Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson 10 out of 10

 Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson

10 out of 10

What a joy this magnifique book is to read, especially coming in the footsteps of the cryptic, dystopian, bizarre, otherworldly, outré The Crying of Lot 49 by the recluse, acclaimed Thomas Pynchon - http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-crying-of-lot-49-by-thomas-pynchon.html - and considering that this simple, accessible, classic, conservative – surely long discarded and considered passé by many readers – majestic, enchanting style is the one this reader loves best, offering the occasion for ‘Happiness on very little’, as there is the case for many of the inhabitants of the hamlet that is at the center of this narrative, which comes in three installments, as one of the best loved trilogies of British literature…

This is a sublime description of the countryside in Britain, at the end of the nineteenth century, during the celebrated – in the book they prepare for the Jubilee – queen Victoria – an age during which the under signed would have liked to live, if summoned to make the choice, albeit not as one of the figures in this narrative, not the poor ones anyway, but preferably as one of those lords in possession of a castle, or at the very least a mansion, something like what we see in Downton Abbey, but with less financial, servants and other trouble – when almost all of the men and women who live in the hamlet of juniper Hill (and most likely in most other country places) are quite settled in their ways and do not wish for a change, a revolution – as tends to be the case in this day and age of inequality, but also a young generation that supports socialist or even communist ideas, unaware of that they mean, as we are, those who have been born behind the Iron curtain, beneficiaries of the system brought in by the Soviets…

Not everything is paradisiacal in the hamlet, that is obvious, the bucolic life though does have attractions and made this reader think of his experience when working in tourism and taking clients from the USA – mostly – to live in villages and experience a trip back in time – although most have had quite modern facilities, there were some with an outhouse and conditions closer to the middle ages and what people in Juniper hill had – and later on in the small town of Rosenau, where modernity would sit close to barbarity and my house was on the edge of the forest and thus next to the Wild (indeed, they filmed for the mega production Cold Mountain about three hundred meters from the house, for some of the scenes).

“A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.” Said a very clever man, H.L. Mencken, and this is the case for this story, wherein almost all made just one shilling per week – which was obviously not the same value as today – and anywhere else – on a personal note, living in a gated community, I observed yesterday a new Porsche SUV, parked nearby, in the middle of a pandemic that had wiped out so much wealth – only to hear the spouse stating maliciously (as always) that people in this community are doing very well – the implication was that her husband is a loser and that stealing, as many if not most of these ‘rich goodfellas’ are, would be acceptable, if it comes with a shining new car and the rather flimsy ‘affluence’…positive psychology studies demonstrate that it is much more important to be ‘time affluent’ for instance and that Hedonic Adaptation destroys quite soon the pleasure brought by material gain…the Dalai Lama has entered a supermarket and said …’wow, so many things I do not need ‘hence this Buddhist, or Stoic approach works better.

Rituals of sacrifice, work, events in the life of the men and women are described with divine talent, the stuffing and killing of the poor pigs, the bacon which is hung in a special place, the meat which is given to others, first of all to those who had given sides in their turn, the lack of consideration for the animals – the hunting of foxes is mentioned, poor animals that are torn apart by apparently nice dogs – milk is a rare luxury…indeed, so is water, for it has to be brought from a distance, never mind the running water that Laura, the heroine of the novel, would enjoy so much once she would move, at the tender age of fourteen and a half, together with hot water for a bath…initially, Laura was supposed to become a nurse – and she would be quite upset when she learns she does not fit the requirements – while her brother, Edmund, is meant to be apprenticed to a carpenter, which seems to be a cleaner profession..

As everybody – more or less – has enough to eat, in order to obtain other necessities there Is a need for other sources – or to use the Stoic precept which insists one need to ‘desire only what one already has’ – and they rely in the hamlet on things sent back home by the girls, daughters that are in service, work in the homes or kitchens of richer people and get some second hand clothes and other things to send back home – if one is a cook, one can ask for fifty pounds a year, maybe five more or threaten with resignation, while other servants get much less, but still, ascetic girls manage to send about half their wages back to their mothers, living on very little…the dream of one of the characters is ‘if only I had a pound every week’

As for the aforementioned precept that money – especially those spent on quite useless gadgets most of the time…what is spend on experiences, travel (if possible during a pandemic) provides much better results in terms of increased wellbeing – do not ensure happiness, this is not the case for those who are very poor…for those living in squalor, more money brings in much more happiness, but there are established levels, for instance, in America, it was studied and it was set at about 60 – 70, 000 dollars per year, depending on the state, it is much easier to have a smaller income in Alabama than in San Francisco, the latter is the place where one million dollars buys a one bedroom flat in certain areas…

There are also vagrants in the countryside near Candleford, in Oxfordshire, where all the events take place and they try to sell anything, shoelaces or Lavender…the morals are different from what we have today and if there is tolerance to some degree for children born out of wedlock, men and women still do not want that disgrace to happen to their daughters…small birds, sparrows are caught with a net and put into a pudding, or if fewer caught they are roasted on the fire – one is tempted to say how cruel these people are, but if the pandemic strikes harder, with a second worse wave, who knows what we have to resort to…after all, they say that in North Korea, another communist paradise that socialists and left wingers should take into consideration when they promote those dangerous doctrines, they eat bark…

Eventually, Laura would move to Candleford Green, a place that seems as different as America would be from our lands…but wait, America is now ruled by a savage, has rebellion on the streets and does not look like the Eden we dreamed about…indeed, if I envied my sister for being a doctor in Chicago, now we have to worry about her…