Bearpaw Adventure

Great Western Divide



Alpine Phlox



Bearpaw High Sierra Camp

Peter and I drove up to the mountains through Fresno, where the heat conditions were appalling: 113 degrees, I think the hottest temperature I've ever experienced. When I had to get out to fill up the car, I had the peculiar sensation that my eyeballs were being roasted, so I closed my eyes, which was probably for the best given the price that was racking up on the gasometer. But it cooled off as we drove up into the mountains, and at Grant Grove in King's Canyon Park we checked into the pleasant lodge and met Lindley, my friend from Kamloops, BC. We're online friends and have known each other for about a decade on the Piffle list (a chatty offshoot of the list devoted to the works of Dorothy L. Sayers, LordPeter@yahoogroups.com). We've met numerous times in person, have hiked in the Canadian Rockies together, plus she's come to most of my talks in Canada and has been down to Santa Monica several times, bringing the component parts for pumpkin maple pie for Thanksgiving. Lindley's nom on Piffle is "Mrs. Merdle" (named after Lord Peter's sixth Daimler of that name, because she loves to drive), while I'm "Miss Schuster-Slatt," after the Mrs. Elton-like figure in Gaudy Night.

Bearpaw porch


After a pleasant evening together we all drove down to Cedar Grove Lodge, a simple, old place on the floor of King's Canyon that we've always loved. Elevation is only about 4,000 feet there, so it's warmer, but the canyon is spectacular, relatively unpeopled (unlike, say, Yosemite), and the stunning white King's River rushes right by the lodge. One of Peter's favorite things in the world to do is to sit on that porch by the river, read and ponder and watch the squawking flock of piercingly blue Stellar's Jays with jaunty crests on their heads, swooping aggressively in search of bits of leftover sandwiches (one ate most of a bag of nuts that he unwisely left attended). Since Peter isn't up to the 12-mile hike to Bearpaw, he stayed at Cedar Grove by himself while Lindley and I went off for three days. So on Monday morning, June 23, we met promptly at 7 AM, drove up the canyon, left my car at Grant Grove Lodge, and proceeded in Lindley's zippier Subaru (or maybe it's that she is much the zippier driver) to Giant Forest. There, we had to pick up a Wilderness Permit at the ranger station, a great nuisance, as we needed to be on the trail as early as possible, and it was already past 9. To my frustration, the woman ahead of us was a real piece of work who kept chit-chatting with the ranger. "Oh, you're from Mammoth? We have a house in Mammoth. Where did you go to school? Do you know so-and-so?" After a few minutes of this infuriating dilly-dallying, I got fairly rude and said, "Look, can you please give us our permit? We've got to get to Bearpaw today, and we're really late." The young lady ranger said reprovingly, "These people are going to Bearpaw too," and the woman, Mrs. Black we shall call her, waved her hands airily and said "You have all day to get there - it doesn't get dark until 10 PM." Actually it gets dark at 8:30, and dinner is at 5:30, but we did get our permit and drove to the trailhead at beautiful emerald-green Crescent Meadow. We sat at a picnic table to gobble delicious bacon-and-egg sandwiches we'd taken out from Grant Grove, and then we finally set off down the famous, venerable (built in 1927) High Sierra Trail at 10 AM. My latest start ever; usually we stay at the nearby Wuksachi Lodge, but coming from Cedar Grove, sixty miles away, this was the best we could do.

Lindley on the trail

The High Sierra Trail winds some seventy miles through Sequoia, winding up at Mt. Whitney, but our destination, Bearpaw, is a 12-mile hike. Ranked moderate, but that must be by somebody in their twenties: for tubby 60 year olds it might be ranked "Seriously Strenuously Challenging." The elevation averages around 7000 feet, gaining 1500 feet overall, but you keep gaining it and losing it...the trail continually alternates going down, which is hard on the knees, and then up, which is hard on your wind. Average hiking time is seven hours, but I haven't achieved that in years; the last time I was there, three years ago, before having arthroscopic knee surgery to fix a couple of small cartilage tears, it took me 8 hours, including a half-hour rest and lunch at the halfway point at Mehrton Creek.

Lindley on Bearpaw porch


Peter, Paul and I made our first trip to Bearpaw Wilderness Camp in 1985, when we practically ran up that trail. It was on that very first trip that we met our dear friends and avid hikers Mike and Eleanor (lawyer and child psychology professor from Palo Alto), with whom we have gone on hiking trips nearly every summer since; they've shown us the best trails in Jackson Hole, the Canadian Rockies, Glacier Park, Montana, Utah, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Mammoth. Other good friends from Santa Monica, Herbert and Cathy and their sons, have also made Bearpaw their most beloved hiking destination over the years. I estimate that this was about my twentieth visit there. I knew that Lindley, a good Canadian hiker who shares my love for wilderness and photography, and is also a keen birder, would be an ideal companion, though I did miss Peter and Paul. I know the trail like the proverbial back of my wrinkly hand, which helps in pacing the hike. Lindley, longer-legged and five years younger than I, politely stayed just behind me all the way. She could have gone faster, but it's good to stay together in bear country.

Cozy Bearpaw tent


One small complication was that I'd forgotten my high blood pressure pills! I've only ever done such a stupid thing once before, when I left them in a hotel in the Lake District and went without them for a week. English Piffle friend Bevis ("Vamping the Senior Common Room") kindly took me to a doctor's surgery in Oxford but they wouldn't see me that day, so I just did without the pills, and my ankles swelled alarmingly, though I had no other symptoms. However, it would certainly be worse to be without blood pressure pills on a strenuous high altitude hiking trip in the back country, as who knows what could happen. Peter gave me some of his Elavil, that he takes for facial neuralgia, as it has the side effect of lowering one's blood pressure, and I took one on our first night at Grant Grove. It made me sleep ten hours, which was good, but then I felt groggy with an almost unbearable compulsion to sleep all the next day until dinnertime, which is a horrid feeling. It's awful that Peter has to live that way. I couldn't be like that at Bearpaw, so I made the decision to do without the pills. Some of the medication remains in the system for a few days; I was feeling very well; and with Bearpaw costing $350 a night for a tent (with all meals included), not to mention not wanting to ruin the first ever Bearpaw Pifflefest, I went ahead.


