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    Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin. Comment by Richard Lung.
    Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin. Comment by Richard Lung.
    Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin. Comment by Richard Lung.
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    Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin. Comment by Richard Lung.

    By Richard Lung

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    A gentle and generous soul, with a quiet and sunny disposition, well liked by many, and more radical than most, a deeply serious human being, with an over-worked conscience, who I once told was a monster of honesty.
    This was Dorothy, the solace of the friendless, the maker, who made a maker out of me, in her own letters, unshadowed by thoughts of publication.

    I collected her correspondence into a bag, serving as a lucky dip of presents from the past. She loved writing, as she loved walking, to refreshing effect!
    Nature-love letters of Dorothy Cowlin: That wouldn't be a bad title for the spirit of Dorothys writing to me, together with careful travel arrangements, and her other passions for family and the arts, and holidays.
    As editor and commentator, here is my second book about this remarkable woman.

    The first book about my friend started with an appreciation of the professional writer, traveler, nature walker, and poet, that begins the title: Dates and Dorothy. It was based on several letters reviewing her novels, possibly as early as 1987, as well as 1988, just before her own letters, recorded here.
    My literary assessment was combined with my second book of verse, that includes the story of our friendship.
    More information on this novelist is in the Wikipedia entry: Dorothy Cowlin.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRichard Lung
    Release dateJun 17, 2016
    ISBN9781311788672
    Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin. Comment by Richard Lung.
    Author

    Richard Lung

    My later years acknowledge the decisive benefit of the internet and the web in allowing me the possibility of publication, therefore giving the incentive to learn subjects to write about them.While, from my youth, I acknowledge the intellectual debt that I owed a social science degree, while coming to radically disagree, even as a student, with its out-look and aims.Whereas from middle age, I acknowledge how much I owed to the friendship of Dorothy Cowlin, largely the subject of my e-book, Dates and Dorothy. This is the second in a series of five books of my collected verse. Her letters to me, and my comments came out, in: Echoes of a Friend.....Authors have played a big part in my life.Years ago, two women independently asked me: Richard, don't you ever read anything but serious books?But Dorothy was an author who influenced me personally, as well as from the written page. And that makes all the difference.I was the author of the Democracy Science website since 1999. This combined scientific research with democratic reform. It is now mainly used as an archive. Since 2014, I have written e-books.I have only become a book author myself, on retiring age, starting at stopping time!2014, slightly modified 2022.

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      Book preview

      Echoes Of A Friend - Richard Lung

      Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin.

      Comment by Richard Lung.

      Commentaries book three.

      Copyright 2016; 2017; 2021: Estate of Dorothy Cowlin; Richard Lung.

      Third edition.

      Table of Contents.

      Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin.

      Preface.

      The Letters.

      1988-9

      5 April 1988

      29 April 1988.

      8 June

      May 5 1989

      11 August

      26 September 1988

      26 September 1989

      1990

      27 Sept. 1990

      Aug. 24 1990

      1991

      4 Feb. 1991

      3 June 1991

      18 Oct 1991

      1992

      1993-6

      1997-9

      March 1997

      2000-03

      2004-06

      2007-09

      Dorothys RSPB Christmas cards.

      Dorothy judges:

      Nature poems.

      Love poems.

      Long poems.

      Letter by Mrs Dorothy Whalley to the Plant Committee.

      Dorothy helps further on electoral reform.

      Dorothy introduces Eve Watson and the Jung connection.

      Letter on Dorothys youthful poems.

      Award-winning poem: Pennine Tunnel.

      Letter on a Frances Anne Bond novel and her replies.

      Libraries as standing polling stations.

      From books to bricks for a season.

      The nuclear threat to the world.

      Guide to five volume collected verse

      by Richard Lung

      Guide to two more book series:

      Commentaries series;

      Democracy Science series.

      Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin.

      Comment by Richard Lung.

      Preface.

      Table of contents.

