Topical Guide 850

Mark Dorset

Memory: Prompt, Cue, Stimulus, or Catalyst for

At Home with the Glynns, Chapter 32:

IT BECAME MY HABIT, on Saturday mornings, after spending the night in the twins’ bed, to climb back down the ladder, scamper to the ground outside the courtyard wall, and slink around to the front door, in a crouch, staying below the windows. […]
     I remember this, suddenly: sweet autumn clematis. […] When I came around the corner of the house in my crouch, I could see that one length of fence beyond the edge of the woods. It was covered with sweet autumn clematis (Clematis paniculata). Now, when summer ends and the sweet autumn clematis blooms, it puts me in mind of lost time, and it always makes me randy, because it reminds me of my nights with the Glynns.

Peter repeats himself here, so I’m going to repeat myself, from my Topical Guide 792:

At Home with the Glynns, Preface:

[…] if, on a September night, […] I happen to see sweet autumn clematis growing on a wall, I am reminded of all the stories I’ve heard about the night the mansion burned, and I’m also reminded of other nights […]

Margot and Martha Glynn, It Means Something: “Sweet autumn clematis (Clematis paniculata or Clematis terniflora grew on the fence that ran along the road beside our house.”

     Thanks to the god of happy accidents, it seems that every September there is a moonlit night when I do happen to see sweet autumn clematis growing on a wall, and so every year the memories return to me […]. I remember the way I would dart to a dark corner of the Glynns’ garden, where the overhanging trees blocked the moonlight, like a freedom fighter or a cat burglar in a shadowy movie. I would scale the garden wall and crouch atop it, where I could look down into the garden courtyard and into the kitchen at the back of the house, then clamber along the wall until it ended just below Margot and Martha’s window. […]

Margot and Martha Glynn, It Fills a Void: “A Part of the Garden Wall: Behind the house was a walled garden where, in good weather, we sunned ourselves while our mother sat in the shade of an old arbor, writing advertising jingles.”

Margot and Martha Glynn, It Fills a Void: “Our Bedroom Window: The house that we lived in […] had been the carriage house for a mansion, a place of local renown, which had burned to the ground. Our father’s studio filled half of the ground floor of the house. The family living space occupied the other half. The bedrooms were on the second floor. We shared one.”

See also:
Memory TG 57, TG 125, TG 574, TG 583; Memory, Faulty: Causes of, Results of TG 34, TG 133; Memory, Remembering, Forgetting, and the Search for Lost Time TG 22; Memory, Faulty, Causes of Distortion in TG 97; Memories: Relationships Among; Relationships to Present Perceptions TG 463; Selective TG 621

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

• You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archiveor consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here.

• You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here.

• You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.

• You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

• At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, and Where Do You Stop? and What a Piece of Work I Am.

• You’ll find overviews of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.

The serialization of The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy is supported by its readers. I sometimes earn affiliate fees when you click through the affiliate links in a post. EK

The illustration in the banner that opens each episode is from an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions.

www.erickraft.com

www.babbingtonpress.com