Memories or Impressions of England
“ENGLAND AND AMERICA ARE TWO COUNTRIES SEPARATED BY THE SAME LANGUAGE” –George Bernard Shaw.
Indeed, any visitor from one country to the other knows how different they truly are. Still, no one who loves reading literature in English can feel neutral towards the land where it was born and continues to flourish, often in the hands of authors with roots far from England itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
(From Richard II, Act 2)
If you've lived in or visited England, please share your most vivid memory in your blog this week. If you haven't visited, how did you come by your most powerful impression of Shakespeare's "scepter'd isle"? Red Room is an international community, and we're especially eager to hear from bloggers from Ireland, India, Australia, and other places with a complex connection to England. Please tag your post "England blog."
A few bloggers will receive books by English authors. A Lesson in Secrets is the newest installation in Jacqueline Winspear's series of between-the-wars mysteries starring detective Maisie Dobbs. "As the storm clouds of World War II gather on the horizon, this pivotal chapter in the life of Maisie Dobbs foreshadows new challenges and powerful enemies facing the psychologist and investigator—and will engage new readers and loyal fans of this "outstanding" series (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review)."
From a novel very much set in an England of the past we go to a novel very much set in a part of the world still dealing with having been part of the British Empire. Standing at the Crossroads is English author Charles Davis's novel set in war-torn Sudan. As the two protagonists—a white woman and a black man united by their love of learning—are pursued across the mountains, they discover an unlikely love that is of itself their best riposte to the fanatics who want to kill them.
So post a blog entry today about Red Room's topic of the week
"memories or impressions of England"
For help on how to blog, please see the directions here. We'll choose one of these blog posts to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week. Post your entry by Friday at 10:30 a.m. PST (GMT-08:00) for consideration, and be sure to tag it with the keyword term England blog in the Blog Keyword Tags field so we can find it. (Please don't forget the exact tag. For more information about tags, click here.)
Don't miss last week's "most interesting ancestor" blog posts, by the way. Stories ranged from a father and son bonding over an ancestor who fought in the wars for Italian unification to a visit to two 19th century cemeteries that tell a story of slavery.
Finally, we'll announce the results of last week's Writing Retreat in the Redwoods contest very soon! We were overwhelmed and grateful for the number of entrants, and look forward to hearing how the winner used his or her week to make great progress on his or her writing.
Thanks as always for blogging!
-Huntington W. Sharp, Senior Editor, Red Room
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Memories of England
I studied in England during the fall of 2005 and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was an adventure. I felt like the super hero Adam Strange, an ordinary man on his home planet of Earth but a hero on the planet Rann. England was my Rann. I was there when England defeated Australia in the Ashes. My flatmates and I took one of the signs from the celebration and hung it in our flat. I experienced theater of all different types, whether it be standing for a couple of hours at the Globe or the intimacy of the Orange Theater you were so close to the performance that it was like being on stage. I experienced history when I visited museums or historical sites like Bath. Have you ever drank a full glass of water from the hot spring? You feel good afterword. You feel cleansed. There's no other way to describe it. I met great people over there. People who had the same interests as me but with a different perspective. People who I still keep in touch with to this day. When I came home it was like Frodo returning to the shire. I was a different person, a richer person. I was richer because of my experience and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Butterflies Abounding
In the mid-eighties, I flew to London to attend a friend's wedding. This was my first foreign-land trip alone, having been through a divorce several years earlier. The morning after the wedding, I checked out of the hotel and picked up a rental car. (When asked by incredulous friends if I understood that the Brits drove on the "other" side of the road, I smiled. Being left-handed, their mode of driving felt natural to me!) Confident that I could do this, yet nervous to be heading away from friends alone and without hotel reservations, I drove out of the agency and followed road signs toward the highway. Safely on the autoroute, I picked up speed and drove north toward the Lake District. After highschool and college English classes, and two well-worn Norton anthologies to prove it, I wanted to see the villages of the poets. I was several hours out of London when I decided to exit the highway and do a little exploring. I found myself on a country road barely wide enough for one mid-sized car. Driving slowly around many blind curves, I saw in the distance, waving above towering wheatfields, a flurry of bright yellow objects. Slowing even more, I came around another curve and stopped. Before me was an Indian family: father, mother, grandparents, children. The men wore white suits of trousers and shirts, the women were in saris of magnificent colors, flowing silks, a stark contrast to the pale wheat. The children, too, were clothed in loose-flowing and colorful outfits. What added to this pallette were the long poles held by all of them...poles topped by lemon-colored butterfly nets. I finally inched along, and we waved to one another as I passed. I remember thinking how joyful they seemed, this family out for a butterly walk. I returned to the highway and continued north. It was several minutes before I realized that I was crying. At first I believed that I was crying for the marriage and family life I once believed I would have, but then it struck me: I was crying because, for the first time in my life, I was experiencing what it felt to be free. Free of stress, free of family responsibility, free to create a new life. Looking back, it would be easy to credit the butterflies, but in truth it was the nets, the way they waved above the wheatfields and colored the landscape. And that joyful Indian family celebrating life on an isolated country road in England.