Bearpaw, photo by Lindley


The trail is beautiful, though I huffed like a grampus the whole way up, alarming Lindley who must have thought I was exhibiting morbid symptoms already; but I assured her that's just what happens when I steam uphill. As with my ballet dancing, I also have the wrong physique for a hiker, with short legs and bony little feet (doesn't that sound attractive), but at least I'm blessed with disproportionately good stamina and will power. By mile ten, when we climbed down into the rocky, wild, stunning gorge at Buck Creek, we were pretty weary, but the way was brightened by wonderful wildflowers, primarily purple Chinese Houses

Chinese Houses

and shocks of Penstemon in pink, purple, and bright red, as well as delicate wild geraniums, golden wallflowers, red Indian paintbrush, lavender lupine, orange umbrella-like leopard lilies, crimson columbine with their little yellow faces, drooping purple Jeffrey's shooting stars, tiny baby blue lips, and white, purple-tipped fivespot. Swathes of tiny pink gilia were also prominent, turning hillsides pink. Later we heard a botanist had been at Bearpaw earlier in the week and had counted something like 130 separate flower species. So I named as many as I could to Lindley, and she named the birds to me, which made for a nice give-and-take.

Pussy Paws




Pink gilia. Photo by Lindley.



The last mile to Bearpaw, coming out of Buck Creek, is straight UP a 500-foot ridge, when you are already jolly tired, so I did my loudest grampus puffing, while Lindley developed a technique of bending over her hiking stick to stretch out her aching back. We made quite a sight, but at last we crested the ridge and strolled a little more through the woods until we saw the white tents of Bearpaw. I strode in exhilarated, calling out to wonderful Carolyn, who's managed Bearpaw for the past 15 years. We flopped down on the porch, with the incomparable Bearpaw view before us - the giant panorama of the Great Western Divide, which looks so close you could reach out to touch it.

Pink Penstemon and Purple Lupine


There were lemonade and brownies waiting to welcome us, as always, and we drained several glasses on the porch. Dinner was just over, but our plates were laid out and waiting for us on the table: tri-tip steak with portobello mushroom pasta and vegetables and salad, followed by luscious home-made lemon meringue pie. You think you're not hungry after that hike, but the food somehow disappears. They kept the fire that heats the showers going for us, so we had lovely hot showers. Bliss. The camp has six tent cabins, each with two super comfortable beds with linens and down comforters (everything has to be hauled in by mule train at the start of the season), but there were cancellations, so hardly anyone was there. A very nice young couple from St. Petersburg, and a lantern jawed school psychologist named Ed who seemed lonely and kind of moved in on me and Lindley wanting to talk, when we were really much too tired. There was no sign of the Blacks.

Hamilton Trail

Lone Pine Trail

We slept like logs curled in our down comforters, and got up to scrambled eggs, bacon and pancakes cooked in bearpaw shape, by Jeremy, one of the four Bearpaw hosts whom I'd met on my last visit (I later bought his country music CD). Lindley relaxed on the porch, but I went back to sleep for a couple more hours; I didn't recover as quickly from the hike as she did. But by lunchtime I was ready to amble to the stream on the Hamilton Lake trail, just a mile and a half downhill, and I enjoyed showing Lindley the spectacular views, the peaks of the Great Western Divide changing perspective. Flowers were just starting to come out. We had our lunch near the stream, tri-tip sandwiches with home made bread, and a brownie. Then we grampused back up to camp and showers. The dreaded Blacks were there - when we encountered them at the ranger station yesterday they were obtaining their wilderness permit for today, and they sailed in saying "What an easy hike it was." They were an older couple, looked about 70, though very fit, and we later learned they were 69 and 66. He was a Rand computer scientist who'd obviously made a fortune, and they were the most obsessive travelers I've ever met. Oddly, when one has been rude (as I really was when I pressed impatiently for the permit), one feels a bit remorseful later, but I was astonished to find that my negative impression of this woman in that brief encounter was extravagantly justified: she turned out to be the single Biggest Bragger I Have Ever Met. (And this is in a lifetime in the movie business, where bragging is not exactly unknown.) As we sat at dinner (the Blacks, the nice young couple, Ed, and ourselves), Bearpaw simply rang with her babble. "When we were in Fiji last week..." "Oh, yes, the large penguins in Antarctica are fun, aren't they." "We always go on safari in Kenya, and it's probably cleaner there than here." "They've really ruined the Galapagos, but we'll go back." "Our favorite place in the world is this island off the coast of Tasmania..." "You mean you haven't done the trails in New Zealand? You really must!" "Hiking around the ruins in Crete..." "Our bartender at the Scottish castle turned out to be Lord Granville..." Finland, China, the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, there wasn't a continent or a city they hadn't visited. But the funniest brag, I thought, was when she uttered the words: "When we were ballooning in Capadocia..." For some reason, that just struck me as hilarious. The one-upsmanship was accomplished. When I ventured that most of my traveling had consisted of my 25 trips to England, the comeback was a laughing, "Oh, well, that's nothing, I'm sure we've been to Paris more than 25 times, not to mention Italy. Have you been to the Dolomites? No?" The only place I'd been where they hadn't was the Scilly Isles, but those were clearly negligible. Lindley got on with them better than I did, because she really is a very varied traveler, and took an around-the-world adventure trip only a year ago, so she actually managed to steer the conversation into near normality with some talk about Australia.

