Home from the Eastern Region/ASECS meeting, University of Delaware

Bayard Hall, University of Delaware where the Shakespeare pieces and “improvements” were performed — an ex-church

Ah! hills so early loved! in fancy still
I breathe your pure keen air; and still behold
Those widel speading views, mocking alike
The poet and the painter’s utmost art.
And still, observing objects more minute,
Wondering remark the strange and foreign forms
Of sea-shells …..
— Charlotte Smith, from Beachy Head

Dear friends and readers,

I thought I’d say I’m home from an almost 3 day away trip (and 2 nights) to the University of Delaware, at Newark, Delaware, where I stayed with a group of friends and colleagues at the Courtyard Marriot Hotel. I had a very good time, better than I’ve had in a long while. I was with people who made me feel and are my friends. Talked about all sorts of things I’ve not gotten to talk of in months. The effort to do it did take much out of me (I spare everyone and myself further elaboration). Talk of conversations or what I ate can’t go far. I’ve never been one to fill a trip with menus or what I ate — though perhaps some people like to hear this. In truth, I don’t much care what I eat, and have a plain taste so cannot regale anyone with menus: I was delighted to see some old-fashioned french toast in one place: I like it with white sugar on top. You see what I mean. One friend and I remembered that both of us came to England to study abroad for a year with one year of one another. So both took a small boat which she told me had been a U-boat during WW2; I know it was retired 2 years later as risky. It was filled to the brim with students in bunk-beds, 6 to a room. She remembered how one lost track of time, how one felt one had crossed 3000 miles. I’ll never forget sailing up the green Thames (that September day 1968) and seeing the White Cliffs of Dover I had read so much about — which Charlotte Smith so loved too (see below my reading while there). I did tell people that “after my two cats I like Uber Cab and its considerate drivers best of all things.” I was told I am become skinny.

I’d like to tell some of the fun I had beyond going to sessions, listening to papers, reading mine (and my two panels on The Anomaly went very well, the first especially well-attended but both had a goodly number of people). The trouble is I feel they should go on another of my blogs, specifically the afternoon at the Winterthur Museum, and the evening watching sets of scenes from Shakespeare paired with their “improvements” by 18th century playwrights set into a modern playlet where Shakespeare meets with Pepys who does not think very well of his work, and they argue over which version of each scene is better should go on Jim and Ellen as about culture, theater, and Downton Abbey too. I glimpses the elegant gardens and vistas of the museum — it was too late, cold, wet to walk through; I took buses to the gift shop and bookstore (a genuine book store with serious books).

Winterthur map

I can confirm that in Newark, Delaware as I drove through I saw yet another American city sharply divided economically, some blocks boarded up (not that many as others I’ve seen), with a small super-wealthy area of splendid old Edwardian and other houses beautifully appointed, a small area of middle class looking recently built (say 1960s) homes, but the rest and most of it culturally and financially impoverished. Here a vast glittering mall (all neon lit) and there a coffee shop or expensive gourmet-type restaurant where cars drove to and from elsewhere. Not much tourist shopping, instead long avenues of car-dealers. The hotel was a generic hotel; it did have a decent lobby for people to gather and drink, and one could get a warm breakfast there. I glimpsed the university; it was too far, too cold and windy for me to visit the library though I could see it from afar and on-line read about it as a place in terms of what research one can do.

I read Charlotte Smith’s poetry and a short story (“The Spotted Dog”) by Trollope while away. I did have free connectivity in my room and used my ipad to read my email and get onto the Net. O I was tempted and succumbed to buying one book, Chris Mounsey’s collection of essays, The Idea of Disabilty in the Eighteenth Century; I’ve yet to read my Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture (and novels) by Martha Stoddard: I promised to review it for the Victorian web months ago ….

Miss Wren from Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend (illustration by Marcus Stone)

It was suggested to me by someone who has a university press I could try to get up a collection of essays myself on the topic of single women in the 18th century who tried to live alone or live without a male peer (protector). So now I have to try for that some time this Tuesday morning perhaps — start writing a book proposal. I’ve never done this sort of thing in my life.

I also drove through the Washington DC area near and about Dupont Circle on Saturday night: it’s turning into a thriving mixed ethnicity (but nowadays heavily white) city, lots of places to go out, good movie-house, pretty tree-lined streets, supermarkets, pharmacies and other neighborhood places. I could see all sorts of people going and coming and spending their Saturday night as pleasantly or usefully (two people were carrying a couch along the street) as they could. I did envy my friend who lives there for a moment, but my home is large enough for me and Yvette to have separate large and high-ceiling space with lots of light (big windows) and for our two cats and many books and furniture including two different largish TVs and now professional level computers with all accompanying kind of equipment. I went to Noodles and Company and brought home a bowl of delicious pasta (penne pasta it’s called, with parmesan cheese) and washed it down with Paisano wine.

I had missed my cats, worried about them. Ian, my ginger tabby, has a way of watching me drive away nowadays (from a front window). Clarycat, a torty, came trotting up, and was nudging and licking me in no time. Last night she slept in the crook of my arm inside between my shoulder and chest somehow or other — except those times I got up with bad pains in my legs. Ian remained more out of touch, but he was sleeping by my side when I woke and this afternoon he put his paws to my face (retracted) and climbed into my lap and cuddled. He puts his arms (they are his arms) around my neck and his head goes in the back of mine — this is something he does characteristically. It’s him hugging me. He’s glad I’m back. Later he was crying about something I couldn’t figure out what. I can’t bear when he cries.

Pussycats on one of my library tables with DVDs of Jewel in the Crown and Ingmar Bergman movies (Jim liked Bergman’s movies) — taken Wednesday night by Caroline who visited us just before my trip

Ellen