I started a new memoir trilogy that was recommended by Pauline Ruffles in her tribute to Derek and Jeannie Tangye, because the author, Jeanine McMullen, had visited the Tangyes at Minack. (And here is some great news for Minack Chronicles readers: Gary Kennon and the Dream Debut have put up their entire delightful album, Minack Dreams, right here on YouTube.)
The visit to Minack wouldn’t happen till the third book. The first tells of how she bought a small farm in Wales, at first commuting from her radio broadcasting career in London and then, when her significant other left her for a woman in a nearby village, moving there full time in 1975 because she had to be there to care for the place and its critters. While I enjoyed the first book very much, I did not immediately become obsessed and decided that the very setting of the Minack Chronicles, on the Cornish coast, is what made that series of 18 memoirs so compelling.
Jeanine longed for the sea, which may be one reason that she loved Minack so much when she finally went there.
Jeanine’s Welsh farm was near the legendary lake of Llyn Y Fan Fach by the Carmarthen Fans.
Jeanine had goats, pigs, a couple of big draft horses, whippets, cats, sheep, poultry, and had a steep learning curve about how to care for their health problems. Like the Tangyes, she had a strong friendship with and frequent calls to the local vet.
As I read, I became increasingly smitten with her, especially with this; the author she particularly meant was James Herriot of All Creatures Great and Small and Thurlough Craig of The Up Country Yearbook (which I must track down if possible).
If I were younger, I’d be doing the same, if only I had read all these books soon enough. (And yet, Jeanine’s books might have given me pause, being most honest about how hard that sort of the life is.)
Her delightfully eccentric mother, Mrs. P. came to live with her most of the time, with an occasional trip back to Australia. She had been a traveling nurse of sorts, and that peripatetic lifestyle of Jeanine’s childhood might be why she longed so much to be settled on the farm.
Jeanine suffered from visitors offering a string of “what you should dos” just as the sisters of St. George Island did (and so do I to a much lesser extent).
Jeanine’s friend Beryl is a woman after my own heart.
And if on dreich days there is no outside stuff to do (although there would be farm animals) there are books to read and share and blog posts to write.
In this first memoir, Jeanine is formulating the radio show that she dreams of doing.
Every description of her farm got me more emotionally involved, especially this one when a horticulturist visits.
Her connection with her acre and a half copse and meadow is similar to how I feel about my Bogsy Wood and willow grove and the threatened frog bog. (Her bridge is an ash tree that fell and rooted at both sides of a stream.)
Like the different names at Minack (Monty’s Leap, Ambrose Rock, the stile named after the man who built it), Jeanine named various spots around her property after events and friends: Place of the Mule, Place of the Otter That Wasn’t, Gwyneth’s Place, Place of Madge’s Amazing Discovery. Makes my garden place names look tamely descriptive.
Allan’s father, Dale, would have loved a walking stick like this. When we would accompany him on his two block walks, he would use his cane to poke weeds out of the sidewalk (and sometimes the edges of people’s gardens. I would find one quite useful in walks around my own garden.
On how weather does not daunt true country people:
I was thrilled when Jeanine mentioned the Green Knowe books (when bringing winter twigs indoors to flower, as my grandma always did). I LOVED those books and must acquire the ones I don’t have and reread them all.
Cleaning house for guests is something that I blissfully have not had to deal with since the pandemic started:
…penetrate into the kitchen or bathroom, both will be tolerably decent. ….It is for this reason that I do not
“Sometimes it has occurred to me to keep the place tidy all the time, but then I’d never get anything else done.“
I feel sort of the same about people who “just drop in” to the garden, although there are certain people who are allowed, mostly ones who entertain themselves (like Scott and Tony!) and are not going to follow me around and talk but will let me get on with whatever task I’ve set for myself. Pre arranged walking-around-and-talking times are quite enjoyable if I am prepared for them and have had a day to weed first.
I love that when Jeanine’s friends visited from the city, they brought shopping from big city stores (just as my dear neighbour Alicia does every time she comes to the house that once was her grandma’s).
By the second and third book, her radio show, A Small Country Living, was in full swing and she traveled the country interviewing interesting people, artists, farmers, craftspeople, musicians, and more. I often paused to google and found that some of those folks are still around.
