Victoria’s
October Leaves
For a number of years, Victoria Magazine
celebrated novelists in their segment entitled,
“Leaves”
In 1990
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of
“The Yearling” was featured exploring
her Cross Creek home.
“There is an affinity between people and
places”, she wrote.
“Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain,
to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic
secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time”.
iii
In 1991
John Gardner’s novel
“October Light” was featured reflecting
on the landscape and the memories inspired
by the riches of the season.
Gardner quotes Rudyard Kipling in his book,
“There is the seasons stopped awhile. Autumn
was gone. Winter was not. We had Time dealt
out to us—more clear fresh Time—grace-days
to enjoy”.
iii
In 1992
“Old Houses”
by Steve Gross and Susan Daley
documents private rooms ‘where time stands still
One such house was the Aiken-Rhett House in
Charleston where Harriet Aiken’s
room remains untouched since
her death in 1892
The authors noted, “Old houses
reveal a beauty and truthfulness
more real and valuable than any replica
could ever be”.
iii
In 1993
A renewed interest in the Victorian Era
sparked a flurry of books that covered
the lifestyles, the decorations and the
rhythm of the 19th century life.
“Many of us live with fragments of a 19th
century home – grandmother’s bed or her
best china, for instance, that were handed down
with a story. But seeing the Victorian home in full-blown
glory is another thing entirely”.
Books listed included:
‘Victorian Style’ by Judith and Martin Miller
‘Victorian America’ by Wendell Garrett
‘The Secret Life of Victorian Houses’
by Elan and Susan Zingman-Leith
‘Victorian Treasures: An Album and Historical
Guide for Collectors’ by Harry N. Abrams Inc.
‘What Jane Austin Ate and Charles Dickens Knew’
by Daniel Pool
‘The Victorian Village by David Souden
and
‘The Waking Dream: Photography’s First Century’
by The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Harry N. Abrams
iii
In 1994
Discovering the Age of Innocence
‘Literature was the center of her life—indeed her life itself
was literature’ once written describing author
Edith Wharton.
“I used to say that I had been taught only two things in my
childhood: the modern languages and good manners’, Edith
wrote in her memoirs ‘A Backward Glance’.
“In my father’s library…words and cadences
haunted it like song-birds in a magic wood, and I wanted
to be able to steal away and listen when they called’.
iii
In 1996
Naturalist Caroline Dormon
Who studied the Louisiana wildlife for more
than 50 years in her solitary cabin named
Briarwood.
“I was born with something—I call it ‘the gift of the wild things’
and because I am simple myself, and have a sympathetic heart, I
can understand animals and simple people to an unusual degree. I see
too, so much that others miss. When I know so many lovely things,
I feel greedy in keeping them all to myself”.
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Wishing you a very Delightsome day,
Kathy
