Friday, 11 July:Comtemplate the two Emily's (while I stir the soup)

Busy with last minute touches to the birthday luncheon, so make yourself comfy in the sitting room and comtemplate the two great Emily's of literature. Gal and Trist will keep you company while I stir the soup and pop the garlic loaves into the oven.

Emily Bronte (1818-1848) lived on the windswept Yorkshire moors in isolation from any intellectual buzz except for the company of her brother and sisters. Her attempts at employment as a governess failed; her life was cut short at thirty and she only wrote a single novel. But what a story that was! Wuthering Heights just simmers with passion, frustration and turbulence. As the wind wuthers across the Yorkshire moors, so does it wuther in the emotions of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. (Do you remember that Dickon in The Secret Garden talks of the wuthering wind?) Neither Heathcliff or Cathy are favourite characters of mine, too cruel and capricious, but I love the way Emily created the bleak, grim atmosphere of Wuthering Heights.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) lived most of her life in self-imposed isolation in Amherst, Mass. She was reclusive, eccentric and dressed mostly in white. In later life, she hardly left her room. But like all great writers she understood the psychology of the human heart so well, too well. She wrote over 1 800 poems, many about death and immortality. I was endeared to Emily in the days and months after my husband died. I find these lines searing even after five years...

The bustle in a house

The morning after death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted upon earth -

The sweeping up the heart

And putting love away

We shall not want to use again

Until eternity.

This Emily Dickinson poem is especially for Alexandra.

The soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door:

On her divine majority

Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing

At her low gate;

Unmoved, an emperior is kneeling

Upon her mat.

I've know her from an ample nation

Choose one;

Then close the valves of her attention

Like stone.