The Emilie Loring Collection

Today, I raise a toast to our Emilie Loring community. For ten years, you have brought your ideas, enthusiasm, and generosity to what might otherwise have been an interesting but solitary pursuit.

An Astute Catch

Last week, Peggy sent this illustration from the J. Peterman catalog and two observations:

In Chapter 10 of As Long as I Live (1937), Peggy says, “Going to play tennis in a skirt? Gee, but you’ll look funny.” Joan answers crisply, “The skirt comes off. I’m wearing pink linen shorts under it, but I don’t walk on the village street in them.”

And in Chapter 10 of Where Beauty Dwells (1941), Di says that she dreads “trudging upstairs to change this playsuit to an honest-to-goodness frock.”

Merry replies, “Why change? That full green-and-white striped skirt covers the shorts under it and the socks and shoes don’t leave quite the expanse of bare leg affected by most of the girls who come here. Going somewhere?”

Kudos to Peggy for a good catch!

J. Peterman’s philosophy is that “people want things that are hard to find. Things that have romance, but a factual romance, about them… Clearly, people want things that make their lives the way they wish they were.” (catalog copy)

That statement reminds me of Emilie Loring’s conversation with the Boston Herald‘s literary editor, Alice Dixon Bond, on a weekly radio program:

She related that her son visited with a neighbor who had read When Hearts Are Light Again. The neighbor said, “I like your mother’s stories because she writes of people as they ought to be.” Emilie responded, “Tell your neighbor that I think I write of people as they are.” (Happy Landings: Emilie Loring’s Life, Writing, and Wisdom)

To ease a hanker

Emilie wasn’t immune to the occasional hanker, of course:

“I wanted terribly to go to England. I couldn’t go, so I used it as a setting for a novel. While at work I read the London Times, English Country Life regularly, and innumerable books. In short, steeped myself in English atmosphere till I became so British that I caught myself saying ‘lift,’ ‘cinema’ and ‘will you please pass the sugar basin?’ I loved that winter in England.” (Happy Landings)

To the nth degree

Emilie Loring loved fashion and attended fashion shows that her characters might always be dressed in the latest styles. In Minneapolis, a trio of sisters, their daughters, a daughter-in-law, and a mother-in-law took this to heart a couple of years ago for their Emilie Loring tea party. They decorated their table with paper dolls depicting fashions that Emilie’s characters might have worn, and, not to be outdone by the paper facsimiles, they, too, dressed as their favorite characters might have done.

I’m still in awe of that effort and wanted to meet these remarkable women. Last week, I finally got the chance.

Talk about “Happy Landings!”

“We’ll make it a dream. We will warm it with color till it makes hearts glow just to come into it.”

Hilltops Clear

Nancy and Kara’s home was exactly as Prue Schuyler described: “Color does to me what the touch of the earth did to the giant Antaeus–sends new life, vitality, courage, initiative surging through me. Sometime the scientists will discover that color is a renewer of life.” (Hilltops Clear)

We had a lovely lunch, complete with Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins, after which I shared items from my Emilie Loring collection and showed slides from my library presentations. Words tumbled over words and memories over memories, as we considered Emilie’s life and favorite aspects of her stories that we have read so often. We talked books, characters, Emilie’s life, Boston, Maine, muffins, and the ingredients of Emilie’s “emergency cupboard.”

The plan was to stay a couple of hours and then get back on the road, but conversation and laughter came easily, and the afternoon slipped away much too quickly for that. These women know their Emilie Loring!

We enjoyed another sitting from the generous buffet, and then it really was time to go–and even that was special.

I found my people. 🙂

Thoughts on the Road

In the ten years that I’ve maintained this website, I’ve loved hearing from you in the comments and meeting some of you on the road. I didn’t know what it would be like after I published Emilie’s biography. Would I still have readers here?

Last week’s visits gave me an insight. For pure information, Happy Landings may suffice, but for the fun of enthusing with others who, too, fell half in love with Drex Hamilton or perhaps bought a sample bottle of Suivez Moi, the perfume that Lois Langley wore in Beyond the Sound of Guns, community is the way to go.

I look forward to finishing the travel guide, Emilie Loring’s New England, and perhaps meeting up with a few of you at each destination to see the sights and get Emilie’s name into the local newspapers. I am still on the quest to find Emilie’s readers, longtime and new.

For us here, I wonder if you’d be interested in visiting again on Zoom. I could share my screen to show my library talks, and you could interrupt with questions and comments. I could share books and artifacts from my Emilie Loring collection and visit about what will be in the travel guide (your chance for influence!). If I can get good reception, I could even try to report “live” from one of Emilie’s places when next I’m on the east coast. Lots of possibilities…

In return, I’d love to turn the tables and hear from you about Emilie and what she’s meant to you. The options are wide open for that, so feel free to make suggestions.

I remember one reader who was furnishing a doll house according to descriptions from Emilie’s novels. I hope she’s still here, and I hope she finished it! (Or maybe we’ll inspire someone else!) I remember Ellen in Canada, who filled her garden with homemade, Emilie-themed ornaments, and at least one of you has confessed to writing her own novel inspired by Emilie. Maybe we could report back on recipes of hers that we’ve tried or gardens we’ve modeled after hers. These are only ideas; the point is to open the floor–and not everyone has to share. We need good listeners, too!

The Universe Speaks

The morning after I returned home, I received an email from Eve Loring Tarmey, and we followed up with a nice, long phone call. She is the last of Emilie’s grandchildren, the one who got things started for me, way back in 1992. We’ve met often since our first in-person visit in 2004. Eve and Bill are celebrating their SIXTIETH wedding anniversary this summer–Happy Anniversary to them!

The day after I spoke with Eve, I learned that my favorite Blue Hill cottage, which hadn’t been available earlier, would now be free during my favorite week in September. I quickly rented it for the week of Emilie’s birthday and the Blue Hill Fair!

So much has suddenly turned my way. I have wind in my sails!

Thanks to Eve and Bill, thanks to Nancy, Karen, Lori, Kara, and Kristy; thanks to Peggy; and thanks to all of you who have shown up in one way or another across the last ten years. You’ve made a difference, and I appreciate you.

Happy Landings!