Post the Fifth; in which we travel to Shrewsbury in search of Brother Cadfael and have coffee with Edward Marston
Ellis Peters with her manager and her Dutch translator Peter Jones, courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons
Ellis Peters, real name Edith Mary Pargeter, was born in 1913 in Shropshire. An autodidact, she never attended university but manged to produce an impressive body of historical fiction. She’s probably best known for the Brother Cadfael mysteries. These are set in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire. Peters envisioned Shrewsbury Abbey as the monastic dwelling of her protagonist, a monk, a healer, and a skillful problem solver, the problem being as often as not whether a murder has been committed, and if so, by whom.
Here is Cadfael, memorably played by Sir Derek Jacobi:
The journey from Ross to Shewsbury was a fairly long one, so Pam, our Blue Badge Guide, had plenty of time to fill us in on the history and legend of the region. My notes on her fascinating disquisition are alas, extremely scatter shot. The bus ride was somewhat rough, and one was continually distracted by the incredible beauty of the countryside. (Well, darn it anyway!) One notation informs that the Welsh flag is Europe’s oldest: 
. Now let’s see what else… “Celtic Welsh were great guerrilla fighters. They wore only ONE SHOE! I was actually able to verify this bizarre fact, courtesy of a site called Castles of Wales. In a section called Medieval Welsh Warriors and Warfare, Jeffrey L. Thomas informs us that “Several manuscripts depict Welsh warriors as having only one shoe and their other foot bare – this probably allowed them to keep a balance on hilly or rough terrain.”
When reading the Brother Cadfael novels, one hears a great deal about King Stephen and Empress Maude (unhelpfully also known as Matilda). Pam gave us a quick rundown of the history of the British monarchy, starting with the Conqueror. It is a tale of fiendish complexity; I won’t even attempt to recount it here. (This site explains the cause of the conflict between Stephen and Maude, and its eventual outcome.)
We learned much about place names: the suffix “-caster” or -chester” denotes a Roman settlement. “Stretton” – as in Church Stretton – indicates a Roman road. There’s more, but it is of a fragmentary nature in my notes. So, let’s proceed to the main attraction on this segment of our journey:
This image graces the cover of the guide book.
The Benedictine Abbey of Shrewsbury was established in 1087 by Roger de Montgomery, newly named as Earl of Shrewsbury. The Abbey flourished up until the Dissolution, after which time it was allowed to fall into disrepair. A full restoration was begun in 1885; the work continues to the present day. Click here for more on the history of the Abbey.
Our guide informed us that the Abbey chooses not to emphasize its association with Brother Cadfael. No specific reason was given for this rather odd seeming policy. There is a Brother Cadfael window – or rather, a section of a window – with the initials E.P. barely discernible therein: 
The Shrewsbury Visitor Information Centre does provide a booklet entitled “In the Steps of Brother Cadfael.” These steps can quite literally be found embedded in the cobbled streets of the town: 
Here are more photos we took of the church’s interior:
In 1137, the remains of Saint Winefride were conveyed from her burial place in Wales to Shrewsbury Abbey. There, they were interred in the west end of the Abbey Church. The Guild of St. Winefride was established in 1487. In 1540, in the time of the Dissolution, the shrine was destroyed and the guild disbanded. In 1987, after a lapse of nearly five centuries, the Guild was restored. Among its other tasks, members are pledged to prayer and to assist in the maintenance and beautification of the Abbey.
Here is the St. Winefride Window:
Ellis Peters took the known facts about the Saint’s removal from Wales by the monks of Shrewsbury and fashioned a cunning mystery entitled A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first entry in the Cadfael series. 
During our visit to the Abbey, greatly to our delight, the organ was being played:
After this intensely pleasurable experience, we proceeded to the Prince Rupert Hotel to have coffee with Edward Marston.
Marston is the prolific author of several historical crime fiction series. Most relevant to our tour was the Domesday series, set in eleventh century Britain and featuring Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret. The title especially germane to our tour was The Dragons of Archenfield. Although the novel is short, I found the plot convoluted and somewhat hard to follow. Marston is a mesmerizing speaker; he put the conflicts of the era in an understandable context. I would now like to revisit the novels in this series.
The novel opens with a memorable sequence of events in which the image of the red dragon of Wales, pictured on the flag above and on this book cover, is brought to vivid, if terrifying, life.
Edward Marston spoke eloquently of Ellis Peters, with whom he had been acquainted. Her research, he averred, was flawless, to the extent that her books are now used in academic settings where medieval monastic life in England is being studied. Marston alluded with respect and affection to Peters’s “slightly Victorian prose style,” an attribute of her novels that many of us consider a major attraction.