Bearpaw dinner

Meanwhile the dinner was wonderful (spicy pork tenderloin, vegetables, and baked potatoes piled with sour cream and bacon, followed by blueberry cake); but after awhile my head was ringing from the bragging and I staggered outside, where the young couple and Ed had already fled. They were sitting around the campfire and we met each other's eyes, and the young Florida banker exploded, "I just had to vent in our tent for five minutes!" and we all laughed. Sitting on the massive rock, still warm from the sun, where marmots and lizards scurry, with red penstemon flags peeking between the stone, we enjoyed the transparent red blaze.

Campfire

Another good night's rest and breakfast, and the young couple and Ed hiked out. The Blacks went down to Hamilton stream, while Lindley and I took the other major trail. It's called the Over-the-Hill Trail, because it starts by climbing an exhausting 500-foot ridge through the forest, but emerges on top to spectacular mountain views and goes down a stony bowl crossed by the most flower-fringed streams of the trip. It's 2.1 miles to Lone Pine Creek, which flows rapidly over broad white rocks.

Lone Pine Creek

We had a relaxed lunch there, before venturing a little way into the meadows below stunning Elizabeth Pass. The flowers were really out in force, mostly profuse flags of pink penstemon, interspersed with dark purple lupines; I was a happy camper. It's a rugged hike back up and down the ridge, but approximately 5 miles round trip is nothing compared to the hike into Bearpaw! After our hot showers, Carolyn delayed dinner till 6, waiting for a party who were late coming in, but strangely, they never showed - so Lindley and I were tete a tete with no one else in the camp but the Blacks! Over a delicious dinner (lasagne, salad, and butterflied charcoaled chicken breasts, followed by cream puffs because Carolyn remembered I love them), the bragging died down somewhat, or rather it changed, to the "I went to Stanford and Our Girls went to Marlborough school and we have Three Homes" variety, which is really considerably worse and even more boring than travel bragging. Odious woman, though Lindley patiently reminded me that most such people brag because they feel horribly inferior about something. I'm sure I hope so.

Blue-bellied Lizard














SAURIAN BRAVADO

A lizard on hot-rocks doing quick-time —
Its belly bluer than the sky;
The naturalist stopped to explain:—
But I would have it saurian bravado!

- Peter Birchall



Marmot Giganticus and Offspring













BEARPAW NIGHTMARE

Marmot Giganticus, a beast
Of vicious temper and sharp teeth
Sat gibbering upon my breast,—
Hot, heavy, wet — reeking of death;
And as it gibbered, so it chewed
A lizard of the high foothills:
The chorea of living food;
A music made of many shrills...

I wrenched myself awake, and found
My doubting double firmly bound —
Naked, alone, on Holy ground,
Before the green-eyed God, who frowned,
And tossed him on a charnel mound
Of rotting flesh where antic devils clowned.


A sonnet in 8's with an over rhymed sestet which is closed by a pentameter to
bring the frenetic piece to a close. This is in the guest book at the High Sierra Camp at Bearpaw, Sequoia National Park.

- Peter Birchall


With so few people in camp, we had no campfire, but we enjoyed photographing marmots, and watching deer. (Animal count of the trip: one bear, about fifteen deer, a family of marmots, dozens of blue-bellied lizards, chipmunks, rabbits, and Lindley's flock of birds.) Next morning we hiked out, and it was brutal - usually the hike out seems easier and takes a little less time than the hike in, but not so this time. I had to really push, and when we got to the lunch spot at Mehrton creek, I realized why: my knee (quad muscle) was very swollen. It's the knee that had the surgery, and although it is well and strong for hiking and ballet, Bearpaw proved to be a little more than it can handle. I took some ibuprofen, and had to force myself to keep moving the last six miles, but the ibuprofin actually did help. It took us 9 hours to get out, though. (Lindley had a strained hip, so no picnic for her either, but she was a trooper.) Then we had to drive the 60 miles to Cedar Grove to collect Peter, which Lindley heroically volunteered to do, since she is such a fast and accurate driver (much more than me in my lumbering SUV), and she knew how anxious I was. We'd been so remote and out of touch, there's no telling how Peter was faring at Cedar Grove; and he'd had to check out at 11 AM and bring ALL our bags downstairs (nine of them) and must sit on the porch all day, even though he'd probably need to be sleeping with all his medication. So I was worried.

We drove down the beautiful canyon in evanescent waning light, pulled up to the lodge about 7 PM, and I jumped out of the car and hobbled in as quickly as I could, bowlegged like a jockey, and saw - There was Peter pacifically and happily reading How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics, as mellowly as can be! He was all bright-eyed with color in his cheeks, and the nine bags were lined neatly up against the wall out of the way. He'd loved his stay at Cedar Grove and had taken some little walks by the river and made friends with the chef. :-) So we drove back up to Grant Grove, seeing the smouldering remains of a brilliant red sunset, and had a good steak dinner. We were reunited with the internet, and then we parted with Lindley, who was driving back up north early in the morning on her own travels. Peter and I slept in and had a leisurely drive home to Santa Monica, stopping to test out a Basque restaurant in Bakersfield - very strange place, with bordello overtones, and a brilliant Basque cook who'd been there 43 years; the restaurant is probably the single nicest thing in that miserably hot city (Bakersfield is a true rival to Fresno). Lamb shank in a spicy tomato sauce, delicious veal cutlets, Frenchy vinaigrette vine-ripened tomato salad, and an array of side dishes, many of which we brought home for Paul. And we arrived home to find Peter's poetry book, Nature, Nonsense, and Foreign Parts, had arrived from the printer, eleven boxes of them! A great moment.

Bearpaw dawn

Arizona Weekend: Mrs. Elton in the Desert Air

Work sent me a 550-page manuscript by a top chick lit author to urgently read and write up by Monday morning. Finished printing out book at 7 PM, hurried to the airport for my 8:15 flight and was the last person to check in on overbooked flight. Fortunately a volunteer accepted a free air coupon and I got on. I never realized how fast it is to Tucson, less than an hour and I only had time to read the first 50 pages of the manuscript.

