Getting to Know Sarah-Jane Bentley, Welsh Stews, and Future Schedules
Plus the next Shakespeare play, new Amazon affiliate links, and more
Greetings Close Readers,
It’s time for an update!
Hopefully you are aware that we are well into our series about Louis Auchincloss’ novel The Rector of Justin. You’re reading along, right? If you are (or if you’ve been listening to The Play’s the Thing lately), then you already know about Sarah-Jane Bentley, a new contributor to the network. She’s a literature teacher at Eton College in England (a school somewhat similar to Justin Martyr in the book) and a great conversationlist and we’re very glad she’s agreed to join the Network from time to time. I am confident everyone will love what she brings to the show (including her recipes for traditional Welsh stews—more on that later!). But, of course, Sarah-Jane is new to most of you and you don’t know her very well. I can sense you saying, “there’s got to be more about her than her English accent and her job at Eton.” So to let her prove that theory correct I sent her five questions that will allow her to reveal a little bit about herself. Here they are along with her responses:
Where did your love of literature come from? Who nurtured it?
My parents cultivated in me a love of literature and a love of the Word. They read to me and my sister throughout our childhood (doing all the voices, of course) and I can remember the page of The Hobbit where the dwarves sing the song ‘carefully, carefully with the plates’ was worn thin. They encouraged us to memorize poetry—sacred and profane. Bible verses, especially the Psalms, were recited at the front of chapel on Sundays but I also remember silly poems from Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes, too. Poetry is at the heart of Welsh culture and the annual Eisteddfod Yr Urdd (a national arts festival) meant that poetry declamation was a routine part of my education. Through my teens I loved fantasy fiction and Victorian novels. My mother would say, “What, you haven’t read Jane Eyre?” and then we’d be off to the local library to borrow Brontë. I discovered years later that she had rarely read the novels herself. In my final two years at school I was taught by a former Benedictine monk and I loved discussing theology with him through our study of Dr Faustus, Hamlet, andThe Wife of Bath.
What are your three most beloved books?
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer; Astrophil and Stella, Philip Sidney; The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy
If you could have a lunch with three writers who would you choose?
Flannery O’Connor, Muriel Spark, and Emily Dickinson would make for a fascinating and somewhat awkward lunch party—that’s if Dickinson could be persuaded to leave the house. Given Spark’s penchant for dexedrine, O’Connor’s lupus, and Dickinson’s (possible) anorexia, I doubt any of them would have much of an appetite. So I’d take them for high tea in a grand old country hotel somewhere with peacocks roaming the grounds (for Flannery) where they’d sit in gigantic wingback chairs and be served impossibly tiny cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and exquisite little pâtisseries. No doubt there’d be arguments about punctuation and consensus over brevity.
In another mood I’d invite Taliesin, Dafydd ap Gwylim, and R S Thomas. We could cover the entire history of Welsh poetry in one luncheon. It would have to be in a dark old pub with a smoky inglenook fireplace and the conversation would run along the lines of Thomas’ poem “Poetry for Supper”:
Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.
What book do you most love to teach?
That’s got to be either Hard Times by Charles Dickens or Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
If a listener were to visit England, what literary site would you say is a must-visit?
Wales. It would be a long journey but the Lleyn Peninsula is spectacular. It’s not hard to imagine poet R. S. Thomas standing outside Sarn-Y-Plas, his stone cottage, contemplating the darkness between the stars to the roar of Porth Neigwl (Hell’s Mouth) immediately before him. A little further around the coast road you can visit St Hywyn's church which stands right on the beach. He preached here as vicar of Aberdaron. And if you don’t mind a quest on winding country lanes, you’ll find Llanfaelrhys nearby, a remote hilltop church, and his wife Elsi’s inconspicuous slate gravestone that says R. S. Thomas is there in spirit. He was an enigmatic character.
Upcoming Schedule
Times runs ever on, as it is wont to do, and so before we know it we’ll have moved on from Auchincloss and dived into Norman Maclean’s A River Runs through It, a book Tim has been pushing for since the beginning (practically). It’s not a long book so we will spend three weeks on it, beginning the week of November 25th. (Please note this is a week later than we had initially planned.) So that means the schedule looks like this:
Week of 11/25: A River Runs through It
Week of 12/2: A River Runs through It
Week of 12/9: A River Runs through It Q&A
At that point we will begin Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River, with which we will end the year.
In the event that you don’t already have these books and in the event that you are intending to buy them through Amazon, please note you can buy them through our new affiliate links. No pressure, of course, but it does help us out. For easy reference here they are:
Meanwhile, over on The Play’s the Thing Heidi and Tim have been chatting their way delightfully through the Tempest and if you’re not listening you’re truly missing out. What a resource that show is—if you’re teaching Shakespeare, or you love Shakespeare, or you want to love Shakespeare, you should tune in (or whatever we do when we listen to podcast). Up next: A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
So I said I’d come back to Welsh stew and here we are.
If you listened to episode two on The Rector of Justin (and you made it to the end) you heard Sarah-Jane explain that she was making a traditional Welsh stew in honor of her visiting sister. Naturally (as one does) I asked her to send me the recipe so I could a) cook it, of course; and b) share it with you. So here it is, in all its glory. Unless you live somewhere in the UK it seems likely you’ll have to do some substituting for the very specific ingredients the recipe calls for (or else some crafty online shopping), but either way I hope you’ll give it a crack—and share some photos while you’re add it. I plan to.
Ingredients
1.5 kg Gower Salt Marsh lamb: best end of neck on the bone
A large onion
10 whole black peppercorns
Halen Mon sea salt
4 large carrots
3 parsnips
3 large Pembrokeshire potatoes
1 medium-sized swede
4 leeks
3 litres of Brecon Garreg mineral water
Calon Wen organic salted butter
Fresh flat leaf parsley
Snowdonia Black Bomber Cheddar
Thelma Caerffili
Crusty white bread
Steps
1. Put the lamb in a large stock pot with the whole peeled onion, peppercorns and a generous pinch of salt; cover with two litres of water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 3 hours.
2. Remove the lamb with a slotted spoon. Fish out the onion and throw it away. Leave the stock for an hour or so to cool then skim off the fat.
3. When the lamb has cooled, discard the bones and trim off the fat. Put the meat back in the pot.
4, Peel and chop the swede, parsnips and carrots. They should be cut into edible chunks that will fit respectably onto a soup spoon.
5. Melt a chunk of butter in a big pan and add the prepared vegetables. Stir them around with a big wooden spoon until they are hot and coated in butter then add them to the stock pot.
6. Add more water to cover the vegetables and bring to the boil.
7. Peel and chop the potatoes, again dicing them quite small. Add them to the pot, too. Simmer for 15-20 mins.
8. Let it cool. Slice the leeks and add them to the pot. Then put the lid on and put it in the fridge overnight.
9. When you’re ready to eat it, bring it back to the hob and gently simmer until it’s piping hot. Add water and season as required.
Serve with plenty of salt and pepper, freshly chopped parsley, a wedge of cheese and chunk of buttered bread. Serves 6-8 people.
That about covers it for this issue of the newsletter. Next time I’ll be back WITH ANOTHER MAILBAG. So get your questions ready.
Talk to you then.
Happy reading,
David