(In 2006, we had the pleasure of meeting Edward Marston in London, at the conclusion of our Smithsonian tour. )
Ellis Peters also wrote detective fiction set in the Shropshire of her own time, featuring Inspector Felse and his enormously appealing son Dominic. I particularly recommend The Piper on the Mountain.
(In 1997, Marston published Murder in Perspective under his real name, Keith Miles. The protagonist is a Welsh architect, Merlin Richards, newly arrived in the U.S. in the 1920′s. The plot centers on Frank Lloyd Wright and a controversy concerning the building of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. The novel was based on actual events; I found it illuminating and enjoyable.)
April 4: Easter Sunday
All thanks are due to my friend Emma, through whose kindly offices I experienced an Easter Sunday filled with prayer and gorgeous music.
For two years now Emma and I have regularly attended the concerts presented by Bach in Baltimore at Christ Lutheran Church. I have come to love this church. It was built in 1955, but the interior resembles a church built in 1555. If Martin Luther himself were to come striding down the center aisle, it would seem entirely right and proper.
In his welcome message, the pastor wrote: “Whether you are a committed Christian or someone searching for deeper spiritual roots and a closer connection with God, we are delighted that you chose to worship with us today.” The part after the “or” – that’s me. So I was very grateful for this.
And then: what a splendid celebration! Not just heartfelt prayers – but glorious music – Drums! Trumpets! Timpani! And of course, the mighty Andover 114, the organ that at its most fulsome seems to be “playing” the entire sanctuary.
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Afterward, Emma and I had a delicious brunch. We then sat for a time in a small, lovely park at the Inner Harbor. The sun shone brightly; the air was delicious. Folk frolicked, rejoicing in the ability to get outside and have fun after the punishment of this past winter.
(The ship is the USS Constellation.)
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And then, back to Christ Lutheran for yet more music, this time courtesy of Bach in Baltimore…
First on this afternoon’s program was an aria from Bach’s Easter Oratorio, beautifully sung by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Blades. Here is the same excerpt performed by Philippe Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale. The soloist is German countertenor Andreas Scholl:
The Bach Cantata for Easter Sunday was BWV 67: Halt inGedachtnis Jesum Christ (“Hold in Remembrance Jesus Christ”). Here is the opening chorus, with Helmuth Rilling conducting:
Then it was time for organist Jonathan Parker to astonish us once again with the might and power of the Andover114. He played a piece that fascinated me. It’s got rather a long name: Choral-Improvisation sur le Victimae paschali, written by Charles T0urnamire (1870-1939) and transcribed by Maurice Duruflé. I have found a video of a young organist named Jean-Baptiste Robin playing this piece on the organ of L’Eglise Saint Eustache in Paris.
Decades ago, I wandered into this church, not knowing anything about it. I was stunned. Looking up, I saw into a vastness that seemed to extend up to the heavens.
Maestro Dimmock pronounced himself delighted at the treat in store for us at the concert’s conclusion: a performance of four Hebrew songs by HaZamir. This was in recognition of the recent celebration of Passover. This lovely bit of ecumenism proved a terrific bonus – these young singers were simply great!
Passionate Presbyterians: Home, by Marilynne Robinson: a book discussion
I wrote the following prior to Friday night’s book group discussion:
This is a profoundly frustrating novel. Marilynne Robinson’s writing is often graceful and elegant; she has a gift for the felicitous turn of phrase. But the plot of Home is so slow moving as to be virtually static. And I confess – I am genuinely puzzled by these characters.
It is the middle of the twentieth century; the country is in the midst of the Civil Rights struggle. But the town of Gilead, Iowa, seems insulated from the cares and crises of the outside world. Instead, the novel focuses on the tribulations of the Boughton family. The Reverend Robert Boughton is old and ailing; his daughter Glory, in her late thirties and fleeing a recently aborted engagement, has returned to her childhood home in order to care for him. The two are soon joined by Glory’s older brother Jack.
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At that point I stopped, having decided that I would complete this post after we had discussed the book. I am now glad I made that decision. The discussion was illuminating on many levels. Most importantly, I learned that my baffled response to Robinson’s characters was due to my ignorance of what life was like for many who grew up in small town America in the mid-twentieth century. I was bewildered by the intense, almost claustrophobic religiosity with which Robinson endows the Boughton household – the frequent, fervent recourse to prayer, the parsing of the finer points of scripture. I was reminded of the seventeenth century Puritans that I encountered in Salem Witch Judge, Eve La Plante’s biography of her ancestor Samuel Sewell. But for Nancy, our discussion leader, and several other group members, the author’s depiction of a mid-twentieth century minister’s family resonated powerfully. They had experienced such a life themselves as children, either within their own families or in the families of friends or relations. This was particularly true if the family in question was headed by a minister.
