Cranford

KJ's mom (affectionately known as Mama T.) came over for a little while this afternoon so KJ and I could go out alone.  Hooray!  It was wonderful.  I would really like a few days alone with my husband as opposed to a few hours, but I will have to wait for that.  All you who are married with no children yet, enjoy these days!  Of  course children are a blessing, but it is also such a blessing to talk to your spouse uninterrupted so enjoy this season!  We had a very successful trip, and I found all manner of good things to read.  It was so pleasant to have the time and the quiet to walk calmly through the library and look over book titles without holding a 22 pound baby on my hip and constantly adjuring my 3-year-old to stay close to me.  (I must say that those are fun memories, too, and bring their own kind of joy.)  Ella took a picture of KJ and I before we went  to the library.  She did a really great job, didn't she?

I found Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.  She was a contemporary of Charles Dickens and wrote for one of his publications in the 1850's, Household Words.  Cranford is delightful reading, painting a picture of the social doings of a small English village.  Life is different there than in fashionable London.  Here is something that made me laugh:

My next visit to Cranford was in the summer.  There had been neither births, deaths, nor marriages since I was there last.  Everybody lived in the same house, and wore pretty nearly the same well-preserved, old-fashioned clothes.  The greatest event was, that Miss Jenkynses had purchased a new carpet for the drawing-room. Oh the busy work Miss Matty and I had in chasing the sunbeams, as they fell in an afternoon right down on this carpet through the blindness window!  We spread newspapers over the places, and sat down to our book or our work; and, lo! in a quarter of an hour the sun had moved, and was blazing away on a fresh spot; and down again we went on our knees to alter the position of the newspapers.  We were very busy, too, one whole morning, before Miss Jenkyns gave her party, in following her directions, and in cutting out and stitching together pieces of newspaper, so as to form little paths to every chair, set for the expected visitors, lest their shoes might dirty or defile the purity of the carpet.  Do you make paper paths for every guest to walk upon in London?

Oh, the joys of British literature!  And any good book, of course.  If you are not the reading sort but appreciate English dramas, you should definitely check out the BBC production of Cranford and Return to Cranford.