Sunday nights recently have been spent amidst the splendors of one of the stateliest of England’s stately homes, Downton Abbey, the stage name of Highclere Castle.

I have been watching chambermaids in caps and aprons turn down the covers on four poster beds, and a pretty little lady’s maid arrange Lady Mary’s hair. I have eavesdropped on the Dowager Countess, and admired the butler’s determination to see that both family and staff do not let down the side. Whispers of scandal overheard on the back stairs, and in the drawing room make it certain I will tune in the following Sunday.

Life at Highclere Castle as portrayed in this book is even more fascinating. Almina Wombwell, was rumoured to be the illegitimate daughter of the fabulously wealthy Alfred de Rothschild. He settled an enormous dowry on her upon her marriage to the 5th Earl of Carnavon.

There were house parties, shooting weekends, (even the Prince of Wales was once guest of honor), balls and banquets as well as celebrations to which the whole village was invited. Electricity, central heating and indoor plumbing was installed.

There are photographs of Almina with feathered hats perched on her upswept coiffeur, photographs of the eighteen house servants; the men in brass – buttoned livery, the women in black with caps on their heads.

During World War I, Almina opened a private hospital in London and turned Highclere into a place where officers could recover in luxury and comfort. (One wonders what became of wounded enlisted men ?) She threw herself and her fortune into this work, and her influence helped turn nursing into a respectable career for women.

Her husband, the 5th Earl Carnovan, avoided the cold, damp English winters, instead spending time in Egypt. While there he became interested in archeology, and teamed up with Howard Carter. Their partnership eventually uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, one of the greatest discoveries of that ancient era.

Although this book has been written by the current Countess, the world she writes about, the world we see on television as Downton Abbey, seems as remote as the world of the Pharaoh’s.

In 1940, magazine editor Howard Bloomfield, his wife Connie, their baby son, and the family dog set sail on Kittywake, a thirty foot gaff rig sloop – destination Florida.

This is the story of their voyage; the harbors, the towns along the way, the people they met at the docks where they tied up.

My husband and I and our seven year old son had made the same trip in 1968, and this book brought back memories of rivers we’d crossed and anchorages we’d found. Though I imagine the 21st century has brought many changes, or “improvements”, for the comfort and convenience of the boats heading South, the magical names on the charts are still the same: The Alligator, the Ashepoo, Beaufort,Callibogue Sound, Dafuskie, the Dismal Swamp Canal, Hobucken Bridge , Mantanzas inlet, Thunderbolt, Oriental, and back to Oxford, where Bloomfield’s trip ends. Ours had begun from there.

The book describes the challenges as well as the pleasures of compressed living: a stroller crowding the cockpit, the delight of having porpoises swimming beside you, the satisfaction when the wind is on the quarter and the sails are set just right, the joy of feeling solid ground under your feet when you make port.

The Bloomfields pulled it off, decided to put off another such trip until the baby, who had been content to lie snug in his hammock, but was now crawling all over the place, would be able to, “swim, steer, reef, splice … and explain the engine to his father.”

Tall ships have been sailing up the river to Chestertown for several years now to take part in our Downrigging weekend, and there must be many of us watching from land who envy the picturesque way of life by those who sail in them.

Harvey Oxenhorn, student and teacher, no athlete, had volunteered to become part of the crew of Regina Maris. The ship was a barkentine, “with more than three miles of lines and sixteen canvas sails.” She was bound from Boston for the Arctic to study humpbacked whales.

Oxenhorn is assigned the fore watch, bossed by twenty-three year old Joan, who is teaching them knots. He fails the bowline, but finally after many tries and help from David, who’d crewed on skipjacks, learned the slippery clove hitch. “Great,” said Joan, ”of course, when its rough aloft, you’ll want to do that with one hand.”

Oxenhorn gives us a vivid picture of the crowded, uncomfortable conditions, of people learning to live and work together. Although terrified of heights, he learns to climb, and in seven foot seas and soaking rain is paralyzed trying to furl the sails – out on the yard arm and afraid to move.  Once again it  is Dave who comes to his aid.  “On deck I was grateful to Dave but angry with myself . . .Now I dread it worse than before. I’m not sure I can go up again.”

There are descriptions of wind , weather, ice bergs and whales —“Every time I have seen a whale its beauty, power and intelligence have been self evident.”

While reading Tuning the Rig, you are not only a member of the crew, but you are shown skies and seas and shores of intense beauty. This is not a peaceful read; you find yourself holding the book, white knuckled, almost afraid to turn the page, though you know the author survived to write it. It was sad to read that Harvey Oxenhorn was killed in an automobile accident shortly after it came out.

A woman sits beside the bed of her husband who has just died, and struggles to absorb the loss. She thinks of their daughter in far off California, who still believes her father is alive. She remembers her first meeting with him in Paris; an artist and a mathematician.

The novel is written in short, seemingly unrelated paragraphs; snapshots of a marriage that lasted for years. The images come and go as she sits in the dark bedroom. You learn about Nina, you learn about Philip. It’s a love story – not sentimental, with a strangely happy ending.