Some memorable driving instructions from someone Jeanine visited for an interview:
She recorded sound effects of animals, weathers, assorted tools and other background noises and produced the show at home. I long to hear it; it must have been so funny and charming, but I can’t find any of it online anywhere even though it was popular in the 80s. Other radio shows from way further back in time are still to be found. Why? Is it lost to all time?
She is open about the financial struggles of her farm and how close she came to ruin at times. In the third book, she was sent to Cornwall to interview Derek Tangye, on a long train ride with no food available (the dining car on the train closed before she got to it) and completely not thrilled at having to read some of the Minack Chronicles on the way down. Derek picked her up at the station and from then on, she was in heaven. You who are Minack fans will have to get this book and tread the three or four pages about her visits. But here, for me, is more proof that the Minack of Derek’s memoirs was true and real.
The vision of Minack and the Tangye’s emotional support helped her get through some hard times.
She was in Cornwall for a third time on a busy round of radio interviews but did not visit “because I wanted to go to Minack when I was relaxed and calm enough to take it all in properly”. Jeannie Tangye died before she could visit again. Jeannine had under a cottage window at her farm some violets that Jeannie had given her, which had seemingly died in a harsh east wind. When Jeannie died, the violets came back to life and were a reminder for Jeanine of her bright and loving spirit.
As for Jeanine herself, I was so utterly besotted with her that I can hardly bear not knowing anything about her last twenty years. (I just had to go get a tissue for my tears as I come to the end of this blog post.) I did manage to find an obituary of sorts, but it seems to strange to me that someone with a beloved radio show didn’t have more press coverage when she died in 2010 at age 73. As with the Tangyes, I am heartbroken that I did not read her books while she was still alive. Her mother must have predeceased her. I hope that Jeanine had happy years after the time of the memoirs. She will continue to haunt and inspire me.
Her books are not terribly hard to find used, so if you like that sort of thing, and some of you do, I urge you to seek them out. I long to see her work continue to be appreciated.
I did find this, which maddeningly is not listenable, and a book review, here.
And I found a blog called Codlins and Cream which I must thoroughly peruse. The author recommends more books in this vein, including Hovel in the Hills, by Elizabeth West, which I read two decades ago and loved. I am wondering if that was the series of memoirs that culminated in the Forest of Dean. I would like to read that series again, which I think might be about a couple who lived in two or three country settings, but I don’t think I will be buying them and will have to resort to interlibrary loan:
I think Elizabeth West’s books are indeed the ones based on moving from place to place, based on this article.
From Jeanine McMullen’s recommendations, I have gleaned a new list of books to read and have already ordered a four book memoir series by Joyce Fussey.
Joyce Fussey
Thurlough Craig Up Country Year Book
Ruth Ruck Place of Stones, Hill Farm Story, Along Came a Llama, The Farming Ladder
Denis Watkins Pritchard (pen name BB?)
The cats enjoyed the rainy days as well.
My grandparents farmed in northern Manitoba. Off the boat as small children from eastern Europe, their parents were relegated to the lesser arable lands – the best land of course being the preserve of English speaking western European migrants.
With cold harsh weather, and the long hour peasant class slog of furrowed fields and tending farm animals, country life was no idyllic retreat. Mum’s love of reading was fostered by devouring stories of travel and life not on a farm – and she and her eleven siblings could not wait to be old enough to leave.
With the passage of time, and in her older years, she always yearned to “stretch her eyes” though. Soft focus memories of undulating wheat fields, punctuated with the boreal forest, and capped with a vast sky in which you could see cloud and storm roll in from miles away.
The land leaves it’s mark on you.
LikeLike
My grandparents farmed in northern Manitoba. Off the boat as small children from eastern Europe, their parents were relegated to the lesser arable lands – the best land of course being the preserve of English speaking western European migrants.
With cold harsh weather, and the long hour peasant class slog of furrowed fields and tending farm animals, country life was no idyllic retreat. Mum’s love of reading was fostered by devouring stories of travel and life not on a farm – and she and her eleven siblings could not wait to be old enough to leave.
With the passage of time, and in her older years, she always yearned to “stretch her eyes” though. Soft focus memories of undulating wheat fields, punctuated with the boreal forest, and capped with a vast sky in which you could see cloud and storm roll in from miles away.
The land leaves it’s mark on you.
LikeLike
That is beautiful. I also feel for her re the hard work. I think it would only be enjoyable if it was chosen.
>
LikeLike
Great cat pictures.
LikeLike
Thanks, Mr T!
>
LikeLike