from Letters from Father Christmas (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Cliff House,

North Pole,

Christmas 1943

My dear Priscilla

            A very happy Christmas!  I suppose you will be hanging up your stocking just once more: I hope so for I have still a few little things for you.  After this I shall have to say "goodbye", more or less: I mean, I shall not forget you.  We always keep the old numbers of our old friends, and their letters; and later on we hope to come back when they are grown up and have houses of their own and children.

    My messengers tell me that people call it "grim" this year.  I think they mean miserable: and so it is, I fear, in very many places where I was specially fond of going; but I am very glad to hear that you are still not really miserable.  Don't be!  I am still very much alive, and shall come back again soon, as merry as ever.  There has been no damage in my country; and though my stocks are running rather low I hope soon to put that right.

    Polar Bear - too "tired" to write himself (so he says) - 

I am, reely

sends a special message to you: love and a hug!  He says: do ask if she still has a bear called Silly Billy, or something like that; or is he worn out?

    Give my love to the others: John and Michael and Christopher - and of course to all your pets that you used to tell me about.

    As I have not got very many of the things you usually want, I am sending you some nice bright clean money - I have lots of that (more than you have, I expect; but it is not very much use to me, perhaps it will be to you).  You might find it useful to buy a book with that you really want.

    Very much love from your old friend,

            Father Christmas.

from Grimble, chapter 1, Monday (Clement Freud)

At school he got lunch; that was the orderly part of his life. Shepherd's pie or sausages and mashed potatoes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday; and on Fridays, fish fingers. This was followed by chocolate spodge – which is a mixture between chocolate sponge and chocolate sludge, and does not taste of anything very much except custard – which the school cook poured over everything.

from a letter to Cassandra Austen, 8-9 September 1816 (Jane Austen)

How good Mrs West could have written such books and collected so many hard works, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment!  Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.

Blackberry-Picking (Seamus Heaney)

for Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

from Augustine and the Fundamentalist's Daughter, chapter 5, Staying Is Nowhere (Margaret R. Miles)

After my first divorce, when I was poor and alone, I learned to console myself by thinking of people who were rich and happy in love.  Remembering this condition, recognizing its actual existence somewhere in the world, made me happy too.  To imagine those feelings was to participate in them.  That learning, over forty years ago, still helps me when I feel anguish over my inability to help my son, and suffer from the irony that I have spent my life teaching other people's children.  But I can help others' children, and so I do.  And I hope that, in the broader generosity of the universe, there will be someone who can help my son.  I endeavor to rest in the knowledge of this"enough", enough to go around, enough for all, if we will only cease trying to stipulate from whom/where it must come, but simply wait with confidence and accept with gratitude.

from Brideshead Revisited, book I, Et in Arcadia Ego, chapter eight (Evelyn Waugh)

'They've closed the chapel at Brideshead, Bridey and the Bishop; Mummy's requiem was the last mass said there. After she was buried the priest came in - I was there alone. I don't think he saw me - and took out the altar stone and put it in his bag; then he burned the wads of wool with the holy oil on them and threw the ash outside; he emptied the holy water stoup and blew out the lamp in the sanctuary and left the tabernacle open and empty, as though from now on it was always to be Good Friday. I suppose none of this makes any sense to you, Charles, poor agnostic. I stayed there till he was gone, and then, suddenly, there wasn't any chapel there any more, just an oddly decorated room. I can't tell you what it felt like. You've never been to Tenebrae, I suppose?'

'Never.'

'Well, if you had you'd know what the Jews felt about their temple. Quomodo sedet sola civitas ... it's a beautiful chant. You ought to go once, just to hear it.'

from The Long Winter, chapter 30, It Can't Beat Us

Winter had lasted so long that it seemed it would never end. It seemed that they would never really wake up.

In the morning Laura got out of bed into the cold. She dressed downstairs by the fire that Pa had kindled before he went to the stable. They ate their coarse brown bread. Then all day long she and Ma and Mary ground wheat and twisted hay as fast as they could. The fire must not go out; it was very cold. They ate some coarse brown bread. Then Laura crawled into the cold bed and shivered until she grew warm enough to sleep.

Next morning she got out of bed into the cold. She dressed in the chilly kitchen by the fire. She ate her coarse brown bread. She took her turns at grinding wheat and twisting hay. But she did not ever feel awake. She felt beaten by the cold and the storms.

She knew she was dull and stupid but she could not wake up.

There were no more lessons. There was nothing in the world but cold and dark and work and coarse brown bread and winds blowing. The storm was always there, outside the walls, waiting sometimes, then pouncing, shaking the house, roaring, snarling, and screaming in rage.

