Would you be open to my featuring a link to your blog in my right hand navigation menu? I’d love to do that!

And would you be open to my questions about Buxton Street, should they come up?

Many thanks for you attention to my requests.

Ellyn (Westley) Peirson
======================

This book is written around my childhood understanding of a significant, singular incident in the life of my paternal grandfather. I dedicate this book to the memory of that grandfather, Harry Westley, a mudlark of sorts who loved meadowlarks… and to the memory of his son, my father, Frank…

Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles* walk’d before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow

O what a multitude they seem’d these flowers of London town
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door

William Blake: married Catherine Boucher in 1782, saving both of them from having to return to St. James Workhouse in Soho, London…

MUDLARKS:
Our death certificates called it phthisis, Hippocrates’ word. We called it “the white plague” – it was our Blitzkrieg, killing who knows how many and turning the survivors into mudlarks, a new community of sub-humans, sifting the filth of the Thames for a living. [Harry Westley, October, 1947]

MEADOWLARKS:
Did you hear that, Nell? That’s the meadowlark. When we first moved to Swift Current, a friend explained to me that they sang when the buffaloes roamed the prairies. [Harry Westley to Nell, June, 1947]
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/audio-of-western-meadowlark-1.3001651