Marian Powys at Snedens

The words are rendered in a fourth-grader's diligent cursive, with carefully drawn loops, humps and tails. âeuro John Pateest', the phonetic transcription of âeuro Jean-Baptiste', refers to the five-year-old child of a French family that lived next door at the time.2 Photograph of Mar...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Powys journal Vol. 34; pp. 12 - 38
Main Author LASKY, JULIE
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bridgwater Powys Society 01.01.2024
The Powys Society
Subjects
Adolescents
Children & youth
Collections
Elementary school students
Families & family life
French language
Grey, Marian Powys
Holidays & special occasions
Houses
Letters
Neighborhoods
Phonetic transcription
Siblings
Writers
New York
United States > US
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:The words are rendered in a fourth-grader's diligent cursive, with carefully drawn loops, humps and tails. âeuro John Pateest', the phonetic transcription of âeuro Jean-Baptiste', refers to the five-year-old child of a French family that lived next door at the time.2 Photograph of Marian Powys Grey at Hagen House in Snedens Landing, probably taken in the early-1960s. In 1922, she bought an antique wood-sided house up the slope from her rental property and furnished it with family heirlooms and artworks. (Snedens was developed in the late-nineteenth century as a seasonal community, and most of the houses lacked modern conveniences.) For much of her time there, she warmed herself with a coal-burning furnace and cooked on a coal stove that smoked up the interior. Mary Ann Miles, a retired antiques restorer who is now in her eighties, described how children just wandered through paths in the woods' and played a daring game of venturing into unlocked homes to 'read a book'. Damp, disordered and lush, very near a church (the Palisades Presbyterian Church was directly across the street) and a cleric's house (the church's manse was next door, to the west),10 Marian's cottage in Snedens Landing was in many ways a grown-up version of the Mabelulu, the playhouse built against a garden wall at the vicarage where she and her brothers Albert and Llewelyn spent many hours as children and adolescents.11 Title spread of the Mabelulu Visitors Book, lettered to emphasise that the playhouse was named after its designers and chief denizens:
ISSN:0962-7057