"However small one's garden becomes, even shrinking at last to a flower on a bedside table, the whole of creation is there" [p. 176]
Katherine Swift worked as a rare books librarian in Dublin, Ireland before she and her husband moved to The Dover House at Morville in Shropshire in the West Midlands region of England, near the Welsh border. In Morville Katherine Swift dedicated herself to gardening.
The Morville Hours is a fantastic book full of quiet charm. I first learned about it from Eva, who posted her thoughts about the book in February. I was intrigued by what Eva wrote and immediately checked our library catalogue for a copy. Luckily we did have one and I soon had the book in my hands. However, at first I was not at all sure I would actually read the book. I was intrigued, it sounded interesting, but I have a very bad read/return unread -ratio when it comes to nonfiction. Last year I actually read one (yes, O-N-E) nonfiction book. In the end with The Morville Hours I did not need many pages to know that this was a nonfiction book I wanted to read from cover to cover. And during the time (numerous metro rides, some evenings at home, 15 minutes to half an hour every morning before work) I spent with the book it grew on me page after page and I ended up really loving it!
The Morville Hours is a hard book to place neatly in any one category. In our library catalogue it is classified as history of garden design. True, it is partly that, but it is so much more. Swift uses the Hours of the Divine Office as a structure for the book. And within that framework she is able to cover so much, numerous topics starting from the obvious gardens and garden history, planting and taking care of a garden, to old books, especially the Books of Hours, etymology of words (from latin, from Old English), nature during different times of the year, her own and her family history, history of Morville and all the previous owners of Morville Hall and The Dover House, ancient mythology and astronomy... I'm sure I forgot some topics, but the list perfectly illustrates how much there is in this one 340+ page book. But the narrative is not busy or crowded, quite the contrary! This is a very meditative book, a very calming read. For example I sat reading The Morville Hours in a full packed rush hour metro and Swift's text put me in my own bubble in a beautiful, serene garden full of colours and scents. No matter the hustle and bustle around me, reading the book I felt calm and relaxed.
I just noticed that Swift has written a sequal to The Morville Hours called The Morville Year. I definitely have to keep my eyes open for that one, too!
Even though The Morville Hours is more about gardens than books, books, too, play an important role in the story. I cannot help but finish this post the same way I started it: with a quote from The Morville Hours. This quote about books and "book people" is from p. 37:
"It's a quiet sort of heroism, the making and keeping of books. You don't get medals for sitting in the library each day, scratching away, writing it all down. Still less for dusting the shelves. But it is what civilisation is made of: the collective memory, passed on, passed down."
Beautifully put, isn't it?
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