Writers' Spaces

The winner of Priscilla Paton's WHEN THE HOUSE BURNS is Sandra Benson. Sandra, contact juliaspencerfleming@gmail.com for more info! 

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'll have much more to say (and photos to share!) about my fabulous trip to Key West and spending time with Lucy and Hallie later in the week, but today I want to share some thoughts on visiting Ernest Hemingway's Key West studio for the second time. The Hemingway House is fascinating for its history and memorabilia, and of course the famous cats, but it's the separate studio in the back that I connected with so deeply that I couldn't wait to see it again. 

Years ago I visited Jane Austen's home in Chawton, Hampshire, and I marveled at the small parlor where she wrote, seldom alone, surrounded by the busy comings and goings of the household. If there was some magic in that room, I felt it doubly in Hemingway's studio. Here I am, taking a selfie in the mirror in the room's entrance, maybe hoping a little of that fairy dust would rub off on me. I imagined papers piled beside the typewriter, books piled on the floor, the keyboard clacking with work in progress. 

On leaving, I was compelled to order a copy of Hemingway's Letters, Vol. 2 of 6, the Paris years. It was waiting for me when I got home, and I immediately came across this quote. Hemingway, writing to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1925, says, "It certainly is funny how your head…can go most of the time like a frozen cabbage and then it can give you hell when it starts going. Have been so pleased to find it still functions." He was writing The Sun Also Rises, the novel that propelled him to fame. There's something comforting about knowing that such a renowned writer had the same struggle with stopping and starting, and that something amazing came from it. 

And to top it off, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS was playing on my flight home.

Dear Reds, have you been inspired by a space where another writer lived or worked? 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes. Yes yes yes. The Mount, in Lenox MA, where Edith Wharton lived and wrote. It is from a completely different time, socially and culturally,and the atmosphere and aura were unchanged when we visited, .and the gardens were  transporting. It’s so–elegant, and contained, and everything was precisely where it was supposed to be, and filled with history and almost-stressful precision and manners.  And she is my absolute idol as a writer. Unmatched! One of the things I hope to adopt for myself is that Wharton apparently wrote in bed, and then dropped her handwritten pages on the floor for the secretary to pick up and transcribe. Wonder if I could somehow make that happen?   

I WISH I had taken a photo of myself in her mirror. Brilliant idea. I will do it this summer.

RHYS BOWEN: The writing space that I crave is Agatha Christie’s Greenway. It is my ultimate fantasy house, an elegant Georgian on the banks of the River Dart in a wonderful setting. Agatha had a desk with that view and also all those grounds to wander in while she talked her way through plot points.  I might choose to write in the boat house if I lived there so I had peace and quiet. But would I work well with some much to look at out of the windows?  And Hank, I too would like a secretary to take my scribbles and type them up. Luckily I dont write by hand as John can’t read my handwriting!

LUCY BURDETTE: Debs, you know how much I love that little Hemingway office and in fact, the entire house and grounds on Whitehead Street in Key West. The office is separate enough from the house that I bet I could get a lot done there. (Well, I’d have to turn off the Internet too…)

Hank, I already do most of my writing in bed, though it’s all in the computer. I wouldn’t dream of dropping pages on the floor. My sweet John would not even notice them and the animals would rip them to shreds. I also visited EW’s home a few years back–it’s gorgeous!

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, such a good question! I have visited the Hemingway house in Key West (back when I was in high school - before I knew I wanted to be a writer). At the time, I viewed it from my 17 year-old “Dude was a total misogynist but at least he loved cats” perspective. Hub and I have deep debates about Hemingway and his regard of women and Hub has worn me down into reconsidering my stance. I don’t believe he was a misogynist so much as a product of his time. Anyway, I also adore Edith Wharton and thanks to Hank am now planning to visit her estate. I’ve never seen it - what an oversight!

As for other authors’ spaces, I have to say on my bucket list to visit are P.E.I. - Lucy Maude Montgomery’s stomping grounds and I want to visit Christie’s Greenway as well. I did the Austen Centre in Bath but would love to visit Chawton. Growing up in CT, the author’s home I remember most clearly is Mark Twain’s house in Hartford via many school field trips. Not sure why I don’t live in such a glorious abode (it has a turret, billiard room, and conservatory!) but here we are. 

HALLIE EPHRON: I haven’t been to many famous authors’ abodes, but the Hemingway House was certainly memorable. Love the cats. And his office. And the surrounding brick walls that keep it separate from the boisterous rest of Key West, making the property feel like its own Secret Garden. And when we visited Prince Edward Island I felt as if I were channeling Lucy Maude Montgomery and catching a glimpse of Anne of Green Gables around every corner. 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I had already started my writing career when we made a weekend trip to Lexington and Concord. Ross was definitely there for the Revolutionary history, but I was dazzled by the wonderfully restored homes of the Transcendentalists, America’s forerunner of the Bloomsbury Group.