Out of bed in the morning to hurry down and dress by the fire. Then work all day to crawl into a cold bed at night and fall asleep as soon as she grew warm. The winter had lasted so long. It would never end.

from Peter Duck, chapter XVI, The Madeiras at Dusk (Arthur Ransome)

There was always something to see. And, besides, there was always something to do. Susan and Peggy were busy from morning to night with their cooking and housekeeping. 'Shipkeeping, it ought to be called,' as Roger pointed out one day when Susan said she was too busy housekeeping to knit a stocking cap for Gibber. Gibber, by the way, got his stocking cap all right, but it was knitted by Peter Duck when he had finished darning his socks. He knitted it from blue wool, on the pattern of his own, and Susan, when she saw it, let shipkeeping go hang while she made a red woollen tassel to go on the top of it.

Every day the main water tank had to be filled up from the small screw-top tanks that were stored under the flooring down below. In this way Susan was able to keep count of exactly how much water they were using. She never had been very good at sums, and neither had Peggy, but long before the end of that voyage nobody could have found fault with their additions and subtractions and divisions. They were calculating all the time, and often Susan would wake up in the early morning thinking that one of the sums had gone wrong, and then she would sit up in her bunk and work it out again, and tell Titty about it, and Titty, in the bunk below, would also have a go with pencil and paper, trying to help. Inside the deckhouse door there was a card, and every time one of those tins from down below was emptied into the main tank, Susan used to tick it off on this card, so that Captain Flint, too, was able to keep an eye on the way the water was going. They were very careful about the water, doing most of their washing in salt water, using special salt-water soap. It did not make much of a lather, and it left them feeling rather sticky, but anything was better than running short of drinking water. And in the end, Captain Flint said that it was all due to Susan that things went off so well. If she had not been so careful with the water they could never have done what they did.

from Anne of Green Gables, chapter 18, Anne to the Rescue (L.M. Montgomery)

Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Diana Barry, white-faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her head. Anne promptly let go of her candle and plate in her surprise, and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder and were found at the bottom embedded in melted grease, the next day, by Marilla, who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn’t been set on fire.

“Whatever is the matter, Diana?” cried Anne. “Has your mother relented at last?”

 “Oh, Anne, do come quick,” implored Diana nervously. “Minnie May is awful sick—she’s got croup. Young Mary Joe says—and Father and Mother are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn’t know what to do—and oh, Anne, I’m so scared!”

Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past Diana and away into the darkness of the yard.

“He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor,” said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. “I know it as well as if he’d said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits I can read his thoughts without words at all.”

“I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,” sobbed Diana. “I know that Dr. Blair went to town and I guess Dr. Spencer would go too. Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Lynde is away. Oh, Anne!”

“Don’t cry, Di,” said Anne cheerily. “I know exactly what to do for croup. You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When you look after three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle—you mayn’t have any at your house. Come on now.”

The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through Lovers’ Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too deep to go by the shorter wood way. Anne, although sincerely sorry for Minnie May, was far from being insensible to the romance of the situation and to the sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a kindred spirit.

The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend who had been so long estranged.

Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard all over the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl from the creek, whom Mrs. Barry had engaged to stay with the children during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it.

Anne went to work with skill and promptness.

“Minnie May has croup all right; she’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen them worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Diana, there isn’t more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I’ve filled it up, and, Mary Joe, you may put some wood in the stove. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if you’d any imagination. Now, I’ll undress Minnie May and put her to bed and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Diana. I’m going to give her a dose of ipecac first of all.”

Minnie May did not take kindly to the ipecac but Anne had not brought up three pairs of twins for nothing. Down that ipecac went, not only once, but many times during the long, anxious night when the two little girls worked patiently over the suffering Minnie May, and Young Mary Joe, honestly anxious to do all she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated more water than would have been needed for a hospital of croupy babies.

It was three o’clock when Matthew came with a doctor, for he had been obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need for assistance was past. Minnie May was much better and was sleeping soundly.

“I was awfully near giving up in despair,” explained Anne. “She got worse and worse until she was sicker than ever the Hammond twins were, even the last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death. I gave her every drop of ipecac in that bottle and when the last dose went down I said to myself—not to Diana or Young Mary Joe, because I didn’t want to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had to say it to myself just to relieve my feelings—‘This is the last lingering hope and I fear ’tis a vain one.’ But in about three minutes she coughed up the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must just imagine my relief, doctor, because I can’t express it in words. You know there are some things that cannot be expressed in words.”

“Yes, I know,” nodded the doctor. He looked at Anne as if he were thinking some things about her that couldn’t be expressed in words. Later on, however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Barry.

“That little redheaded girl they have over at Cuthbert’s is as smart as they make ‘em. I tell you she saved that baby’s life, for it would have been too late by the time I got there. She seems to have a skill and presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case out to me.”