Arizona Jane Austen Society organizer friend Bobbie met me, and drove me to her lovely home outside Tucson. They have four cats and I'd anticipated having to call 411 from respiratory failure (nothing's too big a sacrifice for a Jane Austen weekend), but was pleasantly surprised: not a sniffle or a wheeze. The house is tiled throughout, no hairy carpets, and so beautiful - Bobbie and her engineer husband and clever sons have clearly made their house a labor of love and it's full of art and books. We sat outside in the cool evening air among the desert plants, me scarfing leftover shrimp and pasta, them drinking wine (I couldn't, my goal was to finish 200 pages tonight). However, I had a major anxiety and insomnia attack, and despite ultra comfortable bedroom, slept not one wink. It occurred to me with some force that covering a 550-page manuscript was not commensurate with giving a major talk, appearing in a play reading, meeting a raft of new people and longlost relatives, and seeming intelligent throughout, on no sleep.



Cast of Mrs. Elton play

Nevertheless arose officially at 8, and we drove to the Tucson Marriott, an attractively desert-style landscaped hotel, where the Arizona Janeites gathered in a conference room. My dear cousin Dorothy, now in her 80s, was there with her sweet daughter Peggy; they live nearby, and I haven't seen them in a dozen years, so it was a warm and lovely reunion, and I much appreciated their coming to a Janeite event to see me. I believe it was a success for them too, as they afterward earnestly emphasized that they were going to reread Emma. The Tucson Janeites are a warm, lively, and casually dressed lot (I feel it is safe to say that Mr. Elton has never been portrayed wearing shorts before). The first speaker was imported from California, like me; Kay Young, a professor from UC Santa Barbara read an excerpt from her forthcoming book, Coming to Consciousness: Mind, Body, Emotion and the 19th-Century English Novel. It was excellent and made me see Emma's imaginings in a new light - how Austen didn't use specific visual objects and images but portrayed Emma's mental state to an unprecedented degree throughout the book, so much so that it was almost a textbook of how imagination works.

I gave my talk, "Mrs. Elton in the Desert Air," next; it was the same talk I gave in New York, about Bristol, the slave trade and the social influences that made Mrs. Elton more worldly and modern than the other denizens of Highbury. I simply changed most of the New York references to Arizona ones, but was pleased that they still got the Bella Abzug joke, and liked the one desert quote I managed to dig up and insert in the title. It went well and there were plenty of questions. Then lunch, after which we did the reading of my playlet, with considerable spirit and brio, to a good laugh count, whatever the sartorial standard (actually, a couple of people wore elegant Regency costumes, which gives a piquancy when standing next to those in flip flops). This was followed by more discussion, and then an ambitious musical program - Janne Irvine played, sang, and did Austenian recitations with sprightly vigor, the more remarkable because she is blind. She gave us the one-hour version of a two-hour program, which was just as well, as the chock-full program, running from 9 AM to 4 PM, was necessarily long, and with my sleepless night, I was in danger of being sung to sleep.



Cooked in the smoker all day...

Back at Bobbie's house, I read another hundred pages, and then Janeite guests trooped in for a truly fabulous barbecue. The ribs and beans had been smoking all day in the smoker, and I never tasted any with such a flavor and tang. If they were in any doubt about my rapturous compliments, the bones were evidence: I consumed eight ribs and untold amounts of homemade coleslaw with lashings of beans. Obviously sound sleep would have been well nigh irresistible after this, but I read until I finished the book, then took half an Ambien at 10 PM, and next thing I knew it was 6 AM and time to sally out into the desert.



Mountain Lion at Desert Museum

Since it's so hot in the afternoons (about 100 degrees), mornings are the time for sightseeing, and we drove to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which certainly was worth seeing. It's landscaped habitat with desert animals living as they do in the, well, desert. The wolves and foxes were sleeping, but we saw a magnificent mountain lion, some leaping bobcats, lizards and prairie dogs and many birds, including a woodpecker pecking away on a saguaro cactus. My favorite was lovely Granite the little screech owl, who sat docilely on a docent's wrist. It's a fascinating, unusual museum, the only one I've seen with sunscreen dispensers built into the bathroom walls, and free iced tea to members: http://www.desertmuseum.org/



Lucy and me

Then we drove to Tubac, where old friend and book collector Lucy lives; she was Regional Coordinator of the Jane Austen Southwest group after I was, back in the early '90s, and she's been much missed since moving to Arizona. But it obviously agrees with her: she's radiant and full of projects and her house of books has to be seen to be believed. Tubac is a cute upscale desert chic town, and we had a lovely lunch at a bistro surrounded by beautiful hollyhocks and cacti, with a mist sprayer cooling the terrace (Bobbie has one too; mist is sprayed down from the ceiling and you sit under umbrellas). Wine Country Salad, pecans, dried cherries, grilled Portabella mushrooms, gorganzola and greens, delicious. Then we drove to Lucy's house, a modern white structure on vast expanse of foothill land, it's basically a monument of books in the desert. The house is also filled with a lifetime's worth of Lucy's beautiful collectibles, ranging from Navajo hangings to English engravings, but it's the books...first editions of Jane Austen, complete run of Household Words, and enough collections of 18th and 19th century women authors to happily populate a Chawton Library West. Was particularly charmed by the quaintly illustrated books of the Rt. Hon. Lord Brabourne, Friends and Foes from Fairyland, Queer Folk, and Higgledy Piggledy, and by a copy of Orlando with Virginia Woolf's own signature in purple, with the three little dots in an eccentric row. Went away muttering "must try to get a copy of Hary-O, the Letters of Lady Harriet Cavendish, and Arthur Fitz-Albini..." It also made me vow to go home and organize my books, which reminds me of a quote from Emma:

"She did unfeignedly and unequivocally regret the inferiority of her own playing and singing. She did most heartily grieve over the idleness of her childhood -- and sat down and practised vigorously an hour and a half."



