The Mitford Bedside Companion
Other Mitford Books by Jan Karon
AT HOME IN MITFORD
A LIGHT IN THE WINDOW
THESE HIGH, GREEN HILLS
OUT TO CANAAN
A NEW SONG
A COMMON LIFE: THE WEDDING STORY
IN THIS MOUNTAIN
SHEPHERDS ABIDING
LIGHT FROM HEAVEN
JAN KARON'S MITFORD COOKBOOK
& KITCHEN READER
PATCHES OF GODLIGHT
A CONTINUAL FEAST
THE MITFORD SNOWMEN
ESTHER’S GIFT
Children’s Books
MISS FANNIE’S HAT
JEREMY: THE TALE OF
AN HONEST BUNNY
All Ages
THE TRELLIS AND THE SEED
Jan Karon Presents
VIOLET COMES TO STAY
Story by Melanie Cecka
Pictures by Emily Arnold Mccully
The Mitford Bedside Companion
JAN KARON
A Treasury of Favorite Mitford Moments,
Author Reflections on the Bestselling Series,
and More. Much More.
Edited by Brenda Furman
VIKING
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 14, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © Jan Karon, 2006
Illustrations copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006
All rights reserved
Illustrations by Donna Kae Nelson
Selections from At Home in Mitford; A Light in the Window; These High, Green Hills; Out to Canaan; A New Song; A Common Life: The Wedding Story; The Mitford Snowmen; In This Mountain; Esther’s Gift; Shepherds Abiding: Jan Karon’s Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader; and Light From Heaven. Copyright © Jan Karon, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. By permission of Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Recipe for orange marmalade cake by Scott Peacock
“Making Mitford Real” and “The Right Ingredients” first appeared in Victoria magazine.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Some of the selections in this book are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-1878-5
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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Acknowledgments
Hats off to my sister, Brenda Furman, the dedicated,
hardworking editor of this book, and creator of the
entertaining crossword puzzle in these pages.
Your editor, left; your author, right.
From my family to yours.
About My Sister, the Editor
When my sister, Brenda, was born at home in an upstairs bedroom, I remember hearing her first cry.
Who knew that a wonderful editor had just made her entrance into the world?
As I neared the end of the Mitford series, I noodled my noggin, as Uncle Billy would say, about finding someone to tackle the absolutely whopping job of pulling together a bedside companion that would give you, I hoped, the very cream of the Mitford novels.
It would require, first of all, a reader who relished the printed word, and who knew the Mitford novels intimately. Someone who knew Esther Bolick from Esther Cunningham, and Bill Watson from Bill Sprouse. It needed someone with a sense of humor, and the common sense to know when a scene out of context should begin—and end. It also needed something more than text and a few drawings, it needed…maybe lots of trivia? Maybe even a crossword puzzle? Yes!
In the end, it would be a mammoth task, to be undertaken only by one who’d do far more than methodically excerpt text, and one who would care about the story lines, the characters, and the spirit of the work. That person would also need a great work ethic, as plowing through a million-and-a half words is no day at the beach.
I made a few inquiries. All led nowhere.
Then here’s what happened.
As I had spoken to God about this, He did what He so often does: He spoke back. To my heart, of course, and in a way I couldn’t dismiss.
The one for the job was my sister.
Hallelujah!
Brenda and I worked together on the book you now hold in your hands for more than two years. Or was it three?
I found her sensitivity in choosing the excerpts to be absolutely…well, divine. And her amazing skill at constructing a crossword puzzle simply floored me.
So, here it is, gentle readers.
From my family to yours.
May you laugh. May you cry. May your noggin be noodled. May your memory of favorite scenes and characters be refreshed. And most of all, may your spirits be lifted.
And next time you need a big task accomplished, who knows? The one for the job might be right in your own family.
* * *
Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply….
—Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
* * *
About My Sister, the Author
You keep your past by having sisters. As you get older, they’re the only ones who don’t get bored if you talk about your memories.
—Deborah Moggach
Actually, it’s not if Jan and I talk about our memories, it’s when.
