Bidding farewell to Mrs. Appleyard

You may have noticed that Mrs. Appleyard hasn't made an appearance here since April. I have thought about the book a few times over the summer, but just didn't have time to sit down with it. At least I thought that was the reason. However, I did read seven print books during those months, so I clearly made a choice to read them instead of Mrs. Appleyard's Year. Today, while Hazel Nina was napping, I thought I would pick it up and read May through August and write a little blog post called 'catching up with Mrs. Appleyard.'

I began the May entry, and I just wasn't interested. I skipped ahead a bit, and I still had the same feeling. I think that what I felt was witty in the earlier chapters became tedious later on - as if the author were trying too hard to be cute. Over the years, I have read and enjoyed a few Mrs. A. books, but this is clearly not one of them, so I'm saying adieu to her and giving the book to a library sale.

A Year with Mrs. Appleyard - April

This month’s entry is purely whimsical - a story told to her by man who heard it from his cousin who knew a cousin of the man who cut down the overgrown forsythia bushes at the Arboretum in Jamaica Plain, outside of Boston. Though she suspects it isn’t true, 

when she likes a story she never investigates it. 

Mrs. Appleyard loves forsythias, and 

wonders how people got along in the world before William Forsyth brought this flowering shrub from China. Without the yellow starred sprays that droop over walls, without the tangled thickets that catch the sunlight and hold it, without the patches that seem like sunshine itself on gray days, the time before the leaves come would be bleak indeed.

The forsythias of the story were “so old that they had grown into each other.” When the flowers went by, the leaves filled the branches, “thick enough to keep out rain and hot sun.” The man who passes along this tale said that when the bushes were cut down, they found a whole family of Italians living there. “My cousin says it was their summer cottage.”

Well, Mrs. Appleyard takes such a fancy to this notion that she begins to invent a whole life around this family, which she calls, fittingly enough, the Forsythia family. They lived in the North End of Boston the rest of the year, and settled in their forsythia ‘cave’ during the hot summer months. Some of them worked in the city, and would leave the Arboretum when the gates opened in the morning. Mr. Forsythia kept a fruit and vegetable shop, and 

Doubtless he would often bring home a bag of bananas or tomatoes. They would ripen splendidly in the pleasant twilight and even temperature of the cave.

They did their washing at the edge of the pond. The older son “that rising young stonemason” builds a fireplace upon which his mother “makes an especially succulent variety of spaghetti.” An older daughter worked in a beauty shop and brought home bread.

In fact, the whole thing was idyllic and Mrs. Appleyard thinks it was a great pity that the shrubs were ever cut down. However, they are responding to their pruning and perhaps in a few years …

And thus ends the April installment. What a lovely little children’s book this would make, with delightful illustrations of the Forsythia family and their home and activities. I was utterly enchanted.

You may read about the Arnold Arboretum here. And though this photo is not from the Arboretum, it gives me the feeling that a cozy home could be made underneath the tangle of branches.

A Year with Mrs. Appleyard - March

Mrs. Appleyard doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to expressing her feelings about the month of March! 

No matter how often she encounters this month, she thinks she’ll never live through it. Sometimes she doesn’t care whether she does. Just what it is about March she doesn’t quite know. It blows grit in your eyes, but other months are windy. Its predominating colors are gray and brown, but so are November’s, and she rather likes to see the shapes of trees and of hills without color or even whiteness to distract the eye. March is no colder than January, yet it sets more joints aching. It is only three days longer than February, but it seems endless.

Although I've never given this month much thought, I realized when I read her words that I feel much the same way. You know I love winter. But by March I am kind of ready for a change, especially after mid-month when spring officially begins. Only once in a very great while have we had the warmth of other climes in the latter days of March. Mrs. Appleyard writes of women ‘buying spring coats, though well they know that in New England you can’t wear a spring coat until June and then it is too hot.’ To me, and apparently to Mrs. A. as well, it feels rather like a month that must be gotten through rather than lived in.

A Year with Mrs. Appleyard - February

I will never understand fame - why some are so well known in their fields and others, who may be just as talented are nearly forgotten. Louise Andrews Kent is the example of the latter. I’ve read the very famous Thurber, and I don’t think his humor and wit hold a candle to Kent’s. Of course, humor is a very personal thing. What makes one person laugh, doesn’t even bring a smile to another. 

To me she is hilarious. As I sat reading the February installment, I laughed out loud a few times, and silently smiled all through it. This is the humor of E.M. Delafield, who wrote the Provincial Lady books, and George and Weedon Grossmith, who wrote The Diary of a Nobody.

I love how the February entry in Mrs. Appleyard's Year begins.

Harsh things have been said about February, but not by Mrs. Appleyard. She likes its uncertain temper, its ability to produce snowdrifts one minute and snowdrops the next…

She goes on to write what we mothers of grown-up children may occasionally feel.

Willows turning faintly golden against a dark blue sky with ragged clouds blown across it always delude her into the idea that this year spring will come early. When she realizes she has been fooled again, she stays happily indoors. There is a strain of groundhog blood in her ancestry, Mr. Appleyard says. She sees her shadow and digs in again. She goes to bed early and makes up for it by getting up late. She reads Pride and Prejudice, Walden, Rob Roy - long, leisurely books that she can go to sleep over and pick up another evening. ... Toward six in the morning she sometimes suffers from a few moments of insomnia. Years of getting out of bed at that grim gray hour and chivvying the children into clean clothes, making indelicate insinuations about the backs of necks and the edges of fingernails, juggling with oatmeal and poached eggs, forcing rubbers on reluctant feet, cajoling the sulky motor from the faint pop to the full-throated roar - these cannot be entirely forgotten. She wakes sharply with the nightmare feeling that she must warm the baby's bottle, sew on the lost button, ... So she must get up and begin her duties as policewoman, chauffeur, nose and throat specialist, and dietician. Only, wonderful feeling, she doesn't have to. The children are grown up. She can turn over and go to sleep again.

