Happy Birthday George Gordon

Sonnet On Chillon

by Lord Byron (George Gordon)

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,

For there thy habitation is the heart--

The heart which love of thee alone can bind;

And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd--

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,

Their country conquers with their martyrdom,

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar--for 'twas trod,

Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod

By Bonnivard ! May none those marks efface!

For they appeal from tyranny to God.

Written in 1816 after Byron and Shelley visited the Castle

The Château de Chillon, located near Montreux, Switzerland, is a sturdy, compact fortress nesting in lovely Lake Léman and resonating with over 800 years of feet pacing the worn stones and voices echoing along shadowed corridors.

When Lord Byron and Shelley visited the castle on the 22^nd of June 1816, Byron was deeply impressed by the history of François de Bonivard, a Genevois monk and politician who was imprisoned there from 1530 to 1536. The poet was inspired to write a sonnet and later a longer fable. While in the dungeon, he scratched his name upon a column.

As a young woman I stood in that dim and silent room. I stared long at Lord Byron’s signature above me – preserved forever in stone. I listened to the water high overhead crashing in waves against the wall, the muffled squeak of a mouse hidden nearby and registered deep within that the dust below my feet retained the chill of a grim prison that stilled the beating hearts of countless victims.

But as I walked the hallways, peered through window slits formed for archers and gazed far into the lake from battlements… I found that it was Byron’s spirit that whispered along behind me as I took these pictures…

A Quote From Gabriel

... From Our Current Read

Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd

“And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be —

and whenever I look up, there will be you.

- Gabriel Oak

It is one week until we meet for High Tea to discuss this literary masterpiece.

Keep reading!

Next Read - Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

"ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD" By Thomas Gray (1716-71)

The next read for The Jane Austen Tea Society in our current plan of British Victorian Authors is Far From The Madding Crowd, Hardy’s first major literary success.

Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840 in a small hamlet called Higher Bockhampton which is located in the southwestern English county of Dorset. His childhood was filled with a wealth of deep influences of culture and locale. From their two-storey brick and thatch cottage, Thomas Hardy naturally absorbed a love for literature from his mother, who although she had only served as a maidservant and cook loved to read Latin poets and translated French romances.

His father, a self-employed master mason and building contractor, had descended from an old Dorset family tracing back to the Isle of Jersey in the1400s and was an avid violin player who passed along his love of music to young Hardy.

Thomas Hardy’s childhood very much revolved around literature, music, the local church and life in a rustic rural setting – all of which translated into the body of work that the author became renowned for and for which he was much loved by his devoted readers.

Years ago when I was finally able to put aside the college textbooks and night times taken up with study and homework, I set out on a personal journey to read through the classics… All the ones I felt that I had missed while locked into a “school system plan” that unfortunately was a fairly Austen-free zone. Now that my reading choices were my own I delved into the Brontë sisters, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, of course – Jane Austen and… Thomas Hardy.

I didn’t lose my heart to Hardy the way I did to John Keats but his writing style totally captured my mind. His word-crafting is sublime and the wise reader will keep a dictionary handy if your love of words is equal to your love of story.

Thomas Hardy wrote six novels that were an achievement of great British literature - Far From The Madding Crowd (1874), The Return Of The Native (1878), The Mayor Of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess Of The d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude The Obscure (1895).

Far From The Madding Crowd was chosen for our current read because it was a novel of several "firsts" for Hardy. Besides being his first major success it was his first novel to include his invention of Wessex. Pastoral settings figure significantly into Hardy’s works combined with the loss of a known rural security as the Industrial Age began to change lives. As a setting for his novels, Thomas Hardy resurrected the ancient medievel Anglo-Saxon kingdom name of Wessex and it was – as Hardy described it – a “partly real, party dream” country that occupied a place in the Southwest or Dorchester region of England.

Far From The Madding Crowd first appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in the Cornhill Magazine and its rich language of place and people has the acute ability to take the reader on an atmospheric journey that is full of humor and life lived close to the rural hearth and home skillfully combine with the tragedies and twists of fate that befall the common heart.

Our next High Tea and book discussion will take place on Saturday the 21st of January, 2012 at 1pm. There is plenty of time to walk the lovely path that this book offers. Don’t pass this Thomas Hardy masterpiece by and miss the experience!

To Autumn

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Composed September 19, 1819 after Keats walked near Winchester along the River Itchen in Hampshire...

Celebrating John Keats' Birthday - October 31st!

A Favorite Quote From Our High Tea - October 1st, 2011

Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.

Marian Halcombe in Extracts from her Diary

In The Midst Of... A Woman In White by Wilkie Collins

This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve. (Walter Hartright – The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins)

Are you lost in the center of the mystery? Are you standing in a shadowed corner listening to voices down a dark and silent hall… heart beating and breath catching… what is the meaning of these events?

Are those footsteps? Have they read what you have written in your private journal just minutes ago.

That dull ache in your temple and the damp palms that you clasp together against your breast… surely they are not fevered… for then... who will protect her?

If you have experienced any of these emotions then you are happily deep into the story of The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins.

Twelve o’clock has struck; and I have just come back to close these pages, after looking out at my open window.

It is a still, sultry, moonless night. The stars are dull and few. The trees that shut out the view on all sides, look dimly black and solid in the distance, like a great wall of rock. I hear the croaking of frogs, faint and far off; and the echoes of the great clock hum in the airless calm, long after the strokes have ceased. I wonder how Blackwater Park will look in the daytime? I don’t altogether like it by night. (Marian Halcombe – The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins)

REMINDER - The next Jane Austen Tea Society Book Tea will be in two weeks – October 1, 2011!

If you haven’t started reading, it’s not too late! But you must make haste to be ready to enjoyably discuss this beloved classic over High Tea tastries, fragrant teas and the camaraderie of fellow lovers of great literature!

Old Friends To Trust & Old Authors To Read...

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. Francis Bacon

The smell of old volumes lining fine wood shelves, gilded leather and double-shelved treasures… that is the neighborhood used bookstore.

Now, I do like to make purchases of new books whenever possible and to support the work of gifted authors and current releases. I revel in the smell of fresh print, shiny new dust jackets - bright, colorful & eye-catching – but there is something equally wonderful about diving nose first into an aisle of worn & pre-loved favorites and dusty unknown works waiting to be discovered.

It is immensely pleasing to turn pages touched before by a previous reader. And the occasional comment lightly penciled beside a deep & perplexing paragraph almost never fails to give me a smile… especially if I have had the same thought or a like-minded question.

If you haven’t already – you might venture out to your nearby Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million or local used bookstore to find a copy of The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins for our October read. Make sure that it’s one that feels good in your hands, carries well under your arm and – best of all - lures you into a quiet reading corner to lose yourself in this classic story.

"I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story." Wilkie Collins