Lucy's House of Books

Laden with books (Lucy gave me Artless Tales by Anna Maria Porter, one of Juliet McMaster's publications, and a Chatsworth gardening book signed by the Duchess of Devonshire), but with my suitcase still lighter on the whole, as I'd sold many of my Mrs. Darcy's Dilemmas, I parted regretfully from Lucy and the vast majority of her books, and Bobbie kindly drove me to the Tucson airport. There was wireless internet and I sat with my laptop looking out at the mountains and commenced my write-up. Very fast smooth trip home, stopped to pick up some kabobs for dinner, another stop at the Novel Cafe for a cappucino to keep me going, and then home, where I finished my write-up by a tidy three AM. And so it was done.

New York Trip Diary

Central Park in spring


View from our Riverside Drive window

Peter reading

New York Diary, April 29 – May 6, 2008

There, now, I have actually mastered the technique of sprinkling pictures artistically throughout the blog, and am going a little crazy with it! Great fun. All my New York trip album pictures are on Kodak Gallery, so if you want to see the whole lot, let me know.

The “Austen and Byron: Together at Last” conference was excellent - I've written it up, but must edit my notes when I get home. Jointly hosted by JASNA-NY and the Byron Society, it was held at Union Theological Seminary, a Gothic building with a large green quadrangle that looks like a cross between CCNY and an Oxford college. The talks would have sufficed for a two-day conference, but it was all packed into one intoxicating day. Best of all I liked a talk by Jonathan Gross of DePaul University about the Regency period in which Byron and Austen both flourished. In particular he focused on the intersections and connections of Albany House, where both Byron and Monk Lewis had residences, and Jane Austen’s brother Henry had his banking office. As the house was formerly owned by Byron’s friend and correspondent Lady Melbourne, and one of Jonathan Gross’s books is “Corbeau Blanc: Correspondence between Lord Byron and Lady Melbourne” (Byron’s sister Augusta was his “Corbeau Noir”) there was quite a lot of fascinating material about Lady Melbourne. Peter Graham of Virginia Tech and the Messolonghi Institute in Greece, was a good speaker, though not as interesting to me, as he gave a more basic compare-and-contrast talk between Northanger Abbey and Byron’s Norman Abbey of Don Juan. The other speakers, Rachel Brownstein and Marcia Folsom only got half an hour each but were scintillating, Brownstein talking about the Janeites and the “Byromaniacs,” while Folsom traced, through Austen’s reading and comments on poetry, her probable views on Byron. During lunch, I chatted up Jonathan Gross most enjoyably, the man is a mine of Byronical information and delightful. The conference finished with a glorious pair of readings by “Austen” and “Byron.” Kathleen Chalfont (the famous actress who was in my Courtship of Mrs. Elton playlet in October) did a truly spellbinding reading of the great Lady Catherine and Elizabeth clash, which was a terribly hard act for the “Byron” to follow, though he acquitted himself, shall we say, nobly.

For me, the most amazing thing that happened was that Rachel Brownstein, whom I'd never met, and whom I would have thought didn't know me from Adam, came up to me and said she was a FAN of mine, and that nobody else had ever done the sequel thing or caught the style as well as I have and she thought I was a good writer!!! My goodness! When I picked myself up from the floor I said it was me who was awed at meeting her, great scholar and author of Jane Austen among Women. Only fancy that! What a moment! She also took me by the hand and introduced me forcibly to a TV producer looking for sequel material, and although the woman and I looked at each other rather like strange dogs, I did feel Professor Brownstein’s good intentions to the heart.

Elsa Solender, Gene Gill and me at the conference

As for the rest of my New York visit, I am delighted to report that my dear old Peter and I are having a perfectly wonderful time alone together in New York. It is actually quite romantic! He has perked right up and we are walking around and seeing people together, like, like, why almost like any normal married couple! Too strange and lovely.

Of course, it helps that we are staying in the most wonderful place imaginable. My cousin, Rabbi Ezra Finkelstein, is out of town and has lent us his heartbreakingly lovely home in a beautiful old building on Riverside Drive. This truly is an old family home - it is the seat of some of my oldest childhood memories, of many family Seders; this was my great-uncle Rabbi Louis Finkelstein’s home for sixty years, and he would walk every day to the Jewish Theological Seminary where he was Chancellor. In his day the apartment was a musty old scholar's library. But Ezra is a different sort of rabbi, he is a warm and wonderful family man, and had a large and social parish in Peekskill for many years. He is now 80, though vigorous and active; sadly, his charming wife Elaine died a couple of years ago. When they retired and inherited this apartment it was Elaine who remodeled it and it is beautiful...retaining the old New York feeling, and combining it with great comfort. It is quiet, and overlooks the park and river, with the gorgeous French chateau-like buildings of Riverside Drive's "French quarter" opposite. Not only is it redolent with the best kind of family history memories, but it is also, needless to say, far more luxurious than the way Peter and I normally live! Not only is the place filled with a gallery full of delightful modern art, Chagall and Modigliani and Israeli artists, as well as a golden Egyptian goddess sculpture (perhaps that was Elaine’s new-broom comment on the previous regime), and beautiful old books and family portraits, but it's infinitely comfortable...wonderful beds with lovely duvets and linens and thick towels and modern marble bathrooms and finest soap. No hotel could compare to the sheer beauty and warmth of staying here.

So for a week, Peter and I are living the life of New Yorkers in a fine old home on Riverside Drive. There can hardly be a more wonderful place to live in the city, it is a peaceful enclave - I've been reading up on it and it was designed by Olmstead and Vaux, who designed Central Park, and built Riverside Park and Drive in about 1880. In the morning the sunlight floods in and we look out over the Hudson River and the springtime trees. It's magical. For once Peter is not depressed in New York: on the great long dining table where those decades of family Seders were held, attended by old aunts and uncles now long dead (but their ghosts exude a benign presiding presence over this house), Peter has spread out his books and papers and he sits there happily, looking - it gave me an odd start - for all the world like a Finkelstein. And I realize what I must have subconsciously powerfully recognized in him when we were kids!