The author talks about February illnesses, and well I remember this from my childhood. I often wondered who would be able to come to my birthday party, and how many would have the measles or chickenpox.

From writing of guest towels,

Rather than sully such perfection, the guests have wiped their hands surreptitiously on the corner of a stray family bathtowel or on their own handkerchiefs or on the bathmat.

she goes right into world affairs, and somehow brings humor to wartime. It was startling for me to realize that as she was writing, the US was not yet in the war. I so loved reading

Mrs. Appleyard is sure the British are going to win the war. She has several reasons, but the most important are Mr. Churchill, her Aunt Hildegarde, and the British telephone. ... It was Aunt Hildegarde who wrote to Mrs. Appleyard in 1914 to ask why the United States had not yet come into the war to help Britain.'All the other colonies have,' she reminded her niece.

Louise Andrews Kent continues with what we so admire about the British in the Second World War as she explains what Aunt Hildegarde's letter says,

'I will just spend the time the bombers are overhead to write and tell you the family news.' ...'And now the all clear has sounded. Such good luck. I shall just have time to take the socks I have been knitting to the rectory and be back for tea'

The bit about British telephones is very, very funny as Mrs. Appleyard tells of a time in the late 1930s when she was in England and wanted to make a call. 

... a comfortable train with compartments much larger than a phone booth would have taken her to her friends' house in three hours and it had taken her two hours to telephone.

And

It is no wonder, she considers, that one of the first war measures was to forbid private use of the telephone. With the time saved simply by not chatting with City Directory, Hitler can be pushed into the British Channel. She is sure a people strengthened by contact with Buttons A and B will have no trouble doing it.

I think this is great stuff. The writing is sharp, clever, funny, and filled with warmth. I'm so loving these little monthly readings.

A Year with Mrs. Appleyard - January

The wit and sense of playfulness which permeates Mrs. Appleyard’s Year begins on the copyright page, after we read the 1941 date.

The author asserts that any resemblance between Mrs. Appleyard, members of her family, or other characters in this book, and any real person or persons, including the Scandinavian, is purely coincidental, and she can’t think how it happened.

When you read that, you know you are in for some light, fun reading. The book begins with a chapter called About the Appleyards which rambles on enchantingly from one thought to another from statues to getting older to details about her husband and four grown children, and her house

that was too small for them when the children were small, and that is too big now that the children range in size from five feet four to six feet two.

The book then proceeds to a short January chapter which begins

Faults Mrs. Appleyard certainly has. As she looks them over on the first day of the New Year they seem to her like the ‘other articles too numerous to mention,’ always mysteriously listed in auctioneers’ advertisements. Since she has had most of her defects for over half a century, she is well acquainted with them. Some of them, indeed, have become enjoyable simply because she has had them so long. For instance: if she did not impulsively bring home a large Chinese cabinet (because it was such a bargain) instead of the lacquer finger bowls she started out to buy, her family would be deprived of the pleasure of observing: ‘Now, isn’t that exactly like Mother.’

She tells more anecdotes which illustrate her ‘faults’ and ends the chapter with a list of the things she intends to ‘improve,’ like planning to ‘glance occasionally at her engagement book instead of keeping the entries in it a secret from herself.’ And then because it is getting ‘too depressing’ to continue on with her faults, she takes note of her ‘virtues,’ such as

She uses the brakes on her car instead of the horn.She balances her own checkbook, no matter how long it takes.She never makes a fourth at bridge to help anyone out. She found out long ago that she was no help.

And the month of January ends with her feeling pretty good about herself!

Really, as she thinks it over, she feels almost unbearably virtuous. Perhaps her own best contribution to a pleasant New Year for everyone would be for her to indulge in her vices a little more. So, that is her Resolution.

I just love this book, as I did twelve years ago. It is a joy to read.

Mrs. Appleyard's Year - a year-long reading adventure

In March of 2003 I wrote this in my reading journal:

Mrs. Appleyard's Year by Louise Andrews Kent  1941    

non-fiction (with fictional names) 

Delightful book about life in the 1930s, and early 1940s. The author has great humor and love toward her family, and their life in Massachusetts and their summer home in Vermont. I loved the book which was divided into months.  She tells of their life, and meals, and adventures. I laughed out loud several times, and I learned a lot about life in my area 60 years ago. Amazing how people, and life itself, haven't fundamentally changed all that much. 

I’ve missed doing a monthly reading, as I did with Gladys Taber and Rachel Peden (see A Year with Gladys and Rachel under Letter Topics).  And in fact, I ended my last post of that series with:

This year winter begins at 6.12 am EST on December 21, the earliest arrival of winter since 1886. On that day I plan to begin reading two chapters called Winter from two books: Country Chronicle by Gladys Taber in Connecticut, USA and The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill in Oxfordshire, England; New England and old England. Each book is divided into four seasonal chapters. These two women, though not the same age, are writing within a few years of one another. Country Chronicle was published in 1974 and The Magic Apple Tree in 1982. Susan Hill was born on February 5, 1942 so she was 40 when The Magic Apple Tree was published. Gladys Taber was born on April 12, 1899 so she was 75 when Country Chronicle was published.
The last day of winter is March 19, 2013 so please stay tuned for a first posting around that date!

I fully intended to do so, but 2013 was just too full a year to attempt it. Maybe sometime in the future I will. But for this year, after considering a number of books I own that are divided into twelve entries, I decided I would reread Mrs. Appleyard’s Year, and write about it each month.