Margot Asquith
Daughter of a
baronet,
wife of a prime
minister,
mother of a princess
and
a film director. The
source
of her husband's
success
and possibly his
downfall.
Who wouldn't want her
in their family tree?
She's the reason I
have a B grade
in A level politics,
which I'd never
have studied
otherwise,
nor joined the Lib
Dems.
Her books line my
shelves -
Places and Persons,
Off the Record,
Octavia. At sixteen I devoured
them,
believed her to be my
great-grandma's
grandma's cousin.
Perhaps she was.
I imagine likenesses,
think I can hear
one of us saying the
things she said.
She tells enough
white lies
to ice a wedding cake
- maybe;
The t is silent as in
Harlow, less so.
Her own grandma's
portrait is on my wall
in a montage with the
other family photos.
Robina Arrol - her
picture like the cover
of an Austen novel,
yet she lived
with a manufacturer 'by habit and repute'.
Beatrix Potter
By the time I got to Hill Top Cottage
I was both too old and too
young
to care that it was fifty years
since its mistress left it to
the National Trust.
I wouldn’t have known had I not
been told
that the view from her library
window
was the one Tom Kitten could
see
from the chimney in The Tale
of Samuel Whiskers.
I’d have been jealous had I known
that at my age her education
was over,
that she had never been sent to
school.
By then I no longer wanted
to write books like hers, knew
I could never
illustrate them if I did. I
still pitied
Aunt Ribby, tricked by Duchess
the dog,
Jemima Puddle-duck nearly lured
to her death
by the fox-tailed gentleman.
She was saved, though her eggs
were not.
Even Tom Kitten, put in a
roly-poly pudding
by rats, though it served him
right
for teasing the ducks, ruining
Tabitha Twitchit’s tea party.
Ginger and Pickles were far too
trusting,
but I was still fascinated by
village shops,
perhaps had ideas of owning one
some day
like I had ideas of my own Hill
Top Cottage,
just not in Near Sawrey, too far from the railway.
Mary Ann Evans
Not just a woman but one living in sin,
today she's still
known by her pseudonym,
while many couldn't
tell you who Currer Bell
was. Romola, though
least read,
coloured her writing.
Never again
would her heroines
have names
like Eppie, or Maggie
or Hettie.
No more would anyone
say 'nor' for than,
'as' meaning that;
only once
would a character say
'allays'
not always.
Even Loamshire
is absent from her
final work.
My Fourth Visit
We didn't stay long
in Exmouth.
The waves made
national news that day,
the only time I've
been to Devon in winter.
It didn't resemble
the place
where I'd had my
interview at Rolle College
the last time I
stayed with you,
or where I had lunch
at a Chinese restaurant
with the family after
we'd looked round A La Ronde.
I must have gone
twice that holiday,
my paperbacks by
Margot Asquith
definitely came from
there, and perhaps
David Cecil's Early
Victorian Novelists
with a chunk of pages
on Mrs Gaskell missing.
The birthplace of my
mother,
now it's somewhere I
go with her and Dad
after funerals -
first your mother's,
then your husband's.
I hope next time
won't be after yours.
Peter
J Donnelly lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has degrees
in English Literature and Creative Writing from Lampeter University. His
poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies including
Dreich, High Window, One Hand Clapping and Southlight. He won
second prize in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition in 2021 and was a joint
runner up in the Buzzwords open poetry competition in 2020.
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