Nearly every time my sister and I chat, we share—and compare—our memories, which often include these:
For at least two years, Jan schooled me at home. My lessons began when she was in first grade, and continued until I went off to first grade. Perhaps because Jan had been so thorough in her teaching, I remained in first grade for just six weeks. After all, I knew my multiplication tables forward and backward, and could rattle them off faster than anyone could understand.
It’s good to have a big sister who teaches you. As a matter of fact, by the time I graduated from high school, I had been a stud
ent for fourteen years!
When we were four and six, Jan came up with a get-rich-quick scheme. First, we gathered up all the old magazines (some were really old) in our house, and stacked them in our little red wagon. Piled in the wagon were issues of Life, Look, Collier’s, and Ladies’ Home Journal. Jan loved magazines and decided the entire batch was really worth something, like maybe a quarter. I never knew how she arrived at that price.
Next, we had to have a marketing strategy. After some thought, I believe it was Jan who came up with the idea that our nearest neighbor (just under half a mile) would probably love to have these magazines. We began our journey up the dirt road (it wasn’t paved until years later), taking turns pulling the wagon. Sometimes Jan would pull and I would push and vice-versa. We made it to the neighbor’s driveway, which looked awfully long to me. It was just about dusk and the house was dark. Since my sister was the CEO of our newly formed company, she decided I would be the one to take the wagon down that long driveway to the house with no lights on. At four years of age, you just don’t argue with the boss.
I am excited to tell you that my first big sales job was a complete success. I came back up that driveway (which seemed a lot shorter than before) with an empty wagon and a big, fat quarter in my hand. We were very pleased with ourselves. I think Jan may have been even more pleased, as she pulled me most of the way home in the wagon.
When I was three years old, Mother presented Jan and me with a beautiful baby brother, Barry Dean. When I was six, she completed the circle with another wonderful brother, Philip Randolph, whom we call Randy. Now I was a big sister, reveling in the best of both worlds.
I will never forget the day Jan called and asked if I would edit The Mitford Bedside Companion. When she reeled off the list of things to be accomplished, I thought the driveway, if you will, looked awfully long. But now that the deed is done, I confess that the three years it took to create these pages has been a wonderful journey with my sister, and yet another way that we are “keeping our past.”
May you spend many happy hours in Mitford, just as I have so gladly done.
Introduction:
Everything but the Kitchen Sink
I’m often asked if it was hard to leave Mitford when I wrote the ninth, and final, novel, Light from Heaven.
The truth is, not really. I had told the story of that small mountain town as completely as I knew how, and there was absolutely nothing more to say. Nor did I have any inspiration to do what many readers have suggested, which was to continue the series with the lives of Dooley and Lace. (Trust me, books written without inspiration are no books at all.)
However, it’s also true that I will miss the characters now and then.
For more than a decade, they were like family to me. Indeed, I carried an entire township around in my head, some of them speaking simultaneously (think about that) as they told me their stories. It was enough to make your author forget her own name on occasion, or, when out and about, the name of an old friend or acquaintance. A handful of characters assembled in a story is one thing; more than seven hundred characters assembled in nine novels—and one head—is quite another.
Of course, I reasoned, if I really needed a visit to Mitford, I could always sit down and thumb through the books. But wouldn’t it be nice to have the thumbing, as it were, done for me—and for my readers?
Miss Sadie, whom I still miss, would be quite alive at the wonderful wedding reception at Fernbank, and Uncle Billy would be telling the joke about the census taker. We could be a fly on the wall all over again as Father Tim tells Dooley about sex, and we could revisit the most fun I ever had in Mitford, which was at the big town festival, with the llamas batting their long eyelashes and the children sitting on the knee of the statue of Willard Porter and the little ragwing airplanes dipping and rolling above the crowd on the lawn….
Thus, this book.