Enter-
taining on Riverside Drive


Wednesday, April 30

But I must start at the beginning. The flight wasn't bad, only miserably cramped, and we got in at almost midnight. Poor Ezra waited up for us, showed us around quickly and had to go to bed as he was leaving first thing in the morning before we got up. But we were hungry and moseyed out along Broadway looking for a late night meal. We found a marvelous Indian restaurant on Broadway and 107th, and had the tenderest lamb vindaloo ever, spinach with cheese, and garlic naan. Then to bed. Today we arose leisurely - wonderful hot bath in a great old style New York bathtub - and taxied down to Peter's mother's house where she feasted us with bagels and lox. It was a gorgeous day, cool and crisp and sunny, but we stayed in and I had a little nap, tired from the trip. Then I sallied out to meet my friend Laurie at the New York City Ballet. By coincidence we ran into Nili Olay, president of JASNA-NY, who was there for the same performance – it’s one of the last times Damiel Woetzel will appear, as he is retiring. It also turned out to be the 25th anniversary of Mr. B's death, and Peter Martins himself came out in front of the curtain and gave a talk and toasted Mr. B with champagne, which was a great moment, I was so glad to be in the house. It was a symphonic Balanchine evening, which is exactly my cup of tea, beginning with Symphony in C, a Mr. B signature ballet if ever there was one. A scintillating, glittering performance, in which I most enjoyed the up and coming Tiler Peck. Symphony in Three Movements was with Wendy Whelan and Albert Evans, and neither Laurie nor I like them much; but it was at least interesting. Last was the delectable, colorful Western Symphony, in which I loved the plush, amplitudinous dancing of Megan Fairchild, and the gorgeous Teresa Reichlen. But Damien Woetzel stole the show, as he is a dancer with such enormous charm and personality as well as bravura technique - I used to see him in LA when he was a teenager, and it's wonderful to see what he has become.

Then Laurie came back with me to Ezra's place and we loved showing it to her. Peter had already had dinner with his mother, so Laurie and I went to Henry's down the street and had very good spaghetti and Caesar salad and a melting chocolate dessert. Now I'm back at "our" gorgeous Riverside Drive apartment, feeling so strangely at home in the city. In a way this almost makes me feel as if I am back at my own, forever lost and gone, and always missed, dear childhood home at 68 East 86th Street, from which I was wrenched as an eleven-year-old when my grandparents died within a few months of each other. How they seem to be smiling over my visit here! And how at home and happy Peter is!

And there is wireless broadband throughout *both* this house and my mother-in-law's in Peter Cooper. Hosanna!



West 81st Street

My calendar is enticingly chock full of engagements, with a week to enjoy them in. It will be mostly a social week; I won’t do much more on the cultural front, as there isn’t anything I desperately care about seeing. I’m not musical, dislike New York theater, and there’s nothing calling me from the museums this time (I was just here in October). What I want is to walk under the magnolia trees in Central Park where I played as a child, in a grove near the Metropolitan Museum. I recently found mention of these magnolias in a 1907 New York newspaper, and it’s nice to know that all my grandparents, Winnie and Bertrand Babcock as well as the Finkelstein ones, may have walked there as I did.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

The whirlwind continues...today was a tiring day. We couldn't fall asleep until late, and then Richard and Magda arrived off a red eye flight around 8 AM to drop off their suitcases, since their wretched B & B wouldn’t let them leave them there. I happily showed them the apartment, but when they left I realized there was no use going back to sleep: I had to go see my mother at the Hebrew Home in Riverdale today. Long grueling trip; I tried going by subway this time, but waiting at the 103rd St station it was half an hour till a train came, and then it turned into an express and we had to go back a stop to get to my stop. And then I got off at 131st Street in a bustling Latino neighborhood and had to take a bus to Riverdale. It's lovely there, on the banks of the Hudson; all the spring flowering trees are out, pink cherry blossoms and white pear blossoms. My mother was so happy to see me (well she can’t see, unfortunately), and I made a nice long visit. Took her to lunch in her wheelchair, labeled the dresses my mother-in-law Vivian sent her, and took her to sit outside in the fresh air. The Hudson was looking so peaceful and pretty, with the green banks on the other side, and the flowery trees. I left around 3, and napped a little on the express bus which dropped me at 96th and Lex; crosstown bus, then Broadway bus back to Ezra's, where I met Richard and Magda who'd come to pick up their bags. But they were worried because the B & B where they were to stay didn't answer their calls, and they didn't like to go down there if no one was there to let them in. So we called around the hotels to see if anyone had a last minute cancellation, but there was nothing. Apparently the reason hotel rates have soared is the dollar; Europeans are pouring in for visits, and they can pay $450 a night!



Garden at the Hebrew Home


Also Richard had forgotten all his pills, so he had to go to a pharmacy several blocks away, while Magda had the idea of calling the Cornell Club, since he belongs to the Cornell Club of California. He'd tried them before, but no luck; now, however, they did have a room, for “only” $350. She told them he'd take it when he returned. So when he finally got back we got in a cab and started downtown. He called the Cornell Club and they said yes they had a room, but they were “not reciprocal” with the California club, and therefore he did not qualify to stay there! They had a 7 PM dinner date with a cousin on Broadway and so they got out of the cab at a Chinese restaurant in the mid-60s with their suitcases, while I felt so sorry for them but didn’t know what I could do to help; so I continued on downtown to Peter's mother's. (Afterwards I learned that Richard and Magda gave up their battle with New York hotels and took the train that night to their next destination, Philadelphia for a bat mitzvah; when they returned two days later they found a decent Best Western on 48th Street.) Meanwhile, Peter, his mother, and I went out to one of our favorite restaurants in all the world, Seville on Charles Street, for a magnificent dinner. The owner remembers us; Vivian first went to that restaurant sixty-six years ago, with Peter's father! We all had paella valenciana with lobster, which that place does better than anywhere else we have ever known. Abundant saffron rice with tender chicken, shrimp, chorizo, clams, mussels, lobster...

