Another Book about a House

In "A World Elsewhere," by Wayne Johnston, he tells the story of a quirky, but lovable character who goes by  the name of Landish Druken. He is a sealer's son, sent from Newfoundland to Princeton. There he meets up with the son of the wealthiest family in America. Johnston chooses the fictional name Vanderluyden to describe the young titan; it  is a nod to Edith Wharton who described New York's  reigning family as a holdover from the original Dutch colonialists, who sat atop New York society in a “celestial twilight.”

After an unceremonious end to his Princeton days, young Landish is destined to be tossed about on the winds of fate. Adopting an orphan boy to raise on his own and destitute from having both a drinking and writing problem (he burns every page) he ends up back in Newfoundland as an outcast until reaching out to “Van” who has, by this time, created the famed estate known as Biltmore House.

The house is so vast that Wayne Johnston describes it in segments, wings of the castle, to which Landish and his son are relegated. Rare invitations to Van's library and the journey it takes for them to get there, give you the impression of the size and scope of the place.

The book was gifted to me by my sister Mary, at Christmas. Following a family tradition going back God only knows how long, we give books that, not only we have enjoyed, but ones that tie back to other times and experiences in our lives. My sister explained that, like Wayne Johnston, she was awed, enthralled and wowed by a visit to Biltmore in the presence of our mother, the late Dorothea Smythe.  An Interior Designer, and with a nod to her French ancestry, our mother had a love of finery and beauty that knew no bounds. Naturally, she raved over every room of this beautiful estate and pointed out one exquisite choice after another, as they drifted along through the tour.  Brilliant interiors made her happy and in my mind's eye I can imagine her face lighting up at every turn.

Jan Aertsen Van der Bilt came over from Holland in 1650. It was Cornelius Vanderbilt who lived from 1794-1877, who amassed the great fortune by building railroads. His son, William Henry carried on creating enormous wealth. His son, George Washington Vanderbilt created the estate at Ashland. 
Being a book lover, he shunned New York society in favor of entertaining guests at home.

Beyond the physical description of Bitlmore House, I truly enjoyed Wayne Johnston's engaging  play on words, peppering the novel throughout.  Describing a skit composed at Princeton, entitled “Parodies Lost,” here is one example:

“Alfred Lord Tennyson became Well-Fed lard Venison.  A rotund and burstingly buxom Mary Shelley was carried onstage by Frankenstein. Rudyard Kipling, Rhubarb Nibbling...” and so on.

As I laughed out loud and smiled to myself throughout the book, I also found the story touching and moving. Once finished, I called my sister to thank her for the gift. Reading this book, I felt as if I had been transported to,  “A World Elsewhere.” Now, I too, long to visit Biltmore, and if I get there, let it be in spring when I may see the gardens in their full glory. If not, I have my imagination, and hosts of pictures online for my enjoyment.

 Living in America's finest house, George liked to read and be taken away to foreign lands and faraway climes. I suspect he sat in a comfy chair in front of a blazing fire. When he looked up though, and took a walk to a nearby window, just imagine what went through his mind. I suspect that not even Rhubarb Nibbling could have done Biltmore justice.

The Writer's House

We have heard Charlie Rose interview many writers over the years. He often asks the author to describe his, or her environment. Many readers imagine that the place is somehow part of the inspiration, as if the house gives up the words, and the author just has to keep pace with the ideas. Given to magical thinking, as far back as I can remember, starting with trying to mimic Mary Martin in Peter Pan, and believing I could fly, I am not so sure that the home of any artist does not play a huge part in the creation. In any house in which I have lived, I first walked around trying to imagine where I would put my desk. In my current home, the former owner had set up a sewing counter, complete with drawers underneath, situated by a window facing the lake. In what had been a sun room when our home was built in the twenties, I was immediately drawn in.  I papered my study in blue and white stripes and then ordered a favorite pansy print from Laura Ashley. With my study all set up and ready to go, we put the computer in and soon found that everyone liked it. The kids played games and did their homework there and so it wasn't long before I moved the whole operation to a cozy nook in our bedroom. Over the years, I would come in and find someone sitting there too, but eventually, I reclaimed my initial idea.

My study has a comfortable chair and a sofa, as I sometimes lie down to think. It is a welcoming spot and cheery, as it gets the morning light. Windows on three sides and an alcove in the wall holding books, make it cozy. A corner cabinet has shelves with framed needlework pieces I have done over the years, tea cups and saucers, and  a picture of my beloved sister, Victoria Rose Smythe,  in her hacking jacket, atop her favorite horse called Sir Stafford. Pictures of my grandparents, my children and my mother and father, group shots from weddings, oh, its all here. My great aunt's tea wagon holds my mother's china birds; its as fine a nest as any writer would ever want.

