What Is Your Muse?

What is your muse? We are all compelled by something. It may be great books, art, design, fashion, film, history, an influential personality, great writer, artist, or entrepreneur. Charlotte Moss writes in her new book Garden Inspirations that the garden is her greatest muse. She brings it into her life wherever she can. The garden informs and enriches her surroundings. It influences her aesthetic as a decorator. She is inspired by the great women gardeners throughout history: Vita Sackville-West, Edith Wharton and Beatrix Farrand, to name a few. To read her beautiful new book is to learn how one's woman passion has affected her entire life.

I began to think about mine. I have always believed that a place can be a muse and there is no question that I have a love affair with England. Its writers, artists, history, castles, cathedrals, great houses and landscape have inspired me since I was in college and spent six years reading English novels and poetry. Those books became part of me. They affected my entire life and inspired my love of great books and excellent writing. It is a passion that continues today.

I remember my first trip to England and visiting the places that filled my imagination. I saw the landscapes, the gardens, the little villages, the pubs, the monuments, the pageantry and the historic sites I had been reading about for years. I had a proper English tea, the kind that seemed to occur in all my favorite novels. I discovered London, the setting for so many of my favorite books and it was a revelation. A modern bustling city with beautiful parks and green spaces and a thousand-year old history lurking around every corner if you took the time to look. And there was the glorious countryside. Right out of a novel by Thomas Hardy or a poem by William Wordsworth. My goal was to walk on country lanes, have tea and scones, poke around little villages, and read in rustic settings just as all of my favorite heroines had done. On that first trip I made a special point of visiting as many writers' houses as I could. Seeing the objects that surrounded them was thrilling.

Over the years I have brought home many memories and souvenirs from my trips to England. Even on my very first trip, when I was living on $5.00 a day, I was collecting post cards from my favorite museums. I went to Fortnum and Mason and bought two cups and saucers by Wedgewood, little realizing this was the beginning of a china obsession. And then there were the books. I discovered bookstores like Hatchards, a heavenly place for any book lover. I didn't mind buying new editions of books I already had since the cover art was so different and often more beautiful. I still go to Hatchards, Heywood Hill, John Sandoe and Persephone Books on each and every trip and browse in utter contentment.

When my husband and I traveled together to England for the first time we stumbled upon a book fair in London. Bloomsbury was already a passion of mine and I was thrilled to find a little book of poetry by E.M. Forster that had been published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. It was my first Hogarth Press book. When we traveled to Lewes in Sussex to look for Virginia Woolf's house, we wandered into a little gallery where we found a drawing by Duncan Grant. Those two purchases were so exciting. And so it began... books fill our bookcases, images of favorite writers decorate my study, and art hangs on our walls. Tea pots, cups and saucers peek out of the cabinets in the kitchen. All memories and reminders of a love of England.

But the greatest reward I gained from all that reading and those visits to England was a love of the written word. Books are my passion. Over the years I've discovered many writers to add to my list of favorites: Nancy Mitford, E.F. Benson, Barbara Pym, Jane Gardam, E.M. Delafield, Angela Thirkell, Elizabeth Taylor and Isabel Colegate, just to name a few. They inspire me with their words and stories and motivate me to write something of my own. Great art can inspire personal dreams. That's the thing about a muse -- if you keep an open mind, it will lead you towards creative fulfillment.

 I would love to know what is your muse?
And, are you an Anglophile?