There was a little glitch with the diary scheduled for today, so I've stepped up to the plate myself. Incidentally, April marks the one-year point that I've been honcho-ing the "Books That Changed My Life" series. And what a fabulous year it's been! We've had wonderful diaries from numerous contributors, freewheeling open forum discussions, and a whole lot of fun. None of this would have been possible without YOU--the delightful, spirited, regular attendees of this particular salon.
So pull up a chair and help yourselves to refreshments! I'm on a health kick today, so we have lemon ginseng tea (caf and decaf) along with carrot bran muffins made with organic ingredients: carrots, orange peel, maple syrup, and whole-wheat flour. Do try some apple butter or orange marmalade on the muffins. But hurry, because here comes the diary!
In 1963 two events occurred in my dull, provincial life that had a profound effect. The first was the release of David Lean’s film, “Lawrence of Arabia.” The second was the publication of Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $5 a Day.
“Lawrence of Arabia” jolted me out of my previously pointless existence. I was working as a file clerk or some damn thing, being treated rudely by almost everyone in the office because I was young, female, and insignificant, and wondering whether this was all there was ever going to be. “Lawrence of Arabia” changed that. For three hours I sat in the darkened theater, absolutely mesmerized. Over the next year or so I saw the film six more times. My obsession stemmed from a scene which Lawrence, dressed in flowing white robes, blond hair glinting in the desert sunlight, walked along the top of a train while on the ground his raggle-taggle army looked up and shouted at him: “El Aurens! El Aurens!” (It is difficult for native Arabic speakers to pronounce the English name “Lawrence.”)
I became completely obsessed with T.E. Lawrence: his life, his friends, his career, his books. I read every book in the Tulsa public library about him. In fact I remember looking up from a volume of collected letters that T.E. had written to his family in England from the dig in Carchemish, and thinking, “Here it is, fifty years later, on a blazing summer day in Oklahoma and I’m reading the letters this man wrote to his family in 1913.”
After reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Mint, Private Shaw and Public Shaw, and various other books, nothing would do but I must go to England and see for myself where this man lived, worked, and studied. This would have been merely a pipe dream, however, had I not encountered Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $5 a Day.
Frommer’s book hit me like an earthquake. Before I read it I’d thought one had to be rich to travel across the ocean to visit Europe. How surprised I was to learn that one could stay in a bed-and-breakfast hotel for a pound a night, that the other meals wouldn’t cost much at all, and that there were many places I could visit in England free of charge. In those days the British pound was $2.80 in U.S. dollars.
Just the year before I had encountered Josephine Tey’s memorable detective story, The Singing Sands, which contained a passage I’ve never forgotten, then or now:
You could, if your imagination was vivid, get to a stage when you were in bondage to an idea. When it became an ideé fixe. You could become so enraptured by the pictured grace of a temple’s flight of steps that you would work for years to earn the money and gain the leisure to take you there. In extreme cases it became a compulsion, and you dropped everything and went to the thing that had seduced you: a mountain, a green stone head in a museum, an uncharted river, a bit of sail-cloth.
In the grip of my own particular ideé fixe I planned what I wanted to see in England, worked out how much time I’d need to accomplish that, figured out how much money I’d need to save, and put the plan into action.
Fourteen months later it was time to leave. I packed my bags, kissed the family goodbye, took one plane to New York, another to London, and arrived in that city on my 21st birthday. No other birthday has thrilled me so much before or since.
The story of my travels around England and the Continent is another diary for another day, but that journey to Europe showed me that if I wanted something badly enough, I could do it. I spent four months looking after myself, although from time to time I did stay with old friends from Singapore days. When I came back to the States, I had memories to last a lifetime, new friendships, and above all the knowledge that what might seem impossible can sometimes actually be within reach. Thank you, Arthur Frommer!