      Love was how Dorothy some-times signed-off. It is evident from her love letters, that her love was for nature, to which I was invited to share. I think she loved writing, as she loved walking, to refreshing effect!

      Nature-love letters of Dorothy Cowlin: That wouldn't be a bad title for the spirit of Dorothys letter-writing to me. It is obscured, however, by the mechanics of travel arrangements, not only for our nature walks together. Her other passions for family and the arts, and holidays, also obtrude into these letters.

      This was her legacy, to me, from a gentle, generous soul, which I share with you.

      That is as well as her teaching me the art of poetry. Dorothy was a professional writer. A Wikipedia entry is here: Dorothy Cowlin.

      This edition is to remind me of the walks and the talks, I have to thank her companionship for.

      I collected her correspondence into a bag, serving as a lucky dip of presents from the past.

      Dorothy didn’t always date her letters. It is as well I kept most of them in their envelopes with post-marks. I pick out one at random. And enter a different world.

      For presentation, I place the letters in temporal order. And the memories gather round, for when I, too, become an echo.

      I wrote several letters reviewing her novels, possibly as early as 1987, as well as 1988. These formed the basis for the literary appreciation, that forms the first part of my book, Dates and Dorothy. I don't recall if Dorothy wrote to me, in those years.

      I remember why, now. Those were the first two years of our friendship, when I still lived in town. Dorothy would come to see me, every week, after she delivered her article, usually, for The Mercury, saturday sister paper to the Scarborough Evening News, when there was a local daily news-paper.

      Still, I might come across further communication from Dorothy. I shall include it, and mention it, if note-worthy, in this preface, for any future up-load of this book onto the internet.

      Note to second edition

      I did indeed come across twelve over-looked messages from Dorothy: four letters and eight postcards, mainly very slight. They emphasise what a determined nomad she was. Every spring she sets-out, in search of beauty, and finds it, in nature and wild-life, and the art of man.

      Note to third edition

      I was looking thru the correspondence with Major Frank Britton, then secretary of The Electoral Reform Society. (His letters begin my collection: Electoral Reform in a Toy World of Post and Press.) That was when I found four more letters from Dorothy, all dated 1988, the first full year of our friendship. They are substantial enough to tell the reader of this addition.

      The Letters.

      1988-9

      Table of contents.

      Tuesday, April 5, 1988.

      Dear Richard

      sorry I have not managed to come today.

      Pure lack of discipline really. I overslept, then got up feeling depressed, resorted to a novel (as well as my life they are my dope!) & Got hooked. (It was an Iris Murdoch very hookish). So it was too near to lunch. Then I had some shopping to do – & it was too late to be able to spend any worthwhile time with you. I’m afraid I often waste days like this. I think I was tired after leaving the children, though they weren’t too bad. Then yesterday I went to see an old Whitby friend, whose condition (arthritis, diverticulitis) was really very depressing (and, I am ashamed to say, boring)

      So I don’t think I shall see you til next Tuesday. Sorry – will try to visit you the following Tuesday (19th) Hope you are less lazy than me and getting some writing done!

      Yours

      Dorothy

      29 April 1988.

      Postmark faint or missing.

      Address uncertain or inaccurate.

      Postcard of Cley Mill, North Norfolk (the earliest sent, I think).

      Ap. 29th. [1988: I had not met Dorothy in april 1987]

      On the train, from Norwich to London!

      I went to Ginny’s (daughter) last Sunday, as I felt very alarmed about her condition. I was not very welcome! But I think by the time I left on Tuesday, she was glad of my company, though amazingly recovered after the operation.

      I then went on to my brother Geoff in Norfolk, who gave me a very pleasant time. I meant to come home yesterday (28). But Ginny rang up to ask my company, for tomorrow, for a hospital bone-scan! So here I am on my way back to London.

      Cley is not far from my brothers. I’ll see you when I see you.

      Dorothy.

      Comment.

