Bookshelf Traveling - July 3, 2020

Time for another round of Bookshelf Traveling in Insane Times which is being hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness.   The idea is to share one of your neglected bookshelves or perhaps a new pile of books.   And hooray for a vacation day because that means lots of time for reading!

Someone in my Betsy-Tacy discussion group mentioned Elizabeth Janet Gray the other day, which sent me straight to this shelf.  Gray is one of many authors I came to through my mother.  Gray was a distinguished writer of children's and adult books and is best known for Adam of the Road, which won the Newbery Medal in 1943 and was illustrated by Robert Lawson (the only person to have ever won both a Newbery Award and a Caldecott Medal).  Set in the 13th century, it is the story of Adam’s life with his minstrel father and how Adam copes when they are separated, learning how to survive on the road alone through a series of adventures.   Perhaps I can inspire my youngest nephew to read it this summer.

Gray was an alumna of Bryn Mawr and a noted Quaker.  She left Philadelphia to become a librarian at the University of North Carolina, where she met her husband who also worked there.   Sadly, he died in a car accident less than five years after their marriage.  In 1946, she was invited to go to Japan to teach the heir to the throne.  Emperor Hirohito had decided his son should have an American teacher (he asked for a woman who was "a Christian, but not a fanatic") and Gray went for one year but stayed four, developing a strong relationship with her pupil, crown prince Akihito, and with his family.  They remained in touch until her death at 97.   Windows for the Crown Prince (1952) is a memoir for adults about her experience at the Imperial Court.  Her book must have received approval from the royal family because she was invited to Akihito’s wedding in 1959, where she was the only foreign guest. 

My two favorite Gray books are Jane Hope (1933) and The Fair Adventure (1940), very different books.   Jane Hope is a historical novel set in North Carolina in the years before the Civil War.  Like Gray herself, Jane Hope is a Northerner arriving in Chapel Hill from Philadelphia, coming with her mother and siblings to live with her grandparents after her father dies.  Although a tomboy at 12 incapable of her older sister’s elegance, she eventually blossoms and comes into her own by the end of the book:

 

“Ladies mostly like to have their shoes as small as they can get them,” said Wash with injured dignity.

Jane Hope sighed and said nothing while he drew the tape measure snugly around her toes.  She had been clamoring for grown-up habiliments, and if tight slippers and corsets were the price she must pay for her dresses that hooked up the front and her hoop skirts, then she must submit, as gracefully as she could.

Of course, I realize now, which I didn’t as a child, that when Jane Hope sends her beau off to fight for the South, that he is unlikely to survive and, if he does, life after the war will be pretty bleak! 

The Fair Adventure was a contemporary when it was written, intended for an early teen audience.  Its heroine, Page MacNeil, is the youngest in a large and busy family and about to graduate from high school when the book begins.  Every time something exciting happens to Page it is overshadowed by some other member of the family.  She yearns to go to a fictional college in the North that sounds a lot like Bryn Mawr but family finances dictate that she attend Middleton, a sleepy liberal arts school where her father teaches.  Every time something exciting happens to Page it is overshadowed by a family crisis but eventually she grows up enough to accept that being part of a large, affectionate family is more important than being the center of attention.  One thing I always remember is that Page and her friend had a game where they purposely mispronounce the word ingenue as “injenny” and pay each other a nickel, based on whether they are corrected of not.  In another part of the book, Page’s self-absorbed brother fails the bar exam:

“I’m not an invalid,” said Robin, straightening his tie and squaring his chin, “nor a dangerous lunatic.  It isn’t necessary to send my meals to the padded cell.  Fifty per cent of the men who take this exam flunk it.  There’s no need for anybody to regard it as a tragedy.  I assure you, I do not.”

I don’t know whether to point out to him that the first woman was admitted to the bar in 1869 or to be grateful the pass rate was much higher when I took the New York and Massachusetts bar exams!

Once I was in my favorite bookstore, the Strand in New York, and for some reason detoured past a shelf in the corner, which turned out to be History or Biography.   Somehow a book called Flora caught my eye.  What led me to that exact spot in the bookstore?  I don't usually read biographies!  I hadn’t even known Gray had written a biography of Flora MacDonald, famous for having saved Bonnie Prince Charlie from the English after the Battle of Culloden (both Flora (1966) and Windows for the Crown Prince were published under Gray’s married name, Elizabeth Gray Vining) but there it was and came home with me.  Flora makes an appearance in another of Gray’s books, Meggy MacIntosh (1930), and I like the idea that Gray went on thinking about Flora’s unusual life – from the Hebrides to North Carolina and back to Skye – for 30+ years until compelled to write her biography.  I wish I had written to Gray to tell her how much I loved her books!   By the way, on the far left of this shelf is an unusual book Polly Poppingay, Milliner, about a girl who learns to make hats from her talented aunt.  My copy came from Pomroy House and it seems to be one of the few in existence.