I did have to work yesterday (in the rain). Today at home, the weeds in my garden cry out to be pulled and the weather is not bad. Still, I cannot go back to the garden until I have processed my latest Sylvia Beach Hotel experience.
By 1 PM on Thursday, after Carol and I decided to postpone our excursion to the Newport bayfront until after Friday check out time, I was in the library with a stack of journals pilfered from the Jane Austen room, just down the hall.
I was excited that the journal with the heart had migrated to the library from the Robert Louis Stevenson room, now Jules Verne. I always worry that when the rooms are retired and redone, the journals will disappear forever.
In a Jane Austen journal, I struck the pure gold of life experience and poignancy:
Then, another heartbreaking yet healing entry:
I can so relate to this quotation by Jane, having four houses of excellent neighbours nearby, and one absolutely horrible set of neighbours (fortunately not too close by).
The following entry fascinating reveals how owner Goody promoted the brand new SBH to guests of her Portland restaurant, the Rimsky-Korsakoffee House.
Here is another person who loves reading the journals:
Another entry by Destiny:
and another who loved the journals:
I do know of other resorts who provide room journals. The Lighthouse Motel in Long Beach used to, and may still, and Klipsan Beach Cottages has journals in each room. They are more like guest books where people write of where they ate and what they saw and how much they enjoyed their visit, and they don’t delve as deeply into personal life as the SBH journals does. So while they make very good reading, they don’t share the kind of deep common experience that one finds in the SBH journals.
Here is a thoughtful entry hinting of sisters growing apart:
I found an entry from Destiny written when she could not stay in Jane’s room…
The Jane Austen room has a huge pile of journals.
I thought I had read most of them in a previous visit (when the room was open and I borrowed them), and even though I wanted to go through them all again I decided to get the journal out of the one year old Harry Potter, er, I mean JK Rowling room. (I have photographed the room this year and last year.)
I soon happened upon an entry by Pat Henderson!
I really want to be friends with him. Allan would also find him interesting because he is a biker as well as a writer.
The single Rowling room journal did not provide me with many entries that I wanted to preserve, so I went down the hall and borrowed a pile from the F. Scott Fitzgerald room.
Here, a woman remembers when the SBH was the old Gilmore Hotel:
Many of the entries in the Fitzgerald room journals are bawdy, often referring to putting a pillow behind the headboard or having sex on the flowered chair. I am not quite sure why people want to write graphically of their sex lives in a hotel journal. Either others with similar fortune will feel camaraderie, or those alone not by choice will feel sad. As with the Colette room journals, I find it much less interesting to read about someone’s passionate honeymoon than about the more introspective entries in other rooms. At breakfast, in briefly discussing the journals with a frequent guest, he asked an interesting question: Do certain rooms inspire more amorous activity, and the writing about it….or do people who plan such activity choose certain rooms to stay in?
I decided I would rather read from the Robert Louis Stevenson room journals which I had been thrilled to find in the library attic. It was fortuitous that a noisy book club/poetry reading group had taken over the coffee room and caused me to go, at 3:45 PM, one flight up to my favourite reading spot….because in a glass front bookcase I found a stash of old RLS and Tennessee Williams and E.B. White journals. I had read the E.B. Whites when I had stayed twice in that room. (It is now John Steinbeck.) I think I have borrowed the Williams ones before and that it was another of those rooms (now changed to another author) that inspired more of the honeymoon “here’s what WE did, so different from anyone else” (not) type of entry. So, next: RLS.
I am feeling guilty about my garden so I do have to go weed for a bit first…If only it had rained today!
that was soooo cool to see those journals… I am glad that they gave Jane a primping ..love that room
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It may have been at your suggestion!
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OH I meant to tell you to stop at the public library to see the Jane Austin display they had… might have been gone already
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so cool to see all these entries… makes me wish I had prettier handwriting …sigh I must remember to tell you about the scrapbook project & my SBH To Do list when I have more time
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Please do! Your handwriting is legible which is more than can be said for some journalers.
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