Friday, May 2, 2008

We slept well and long, and then we went off to my friend Barbara’s; I’ve always wanted Peter to meet her and see her lovely Riverside Drive apartment, just a short walk along the leafy park from "ours." We had a wonderful time talking about Byron and the Lexicon trial and Peter's poetry book and the blogosphere and Cranford and Canadian lakes, and her husband’s growing up in China before World war I…and she served us lovely tea and Peter finally got to meet her and see her beautiful home and her William Morris hangings and thousands of books. We left her at six to meet my childhood friend Mark and his wife Barbara (both psychologists) at Docks, the seafood place on Broadway and 89th, right next to Murray's Sturgeon Shop. We had arugula salad, clam chowder and huge lobsters with crusty bread, all very good, though way overpriced (however, this was our only “too expensive” meal in NY, so that wasn’t bad going). Warm and wonderful conversation about the past, New York, growing up and leaving, work, publishing, psychology...life and memories. Then we walked back to Ezra’s, just a nice after dinner stroll, from 89th to 106th. Barbara astutely pointed out that his modern art collection was worth a pretty penny, which I’d been clueless about. Mark and Barbara are darlings, and Mark and I have a special bond, for we were each other's childhoods, each other’s friend and beloved companion against formidably dysfunctional backgrounds. We figured out that we have known each other for 55 years! Mark now sees 4 - 6 patients a day in his West End Avenue office, and Barbara sees about 8 - 10 at their clinic in Hastings on Hudson, so they’re busy and doing well. They have a nice house right on the banks of the Hudson with beautiful flowering trees, and just bought a second home near Tanglewood. Barbara rather regrets their not having bought a Riverside Drive apartment years ago when they could have, but they seem very contented with their life as it is. It’s a very New York life and mindset that makes me realize all the more how I have diverged from New York ways.

So Peter and I are resting at "home" now. Tomorrow is the Austen/Byron conference…




Union Theological Seminary quadrangle



Trying to sell books





Sunday, May 4, 2008

After I got back from the conference (which I’ve already described), Peter and his mother and I had dinner at our favorite Turkish restaurant, Turkish Kitchen on Third Avenue and 27th Street. A couple of divinely delicious eggplant appetizers, plus char-grilled octopus salad and meltingly lemony white bean salad (they make the best ever), with Turkish bread and tea, followed by Cornish game hens stuffed with rice and pine nuts and served with little pancakes! Just superb. I was tired after this dinner, to say nothing of the day long conference, so I slept late Sunday, until afternoon. Then we taxied to the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, where we duly looked at my Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma on the big time bookstore shelf, and had cappuccino in the lively café. After that, we taxied to see my cousin Anne, her husband Jim, and 11-year-old daughter Joanna, and I gave Joanna all the presents I’d accumulated for her. Peter hadn't seen my cousins since Joanna was born, so it was lovely that we spent hours with them, and Peter inaugurated his first meeting with Joanna by playing four games of chess with her! He confirmed my opinion that she is extremely bright. She is tutored by an 18-year-old Russian immigrant grandmaster, but she firmly states (talking as if she was 17 instead of 11), that she’s going to Cooper Union to become a fashion designer. We went out for Indian food together and had a very warm family time. Peter got on extremely well with Anne’s husband Jim, who’s director of the online program at the New School. A wonderful evening, making friends long after the aforementioned dysfunctional childhoods.



The Chess Players




Afterwards we visited with Peter's parents for awhile, and then when Richard and Magda were done with their Carnegie Hall concert (they came back from Philadelphia this afternoon), we rendezvoused with them and had fantastically delicious Italian pastries and capuccino at glorious Veniero's (the venerable Italian cafe we love on 11th Street). Richard treated us and even bought a box of Italian cookies which is Paul’s present from New York! Then Peter had the idea of going on a midnight ride on the Staten Island Ferry. This was great exhilarating fun, really the high point of our trip. The round trip takes about an hour - and is free! - and the glittering skyline and Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor were as dazzling at night as ever, even minus the twin towers…and for that matter, on the Staten Island trips of my childhood, they weren’t there yet, so it was the “old” skyline. It was a balmy night and quite comfortable on the water, and I could tell that Magda, who has only been to New York once before, was thrilled!


Monday, May 5, 2008

By day New York is looking beautiful in its dress of flowering trees, cherry and plum blossoms. The weather has been nice, a couple of days rather grey and cool, but the sun came out today and it’s warmed up to near-summer weather; the town is abloom with tulips (there’s a huge pink-and-white striped bed of them in a little pocket park near Ezra’s), and whopping yellow ones in front of the canopy of our elegantly doormanned building.

Meanwhile I awoke this morning to find that this three-part piece I'm doing for the Jane Austen Today blog has started running: it's quite long and perhaps a trifle daffy, being “Mrs. Elton Sez,” views on the Cranford mini-series channeling Mrs. Elton’s voice. They've laid it out very nicely and it looks handsome:

http://janitesonthejames.blogspot.com/2008/05/cranford-episode-one-mrs-elton-sez.html

The trouble is, we fly home Tuesday night, I return to work Wednesday, but I still have to watch a DVD of Cranford and come up with some more Mrs. Elton channeling, and then write a talk to give at the book party my kind Beverly Hills friend Judy is giving for me at her gorgeous palazzo on Saturday – plus I’ll have a manuscript to read! So I do feel a little pressured with not much time to get these things done, plunging right back into things so immediately after a trip.

