Dear Pam,
Cathy
and I had a nice long lunch with your sister last week, and I thought of dropping
you a line before we leave. Our time is
fast approaching. Sometimes I have his
intense urge to stay here, I'm not sure what it is, perhaps all the green and
the history and the manners, civility; perhaps it is just the pleasure of
having had the year off, with, literally, no worries, (though of course we
manage to create worries in whatever situation we are in). On the other hand, it will be fun to go home
and see everyone again, to be in our own home, to be in our own country, and we
look forward to it. Still, wouldn't I
like to be like your sister! Though
there being six of us makes a little bit of a difference!
It
has been a fantastic year, we've taken lots of trips, been to London lots of
times, seen lots of plays, museums, churches, the whole show. We've been on the walking tour of Cambridge four
times, been punting on the Cam. Two
weeks ago we went to the Chelsea Flower Show and had our first Pimm's. We've had our share of bitter and cider and
regular old lager, though we have not yet really experienced the great pastime
of the middle classes: sitting outside in front of the pubs, drinking pint
after pint, preferably on a hot day when every male takes his shirt off. Perhaps before we leave! On the other hand, our
skin has all become so white (compared to home, not compared to English skin) that
we will no doubt be much more careful about tanning this summer.
Saffron
Walden is a nice little town, not quite a city, bigger than a village: three
laundries, a supermarket, four or five drugstores, one hotel, five or six
restaurants, five or six pubs, a small department store, two
bookstores/stationers, five banks, four S&Ls, plus an assortment of shoe,
antique, furniture, and clothing stores and bakeries, butchers and fresh
vegetables. There is a market on
Saturday and Tuesday in the market square, and the town is almost always busy,
people walking about with things to do.
Robert, Mara and Jeffrey are at St. John's in Cambridge (one of the two
"chorister" schools in Cambridge, the other being King's). It is an excellent school; people sign up their
kids at birth to get in and the "leavers" go on after sixth form (7th
grade) to the name schools like Harrow, etc.
We are definitely in on the right track.
Robert did not make the cricket team, but keeps score, and we follow the
school team. Our friend advises us to
learn cricket and you will understand the English.
I
have spent much of my time at my desk, working at being a writer, though I am
not sure I have anything to show for it.
I did send in my manuscript to a literary agent, and he sent back a very
constructive rejection letter (I read it once in March, but couldn't bring
myself to reread it until last week when I was able to appreciate his comments
over and above the rejection). Still I
keep at it and did enter some contests though of course no prizes. I have also done more reading than I would
have done at home. As it happens I have
just finished rereading The Great Gatsby
and am surprised to see how much a bearing it has on where I am now, for it is
all about dreams, "Winter Dreams" he calls them elsewhere: dreams
which so capture our imagination and attention that they rule our lives. England was one of those dreams, perhaps
there are others as well. Fitzgerald
isn't much help on what comes next, only the danger/tragedy of letting those
dreams rule your life.
Everyone
says that we have not experienced much of an English winter. We did have a week of hard frost the week
before Christmas, and it was cold, but nothing we couldn't handle. There is a drought here too. It is very green, but there is not enough
rain in the winter to replace the underground supplies, so water is being used
up faster than replaced, though that is only in parts of England, mainly the
southeast, where we are. May was the
hottest month of May since 1833, but we were told that it rained everyday in
June last year, before the rest of the summer warmed up. Today is starting like last year I
guess. We had some showers over the
weekend and the heat wave seems to be broken with rain on the way this
week. Springtime here is exceptionally
beautiful. In Las Vegas I sneeze through
spring and find it difficult to breathe.
School
is out the 22nd of July and our lease is up the 27th. I hope we will stay till then, returning on
the 28th for a quick drive back from NY in our beloved, but well broken in, VW
bus.
See
you soon. Give our best to Joe and the
boys. Enclosed for your spare time is
part of my book, which I will save now till I'm famous!
* * * * *
Tuesday
2 June. 8:50 a.m. Cloudy, cool. Thinking about Gatsby last night. Amazing he did this, put the story together,
only eight (I think) chapters, 168 pages, yet rich with details and story. As I was thinking about it again this morning,
wondering who I could portray, or use as a model, it occurred to me that there
are few people I know who have a dream!
They do have dreams, of course, but they are of cars and houses and
savings accounts, things like that. I
suppose in that way I am very much like my father in that my dreams have no
practical relationship to my life. How
many times have people said (or have I thought) I'm like my mother, but I think
having known no other life or the hardship of the "cruel world"
(other than the hardship of motherhood which is its own burden, but different)
she naturally assumed that life was the way she had lived and the way her
husband had imagined it would be, so they were suited to each other. It was only later in their lives when she
realized that his dreams did not always lead them to the type of life she
imagined, they sometimes led beyond it, past the enjoyment, the peace, the
richness of the present life, on to the next dream.
But
I think the point to be made is that the Buckley dream is very much different
than those silly dreams of economic prosperity which led on most people. We had dreams of fat Christmases, missionary
deaths, Hollywood romances, political intrigues and so on.
It
is interesting to think that perhaps my father has kept alive, in an
adulterated way, some of the dreams of his forefathers and foremothers as they
set across the ocean, looking for a new land with a hope for new freedoms, new
lives, not just prosperity, but hope for better lives, though now that I write
that, I'm not exactly sure what it means beyond prosperity: free to grow up and
be the master of your own fate? Do I
really mean to say that this is the same dream my father had? When he left New York? When he moved to England? When he moved to Las Vegas? Has he perhaps transferred his dream to the
20th Century? In other words, changing
the desire to escape the oppression of a poor, conquered country (Ireland) to a
desire to escape the everyday lives which are the modern day equivalent: our
own poor spirits, conquered by materialism?
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| Thomas' "Smelly Wellies" |
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