Christmas 1968

I spent a most wonderful Christmas at Hatfield Place in 1968. The family who then owned the huge home were welcoming and it was my first view of grand homes and the people who lived in them. I wrote a short story about my experience there because I wanted to put it down to memory. Next to a Christmas I spent in Cambridge in 1989, it was my most memorable. Being a very naive American girl I was puzzled by the lady of the house showing me a photo of where her family stood during an audience with the Queen. But the owner of the home went on to be knighted, so they must have been important in some way or another As all of that did not matter to a girl of 20, with a great great grandfather coming from England and settling in Maine, I respectfully listened and learned a lot. The Christmas Day dinner was delicious. Boxing Day came alive instead of simply being out of our U S history books. And Rudolph Nureyev danced that year with Fonteyn in 'The Nutcracker', televised and watched by me in the library. I own a copy of a book of Essex architectural edifices. Hatfield Place is in the book. As I read the description of the interior I recall photographs that I took of this great home. Nothing compares with personal photos and real people. It seems the property was sold. Hatfield Peverel was small and quiet. We bicycled during Christmas week until a light snow fell. I was taken to worship at another home or church. I was looking for a Catholic service. I no longer know where I attended but I was happy to join in the singing. I want to remember Hatfield Peverel as it was. I drove through the town once in the 1980s but things had changed and it seemed the home was in other hands. The England that I seemed to experience there was like the H E Bates novel, "Love for Lydia." Perhaps it was a village much more pastoral but beautiful.