Topic 67: Man's Opinion of Himself

Carol:

I Need My Space    

“It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature ia strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.“ Virginia Woolf

I love to visit artistic spaces, to see where someone famous crouched over a desk to fill a page with inky rhymes or placed an easel  near a window to gain clarity from the morning light. I always find a way in my travels  to visit the homes of painters, musicians, and of course writers. As I wander through the rooms, I imagine the conversations that took place, the daily routines that nurtured—or hindered—their art. I am curious about the outer spaces that supported the inner work, you might say.

 

The museum that was “Papa” Hemingway’s Key West home teems with 12-toed cats and overgrown tropical vines. His writing studio is an immaculate and comfortable  sanctuary set apart from the house and hubbub of family life.  Hemingway was a morning writer who typed out a certain number of pages before joining Pauline and the children around the pool or joining up with the rest of the locasl  known as the “Key West Mob.” Much of his best writing came from the Key West years  between 1931 and 1939 when he and Pauline divorced. These were happy, productive years before the rising depression and self-doubt that would later plague him literally to death. (source: Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum).  

A hundred years earlier in England’s Yorkshire, the Bronte home was the parsonage next to the  church and cemetery atop a hill in the industrial town of Haworth. The house may look large today, but for a family with 6 children and several servants it was small, a dark and gloomy contrast to Hemingway’s colorful island home. Yet, the Bronte sisters found the space and the encouragement from each other to write the poetry and novels that captured the mood of the wild moors of their Yorkshire home for generations of readers after their publication in the late 1840;s.  I wonder how much of  Charlotte Bronte’s own self-doubts found expression  through the thoughts of her most famous character who described herself as in a “habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression” (Jane Eyre Chapter 2 -- Source: Bronte Parsonage Museum).

Further north in England’s Lake District and 50 years earlier, another literary family was living elbow-to-elbow in their small, dark home, a former pub.  Today we would call “Dove Cottage” picturesque, but when William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved into the house in 1799,  the dark, wood paneled first floor was so dark that he turned the 2nd floor into the sitting area . . William went through long periods of self-doubt, especially at those points in his career when he was harshly criticized by fellow poets and critics. Daily walks along the lush, green lakeside paths with Dorothy, and the friendship and encouragement of frequent Dove Cottage visitor Samuel Coleridge pulled him out of his artistic depression. (source: Dove Cottage Museum)
 

My days of exotic travel and literary pilgrimages are on temporary hiatus, but I  can look out the window of my office and see the writing “studio” of another of my very favorite authors, where the lights spill out from under the door very late at night while the writer cum librarian labors at her novel. I try to respect the boundaries of privacy, so I don’t go into Megan’s office unless invited, her outer space. The harder job of any mother is respecting the private inner space of a sometimes self-doubting, sometimes frustrated artist child of any age.
 

The other half of The Daily Theme collaboration has gone Christmas shopping with her cousin’s two-year-old in tow. I imagine Megan won’t have time to write today’s Daily Theme #67. I also imagine   she won’t be pleased when she arrives home and finds out the gingerbread house she worked on so hard yesterday--the gingerbread house so carefully decorated with gum drops and peppermint sticks that looked so nice on the dining-room table-- got nibbled by Milo the magnificent while the other half of the daily theme collaboration wasn’t paying attention. 
 

Sources:
The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum.  
The Bronte Parsonage Museum.
Dove Cottage and Wordsworth Museum
Chapter 2 - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Megan:

As my mother said, I'm a bit tied up today chasing after this little handful:

Also, I will be planning a suitable punishment for Milo for eating my house, which took 3 HOURS to decorate. I'm thinking: Execution. 

I'll try to write tomorrow... but the kidlet is here until Saturday.