Crispin Crispianus

My cleaner didn’t come this morning, so the kitchen is not entirely ready for a daughter-in-law’s inspection, but it can’t be helped. I’m feeling pretty end-of-day, as often, and won't do more than lay out towels.

Nor have I done much knitting, and that little, on the new Dathan.

You’re absolutely right, commenters: the book I can’t find is Madeline Weston’s “The Traditional Sweater Book”. Where on earth could it be? It’s not so much that I need the pattern – I need the book. So today, this is embarrassing to admit, I went to Abebooks and bought it again. It was very cheap.

St Crispin’s Day

On Crispin Crispianus in 1952, Sylvia and Ann and I met at her grandmother’s house on East College Street in Oberlin. I think Sylvia’s parents must have been there too. She was about to drop out of college for a year and go with them to England. And at some point that afternoon, somebody must have said, why don’t you join us next summer, Jean?

The first day of the rest of my life.

Olivier’s Henry V was much with us in those days, and much beloved. And the play sort of followed us around. At the end of that summer of ’53, when the others had gone home, I wandered about alone for a few days, and came to the Edinburgh Festival. I saw an excellent Fringe Henry V in a church somewhere, quite possibly the Phoebe Traquair church just around the corner from here.

And then one day in the ‘80’s Ann and Sylvia and I were together in Birmingham – my husband must, mercifully, have been absent. We went to Chatsworth and we went to Stratford and what should the RSC have had on that day but Henry V, with Kenneth Branagh. It must have been relatively early in his career. It was wonderful.

Today I got a Jacquie Lawson ecard from Sylvia. She sends them sometimes. It was all sort of thanksgiving-y but at the end, a message from Sylvia: Happy St Crispin’s day. I burst into tears.