Specific expectations governed the comportment of members of such families: in church, the wife and children were seated in the front pew, and all were expected to be presented and accounted for. Traveling clergymen were always welcomed as guests, and offered the hospitality of lodging and home cooking. Thus, Glory was performing the function that her late mother had in her turn performed. But poor, long suffering Glory, constantly producing those heavy, meat-and-potatoes heart-attack-on-a-plate meals that many of us recall fondly from the 1950′s – that is, if we lived to remember them! I couldn’t help but feel impatient at her automatic assumption of the role of handmaiden to the men of the house. If she wasn’t cooking, she was cleaning or mending. She sets about these tasks in the spirit of mute acceptance. Oh, the sheer drudgery of it all! Group members patiently reminded me of the time and place in which the novel’s events were transpiring. But that fact did nothing to stem my annoyance at the situation. Oh, how I wanted Glory to rebel!
Then there is Jack, the prodigal son returned home. His checkered history includes impregnating a young woman and then deserting her (the child subsequently dies), theft, alcoholism, and a stint in prison. We are repeatedly reminded of his transgressions, often by the trangressor himself. Glory is forgiving; her powerful love for her brother overcomes any tendency to judge him. But for their father, forgiveness is more difficult to grant. As a minister, he strove to be a pillar of rectitude in their small community, but Jack’s waywardness had undermined his position and mortified him before his parishioners.
Unlike Glory, Jack did rebel. But in the context of Home, he does not come across as a bad person. On the contrary, he is extraordinarily helpful to Glory in the domestic sphere. Where his father is concerned, his attitude is one of contrition. He frequently beseeches his father to forgive his behavior, both past and present. (Jack seems to need forgiveness for his very existence.) At one point, Reverend Boughton apologizes to his son for not being a sufficiently good parent to him. Jack assures him that to the contrary, he was a wonderful father. Glory too does her share of apologizing, especially to Jack for real or imagined acts of insensitivity. In this household, love apparently means having to say you’re sorry – over and over again. It grated, this constantly repeating cycle of apology and reassurance.
I found myself deeply grateful for the few lighthearted moments this novel afforded. Most of them had to do with the old De Soto that Jack is rehabbing:
“Again the starter and the engine, and after a minute or two the rattle and pop of gravel as the De Soto eased backward out of the barn. It gleamed darkyl and demurely, like a ripe plum. Its chrome was polished, hubcaps and grille, and the side walls of the tires were snowy white. There was a preposterous beauty in all that shine that made [Glory] laugh. Jack put his arm out the window, waving his hat like a visiting dignitary, backed into the street, and floated away, gentling the gleaming dirigible through the shadows of arching elm trees, light dropping on it through their leaves like confetti as it made its ceremonious passage. After a few minutes she heard a horn, and there were Jack and the De Soto going by the house. A few minutes more and they came back from the other direction, swung into the driveway, and idled there. Jack leaned across the front seat to open the passenger door. she walked across the lawn to the car and slid in.
Now that is a lovely scene, beautifully described. And I felt grateful for this small celebration of secular, everyday life!
Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson published Gilead to critical acclaim in 2004. It won both the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2004 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2005. The events of Gilead and Home take place more or less simulataneously; in fact, in her review of the latter for the Los Angeles Times, Emily Barton suggests calling the two novels “co-quels” (a rather tortured coinage, methinks). Gilead is slightly shorter than Home. Though I struggled, I got through it. I liked Home more, but only marginally so. By the time I was heading for the home stretch, I was feeling positively mutinous: I wanted Glory or Jack – or someone in that dull little burg – to do something truly reprehensible. Run off with the neighbor’s wife – or husband – or both! Or if not that, at least steal from the collection plate one Sunday.
(This perverse thought experiment is putting me in my mind of the lyrics to the song “Fie on Goodness” from the musical Camelot; in particular, the following lines: “Ah, but to spend a tortured evening staring at the floor / Guilty and alive once more.”)
As I wrote prior to our discussion, Home has so little in the way of a plot that it is virtually inert – more of an exercise in stasis than in storytelling. What plot there is concerns Jack’s efforts to win back Della Miles, the woman with whom he is currently in love. His errant behavior has caused her to reject him, now, his letters to her keep coming back unopened and marked “return to sender” (and doens’t that seem quaint in this era of e-mail, text messaging, etc.). Having grievously wronged a woman once, Jack is trying to do the right thing this time around, but once again, he may be too late.
I appreciate the virtues of this novel a good deal more since we had our discussion. Robinson’s writing can be lyrical in its precision. I have to agree with Nancy, who observed that “every word bears weight.” And I want to add one more thing: many of the contemporary novels that I’ve read recently falter at the end. In contrast, I thought the conclusion of Home was fitting, even beautiful. It contained an interesting revelation and the seeds of hope, and it made me want to put my arms around Glory and give her a hearty embrace.
Oh – and Nancy, the impromptu hymn singing was delightful!