The Alcott Family’s homes, The Old Manse, the Thoreau-Alcott House, and Louisa May Alcott’s own Orchard House, feel as if philosophy and art and writing and political activism are seeped into the very walls. (They’re also, for those of us in old New England houses, excellent guides to the sort of wall treatments, paint colors and decor were authentic to that time.) You can also see Emerson’s house and spaces where Hawthorne worked. I left feeling almost dizzy with the concentration of world- and literature- changing talent that had sat inside those houses and strode the tree-lined paths between them.

DEBS: Of all the places mentioned, Greenway is the one I'd most like to visit. I'm envious, Rhys!

READERS, have you visited famous authors' homes? And did any magic linger?

House of...worth?

She's not exactly one of us, if one of us means mystery writer in the traditional sense, but Edith Wharton was a woman who wrote when it wasn't easy for a woman to write, with a husband who wasn't always supportive, (can you say aggressively unsupportive?) A woman who kept at it whatever the feedback was. In that sense she was one of us. And now her house is under seige, in danger of being foreclosed on by a bank. It happens. The bank is not the enemy, but that's not the point.

The Mount, in Lenox Massachusetts is a wonderful place. I feel particularly sad about this, not just because I'm an Edith Wharton fan, but because the garden in Pushing Up Daisies was loosely based on Wharton's garden at The Mount. I had an inspirational visit there a few years back and thought that Edith or Beatrix Farrand, who designed her gardens, were long past minding a similar layout in my book.

If this were Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West I wouldn't to be writing this. I wouldn't need to. Some professor or university or movie star would pick up the gauntlet and raise the money needed to prevent his home from being turned into condos or a spa or whatever the heck new owners might want to do with the property.

Any other Edith Wharton fans out there? The place where she created masterpieces of American literature should be preserved and you can help. Check out

http://www.edithwharton.org/

HANK: She's one of my favorites. In fact, when I still was in a book club (pre-Charlie) and we all got to choose a book for the group, I picked Custom of the Country--which if you haven't read, do. It's astonishingly modern and incredibly well-written. A wonderful story--compelling and irresistible, with a complicated and unique main character, and no punches pulled.
And then, half of my book group just hated it. Which has always baffled me. I thought it was staggering. And House of Mirth. Sometimes I just can't get it out of my mind.
But anyway--we go to Lenox every summer, to hear the symphony at Tanglewood and walk through the sculpture garden at Chesterwood and go to the Book Store on Housatonic Street and have espresso slushes at Soco and martinis at Bistro Zinc. And we never miss The Mount. We've seen it through the highs and lows, and watched Wharton's one-act plays performed in her parlor, had lemonade on the balcony.
Now its kind of weirdly re-made into a decorators show house kind of place, where they've designed rooms that aren't even the way "Edith's" were, which frankly drives me crazy. Because--what's the point? Plus, she was the expert and icon in architecture and decorating before she went on to literature, and the idea that they...oh, well.

Anyway. Ro is so right. The idea that it's going to be foreclosed on seems bizarrely anachronistic. Or something like that. To take such a 21st century phenomenon, and slap it across an historic site. Seems, what? Crass? Absurd? Short-sighted? And do what with it? Make the Mount a furniture store?

HALLIE: "Custom of the Country." Check--now it's on my TBR list. Still, can you imagine how bizarre it would be to look back from your grave, 70-plus years post mortem, and see the world trying to make the place where you wrote into a monument?? And how heavenly(!) it would be if anyone would be blogging (will they still blog?) about your writing.

HANK: Who owns it, anyway?

RO: It´s the Edith Wharton Foundation, and try as I might I wasn´t able to find the suggestion any mishandling of funds..it seems they just got caught up in some unfavorable loans and bad refinancing deals. I have to say...I´m writing this from El Salvador..where I´m finishing up a blitz build with Habitat for Humanity. Fifty four houses are going up (pix on my website in a week or so) for less than it would cost to...I don´t know... replace Edith´s azaleas. It´s strange to have these two situations side by side in my brain, but I do.

ROBERTA: Now I've got Custom of the Country on my TBR list too. Have never been to Edith Wharton's home, but I did tour Hemingway's house in Key West this winter--twice. The place is constantly mobbed with tourists who want to hear the story of his life--he had four or five wives, I can't remember, and was a hard-drinking, adventurous and tragic figure in the end. You would absolutely salivate over the room where he wrote. It would be very sad to see Wharton's--or Hemingway's--home disappear. This is the kind of "museum" where ordinary people can go to appreciate the mastery and humanness of writers.

RO: Does anybody else think Hank has the coolest life? Espresso slushes..? Martinis? Tanglewood..every time I go, it rains.