Cornflower

Books and cakes - 66

    "Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake."

    Thank heavens for Miss Temple and a small moment of cheer at Lowood - one of very few in Jane's existence there.

    With food conspicuous by its absence most of the time in Jane Eyre, seed-cake it is for our virtual afternoon tea, and it's making its third appearance in 'Books and Cakes': we had it with Tom's Midnight Garden, and a long way back with The Mysteries of Glass, but though somewhat 'old-fashioned', it's a good cake and I'd recommend it. This time I used Delia's recipe sans almond topping as such frippery seemed out of keeping with the privations of Lowood, but I've run to a large pot of Lapsang to go with it, so please pull up a chair! We're talking about the book over here.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day ...

  

    " ... We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question."

    That's the very famous opening paragraph of a very famous novel - the Cornflower Book Group's April book. I hope you will read it along with us.

 

The painting - which is on the cover of my edition of the book - is A Lady in Grey (The Artist's Daughter), 1859, by Daniel Macnee (great-grandfather of actor Patrick Macnee, apparently).

Edited to add: here is a short piece about the artist (including a mention of the picture) on Patrick Macnee's website.

The motto was 'Pax' ...

   

     "... but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Pax: Peace, but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort - seldom with a seen result: subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at nights, little comfort, sometimes scant food: beset with disappointments and usually misunderstood, yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love. 'It is My own peace I give unto you.' Not, notice, the world's peace."

    That's the opening of the Cornflower Book Group's April book. Will you join us and read it?

Chapter 1 - Hiram's Hospital

   

     "The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of ---; let us call it Barchester. Were we to name Wells or Salisbury, Exeter, Hereford or Gloucester, it might be presumed that soemthing personal was intended; and as this tale will refer mainly to the cathedral dignitaries of the town in question, we are anxious that no personality may be suspected. Let us presume that Barchester is a quiet town in the West of England, more remarkable for the beauty of its cathedral and the antiquity of its monuments, than for any commercial prosperity; that the west end of Barchester is the cathedral close, and that the aristocracy of Barchester are the bishop, dean, canons, with their respective wives and daughters."

   

    Please come and join us in Barchester.

Story of the Door

   

    "Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of hs life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. 'I incline to Cain's heresy,' he used to say quaintly: 'I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.' In this character it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour."

    Thus begins the Cornflower Book Group's February book - details here.

Really, there's nothing to see ...

    "Nothing ... Only this: a great lawn where flowerbeds bloomed; a towering fir-tree, and thick, beetle-browed yews that humped their shapes down two sides of the lawn; on the third side, to the right, a greenhouse almost the size of a real house; from each corner of the lawn, a path twisted away to some other depths of garden, with other trees.

    Tom had stepped forward instinctively, catching his breath in surprise; now he let his breath out in a deep sigh. He would steal out here tomorrow, by daylight ... He would run full tilt over the grass, leaping the flower-beds; he would peer through the glittering panes of the greenhouse - perhaps open the door and go in; he would visit each alcove and archway clipped in the yew-trees - he would climb the trees and make his way from one to another through thickly interlacing branches. When they came calling him, he would hide, silent and safe as a bird, among this richness of leaf and bough and tree-trunk."

    That passage is from the Cornflower Book Group's January book. Please join us to read and talk about it.

It caused a mild scandal at the time ...

     "... but in most people's memories it was quite outshone by what succeeded it. You could see it as a drama all played out in a room lit by gas lamps; perhaps with flickering sidelights thrown by a log fire burning brightly at one side of the room, a big Edwardian drawing-room, full of furniture, tables crowded with knick-knacks and framed photographs, people sitting or standing in groups, conversing; and then a fierce electric light thrown back from a room beyond, the next room, into which no one has yet ventured, and this fierce retrospective light through the doorway makes the lamplit room seem shadowy, the flickering flames in the grate pallid, the circles of yellow light round the lamps opaque (a kind of tarnished gold) and the people, well, discernibly people, but people from a long time ago, our parents and grandparents made to seem like beings from a much remoter past, Charlemagne and his knights or the seven sleepers half roused from their thousand year sleep.

    It was an error of judgement which resulted in a death. It took place in the autumn before the outbreak of what used to be known as the Great War."

    That's the opening passage of the Cornflower Book Group's October book; we'll be talking about it from the 26th., and though I ought not to pre-empt the discussion, I will say that I recommend it strongly, and I hope you'll join us.

I am Polly Flint ...

   

     "....I came to live at the yellow house when I was six years old. I stood on the steps in the wind, and the swirls of sand, and my father pulled the brass bell-knob beside the huge front door. Together we listened to the distant jangle and to footsteps padding nearer. My father did a little dance on his short legs, and whistled.

    Then there followed sharp scenes of confusion and dismay. 'Shut the door. Shut the door. The sand, the sand!' and figures stood about the hall on coloured tiles."