Anne had gone home in the wonderful, white-frosted winter morning, heavy eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Matthew as they crossed the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy arch of the Lovers’ Lane maples.

“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it? Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath—pouf! I’m so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And I’m so glad Mrs. Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn’t I mightn’t have known what to do for Minnie May. I’m real sorry I was ever cross with Mrs. Hammond for having twins.”

from Still Life, chapter 12, Behold the Child (A.S. Byatt)

It was agreed that Stephanie should have some time to herself, to work.  It was agreed, largely by Daniel, that Daniel's Mum and Marcus would mind William whilst she did an hour or two in Blesford public library ... Stephanie felt that she was being accused of desertion by some powerful representative of motherhood ...

Stephanie found it physically hard to pedal her bicycle away from the house.  She felt held as by a long linen binder, such as mill children had worn to work machinery, to the shape of her son in his woven basket, one fist in his small ear.  She seemed to hear, to feel, to smell powerful calling sounds, rufflings of the air, odours, which wanted her back, insisted that she must return.  She put down rational foot after rational foot, with difficulty.

-

In the library, Stephanie laid out her books.  Never before had she attempted to work without the outside sanction of an essay to write, an exam to pass, a class to prepare ...

She decided to read the 'Immortality Ode', just to read, clearly ... She felt panic.  She had with some pain cleared this small space and time to think in and now thought seemed impossible.  She remembered from what now seemed the astonishing free and spacious days of her education the phenomenon of the first day's work on a task.  One had to peel one's mind from its run of preoccupations: coffee to buy, am I in love, the yellow dress needs cleaning, Tim is unhappy, what is wrong with Marcus, how shall I live my life?  It took time before the task in hand seemed possible, and more before it came to life, and more still before it became imperative and obsessive.  There had to be a time before thought, a wool-gathering time when nothing happened, a time of yawning, of wandering eyes and feet, of reluctance to do what would finally become delightful and energetic.  Threads of thought had to rise and be gathered and catch on other threads of old thought, from some unused memory store.  She had snatched from Marcus and Daniel's Mum, worse, from William whose physical being filled her inner eye and almost all her immediate memory, barely time for this vacancy, let alone for the subsequent concentration.  She told herself she must learn to do without the vacancy if she was to survive.  She must be cunning.  She must learn to think in bus queues, in buses, in lavatories, between table and sink.  It was hard.  She was tired.  She yawned.  Time moved on.

-

... And yet her mind lifted: she had thought, she had seen clearly the relation between the parts played by the child-player and the confinement and depth.  She felt a moment of freedom, looked at her watch, saw that there was no more time to write this down or work it out ...

-

Stephanie, her mind on the platonic aspects of the 'Immortality Ode', her body extremely anxious about William, came through the front door.

There was a terrible silence and then Stephanie, books flung down, had scooped up her still son, who, simply winded, began to scream ...

-

Stephanie kissed the graze and wept.  There is something peculiarly distressing about the first wound on new skin.

from Gaudy Night, chapter 11 (Dorothy L. Sayers)

The only member missing from the Senior Common Room was Mrs Goodwin, whose small son (a most unfortunate child) had come out with measles immediately upon his return to school and again required his mother's nursing.

'Of course she can't help it,' said the Dean, 'but it's a very great nuisance, just at the beginning of the Summer Term.  If I'd only known, I could have come back earlier.'

'I don't see,' observed Miss Hillyard, grimly, 'what else you can expect, if you give jobs to widows with children.  You have to be prepared for these perpetual interruptions.  And for some reason, these domestic pre-occupations always have to be put before the work.'

'Well,' said the Dean, 'one must put work aside in a case of serious illness.'

'But all children get measles.'

'Yes; but he's not a very strong child, you know.  His father was tubercular, poor man - in fact, that's what he died of - and if measles should turn to pneumonia, as it so often does, the consequences might be serious.'

'But has it turned to pneumonia?'

'They're afraid it may.  He's got it very badly.  And, as he's a nervous little creature, he naturally likes to have his mother with him.  And in any case, she'd be in quarantine.'

'The longer she stays with him, the longer she'll be in quarantine.'

'It's very tiresome, of course,' put in Miss Lydgate, mildly.  'But if Mrs Goodwin had isolated herself and come back at the earliest possible moment - as she very bravely offered to do - she would have been suffering a great deal of anxiety.'

'A great many of us have to suffer anxiety in one way or another,' said Miss Hillyard, sharply.  'I have been very anxious about my sister.  It is always an anxious business to have a first baby at thirty-five.  But if the event had happened to occur in term-time, it would have had to take place without my assistance.'

