Lorna Wishart, Laurie Lee's mistress, one of the great beauties of her day.
A very entertaining biography about Laurie Lee, one of the UK's favourite authors.
TASTY MORSELS
' On frosty mornings he woke cold and desolate.His mind ugly and raw, clutching desperately at the precipice until Lorna came again, with a bag of sweet cakes and two bottles of wine. He played the violin while she cooked him salmon and potatoes
or steak and onions filling the caravan with oily aromas.'We felt secure in the warm shadows of the van'
A German bomber flew over the woods, dropping four bombs; Laurie heard the whistle of a splinter beside him, six feet from the caravan..He was fine as long as the sun shone and she was with him. After she left silence fell like a deafening wave.
As Britain's industrial cities were devasted, Laurie was guiltily conscious of his apparent immunity from engagement. Whole days would pass when he made a few drawings, did a cross word puzzle, cooked a stew,trimmed the lamps, played his fiddle, and wrote two poems,one unprintable and the other incoherent...
" I am in some way amazed that I am allowed to do this. My life is more tranquil, more lacking in incident than it has ever been.When I find myself making love on sunny afternoons with the sound of battle overhead, I can only think there is something marvellously right about my life or something terribly wrong. Although I like to feel, as I have always done, that nothing but life and love is my business, I have a recurrent breath of suspicion that I have some duty to my fellow men. We shall see how long I can ignore it."
He spent an eyeopening weekend with the eccentric artist Cedric Morris in Suffolk.
Morris took him through pink walled rooms hung with sickeningly diseased and cynical portraits. Lorna's painter friend David Carr was there, drooping his grecian locks, and there was a shaven headed Nazi type who cooked staggering meals.Everybody seemed very free and easy and used words that made Laurie blush.
Whatever reality is, it intrudes soon enough. Laurie Lee is given the privilege of love conquering all, for a while, anyway. And aren't they gorgeous?
ReplyDeleteThis is an introduction that is very seductive..thanks..
The only thing I have ever known about Laurie Lee is that he wrote a book called 'Cider with Rosie' and I've never read it!
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good read Lyn. I am going to write up tasty morsels from a book I enjoy every now and then. I find it very hard to find books that are rivetting reads. I am no longer prepared to struggle with literature any more.
ReplyDeleteDerrick,you must be the only person of your generation who has not read 'Cider with Rosie'.
I didn't like it much,but I think you would enjoy this one.
Derrick, Rall and Lyn . . . Laurie Lee's poems here are well worth a look, particularly "Town Owl."
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