    That is the opening of the Cornflower Book Group's September book. You'll find all the details here, and I hope you'll decide to join us in reading it and talking about it.

I have never begun a novel with more misgiving ...

    "... If I call it a novel it is only because I don't know what else to call it. I have little story to tell and I end neither with a death nor a marriage. Death ends all things and so is the comprehensive conclusion of a story, but marriage finishes it very properly too and the sophisticated are ill-advised to sneer at what is by convention termed a happy ending. It is a sound instinct of the common people which persuades them that with this all that needs to be said is said... But I leave my reader in the air. This book consists of my recollections of a man with whom I was thrown into close contact only at long intervals, and I have little knowledge of what happened to him in between. I suppose that by the exercise of invention I could fill the gaps plausibly enough and so make my narrative more coherent; but I have no wish to do that. I only want to set down what I know of my own knowledge."

    That is the opening of our book group's May book. All the details are here, and I hope you'll join us to read and talk about it.

(The image is from the cover and is a detail from The Miramar at Cannes fashion plate by Leon Benigni from Femina, 1928.)

Wistaria and sunshine

    "It began in a woman's club on a February afternoon, - an uncomfortable club, and a miserable afternoon - when Mrs. Wilkins, who had come down from Hampstead to shop and had lunched at her club, took up The Times from the table in the smoking-room, and running her listless eye down the Agony Column saw this:

    To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let Furnished for the month of April. Necessary servants remain. Z, Box 1000, The Times.

    That was its conception; yet, as in the case of many another, the conceiver was unaware of it at the moment."

    That is the opening of the Cornflower Book Group's April book. Here are all the details, and I hope you'll join us in reading it - it should be fun.

Flitting

"It's October, an Indian summer. I'm standing on the threshold like some callow teenager, about to move house for the first time in my life. I've spent more than half a century in this place, in this undistinguished, comfortable town house on the edge of the Chiltern Hills, and had come to think we'd reached a pretty good accomodation. To have all mod cons on the doorstep in the quirkiest patch of countryside in south-east England had always seemed just the job for a rather solitary writing life. I'd use the house as a ground-base, and do my living in the woods, or in my head. I liked to persuade myself, that the Chiltern landscape, with its folds and free-lines and constant sense of surprise, was what had shaped my prose, and maybe me too. But now I'm upping sticks and fleeing to the flatlands of East Anglia.

    My past, or lack of it, had caught up with me. I'd been bogged down in the same place for too long, trapped by habits and memories. I was clotted with rootedness. My Irish grandfather, a day-worker who rarely stayed in one house long enough to pay the rent, knew what to do at times like this. In that word that catches all the shades of escape, from the young bird's flutter from the nest to the dodging of someone in trouble, he'd flit."

    That is the opening passage of the Cornflower Book Group's March book; please come and read it with us - you'll find all the details here.

It was dusk - winter dusk

    "... Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the forest trees. Snow lay piled on the dark road across Willoughby Wold ... Snow lay thick, too, upon the roof of Willoughby Chase, the great house that stood on an open eminence in the heart of the wold...."

                    ~~~~~

    "Marco da Cola, gentleman of Venice, respectfully presents his greetings. I wish to recount the journey which I made to England in the year 1663, the events which I witnessed and the people I met, these being, I hope, of some interest to those concerned with curiosity."

                                            ~~~~~

    Those passages open the books the Cornflower Book Group will be reading for discussion in January and February. If you'd like to join us you'll find all the details here.

The house of dream and imagination

   

    " 'I wish,' he was telling them, 'not just to design a house but to create a whole world. I want to work from the foundations to the interior, the windows, the doorways, the furnishings, the fabric of the place as well as the structure. I will design you a life. Not a mere house to live in, but a whole way of life.' He opened his hands as though the life were there within his grasp. 'Your abode will be a work of art at which people will wonder.' "

    That is an extract from the Cornflower Book Group's November book. You will find all the details here, and I hope you'll join us in reading it - all welcome!

My lover came to me on the last night in April ....

   " .... with a message and a warning that sent me home to him. Put like that, it sounds strange, though it is exactly what happened. When I try to explain, it will no doubt sound stranger still. Let me put it all down in order."

    Please join us to read on!

When the lights went off the accompanist kissed her ...

 

    "... Maybe he had been turning towards her just before it was completely dark, maybe he was lifting his hands. There must have been some movement, a gesture, because every person in the living room would later remember a kiss. They did not see a kiss, that would have been impossible. The darkness that came on them was startling and complete. Not only was everyone there certain of a kiss, they claimed they could identify the type of kiss: it was strong and passionate and it took her by surprise."

    That is the opening passage of the Cornflower Book Group's September book. I hope you'll join us in reading it - you'll find all the details here.