At noon today I taxied to meet Laurie at the Neue Gallery, on Fifth Avenue and 86th Street, across from the Met, where they’re having an exhibition celebrating Klint’s life and work. The museum, in a Fifth Avenue townhouse, modernized and very elegant, is fairly new, I think it opened within the last few years, and it’s certainly what everybody in New York is talking about having seen or going to see; so even though I don’t care particularly for German culture or art of the period, as there’s no other major exhibit I want to see in town (the Met itself is closed Monday, or I’d go see the Poussin exhibit), I figured I might as well. Actually what decided me was Richard and Magda saying that the gallery had an elegant and superbly authentic Viennese cafe, which was not to be missed. Richard did mention it was a bit noisy and he didn’t care much for his bratwurst, but Laurie and I had a very different experience. In the first place we got the best table in the room, a banquette in the corner away from other tables so we could command a view of the windows and the whole place and the chic ladies and magnificent white blossom flower arrangement. So springlike! We ran into Mary Margaret Benson, a Janeite from Oregon, and her husband, who were in New York for the Byron conference, like me. Since this was the second time I’d run into somebody with Laurie (and she’s the one who lives here) she asked if I knew 500 people?

And then the FOOD, oh my! First we had Hungarian goulash soup with crusty bread, and iced tea: and it was divine. Slivers of beef and potatoes and lots of paprika, of course (it was soup not stew), but with a wonderfully delicate blend of subtle foreign flavors. Then we shared a marvelous egg salad sandwich on the crusty bread, with a spicy Hungarian paprika flavor, and splitting it was just right, since of course we had to have dessert too! And I had perhaps the best hot chocolate with whipped cream ever – dark chocolate like you get in Venice, with a thick dense cumulous cloud of cream. And we shared a piece of ineffably wonderful cake – light chocolate and pistachio and marzipan and hazelnut cream, with another dollop of their fabulous whipped cream. Whew!







After that we dutifully traipsed through the gallery, which was mildly interesting; there was a nice roomful of multi-colored jewelry worn by Klimt’s circle, who dressed like early bohemians in “reform dress” that was actually quite beautiful – his model, who looked like a cross between Anna Pavlova and V. Woolf, wore long flowing waistless smocklike gowns with the jewelry. The famous golden Klimt portrait was there, looking infinitely more dazzling in person, layers of multicolored gold. There was just enough to see without getting tired, and Laurie bought some gorgeous Klimty books in the excellent shop. (We skipped the $8000 reproductions of the jewelry.) Then we did what we longed to do (and needed to do, after that lunch!), dived out into Central Park. I duly performed my walk under the magnolias, and we strolled over to the Belvedere Castle lake where Mark and I played fifty years ago (it’s fenced off now so kids can no longer paddle on its banks as we did), and we saw a heron – there certainly were none of those in Central Park in my day!




Then we strolled to the Ramble and sat there, where Laurie always feeds the birds. And I had a magical surprise, something I’ve always longed to see and never expected I would: a brilliant red cardinal came and hovered in the airy green branches over our heads! Fire truck red, and exquisitely tiny, with his little crown. Then Laurie, satisfied with her magic, and I parted ways, she went East, to her East Side home, and I West, crossing the park and walking from the 79th street exit all the way to Ezra’s on 106th and Riverside – took me more than an hour and was tiring as it was warm, but an interesting walk. Then I had a bath and a nap, and at seven sallied out to Henry’s around the corner, to have dinner with my Hunter friends. There was Eva, the lawyer; Deb the science writer; Priscilla the real estate agent; and Dave the professional bridge player. A mixed set, but all very warmly disposed toward each other, and I ate a Caesar salad and giant bowl of mussels. Afterward Priscilla and Dave came up to Ezra’s, and Peter and Dave got along like a house afire, talking about bridge clubs they have known!






Tuesday, May 6, 2008

I write this on the plane going home. This morning I took the subway to Zabar’s, where I bought two pounds of nova, a quarter pound of sturgeon, whitefish salad, cream cheese with scallions, a dozen Zabars bagels, and a chocolate babka, as well as delicious sandwiches for the plane! (Better than what American Airlines would serve, and charge for.) Then took the bus up to 103rd where I bought champagne for Ezra and replenished a few groceries. Finally back at the house took a small nap, then Peter and I had lunch (more Zabar’s stuff) and finished packing, also making sure that the house was absolutely immaculate. A cleaning lady comes tomorrow, before Ezra gets home, so we didn’t have to worry about real cleaning, but we left things tidy. Then we taxied to the airport, arriving nice and early. To my surprise there’s quite good food at the AA terminal – New York Italian stuff – and we sat at a café and had some lovely cappuccino. And I’ve spent the whole flight working on my speech for Saturday, and finishing writing this up. My new little laptop with the 12-hour battery is absolutely perfect for airplanes. But I can’t wait to get home and see Paul and give him his bagels and cookies…

Light, Bright, and Sparkling

I am calling my blog Light, Bright, and Sparkling, a quote from Jane Austen. She wrote about her novel, Pride and Prejudice: "The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story: an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparté, or anything that would form a contrast and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and general epigrammatism of the general style."

I intend the Light part of my blog to represent my writing, which certainly wants shade, if not sense. The quotation to represent this section is from Mansfield Park: "To give way to gaiety, to speak with lightness, and to you!"

Bright...would be a smattering of book reviews and book talk, about other people's books and the ones I write. My Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma has just been published, and Mrs. Elton in America and Onoto Watanna are still available. And the Jane Austen quote is: "The same books, the same passages were idolised by each; or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed." This is from Sense and Sensibility.

And Sparkling...would be pictures and musings about Venice and the Venetian glass beads that I like to design. "The balmy air, the sparkling sea..." a quotation from Mansfield Park.

As to who and what I am, that remains to be discovered; but the reader is directed to the solid information that can be found on my website: http://www.dianabirchall.net/

I shall now probably not write another post for a fortnight; but at least a technical beginning has been made. Now how do I link things? And put pictures on? Oh, help. All very well to be light, bright, and sparkling if you can't use a bloody computer.

Diana Birchall