Category Archives: Literature

Arts, Books, Literature

The Heart of a Garden

PINNEGAR, in Reginald Arkell’s 1950 novel “Old Herbaceous”, is the gardener at the local big house. A foundling baby, he grows up to find home and family in the garden and its plants.

Mrs Chateris owns the garden and loves it for its beauty. She and Pinnegar often disagree about what should be planted where, but she usually submits to his expertise. In the same fashion, when a plant seems to be in trouble, Pinnegar would ask the advice of the “First Gardener” and go his way.

I am sure Mrs Arkell (and Pinnegar) agreed with the notion that most of us find out, but which Dorothy Francis Gurney put into words: “One is nearer to God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.”

Standard
Arts, Literature, Scotland

Making it a big thing

HELPING HANDS

THERE’S an old Scots proverb that many in Scotland are fond of. It goes, “Mony a mickle maks a muckle”.

The spelling varies, but in essence it translates as “lots of little things make a big thing”.

A man might make a decent income by being good at many little jobs; lots of people doing a little bit to help someone adds up to that someone being helped in a big way.

And then there is the Russian version of that old saying which also expresses it subtly: “If everyone gave a thread, the poor man would have a shirt.”

Standard
Arts, France, History, Literature

The ‘billet-doux’ should return!

SHORT-SWEET LETTERS

Have you heard of a billet-doux?

During the Thirty Years’ War, when French soldiers might have slept in a different town each night, they took their chance, whenever they could, to write home.

The letters from their latest “billet” would hopefully be “sweet”. And so the term “billet-doux” was derived.

The practice carried on into peacetime, with many a young lover receiving regular letters, generally of no consequence other than the assurance of undying love.

Of course, the subject doesn’t necessarily have to be love. It might be gratitude, appreciation or wonder!

In an age when people often claim they don’t have time to write letters, might we encourage the return of the short, sweet note – the billet-doux?

Standard