Reading Enchanted Elizabeth with scones

  • I blame Greg.

    I wasn’t going to spend Cheese­fare Sun­day hav­ing any­thing all that spe­cial or rich. But then, Greg announced a belated birth­day present of Eng­lish clot­ted cream, which he KNOWS can only go with scones and jam. And Good Sis­ter Lynn had sent me my favorite tea (Har­ney & Sons Eight At the Fort) and demer­ara sugar cubes. So what’s a per­son to do? Am I made out of stone? Before I knew it, I was off on one of those faux-British, faux-Victorian tears that Lynn describes as “twee.”

    And I knew just who I was going to share my spe­cial treat with — author Eliz­a­beth von Arnim. She was the author of my favorite movie, “Enchanted April,” and I recently found out that I could get all her books on the Kin­dle for free. She’s quickly become a favorite per­son to share a pot of tea with.

    Here’s a sample:

    (on going into her gar­den just before dawn) …

    It was won­der­fully quiet, and the nightin­gale on the horn­beam had every­thing to itself as I sat motion­less watch­ing that glow in the east burn­ing red­der, won­der­fully quiet and so won­der­fully beau­ti­ful because one asso­ciates day­light with peo­ple, and voices, and bus­tle, and hur­ry­ings to and fro, and the drea­ri­ness of work­ing to feed our bod­ies, and feed­ing our bod­ies that we may be able to work to feed them again.

    But here was the world wide awake and yet only for me, all the fresh pure air only for me, all the fra­grance breathed only by me — not a liv­ing soul hear­ing the nightin­gale but me, the sun in a few moments com­ing up to warm only me, and nowhere a sin­gle hard word being spo­ken, or a sin­gle self­ish act being done, nowhere any­thing that could tar­nish the blessed purity of the world as God has given it us.

    If one believed in angels, one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and can­not hurt each other, and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind. The doors shut, and the lights go out, and the sharpest tongue is silent, and all of us, scolder and scolded, happy and unhappy, mas­ter and slave, judge and cul­prit, are chil­dren again — tired and hushed and help­less and forgiven.

    Blessed feast to all!

     


    Related posts:

    1. Life as it should be
    2. Bush tea and the snif­fles with Mma Ramotswe
    3. Home sick, read­ing about spice
    5. My tea tree

    February 26th, 2012 | Grace | 2 Comments | Tags: , , , ,

2 Responses and Counting...

  • pho­tini 02.26.2012

    uuum­mmm. Scones and clot­ted cream. I wish I hadn’t read this. Now I have to wait until Pascha!

  • Grace

    I know. It was kind of a bad thing to do. I’m obvi­ously too much of a sucker for a good tea break to think things through.

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