crumbs
by rantywoman
Diana Athill on her childless aunt:
What my aunt felt about it she never said. She was not only a reserved woman, but the most genuinely unselfish person I have ever met. Silent, a little apart, she threw herself into work. She gardened, she served on committees, she taught Sunday school in the village, she became a Justice of the Peace. The books on her shelves were not quite like the books of the rest of the family, the pictures in her bedroom were not like their pictures, and she was the only one who would slip away for holidays abroad, walking in the Dolomites, or staying in rough inns in Italy or Yugoslavia. She loved small children and they loved her. Gently, diffidently, she dropped crumbs of poetry or romanticism or liberal opinion along their paths for them to pick up if they cared to.
– Instead of a Letter, p. 132
I have been following your blog for many months now, and I am so grateful for the writers you mention. I am reading Diana Athill now, and a book on Jean Rhys is patiently waiting on my nightstand. I don’t know how you have the time to find these great voices, but please know it’s so appreciated that you share them. Reading their work and others like May Sarton, are such great reminders of how “normal” this “nontraditional” path may actually be.
Thank you! I have had to restrain myself from quoting the entirety of Instead of a Letter.