Lost Books: Loretta Mason Potts

[sartorias]

I love ediscovering old favorites and finding the old magic still works, if not as intensely. One of these--I've never heard anyone mention it--is Mary Chase's Loretta Mason Potts. It was pubbed by Lippincott (how many of my generation's old favorites were put out by Lippincott?) in '58, and illustrated charmingly by Harold Berson. I do remember

Comments

[intertext]

I can't remember if I ever read that book, but I liked _The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden_ by the same author. That link above is interesting for all the other books mentioned, like _The Little White Horse_ and the cathedral school books by William Mayne.

[sartorias]

Yes. Though the person kvetching about how "everyone" had to have dial phones by 1905 made me laugh. I have relatives who didn't get on the phone until the thirties, and no dial for their small town until way later.

[gauroth]

Yes, my in-laws didn't have a phone at home until 1981. They used the public phone-box 10 minutes' walk from their house. That was normal for the area they lived in.

Another bit of history: it was only in the late 1920's that my mother's parents had electricity in their house. Until then there was gas in the downstairs rooms. Mother remembered the lovely glow and the background faint hiss of the gas but she and her 6 siblings had to light candles to go upstairs to bed.

I suspect that we 21st Century creatures don't really appreciate having light so easily. Ditto stoves, refridgerators, central heating... There's a reason that high-status Tudor and Renaissance fashions were made of voluminous velvet: those castles were bloody cold!!

[sartorias]

Exactly.

I don't think my grandmother's farm had elecriticy until she was long gone out of it. It did have an outhouse, rather than an indoor toilet--she says you just never know what real misery is until you've had to have diarrhea out in the sub zero temps, because my great grandmother had read the new words about germs, and chamber pots were unsanitary.

[green_knight]

I grokked the desire for a chamber pot on Saturday when I was holed up in my tent while a storm raged outside.
Eventually I had to get up and go outside, but there was half an hour between 'I really should go' and 'Just GO.'

The picture is from that trip. Once I was inside the tent, I didn't want to get out...

[sartorias]

Ahah. Yes. That would be unfun indeed.

[gauroth]

'The Little White Horse' was one of the books of my childhood that I literally read to pieces. I had to be careful in case pages fell out and fluttered to the floor. William Mayne was also a great love: such lovely writing, and the cathedral school, unlike H*gw*rts is situated in the real world. Thank you for reminding me of them: I must re-read them.