How can I write about Scilly? This is Sam Llewellyn’s world, a world of sea and ships, of longings and laughter, of boats and beginnings. For everyone who comes here is beguiled into dreams of starting a new life.
Arrive on Tresco, the second largest island: it has an area, almost, of a massive 3 square km. Sam’s childhood home. Home to the sub-tropical Tresco Abbey Gardens, inspiration for Sam’s ‘The Sea Garden’. It is also the setting for his book ‘Hell Bay’, although the book begins in Hell Bay on Bryher, the poor cousin lying a few hundred yards across the channel. Walk across at low tide on a calm day. Even then, Hell Bay’s waters will be boiling furiously on the jagged rocks which surround it.
Read just one of Sam’s books and you are drawn into a nautical world where weather directs lives. Is his best book ‘The Shadow in the Sands’, his ‘sequel’ to Erskine Childers’ classic ‘The Riddle of the Sands’? I don’t know. You need to read all his novels before you dare make that decision. ‘Swallows and Amazons’ for adults.
Scilly is also the home for Michael Morpurgo’s ‘Why the Whales Came’ and ‘The Wreck of the Zanzibar’. Weep for the characters struggling to stay alive during the storms which lash the islands in winter. In the nineteenth century, life in Scilly was a hand to mouth existence; hardship the usual bedfellow.
Now, the islands throng with the tourists which provide the vast part of the islanders’ income. The air is clear and mild; in spring, daffodils bloom earlier than anywhere else. Strolling around the islands – there are virtually no cars – evidence of other industries can be seen. Fishing, shipbuilding, flower farming…
The islands are unique; the ambience is almost tangible. Dive into Llewellyn and Morpurgo’s books: you are almost there.
The Rock
I arrive from the sea. As the ferry eases down the Little Russell between Guernsey and Herm, the town of St Peter Port opens up to view. It has changed little since Victor Hugo landed here 150 years ago: despite some modern additions, pastel coloured buildings still jostle together in narrow cobbled streets. Boats fill the harbour; the fish market sells fish; Castle Cornet stands sentinel.
A short climb up a quiet street devoid of traffic leads to Hauteville House, Victor Hugo’s sanctuary for 15 years. A monument to his art, its walls and ceilings are covered with carpets; furniture of dark, intricately carved wood is integral with the building. One ceiling is lined with ceramics; another room with tiles. The darkroom is hidden in a cupboard. The winter garden is a conservatory with inspirational views of the islands. A glass eyrie at the top is where this literary giant wrote, standing at a writing desk.
Fiercely opposed to Napoleon, Victor Hugo sought refuge in Guernsey after he had to flee France. The island inspired him: its harsh, rugged cliffs combined with its gentle inland scenery, the hidden coves, a profusion of plant life growing abundantly in a mild climate. It was here that he wrote several of his most famous works: notably ‘Les Miserables’ and the work he devoted to the people of Guernsey, ‘The Toilers of the Sea’: “I dedicate this book to the rock of hospitality, to this corner of old Norman land where resides the noble little people of the sea, to the Island of Guernsey, severe and yet gentle…”.
Walking the streets, discovering the beaches mirrored in his paintings, surrounded by descendants of those he knew, it is easy to follow in the footsteps of this great man. He seems to be here still.
From Out of Africa
“I had a farm in Africa…” Karen Blixen’s house still stands, gazing out towards the grey green Ngong Hills. Even in her day there were cars, as now, yet I walk with Kenyans who have no other means. I trudge through the suburb, once a coffee plantation, now lined with gracious mansions and high-walled gardens. Then there were red-earth dusty tracks, no gates, no barriers; now, tarmac, steel gates, electric fences.
The house reeks with memories: of a simpler lifestyle horribly complicated by relationships, by disease, by death. How did she live with the recollection of a husband who deliberately infected her with syphilis; a lover who betrayed with other women and, ultimately, with death? I wander from room to empty room, footsteps echoing hollowly on the bare wooden floors. Sadness and melancholy, unhappiness and gloom amidst the vibrancy of Africa.
I have accompanied Karen on many of her journeys. Just as she flew over the dusty landscape with Denys Finch-Hatton, so have I; just as she struggled into the centre of Nairobi in an unreliable car, so have I; just as she walked among the coffee bushes, picking the ripe berries, so have I. Just as she bore the life of Africa in her body, so do I. Her memories were so vivid that she recreated her fascination from distant Denmark. Seas, continents and loneliness could not rob her of her love.
The memories are bitter-sweet, yet the joy, the abundant life, the anticipation and the hope that is Africa journeys on.
Going past Giants
My travels did not take me very far. Just a short walk to school, a dive back of a hundred years or more. Two hundred yards from home took me to my first remembered pain: the War Memorial, standing proud for fourscore years and ten, now accuses my neglect of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen whose words have seared my soul.
I hurried on; that insignificant Edwardian house I passed now bears a bright blue plaque: I wish it were a happier memory. How brief, how rich in poetry was the life of Rupert Brooke. Another sensitive, senseless victim of a horrid war. Did he, I wonder, realise how futile his death was? We were robbed of much delight. My treasured volume of his collected poems endured moves between continents.
Then, turning a corner, I passed by The Close. The hallowed grass of Rugby School trodden upon by many authors, not least Thomas Hughes of Tom Brown’s Schooldays fame. Matthew Arnold, whose poems I have always loved; Arthur Ransome, whose nephew was a great friend of my father’s:I treasure his books still; Salman Rushdie; D Watkins-Pitchford – ‘BB’- who enchanted me with stories of the miniature Little Grey Men and their adventures on the tiny stream I fished for minnows; Anthony Horowitz, teacher’s friend – who else excites young boys as much as Alex Rider Secret Agent?
Rushdie I did not know; Horowitz was my age; yet the others were as much a part of my growing up in Rugby as my own family. As I grew older, the walk to school became a walk to the hospital; a dog walk; a short cut to town: yet, whatever my purpose or my destination, the words still whispered to me from the buildings I passed. I remember them still.
