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Biography & Autobiography.
Nonfiction.
As heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week 'There is always in our minds the hope that we may find again those golden unhastening days and wake up and dream' In this beautifully nostalgic memoir, eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on 'The Grange', where her grandfather, the celebrated painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the cultivated tone, Thirkell also reminisces about her parents' home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat, where Angela's cousin, Rudyard Kipling, lived across the green. A tale of forbidden explorations, Punch and Judy shows, and adventures in the garden, Three Houses is beautifully evocative of the innocent quality of childhood. From the busy literary centre of London to the English coast, this stunning memoir is both reminiscent of the golden days of youth and an interesting vision of a writer and the early influences that informed her later work.… (more)
Ugh. I guess I'm too American for this. Class snobbery, and cultural references unfamiliar to me. I agree it would have been lovely to hear Kipling read [b:Just So Stories|34053|Just So Stories|Rudyard Kipling|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546075870l/34053._SY75_.jpg|2475078] aloud, but even those, Best Beloved, have become too dated to recommend.
This memoir of early childhood was published before Angela Thirkell had established herself as a popular novelist. It was an entertaining read, with its nostalgia for carefree days of exploring her grandparents' sprawling, oddly composed house with her siblings and cousins. Thirkell's grandfather was the pre-Raphaelite artist, Edward Burne-Jones, who collaborated with William Morris on stained glass windows, as well as making a name for himself as a painter. As a child, Angela was sometimes allowed to sit in her grandfather's studio while he worked. She was also related through her mother to Stanley Baldwin and to Rudyard Kipling, whose daughter Josephine was her best friend during brief happy holiday intervals at North End House and The Elms, before Josephine tragically died at a very young age. As with most memoirs, it is hard to imagine remembering so much of one's childhood, or that so many marvelous and memorable things could have happened in such a short time. But it is delightful to surrender to the author's tales, just as she and her contemporaries did to "Uncle Ruddy's" renditions of his "Just So Stories". ( )
A sweet but not saccharine recollection of a happy Victorian childhood in England, replete with stern nannies, sausage breakfasts, loving parents, and indulgent grandparents.
In the summer of 1751 Samuel Richardson invited a party of friends to his country house at North End to hear a reading of the manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison in the grotto.
Quotations
‘One occupation I can thoroughly recommend if your heartless parents send you to bed while it is still light. You lick your finger and rub it up and down on the Morris wallpaper. Presently the paper begins to come off in rolls and you can do this till you have removed so much of the pattern that your mother notices it.’
As I look back on the furniture of my grandparents' [Edward Burne-Jones and Georgiana] houses I marvel chiefly at the lack of comfort which the P-R Brotherhood succeeded in creating for itself. It was not, I think, so much that they actively despised comfort, as that the word conveyed absolutely nothing to them whatever. I can truthfully say that at neither was there a single chair that invited to repose ... the sofas were simply long low tables with a little balustrade round two, or sometimes 3 sides ... the best was too short to lie on ... massive washing-stands apt to fall heavily forward on to a small child ... beds ... it can only have been the physical vigour and perfect health of their original designers that made them believe their work was fit to sleep in.
Last words
The room was luminous with sunlight penetrating the blue Morris chintz and I could quite well see my angel at the foot of my bed pulling away the curtain of darkness to let in the light, till at last I fell fast asleep.
Biography & Autobiography.
Nonfiction.
As heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week 'There is always in our minds the hope that we may find again those golden unhastening days and wake up and dream' In this beautifully nostalgic memoir, eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on 'The Grange', where her grandfather, the celebrated painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the cultivated tone, Thirkell also reminisces about her parents' home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat, where Angela's cousin, Rudyard Kipling, lived across the green. A tale of forbidden explorations, Punch and Judy shows, and adventures in the garden, Three Houses is beautifully evocative of the innocent quality of childhood. From the busy literary centre of London to the English coast, this stunning memoir is both reminiscent of the golden days of youth and an interesting vision of a writer and the early influences that informed her later work.
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Book description
Describes the three places in which Angela Thirkell spent her childhood: The Grange, North End; the Greyhound, Kensington; and Rottingdean, Sussex.
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Wikipedia in English
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LFL find. September 2024