Beverley Nichols - Laughter On The Stairs (Beverley Nichols Trilogy Book 2)
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Laughter On The Stairs (Beverley Nichols Trilogy Book 2)
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In this, the second volume of the Merry Hall trilogy, Nichols is less concerned with his garden and more with his house, but the story does include the memorable characters Our Rose, the ditzy floral designer, and the cantankerous gardener Oldfield.
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Dust jacket photograph of Beverley Nichols is the property of Bryan Connon, reproduced with permission.
Drawings by William McLaren
Copyright 1953 by the estate of Beverley Nichols
First published in 1953 by Jonathan Cape
Foreword and Index copyright 1998 by Timber Press, Inc.
TIMBER PRESS, INC. The Haseltine Building 133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450 Portland, Oregon 97204, U.S.A.
Printed in Hong Kong
Second printing 1999
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nichols, Beverley, 1899 Laughter on the stairs / Beverley Nichols : with a foreword by Roy C. Dicks. p. cm. Originally published: London : J. Cape, 1953. Includes index. ISBN 0-88192-460-1 I. Title. PR6027.I22L3 1998 824'.912dc21 98-7155 CIP
Page v
CONTENTS
Foreword
by Roy C. Dicks
vii
Laughter on the Stairs
Facsimile of the Original Edition of 1953
8
Contents
13
Index
by Roy C. Dicks
257
Page vii
FOREWORD
Obsessions are guilty pleasures to which we all succumb from time to time. My preoccupation with the writings of Beverley Nichols has been total and all-encompassing. With my background in gardening, writing, and theater, I was an easy mark.
A few years ago, Dr. J. C. Raulston, the late director of the North Carolina State University Arboretum, suggested I read Nichols's best-known gardening book, Down the Garden Path. (He also lent me Bryan Connon's biography Beverley Nichols: A Life, which is a must for the true enthusiast.) I was immediately taken with the humor and humanity of the writingand the author's mischievous personality. My interest took quick root and soon I was on my way to collecting nearly all of Nichols's sixty books, including the twelve gardening titles, a task made more difficult by the fact that nearly all his books have been out of print for decades. I have even traveled to Britain to visit the four homes that provided the settings for his gardening books.
Though I do not expect every new reader to go to such extremes, I predict that most will not be able to stop reading Beverley Nichols after just one book. Few people who garden or have a love of nature will be able to resist the poetry, charm, and unabashed emotion with which Nichols invests his observations. First-time readers consistently report reactions that run something like "I have always secretly felt that way about gardening but thought I was the only one crazy enough to think such things!"
Page viii
Originally, Nichols did not have any leanings toward gardening. He was already the author of nine books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles when he decided to "get away from it all" in 1928 by purchasing a small Tudor cottage in Glatton, about sixty miles north of London. The grounds were in such a dismal state that lie decided to renovate the gardens. A complete novice learning by trial and error, he took three years to complete the project. He chronicled his failures, successes, and increasing enchantment with all plants and flowers in Down the Garden Path (1932). Due to the phenomenal public reaction, the book was quickly followed by two more titles about his cottage and garden, A Thatched Roof (1935) and A Village in a Valley (1934). As he moved to new locations during his life, he wrote of the gardens he developed at each site, publishing Green Grows the City (of his grounds at Hampstead), the Garden Open trilogy (Richmond), and my favorites, the Merry Hall trilogy.
Merry Hall was the name of a Georgian manor house twenty miles south of London near Ashtead, which Nichols purchased in 1945 after living in London for nine years. He wanted to have a bigger garden (Merry Hall was situated on four acres) and he wanted to have a grander home in which to entertain. He spent a large amount of money and time transforming the estate and the grounds into his personal haven. In 1951 he published Merry Hall, the first in the trilogy about his efforts there. Laughter on the Stairs and Sunlight on the Lawn were to follow in 1953 and 1956. For many, these are Nichols at his very best, mixing the archetypal sentiments of a gardener with flights of literary fancy and ripe British humor.
Some of the events and characters in these books were invented for dramatic effect, but the basic narrative is true and can be readily appreciated by anyone who gardens.
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