We have reached a time in life when it is time to scale down and move on. It will all have to be recreated. Just as a novel begins with a blank page, a home starts with other peoples paint choices, counter tops and old carpets. The creative process begins anew. I have no doubt that my next writing space will be as charming as this one and that wherever I put it, the ideas will flow. Some writer's like to be closed into a small nook with the drapes drawn and the distractions down to the limit. As for me, I can recall writing with a sleeping baby in a carrier on top of my kitchen table. Virginia Woolf's oft quoted statement of women needing "A Room of One's Own,” hit a cord, because it is almost impossible to achieve! The days when I took to my bed with a cold, often had my husband stretched out reading, a cat and two children up there on the bed with us and the dog curled up on the floor at the side. I would have my computer on a breakfast tray, still trying to get my thoughts down while asking everyone if there was any other place they would rather be. When they would all chime in with, “No,” I considered myself lucky.

Campers like to linger at the their favorite campsite with the last cup of their morning beverage in hand. Striking the tent and dousing the fire, brings it all to a close. The canoes are then loaded, the journey beckons and the point is rounded; we set off into the great unknown.

From Listen to the Salutation to the Dawn, I am reminded of these words: “For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision, but today, well spent, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.”

Pictured above is the view from my study.  My home where I raised my children and wrote two books, will enter a new era, just as we set off on another adventure. This place will always remain with me in my mind, and I will always love it and think of it as my house of dreams. As the future beckons and as we begin another chapter in our lives, the one constant is my cherished Idaho and my beloved Lake Coeur d' Alene. I look forward to knowing it more deeply and more fully.

Fiction / Figure Skating

As writers, we are all too familiar with the wall. The work may be flying along at a healthy clip and then suddenly, one tends to hit a wall. This depressing, all too frequent occurrence has a nasty little friend that comes along side it: fear.

Many articles are written about the wall. How to kick through it and keep going, may be a matter of individual preference, but I can only attest to what seems to work for me, and I have tried everything.

Sometimes it is the association of words that set off the trigger. When spell check came along, I think I found my best friend, not for the obvious reason. The list of words with similar sounds does something to my brain. When searching for names, or seeing names come up in spell check, it never ceases to astound me that a list of verbs, so characteristic to that person, pop up on my screen. In the process of writing a memoir, I changed the surname of my family, but the original, namely Smythe, brings up smother, smite and smote. These words have an eerie similarity with the theme of my early life.

Casting about for a topic sent me searching and brought up the word association of fiction/figure skating. Pop goes the weasel. To understand the labyrinth of my thought process, I will part the mists of time and take you back to the early days of the sport. Long before television executives were astounded by the number of viewers tuned in to the skating portion of the winter Olympics, it was a curious, obscure and often weird pursuit, full of excruciating pain and boundless effort. The yield came to almost nothing, but the title of champion for the best, and an annual show involving copious sequins for the rest. The marks consisted of a compilation of school figures at sixty per cent, and the estimable beauty of the free skate at forty. Learning the school figures began early, at the age of six, with the simple figure eight.

Time spent in this endeavor meant the rink had to be divided into patches, with each student designated to their own square. We had to take to the ice in silence and remain quiet for the hour devoted to practicing our figure eights. Like monks, we dutifully obeyed the rule of silence as the penalty for speaking was severe.

You set out from the center skating on the right foot. The art of tracing a perfect circle in the gleaming and pristeen square meant your blade would carve a tracing on the ice. The task seemed impossible, but lessons taught that you had to concentrate with every fiber of your scatterbrained mind in order to get it just right. At the top of the first circle, you slowly moved your left leg forward while reversing the position of your arms. If you did this too quickly, it would throw you off and the tracing would start to wobble. It was the scale, the perfection and the wavering upon which you would be judged. Severe, much older, sour looking people wearing Russian hats would sometimes get down on their knees with magnifying glasses to score the perfection, or lack thereof for the school figures.

What does this have to do with writing? It was there that I began. In the silence, on the cold ice, with my body taught, my skates locked into the task of drawing with my foot, the tracing of a perfect circle, one on top of another, that my creativity was born. I began to make up stories and long conversations with imaginary friends in order to cope with the torture of remaining silent.

Doris Lessing said that when she wrote, she had to make herself still and then search for that underwater feeling. I go for the early training. Patch. Silence. Contemplating, and concentrating on two perfect circles the top drawn with my right foot, the bottom with my left. Get enough speed to get around, but not too much so that you wobble, control the change from right to left, look to the center at all times and then wait for the judges to come in.