Literary Pilgrimage to England

This is an excerpt from my eBook entitled "England in the Footsteps of its Literary Giants".   I wrote this in 1987 after I'd received my Bachelors Degree in English Literature.  My husband & I took a 3 week trip to see the birthplaces and environs of some of my favorite British writers.  

Our next stop was the Yorkshire Dales, where James Herriot lived and wrote of his experiences as a veterinarian in “All Creatures Great and Small”.  We knew that the name “James Herriot” was his “nom de plume” and we wouldn’t be able to look up that name in the local phone book, but we wanted to make a pilgrimage to Thirsk, the town where we’d heard that he lived and practiced.  We went into a bookstore in the town’s square, and, being the intrepid travelers, asked the clerk if he knew where the famous writer lived or worked.  He told us that all we had to do was to walk across the street and look for the red door and the sign, “Veterinary Surgeon’s Premises”.  Outside was a white drop off box where Herriot often left medication for his clients to pick up after hours.  He was still practicing medicine at the time when we were there, but, unfortunately, we never got to meet him.  He has passed away since our visit and his home/office is now a museum in his honor.

Home/Office of James Herriot

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The Yorkshire Dales really were beautiful: rolling green hills with hedgerows discretely separating each farm.  Another reason why we had come to this area was to visit the home of the Brontes.  We saw the Parsonage where the family resided and were able to see the desks where the sisters had done their writing. We walked the moors and thought of Heathcliffe and Kathy from “Wuthering Heights”.  It was cold there and we stopped for some tea in a little shoppe.

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The Bronte Parsonage

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The Brontes weren’t the only 19^th century female writers whose house we visited--we also made a pilgrimage to two of Jane Austen’s houses.  The first was in Chawton, which is about 60 miles from London. Walking the neighborhood, I was struck by the vision of thatch-roofed cottages and I saw an old, creepy cemetery attached to an ancient-looking church. The town looked like it hadn’t changed much since Jane Austen’s time.

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Her last home was across the street from the Winchester Cathedral.  She died here just when she was starting to get famous.  She is buried beneath the floors of the cathedral. I again thought of music from the 1960’s and the popular song that said, “Winchester Cathedral—you’re bringing me down”.  I seemed to have had a 1960’s song track playing in my head on this vacation.  Not only did I think of music on this trip: almost every place we visited also spoke of England’s literary heritage.  We strolled through the town of Winchester, and we saw a parade of “19^th Century British soldiers” marching through the Victorian-looking town.  We found out that the mini-series, “Vanity Faire”, by William Makepeace Thackeray (another of my favorite Victorian writers), was being filmed.

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“Are you going to Scarborough Faire”? asks the song from Simon and Garfunkel—another of my favorites from the 1960’s.  The town of Scarborough, northeast of York, sits on a bluff overlooking the coast.  It is famous for the awe-inspiring remains of a castle and a church.  The ruins were partially destroyed in 1645 during the Civil War between Cromwell and Charles I.  When we were there, the wind from the coast was eerily whipping through the ruins.  It was a very beautiful location and definitely “worth a detour” as guide book say.

Scarborough Ruins

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When the time had come to return to our lives in California, we didn’t want to leave. England has so much more to see.  California is so young compared to “jolly olde England”, with all its history and culture.  The trip was a splurge—we were lucky that our bosses allowed us to take three weeks off for our vacation.  Before we had left California for our pilgrimage to literary England, I had been saving up money from my paychecks all year.  We wouldn’t have changed a thing.  It was the trip of a lifetime and a dream come true for this English Major.

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Punctuation Can Be Fun

Many times when I’ve told people that I was an English Major, I am answered by a groan and someone saying, “I hated that class in school.”  Why?  They often answer, “Too much memorization of stupid rules.”  I’d like to stick up for those “stupid rules”: I think that they are important because misuse of punctuation marks can lead to confusion; and isn’t writing ultimately about communicating, not confusing?  Here’s the best description of the importance of these rules: “Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, take notice, or stop.”  This quote is taken from Lynne Truss’s book, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.”   She provides several funny examples of misused punctuation.  Consider her title.  It was taken from a sentence she read that was presumably was about the eating habits of pandas; but the way it’s written, it makes you think that the panda had a gun: he ate his food, shot his gun, and then walked away.  Obviously, that’s not what the writer intended and there shouldn’t be a comma in his description.  Frank McCourt, the noted writer and humorist, said that Lynne Truss should be nominated for sainthood; and he should know about the need for rules about punctuation: he taught English and most likely saw several examples of bad writing over the years.

Here’s a funny example from her book about the misuse of apostrophes: she had seen a sign about a large play area for kids that said: “Giant Kid’s Playground.”  Would you want your child playing with the kid of a giant?  I sure wouldn’t.

