The Mitford Bedside Companion

by Jan Karon

  For more about reading aloud, go to a search engine and simply type in “reading aloud.” You’ll find great material to help you be your most captivating and entertaining self when you read aloud.

  There is no robber worse than a bad book.

  —Italian proverb

  The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

  —Joseph Joubert

  Richer than I you can never be, I had a mother who read to me.

  —Strickland Gillilan

  A real book is not one that we read but one that reads us.

  —W. H. Auden

  * * *

  Setting: MAIN STREET GRILL

  PERCY

  I got to do somethin’ to rake in b’iness.

  (beat)

  Maybe I ought t’mess around with th’ menu. Come up with a special I could run th’ same day ever’ week.

  MULE

  Gizzards!

  PERCY

  What about gizzards?

  MULE

  I’ve told you for years…gizzards is th’ answer to linin’ your pockets.

  PERCY

  (irritated)

  Don’t talk to me about gizzards, dadgummit! They’re in th’ same category as what goes over th’ fence last. You’ll never see me sellin’ gizzards.

  MULE

  To make it in th’ restaurant business you got to set your personal choices aside. Gizzards are a big draw.

  J.C.

  (earnestly)

  He’s right. You can sell gizzards in this town.

  (thumps the table, emphatic)

  This is a gizzard kind of town.

  MULE

  All you got to do is put out a sign and see what happens.

  PERCY

  (beat)

  What kind of sign?

  MULE

  Just a plain, ordinary sign. Write it up yourself an’ put it in th’ window.

  (beat)

  No big deal.

  PERCY

  When me an’ Velma retire at th’ end of th’ year, I want to go out in th’ black. Maybe send ’er to Washington to see the cherry blossoms. She’s never seen th’ cherry blossoms.

  MULE

  Gizzards’ll get some cash flow in this place.

  PERCY

  Seem like chicken livers would draw a better crowd.

  J.C.

  Livers tie up too much capital. Too much cost involved with livers. You want to go where the investment’s low and the profit’s high.

  MULE

  You been readin’ th’ Wall Street Journal again.

  That’s what gizzards are about.

  What d’you mean?

  PERCY

  (perplexed)

  PERCY

  What would I put on th’ sign?

  Here’s what I’d put…(makes a sweeping gesture)…GIZZARDS TODAY.

  PERCY

  (incredulous)

  That’s it? “Gizzards Today?”

  MULE

  That says it all right there. Like you say, run your gizzard special once a week…maybe on…

  J.C.

  Tuesday! Tuesday would be good for gizzards. You wouldn’t want to start out on Monday with gizzards…that’d be too early in the week. And Wednesday…you’d want something…

  MULE

  (brightly)

  …more upbeat!

  FATHER TIM

  Right!

  J.C.

  Wednesday could be lasagna day. I’d pay good money for some lasagna in this town.

  (Silence. Mule BELCHES. They give him a look….)

  MULE

  ’Scuse me.

  PERCY

  Do y’all eat gizzards?

  J.C.

  Not in this lifetime.

  MULE

  No way.

  FATHER TIM

  I pass. I ate a gizzard in first grade. That was enough for me.

  PERCY

  I don’t get it. You’re some of my best reg’lars. Why should I go sellin’ somethin’ y’all won’t eat?

  J.C.

  We’re a different demographic.

  PERCY

  Oh. So how many gizzards would go in a servin’, do you think?

  J.c.

  How many chicken tenders d’you put in a serving?

  PERCY

  Six. Which is one too many for th’ price.

  J.C.

  OK. As gizzards are way less meat than tenders, I’d offer fifteen.

  (beat)

  Sixteen, minimum. Be sure you batter ’em good, fry ’em crisp, an’ serve with a side of dippin’ sauce.

  PERCY

  Fifteen gizzards. Two bucks.

  (brightens)

  What d’you think?

  FATHER TIM

  I think Velma’s going to D.C.

  In This Mountain, Ch. 3

  Oops!

  Bloopers in Mitford and How They Got There

  Why was the box that Fr. Tim found in Miss Sadie’s attic postmarked? In A New Song, Hélène said it had been shipped by boat from France.

  The shippers, you recall, went to the Paris apartment of Hélène Pringle’s mother and packed many items which Mr. Baxter wished to be shipped to America. The bronze angel was put into a box already on the premises, which had been previously used—and postmarked—for another purpose. The entire shipment had then been packed into a container and sent to America.

  Is Absalom Greer’s sister a widow or a spinster? You’ve referred to her as both Lottie Miller and Lottie Greer.

  You have me here. To my great chagrin, I wrote it both ways, don’t you know. But of course Miss Lottie has to be one or the other, doesn’t she? So let’s say she was briefly married to a Mr. Miller, who vanished, after which she took on the lifelong care of her brother, Absalom Greer, and later resumed the use of her maiden name. Indeed, Absalom was Lottie’s greatest devotion, reminding us of Dorothy Wordsworth’s devotion to William, her brother.

  In At Home in Mitford, you briefly mentioned Annie Owen, daughter of Hal and Marge Owen. We never met her or heard of her again until the final novel. Why?