'It is always difficult to say which duty one should put first,' said Miss Pyke.  'Each case must be decided individually.  I presume that, in bringing children into the world, one accepts a certain responsibility towards them.'

'I'm not denying it,' said Miss Hillyard.  'But if the domestic responsibility is to take precedence of the public responsibility, then the work should be handed over to someone else to do.'

'But the children must be fed and clothed,' said Miss Edwards.

'Quite so.  But the mother should not take a resident post.'

'Mrs Goodwin is an excellent secretary,' said the Dean.  'I should be very sorry to lose her.  And it's nice to think that we are able to help her in her very difficult position.'

Miss Hillyard lost patience.

'The fact is, though you will never admit it, that everybody in this place has an inferiority complex about married women and children.  For all your talk about careers and independence, you all believe in your hearts that we ought to abase ourselves before any woman who has fulfilled her animal functions.'

'That is absolute nonsense,' said the Bursar.

'It is natural, I suppose, to feel that married women lead a fuller life,' began Miss Lydgate.

'And a more useful one,' retorted Miss Hillyard.  'Look at the fuss that's made over "Shrewsbury grandchildren"!  Look how delighted you all are when old members get married!  As if you were saying "Aha! education doesn't unfit us for real life after all!  And when a really brilliant scholar throws away all her prospects to marry a curate, you say perfunctorily, "What a pity!  But of course her own life must come first."'

'I've never said such a thing,' cried the Dean indignantly.  'I always say they're perfect fools to marry.'

'I shouldn't mind,' said Miss Hillyard, unheeding, 'if you said openly that intellectual interests were only a second-best; but you pretend to put them first in theory and are ashamed of them in practice.'

'There's no need to get so heated about it,' said Miss Barton, breaking in upon the angry protest of Miss Pyke.  'After all, some of us may have deliberately chosen not to marry.  And, if you will forgive my saying so -'

At this ominous phrase, always the prelude to something quite unforgiveable, Harriet and the Dean broke hastily into the discussion.

'Considering that we are devoting our whole lives -'

'Even for a man, it is not always easy to say -'

Their common readiness confronted their good intention.  Each broke off and begged the other's pardon, and Miss Barton went on unchecked:

'It is not altogether wise - or convincing - to show so much animus against married women.  It was the same unreasonable prejudice that made you get that scout removed from your staircase -'

'I object,' said Miss Hillyard, with a heightened colour, 'to preferential treatment.  I do not see why we should put up with slackness on duty because a servant or a secretary happens to be a widow with children.   I do not see why Annie should be given a room to herself in the Scouts' Wing, and charge over a corridor, when servants who have been here for longer than she has have to be content to share a room.  I do not -'

'Well,' said Miss Stevens, 'I think she is entitled to a little consideration.  A woman who has been accustomed to a nice home of her own -'

'Very likely,' said Miss Hillyard.  'At any rate, it was not my lack of consideration that led to her precious children being placed in the charge of a common thief.'

'I was always against that,' said the Dean.

'And why did you give in?  Because poor Mrs Jukes was such a nice woman and had a family to keep.  She must be considered and rewarded for being fool enough to marry a scoundrel.  What's the good of pretending that you put the interests of the College first, when you hesitate for two whole terms about getting rid of a dishonest porter, because you're so sorry for his family?'

'There,' said Miss Allison, 'I entirely agree with you.  The College ought to come first in a case like that.'

'It ought always to come first.  Mrs Goodwin ought to see it, and resign her post if she can't carry out her duties properly.'  She stood up.  'Perhaps, however, it is as well that she should be away and stay away.  You may remember that, last time she was away, we had no trouble from anonymous letters or monkey-tricks.'

Miss Hillyard put down her coffee-cup and stalked out of the room.  Everybody looked uncomfortable.

'Bless my heart!' said the Dean.

'Something very wrong there,' said Miss Edwards, bluntly.

'She's so prejudiced,' said Miss Lydgate.  'I always think it's a very great pity she never married.' 

Miss Lydgate had a way of putting into language that a child could understand things which other people did not say, or said otherwise.

'I should be sorry for the man, I must say,' observed Miss Shaw; 'but perhaps I am showing an undue consideration for the male sex.  One is almost afraid to open one's mouth.'

'Poor Mrs Goodwin!' exclaimed the Bursar.  'The very last person!'

She got up angrily and went out.  Miss Lydgate followed her.  Miss Chilperic, who had said nothing, but looked quite alarmed, murmured that she must get along to work.  The Common Room slowly cleared, and Harriet was left with the Dean.

'Miss Lydgate has the most terrifying way of hitting the nail on the head,' said Miss Martin; 'because it is obviously much more likely that -'

'A great deal more likely,' said Harriet.