought to be satisfied if we get something thoroughly good, even though it be not absolutely and unquestionably the best in the world.  The habit of worrying about the books that we have not read destroys the pleasure and diminishes the profit of those that we are reading.  Be serious, earnest, sincere in your choice of books, and then put your trust in Providence and read with an easy mind.”  

The New Lifetime Reading Plan is your friend, a partner that will facilitate this effort.  It does not have a bossy or preachy tone, but rather encourages and stimulates.  It is a useful guide, a time-saving tool and great reading in its own right.         

2003 Book Review for Wolf Moon Press

Reference Maine, At Last - Settling In (Vol. II) Page 178
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