  Frankly, I forgot all about Annie until Light from Heaven, in which we learn that after college, Annie joined foreign services and thus was conveniently absent from the story line for several years.

  I daresay there are other bloopers and mis-thinks in a series of novels that range over a period of ten years and involve hundreds of characters.

  Oh, for a concordance of names and places and special words (liver-mush, buddyroe, etc.), not to mention a list of who smokes Camels (or was it Chesterfields?) and drinks vodka (or was it gin?), and who has amber eyes and who has brown, and where was Buck Leeper from and is Harley’s surname spelled with a C or an S, and how old are the Barlowe kids, and in which book will I find Cynthia’s middle name? Ugh.

  There are dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of details to be recalled about each character, which is why rosemary (for remembrance) is my all-time favorite kitchen herb!

  Cast of Characters

  The Very Thing

  The Very Thing

  Long before Mitford was conceived, Jane Austen wrote this in a letter to her niece, Anna:

  “You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life; three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.”

  I chanced upon this pertinent counsel when writing the second novel, A Light in the Window. It was of enormous encouragement as I wrote further into a series that would have no voguish noir, no pop sentiment, no murder, no mayhem, and no cussin’.

  Indeed, I was thrilled to have such estimable permission to write of ordinary people living ordinary lives in a country village.

  By the way, one of Jane Austen’s many distinguished biographers, Carol Shields, disputes the wisdom of calling her “Miss Austen.” I shall have to do it, nonetheless.

  “Collecting your people” is how Miss Austen put it.
But, truth be told, my people collected me. One after another, characters appeared, quite full-blown, and demanded that I do something with them.

  Almost immediately after Father Tim “left the coffee-scented warmth of the Main Street Grill” on page one of At Home in Mitford, the second character showed up.

  Had I expected a dog the size of a sofa to pop into the story? Actually, I had no idea what to expect, for I’d never written a novel and didn’t have the hang of how things are supposed to proceed.

  Momentum, if one dares use that word for a Mitford book, built quickly. Close on the heels of Barnabas, a third character presented herself.

  Pretty grouchy, that Emma, and not my cup of tea in real life (though I can be pretty grouchy, myself, at times). But there she was, as ready-made as if she were flesh and blood, and there she remained for all nine novels. She was even wearing a familiar scent, My Sin, which I thought was rather amusing for a church secretary.

  I knew, soon on, that my main character was a bachelor with many characteristics that make for a comfortable single life. He read widely (always a boon for someone living alone). He cooked (had to, of course). He enjoyed gardening, and music, and was affable enough to be invited ’round to someone’s house on occasion.

  Thus, I didn’t try to hook him up with an eager and companionable parishioner; I felt he had enough substance to be interesting, himself. So imagine my surprise when Cynthia Coppersmith moved in next door.

  “No surprise in the author, no surprise in the reader,” said, let’s see, Sandburg, I think. Or was it Frost?

  But if I wasn’t consciously structuring the characters and designing the circumstances, what, then, was going on?

  There’s a sense in which I “came upon” these characters in the midst of living out their lives, and they allowed me, if you will, to tag along.

  Indeed, I wished to be as much observer as creator, I even wanted the work to have a documentary quality, to capture the living-out of a simple, decent, and quite ordinary life. A simple, decent, ordinary life! Compared to what I’d been finding in bookstores and on the shelves of my town library, this was radical stuff.

  If one is to move forward with such loosely defined parameters, one must, of course, give one’s characters the very precious—and equally dangerous—gift of free will, which God gives all of us.

  I read that Iris Murdoch wrote lengthy outlines of each of her novels. Forty pages, I believe her husband said. Not too surprising. Many authors make extensive outlines. What amazes me is that Ms. Murdoch is said to have stuck to them.

  I found as I worked at the beginning of the series that I loved dialogue. And no wonder. I had grown up listening to my grandmother’s endless stories—about an enthralling childhood in which she was the only pupil in her one-room schoolhouse to own a pair of shoes. About the five suitors who vied for her hand in marriage, and the riveting analysis of their personal characteristics. About the dresses of lawn and marquisette and silk faille (arcane and wonderful-sounding), which she sewed by hand, and the hats she ornamented with grosgrain ribbons and the wings of birds. Her voice was a music that played throughout my girlhood and has continued throughout my life. To put it in the vernacular, I got my ear from Mama.

  Characters started stacking up like planes over Atlanta.

  And they were all talkers.

  I remember realizing that there was very little plot in what I was writing and believed I should remedy this miserable deprivation at once.

  But the characters kept talking. And talking. And I kept listening, and liking it.

  And so I learned to say that my novels are not plot-driven but character-driven, which redeems me a little, I hope.

  Though I’m not sure I realized it, I had chosen a main character through whose eyes we—you and I—would be privy to everything that goes on in a small town. As another author may write of many characters viewing one circumstance, I was compelled to write of one character viewing many circumstances. Who could be counted upon to process deeply human behavior in a way that makes a difference and inspires the reader (and the author, while we’re at it)? And who would be more trusted than a truly decent priest, who is confessor, shepherd, and friend?

