"Pursuant (Isn't that a wonderful word?) to our earlier conversation, this is so full of the England you dream of that I had to send it to you. Enjoy."
To which I had to respond with this from a friend on the Chesapeake's Eastern Shore, which may show partly why having lived there has provoked such fascination with this part in particular of England; the 'he' referred to is the local writer, Christopher Tilghman, who has a new novel coming out set in the U.S. Civil War era:
I've met him....kind of a weedy, strange member of a HUGE clan of descendants of the doctor who fled England in the Protectorate, gaining the Hermitage, enormous land grant on lower Chester River in 1647.........the old man's daughter Rebecca married the up-and-coming SIMON WILMER, lately of Stepney Manor and about 3,000 acres on both sides of the Chester River, 100 of which he managed to sell in 1706 to the Legislature of the day for the "erection of a town...." :) Seriously, the man writes some luscious and semi-decadent prose and if you partied at the Hermitage at sundown on a summer's eve with much of the clan present and everything, EVERYTHING the tribe ever owned still present in the house, built in 1860s, and the mighty Chester slapping at the pilings while the ospreys screeched and fished and the foxes barked in the darkening fields and the mist rose over the marshes below the grass terraces you'd understand why.......BTW, that 100 acres is where the river port of C'town was built, which is now the county seat. C'town is also the county seat. As mentioned so many times, the same names of power and wealth from the founding settlements' eras are still alive and well in the ranks of power and wealth today. Another reason why Midsommer resonates so much.
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