Literary Trails, British Writers in Their Landscapes by Christina Hardyment

Title: Literary Trails
Author: Christina Hardyment
Publication: The National Trust/Harry N. Abrams, hardcover, 2000
Genre: Nonfiction

Hardyment is a British writer who more than shares my love of literary pilgrimages. This oversized, illustrated book contains eight chapters of essays, pictures, vignettes about particular authors, timelines, maps, and more. She knows how we booklovers think:

The place in which a famous writer wrote and the tools of his or her craft are potent magic. The studies, libraries or humble workhuts of famous writers are always the places in which visitors linger longest if their house are opened to the public. Most attractive of all is the actual desk or table they used – preferably still displaying aged pens and blotched notebooks, framed photographs and a clutter of loved momentoes. It is as if by visualizing exactly where and how a writer worked, something of the mystery of their genius will be revealed.

The first chapter, Pen and the Place, focuses on authors’ actual desks and writing habits. I already knew that Hardyment was a big fan of Arthur Ransome, author of Swallows and Amazons, because someone had recently recommended another of her books, Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk. Most of the items that were on his desk are now in the Abbot Hall Museum of Rural Life in Cumbria. Other authors she mentions include Tennyson, Kipling, Thomas Carlyle, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf. The second chapter, In Search of Lyonesse, focuses on three places associated with King Arthur: Tintagel in Cornwall, and Glastonbury and South Cadbury in Somerset. I haven’t been to any of these places so enjoyed the pictures and maps, and even the tips, such as the warning that Tintagel is not a very attractive place but has two sites worth visiting, the Old Post Office and a 19th-century building that contains impressive stained glass windows. 

In contrast to the romanticism of the King Arthur legend, Hardyment points out not everyone was a fan. One critic was 16th-century Protestant scholar Roger Ascham (I was surprised she did not mention he was Elizabeth I’s tutor, which might of interest to her readers) who dismissed books about chivalry as frivolous, reminding me of an apartment-mate I had in business school who said I read too many “pleasure books” (some things never change).

Lamb House, Rye

Other chapters focus on Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Literature and the Country House (I did not know Disraeli was a novelist as well as prime minister!), which described how Henry James’ home in Rye “became a Mecca for twentieth-century literati” living locally. Having visited Rye and seen Lamb House relatively recently, I enjoyed hearing how James came for a holiday and eventually decided to make his home there. Other chapters cover the English Lake District (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Ransome, Potter), the Bloomsbury set, and a chapter on thrillers that covers Robert Louis Stevenson (cousin of D.E.), Anthony Price, a lesser-known writer of historical mysteries I enjoy, du Maurier, Sayers, and others. Hardyment observes:

“[du Maurier’s] marriage was long and fulfilling, but not quite a fairytale. Browning was a man of the world, with something of a roving eye. Daphne, nine years younger, felt as immature and inadequate as her heroine in Rebecca. Browning had been engaged to a glamorous, self-confident debutante called Jan Ricardo, and Daphne recalls how she once found a bundle of her letters, carefully preserved, in one of her husband’s drawers. ‘The green-eyed monster showed no mercy then, nor would she now.’”

Hardyment must also be a Mary Stewart fan. There’s a brief mention of The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart. Whether she intended it or not, I was also reminded of Madam, Will You Talk, which mentions Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne (1789), which Darwin praised as “one of the chief reasons for his interest in zoology.”

Reverend White was a naturalist and a pioneer of birdwatching. Hardyment devotes two pages to White's small town in Hampshire.  It is hard to capture the essence of this charming book which contains so much information.

Literary Trails is one of the recommended books on my British Studies list. It is clearly a labor of love undertaken by Hardyment and must have taken years to research! It is a fun book to open at random and enjoy. Check to see if your library owns it.

Have you made any literary pilgrimages?  My most recent one was to Provence but I have also been to Prince Edward Island, Orchard House, and Deep Valley, Minnesota, to name a few.

Source: Library