Here you’ll find what I hope are some of your favorite scenes, all the Uncle Billy jokes, all the major town events, Father Tim’s prayers and table blessings, loads of Scripture verses, which, themselves, have played important parts in the books, the (nearly) full cast of characters, varieties of mountain weather, a bushel of essays by yours truly, a peck of my family photographs, the recipe for that darned Orange Marmalade Cake, trivia for the whole family, an original Mitford crossword puzzle—indeed, everything but the kitchen sink. (In a few places we’ve edited some of the longer scenes a bit—otherwise the book might take a crane to lift it!)
Archibald Rutledge said this:
“I am absolutely unshaken in my faith that God created us, loves us, and wants us not only to be good but to be happy.”
In these pages, I pray you will find a portion of happiness, however infinitesimal. And speaking of happiness, I would leave us with this thought, penned by a wise, albeit unknown writer:
“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.”
Contents
Acknowledgments
About My Sister, the Editor
About My Sister, the Author
Introduction
ESSAY: “I Know the Plans I Have for You”
A LITTLE WORLD OF OUR OWN: The Town of Mitford
ESSAY: Making Mitford Real
TENDING TO THE NEEDS: Blessings at Mealtime
HOMETOWN APPETITES: Gathering Around the Table
THE QUINTESSENTIAL MITFORD MENU: Digging In
A SHORT STORY: The Right Ingredients
CALLING HOME: Prayer
ESSAY: Going and Telling: The Life of a Faithful Priest
ONE SMALL VERSE: Scripture Quotes
ESSAY: Popular Questions from Gentle Readers 205
THE COMMON GOOD: Special Events
ESSAY: Someone to Say “Bless You"
THE POSTMAN’S KNOCK: The Letters
ESSAY: Once Upon a Time Writing for Children
HEALING THE BROKEN HEART: The Sermons
ESSAY: How Mitford Got Out There
A CHEERFUL HEART: Uncle Billy’s Jokes
A USEFUL TOOL: The Seasons
FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY Mitford Trivia
Mitford Crossword Puzzle
Reading Aloud: The Gift of Gifts
Oops! Bloopers in Mitford and How They Got There
CAST OF CHARACTERS The Very Thing
ESSAY: Where Did They All Come from, Anyway?
Waste Not, Want Not: The Father Tim Novels
The Almost Complete, Only Somewhat Partially
Abridged Scoop onthe Mitford Years Series
and Your Author, Jan Karon
“I Know the Plans I Have for You”
If you think of life as a journey, then in 1988, one might say I stood at a great crossroads. Though yearning to be an author since the age of ten, I had instead mired myself quite deeply in advertising, where I worked as a writer for more (much more, actually) than three decades.
Though I desperately wanted out of a notoriously unkind business and into the gentler realm of book writing, I couldn’t find the courage to walk away from certain income. What if I failed at writing a book? What if a leap into the unknown ended with dashing myself on the rocks below? And how did one write a book, anyway? I simply couldn’t find what Sir Walter Scott called “the soul to dare.”
I began to pray about all this, not randomly or when I happened to think of it, but persistently. Wha
t do you want me to do, Lord? And how am I to accomplish it?
After two years of focused prayer, and using my journal as a sounding board, God spoke to my heart and said, Go. And I will go with you.
I was nearly fifty years old when this long-awaited but oddly terrifying answer came. It was springtime, and every azalea and dogwood was abloom in my lovely old neighborhood. I put a For Sale sign in the yard of my small cottage, and a day and a half later, I was signing a contract for an amount that pleased me very much.
I bought a little house near my brother and his family in the mountain village of Blowing Rock, North Carolina. I traded my Mercedes sedan for a Jeep. I cut my living expenses by roughly half, and having never used anything more complicated than a typewriter, bought a secondhand computer, which, by the grace of God, I learned to use.
All this accomplished, I sat down with breathless expectation to write my first book.
That’s when I found I had nothing to say.
Nothing.
Writer’s Dream Turns to Nightmare.
Soon, God spoke to my heart again. Don’t look back was the message I strongly perceived. I am with you.
If God is with us, who or what can be against us?
I continued to pray and hope and believe. I clung to quite a few promises of Scripture, not the least of which is found in Jeremiah 29:11.
“I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”