  Thus, it is Father Tim’s sympathetic—and genuinely authentic—kindness that draws the characters out and opens them up, so that we can gaze into their lives without, well, prying.

  I’m reminded of how I love to glance into other people’s homes as I pass on a nighttime street during Christmastide. A glittering tree, the way the curtains are drawn back, the frame on a painting—it’s merely a glimpse, but it connects me to utter strangers in a way that is moving and real.

  Perhaps, then, what I seek to do with my own “three or four families in a country village” is connect you to a group of characters in a way that is moving and real.

  By the time we got to the seventh novel, In This Mountain, and Father Tim was struggling desperately with the thing that ails too many of us today, some of you felt so connected to this man that you went to my Web site and gave him a good tongue-lashing for not taking his medication!

  On a much earlier occasion, a woman came up to me at a reading and declared (I recall that she had her hands on her hips), “If you don’t let Father Tim marry Cynthia, I’m goin’ to quit foolin’ with you!”

  And I shall never forget a speaking event in the barn at Fearrington Inn. As I greeted each of three hundred guests, I noticed a man standing quietly to himself, observing. He was tall, and rugged, and attractive into the bargain. Everyone had gone when he came up to me, and I shook the hand of a man whose palm gave evidence that he works out of doors.

  There was a lovely quietude about him as he said only this:

  “Miss Karon, I want to thank you. I was Buck Leeper.”

  When you open a Mitford novel, I hope you’ll feel that it’s all quite familiar, somehow. Comfortable, even. And instead of keeping your shoulders hunched up about your ears, as a stressful world teaches us to do, you might take a deep breath and relax, and maybe even laugh out loud in this quirky, fictional place that seems, oddly enough, like home.

  Indeed, that is the very thing that would please your author most. The very thing.

  Where Did They All Come from, Anyway?

  There are more than seven hundred characters who appear—or are mentioned—in the Mitford series, including many four-legged pets and a canary named Louise.

  The following Cast of Characters will, however, have its limitations. Chiefly, I will describe those characters who have true meaning to the story line, and only rarely those characters whom we never, or almost never, meet. For example, though Parrish Guthrie is dead as a doornail and merely referred to in the series, he was a parishioner of some importance and will therefore live on in Mitford history.

  I’d give absolutely anything if I didn’t have to do this list (which I find onerous in the extreme), but I can understand why so many of you have requested it. The Mitford series is like an immense Russian novel in which hordes of characters, often with funny names, must be met, sorted out, and in the reader’s mind, assigned their proper places. Worse yet, some of these characters have the same surname, though they aren’t even related. And several share the same Christian name, just as in real life.

  Why so many characters, anyhow?

  Just as I’m smitten with people of various sorts, I love characters of various sorts, and nearly any character at all has been allowed to walk into my stories, demand their moment, and by some mystery which I shall never, ever understand, completely alter and rearrange the scheme of things if they feel so inclined. I’m telling you, Gentle Reader, characters will take over a book as if they owned it.

  You’ll recall Buck Leeper.

  Buck Leeper sauntered into A Light in the Window wearing a hard hat and muddy boots, smoking like a depot stove and cussing like the proverbial sailor. What on earth would I do with him—hit Delete? Or wait and see what he had in mind? I chose to do the latter.

  B
ut—and here’s the rub:

  How can books with no cussin’ feature a character whose language is obscene?

  I didn’t want this broken, driven man coming off like a pantywaist. I wanted him to be bold and authentic. Indeed, he was so authentic to your author that I found myself, on two occasions, praying for him!

  (I said to myself, Child, you are working way too hard!)

  In any case, instead of revealing his language, I revealed his anguish. And readers got it.

  While we’re at it, who expected Lace Turner to jump from a tree and land at the feet of Absalom Greer? Or who knew, when Father Tim was given the daunting challenge of reviving a remote mountain church, that Agnes Merton would be sent to him, as surely as the angel was sent to Daniel?

  Over the years, people have asked again and again:

  Where do you get your characters?

  As you can see, my characters get me.

  They walk into the story, blasé as anything, and I have to deal with them.

  In A New Song, I had no idea who lived behind the wall; I knew only that someone did, and he was in trouble. Then, once I met Morris Love, I had no idea what to do with him. Long periods of head-scratching, praying, sleepless nights, bafflement. Then, the ardently sought Aha!

  Or, take George Gaynor, the so-called Man in the Attic. I was totally surprised to find someone living surreptitiously in Lord’s Chapel—it was when Father Tim smelled chicken soup in the empty church that I realized something was definitely up.

  Thank goodness, God knows all this stuff, and is gracious enough to let me in on how it all works, though I must tell you He hardly ever gives me the big picture. I get only a little insight at a time—in the same way the beam of a flashlight, on a very dark night, gives just enough illumination for one step at a time.

  By the way, thanks for walking with me all these years. In a way, we stepped into the light of the beam together, again and again and again.

  May it ever be so.

  Author’s Note: You’ll find in these casts of characters that I include a character’s name in the first book in which that character appears—but not in every subsequent book. Otherwise the lists would be so long and this book so heavy that it would require a crane to place it at your bedside.