A Month of Yahrzeit
I have been thinking about death a lot lately. This is partly due to a book I have just finished, and another that I am currrently in the middle of. The two titles, respectively, are The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak and Nothing To Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes.
Set in the south of Germany during the Second World War, The Book Thief is narrated by Death itself. It is an immensely powerful novel. The Barnes book is part memoir, part the author’s rumination on various aspects of death, and especially on how to face the inevitable when religious faith has been abandoned. Compelling as it is, I am having to read it in discreet chunks.
I’ll have more to say about both of these books in later posts. But meanwhile, I’d like to pay tribute to the memory of my father, my father-in-law, and my sister-in-law, all of whom passed away in the month of October between the years 2000 and 2003.
I am constantly kicking at the traces that still bind me to the religion I was born into. But Judaism still exerts a hold on me. I have always liked the custom of lighting the Yahrzeit candle to commemorate the anniversary of the death of a loved one. That person’s soul glows in the taper’s light. Every time you gaze on it, you remember.
And so, this is for the three above named people, each of them beloved, each of them missed.
Are You Better Off?
George F. Will is a columnist I respect but often disagree with. I have to say, though, that in today’s Washington Post, he really nailed it with Are You Better Off? His subject, which he tackless with refreshing directness, is nothing less than the true nature of human happiness!
Easter Sunday, March 2008
Ron and I spent Easter Sunday at home, just the two of us. 
We made beef bourgignon and listened to music. First, the Mozart symphonies, starting with number twenty. We made our way through to the mid-thirties before switching gears and putting on the ‘Prelude and Good Friday Spell’ from the opera Parsifal by Richard Wagner.
The Mozart symphonies were performed by the Prague Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. The recordings were made in the early 1990′s. The clarity and exuberance of the playing – perfectly captured by Telarc, that home of sonic wonders! – fills the house.
The delicious aromas of the mingling stew components are equally pervasive. As dinnertime draws near, we put on the Wagner. I like to listen to this at Easter time. The recording we have features the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by the great Bruno Walter. Here is what the liner notes – uncredited, alas – say about this music:
“Like Tannhauser, the last of Wagner’s music dramas, Parsifal is built around a story of the Knights of the Holy Grail, and concerns itself with the conflict of spirituality and earthly passion. It contains some of the greatest music Wagner ever wrote, particularly the spiritual Prelude and one of the most awe-inspiring religious pieces of music ever penned–the ‘Good Friday Spell’ in Act III.”
This recording, released by Columbia Masterworks, was made in 1959. It is the only version of this sublime masterwork that I will ever need to own.
If there is one thing I have learned in my life, it is cherish days like yesterday for their simplicity and for the peace and love with which they are filled.
“All creationists are mortal”
“Genesis” is the first essay in E.L. Doctorow’s collection Creationists. In it Doctorow makes a provocative observation on the art of the storyteller: “If not in all stories than certainly in mystery stories, the writer works backward. The ending is known and the story is designed to arrive at the ending.”
Later, there is this passage:
“The cosmology of Genesis is beautiful and for all we know may even turn out to be as metaphorically prescient as some believers think it is. One imagines the ancient storytellers convening to consider what they had to work with: day and night, land and sea, earth and sky, trees that bore fruit, plants that bore seed, wild animals, domesticated animals, birds, fish, and everything that crept. In their brilliant imaginations, inflamed by the fear and love of God, it seemed more than possible that these elements and forms of life, this organization of the animate and inanimate, would have been produced from a chaos of indeterminate dark matter by spiritual intent–here was the story to get to the ending–and that it was done by a process of discretion, the separation of day from night, air from water, earth from sky, one thing from another in a, presumably, six-day sequence culminating in the human race.”
This essay was originally written for the Pocket Canons Bible Series, published in 1999 by Grove Press.
The Power of Words
In a section of Classics for Pleasure entitled The English Religious Tradition, Michael Dirda quotes a passage from the Gospel of Luke, as rendered in the King James Bible.I love what he says after the quoted passage:
“The solemn harmonies of such prose are largely ignored in these days of text-messaging and political newspeak. Nonetheless, sometimes only the full organ roll of liturgical English can match the sacredness of weddings, funerals, and religious holy days.”
Dirda then goes on to quote from The Book of Common Prayer‘s Order for the Burial of the Dead:
“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he flieth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we be in death…”
This seems bleak to the point of hopelessness. Where is the consolation? But wait…”These magnificently somber phrases eventually build to one of the great climaxes in English literature:
‘Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, and that in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye by the last trump. For the trump shall blow, and the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed….Death where is thy sting? Hell where is thy victory?’”
Surely in the annals of great oratory there is a straight line from this triumphant declaration of faith to Martin Luther King Jr’s equally triumphant “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