      Dorothy and her partner had a falling-out, for many years, with one of her brothers and his partner. The offense, taken, seemed disproportionate. It did not seem to warrant standing on ones dignity for so long. (I was not so rash as to say so. And I could not know how reconcilable her brother and wife were. I kept my counsel. I felt intuitively that it was a sort of privilege that she had confided, this chronic personal upset.) I think the break was with her elder brother. If so, the postcards, from Norfolk, testify to their having made up, at last.

      Wed. June 8

      Dear Richard

      On looking at my oracle (i.e. calendar) I see that it isn’t Monday next that I fixed to come to see you, but Tuesday (14th) I don’t know why we both had Monday in mind. I was somewhat dazed – owing to events at Ginny’s, and am still miserable, but coming round a bit. I shan’t bore you when I see you! I find I can tell you a lot of things I don’t tell everyone. But I try not to go on about my troubles (mostly my daughters) too much.

      See you!

      Dorothy.

      Monday aug. 8th

      Dear Richard,

      thank you for your very long letter! I would have replied before, but have had Jonathan (my grandson) to stay. He kept me very busy!

      I marvelled at your very careful & detailed analysis of my two books – which I think is on the whole very just – though very much on the merciful side of justice! It is interesting you felt Rowanberry Wine to be a lightweight. Several critics at the time said so – including the publishers. I did have one very nice review by Pamela Hansford Johnson. The unpleasant husband, you may be amused to hear, included traits taken from my father! He wasn’t intended to be so very unpleasant.

      Oh well – it’s too late to benefit now by your criticism. Pity I didn’t know you in 1956! Perhaps I might have benefited & kept going longer?

      I simply can’t remember this talk you mention! Isn’t it strange that it has left no trace on my memory? I dislike giving talks, though I can never resist the flattery of being asked. Perhaps this is why I have forgotten? (Sorry!) I don’t remember you, until you read the story of the little boy, at school.

      Well – I look forward to seeing you next Monday. Shall we make it 10:40 while we’re at it? And take lunch again? I can’t think where we can go, but will try to think up something in the meantime.

      See you!

      Dorothy

      Editor comment:

      PHJ much prefered Rowanberry Wine to Dorothys previous novel, The Slow Train Home her own personal favorite. RW is light reading as befits the setting of the novel, in the sunny breezy carefree outdoors. The other title is a metaphor for the emergence of fatherly commitment.

      I met Dorothy by going to the wrong room, on my way to a 1987 general election meeting. I had made an intentional, but isolated visit to the Writers Circle, a few years before.

      I did not know the speaker, a white-haired lady, sat sideways in her seat, in a loosely worn grey raincoat, as tho she was just about to leave. Looking back, she seemed deprecating in her stalled career as a novelist, which I then knew nothing about.

      Post-mark: 26 Sep

      Saturday.

      Dear Richard

      I have just finished your M/S, and thought I would tell you my first reactions. It seems quite a long time to 10th Oct when you are coming, & I shall be rather busy with a visitor next week.

      I enjoyed it all, some parts very much indeed. There are some really good pieces of writing – much poetry – (by which I mean the prose poetry!) A lot of humour, and a lot of playing with words, some of which reminds me of GK Chesterton – the way he takes well-worn phrases or proverbs & and gives them new life through examining their literal meaning.

      I thought too that the feelings and attitudes of a small boy come through very well.

      That in fact seems to be the thread that binds together what is a bit of a miscellany.

      Could this be made stronger? – by cutting out a lot (if not all) of these causes – reform of spelling, & the electoral system – very good causes, with which I entirely agree – but interfering with the main theme of the book?

      You argue these causes very well – as you did in the S.T.V book. But these passages felt to me too much of an interruption. I wanted impatiently to get back to Bert! (By the way – now and then he suddenly became Robin! Was this a previous, later abandoned a name?)

      The first part of book one seemed to me the best writing, though parts of all of it seemed good too. In books 2 and 3 some of the fights and predicaments of Bert felt

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