WILD STRAWBERRIES - 9

"'Owbridge's lung tonic for you tonight, my boy"'

 said David."

NANNY'S DOMAIN

A SONG FROM THE NURSERY

Recorded in 1944.  So many boys must have remembered this song from their nursery days now that they had gone for soldiers everyone.  A knot in one's throat, a tear furtively swept, collective memories even for those of us who were no yet born.  

WILD STRAWBERRIES - 8

"Just inside the door was an enormous upright mechanical organ, product of the Fatherland in its milder days.  Into this you inserted a large metal disc covered with perforations, and then turned a handle.  A huge metal roller, studded with spikes like some engine of the Inquisition, could then be observed in motion through the glass front of the upper part, and crashing melody poured forth."

WILD STRAWBERRIES - 7

"The nursery, which had been the home of Lady Emily's four children, was a large, sunny room made from several half-attic rooms thrown into one, with sloping ceilings in odd corners.  It was filled with the accumulation of many years of children.  A large dappled rocking horse with fiery nostrils stood in one corner."

GUDGEON'S DELIGHT

"To sound the gong was, though he would have died than confess it, one of the great joys of Gudgeon's life.  The soul of the artist, the poet, the soldier, the explorer, the mystic, which slumbered somewhere inside his tall and dignified presence, was released four times a day to empyrean heights unknown and unsuspected by his employers, [---] and his underlings."

WILD STRAWBERRIES - 6

"Rushmere Abbey was the meagre remains of a great Cistercian foundation.  Little of it was left but the broken arches of part of the cloisters and a fragment of the dormitories."

WILD STRAWBERRIES - 5

   "The way to Rushmere Abbey lay at first by a shaded lane, then a footpath led through fields.
   "It isn't a good country for cowslips," said David, "but we have everything else.  Fritillaries are an absolute pest hereabouts.  Look there."
   Not far from the stream which bordered the meadow, a number of the snake-headed flowers, white and purple, rose among the grass.  Mary knelt down to look at them, fingering one or two, but not plucking them.
   "Do you know what I'd like, David?" she said, "I'd like a lot of shoes, exactly like these lovely snake-skin creatures.  White shoes and purple shoes."

WILD STRAWBERRIES - 4

"... she went to the window and kneeling on the window-seat looked out into the park.  Her bedroom was at the front of the house, overlooking the great meadow which lay bathed in warmth and peace."

SECCOTINE - IT STICKS

WILD STRAWBERRIES - 3

"The large bedroom was crammed to overflowing with family relics, and examples of the various arts in which Lady Emily had brilliantly dabbled at one time or another."

WILD STRAWBERRIES - 2

"RUSHWATER HOUSE WAS A LARGE, rather Gothic house built by Mr. Leslie's grandfather.  Its only outward merit was that it might have been worse than it was."

FASHION PLATES

What Lady Emily would wear.

Ascot, 1934

The hats have become more elaborate with time.  

Compare this to what they are wearing these days.

WILD STRAWBERRIES - 1

"Through this gate the Leslie family had come to church with varying degrees of unpunctuality ever since the vicar had been at Rushwater..."