Do you overuse exclamation points in your writing?  Truss quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description of them.  He says, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.”  She says that they are “like a big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited, breaks things, and laughs too loudly.”  This is definitely something we should keep in mind in our writing.  I do not want to over-use them.

I write books with my husband and he’s asked me for help in knowing where he should use commas.  I tell him to imagine saying a sentence aloud, and whenever you pause, you probably will need a comma or some other punctuation mark.  Like Lynne Truss says, “they tell us when to slow down.”

Have you ever wondered where to use a colon in your writing?  Here’s her rule: “they deliver the goods that have been invoiced by the preceding words.”  I use colons a lot in my writing and I love this rule. Here’s an example of the correct way to use a colon: in “The Hound of Baskerville”, Sherlock Holmes says, “This much is clear Watson: it was the baying of an enormous hound.”  The writer should imagine saying a delighted and satisfying, “Yes”, where the colon comes.  Colons are nearly always preceded by a complete sentence and are used to precede lists.  When should you use semi-colons?  They are used to combine two related complete sentences when there is no conjunction (and, or, nor, but).

I wonder if someday soon, because of text messaging and Twitter, things like good grammar, spelling, and punctuation will be seen as a dying art; like using a fountain pen and going to the post office to buy commemorative stamps to mail your correspondence and cards.  In my own fiction writing, I use a lot of sentence fragments because I think they make the paragraph more dramatic; so, there is a time and place to bend the rules; but I liked to think that when I read articles from Time Magazine or Smithsonian, the writers will continue to use sentences that deliver the goods and tell me when to slow down, take notice, or stop.  I have to admit, though, that misuse of punctuation marks can lead to some hilarious and unintended meanings which are always fun to catch.

Punctuation Can Be Fun

Many times when I've told people that I was an English Major, I am answered by a groan and someone saying, “I hated that class in school.”  Why?  They often answer, “Too much memorization of stupid rules.”  I’d like to stick up for those “stupid rules”: I think that they are important because misuse of punctuation marks can lead to confusion; and isn't writing ultimately about communicating, not confusing?  Here’s the best description of the importance of these rules:  “Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, take notice, or stop.”  This quote is taken from Lynne Truss’s book, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.”   She provides several funny examples of misused punctuation.  Consider her title.  It was taken from a sentence she had read that was presumably was about the eating habits of pandas; but the way it’s written, it makes you think that the panda had a gun: he ate his food, shot his gun, and then walked away.  Obviously, that’s not what the writer intended and there shouldn't be a comma in his description.  Frank McCourt, the noted writer and humorist, said that Lynne Truss should be nominated for sainthood; and he should know about the need for rules about punctuation: he taught English and most likely saw several examples of bad writing over the years.

Here’s a funny example from her book about the misuse of apostrophes: she had seen a sign about a large play area for kids that said: “Giant Kid’s Playground.”  Would you want your child playing with the kid of a giant?  I sure wouldn't.

Do you overuse exclamation points in your writing?  Truss quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description of them.  He says, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.”  She says that they are “like a big attention-deficit brother who gets over excited, breaks things, and laughs too loudly.”  This is definitely something we should keep in mind in our writing.  I do not want to over-use them.

I write books with my husband and he’s asked me for help in knowing where he should use commas.  I tell him to imagine saying a sentence out loud, and whenever you pause, you probably will need a comma or some other punctuation mark.  Like Lynne Truss says, “they tell us when to slow down.”

Have you ever wondered when you should use a colon?  Here’s her rule: “they deliver the goods that have been invoiced by the preceding words.”  I use colons a lot in my writing and I love this rule.  Here’s an example she uses for the correct way to use colons: in “The Hound of Baskerville”, Sherlock Holmes says, “This much is clear Watson: it was the baying of an enormous hound.”  The writer should imagine saying a delighted and satisfying, “Yes”, where the colon comes.  Colons are nearly always preceded by a complete sentence and are used to precede lists.  When should you use semi-colons?  They are used to combine two related complete sentences when there is no conjunction (and, or, nor, but).

I wonder if someday soon, because of text messaging and Twitter, things like good grammar, spelling, and punctuation will be seen as a dying art; like using a fountain pen and going to the post office to buy commemorative stamps to mail your correspondence and cards.  In my own fiction writing, I use a lot of sentence fragments because I think they make the paragraph more dramatic; so, there is a time and place to bend the rules; but I liked to think that when I read articles from Time Magazine or Smithsonian, the writers will continue to use sentences that deliver the goods and tell me when to slow down, take notice, or stop.  I have to admit, though, that misuse of punctuation marks can lead to some hilarious and unintended meanings which are always fun to catch.