How was this daffodil fresh young woman with her beautiful, crystal voice able to emerge from the turbulent home life and upbringing she writes of in this memoir ? She began singing professionally when she was 12ish. Her mother broke up the family by joining ranks with a man Julie was told to call Pop. Julie was forced to leave her home, father and brother and join her mother and stepfather as they toured in second rate vaudeville theatres as a musical trio. Alcoholism dulled her mother’s piano playing and her stepfather’s voice, just as Julie’s career surged forward. By her teens she was supporting the whole family; mother, step brothers, and even the step father she disliked.

Her big break came when she was chosen for the Boy Friend, a hit musical in England and America. This led to the role of Eliza in My Fair Lady .The backstage glimpses into behind the scenes of My Fair Lady and her subsequent TV shows are intriguing, as well as Julie’s comments on the theatrical world in which she became a star. She also reveals the strain on her voice from the singing, which sounded so carefree and effortless. The book ends as she flies off to American with husband Tony Walton and baby Emma to become Mary Poppins.

This was one of our favorite Garve’s “thrillers “ My husband and I really liked the sailing parts best, but the tension on the boat and how Leanda and Conway are going to get out from under the clutch of the “Hero” was also great. Though this time, re-reading it, I knew the ending, I had forgotten how it was pulled off, so I was still turning pages feverishly.

The people seemed on the stiff side. I did however like the sketch of English folk and their social life on the Island of Heureuse. Garve very puritanical re: sex. If this had been written today Leanda and Conway would have leapt into the first available bunk at the first available moment, and she probably would have been raped by the “Hero” for good measure. Thank heavens for the restraint of the 50s.

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is the only novel I’ve ever read/seen created from odds and ends: a post card, a map, ads for the latest fashions. Frankie was given a scrapbook when she graduated from high school in 1920, along with her father’s old Corona typewriter. This inspired her to type out her story on squares of paper and paste them in the book alongside an appropriate ad or clipping from a magazine or newspaper. Will Atwater takes her to the movies on her first date. A ticket stub is pasted next to his snapshot, and a drawing of an impossibly handsome man in an ad for an Arrow shirt .

Frankie goes to Vassar, makes friends with sophisticated Allegra who teaches her to smoke, meets Vincent Millay, goes to a dance at Yale.

Each page is a delightful montage, headlines, cartoons, and always ads of young women in the latest fashions. They carry the story along: a map of Greenwich village, the S.S. Mauretania (3rd class), Paris in time to cheer Lindbergh’s landing.

This is a delightful book and I congratulate its author for her (well disguised) scholarship. She has taken us on a light hearted trip through the early years of the twentieth century, with not a foot note in sight.

published 2011

Here’s a very salty novel about an ambitious real estate developer from the Western Shore, (where else?), named Liz. She’s decided her next project is to buy up East Neck Island and turn it into the most luxurious, prestigious, exclusive place in which to build your mansion/cottage. Forget the Hamptons, Newport, Palm Beach, Martha’s Vineyard and Gibson Island.

Her nerd of a husband meanwhile is working on a government project for Universal Solutions Unlimited, so secret nobody knows what it’s about. On the side he’s using nanotechnology to develop mind control techniques.

Over to Rock Hall; watermen Deadeye, Crowbar, Seasnake and his son Junior are casting off the lines of their workboats and heading down the Bay, tonging for oysters. The air waves crackle with their four letter repartee, as they tease Junior about his multiple “marriages” – code word for you know what.

Hurricane Gabriel is sneaking up on these characters, and others equally picturesque, and catches them taking shelter on East Neck Island.

Hoffecker writes elegantly, intelligently and with a wicked wit. He casts a sharp eye on the world of the rich as well as the world of the wish-they–were-rich, and it’s all set in our own back yard.

(pub.2007)

I am ever on the lookout for books which cheer, rather than depress. They seem harder and harder to find nowadays. Then I came upon The Kindness of Strangers with a quaint cover disguised as a well worn leatherbound book.

The Dalai Lama has written the preface. “ I greatly appreciate the theme of this book that gathers stories of kindness received when it was most needed … I am sure they will inspire everyone to take whatever opportunities arise to be kind to others in turn.”

Don George has spent twenty-five years wandering the world and has brought together tales from some of his favorite writers to tell of their own examples of unexpected kindness.

Jan Morris writes of being nursed back to health by a Sherpa family in their smoky hut in Nepal. “I didn’t even know the local words for thank you.”

Pico Iyer writes about being shown the sights of Mandalay by Maung-Maung who had a B.S. in Mathematics but drove a tri-shaw, and was saving his money to get a further certification in Mathmatics.

James Houston,locked his keys in his rental car. Lost on a dark night on the island of Hilo in Hawaii he finds himself face to with a large fierce looking man who straightens a coat hanger that he slips down the car window and unlocks it. “Hey one time maybe I get stuck, you come by, do da same. Everything come round, you know.”

I kept wondering as I read, how these travellers got themselves in their predicaments – wandering away from her group, lost in the Sahara Desert as Amanda Jones was, for Heaven’s sake !

But read on, Gentle Reader. These are tales we need to know about.