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an ongoing series by Thomas E. Kennedy and Walter Cummins
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CHEERIO, NORTH ARMS
An Essay by Walter Cummins
“Big thanks to everyone that came to see us off last night, very sad to think that's the last time we would be able to have you all in the same room :-( hopefully there's plenty of headaches this morning as the stocks are impressively low today!! we're open for drink only today and close the doors for the last time at 6pm. we'll miss you all x”
The program faculty now includes Ellen Aikens, Jeff Reynard Allen, Renée Ashley, David Daniel, Kathleen Graber, David Grand, Harvey Hix, Thomas E. Kennedy, Minna Proctor, René Steinke, and myself, Walter Cummins. We all share many North Arms memories, along with former colleagues like Terese Svoboda and Laurie Stone.
A sad message was posted on Facebook today, February 9, 2013. The North Arms is closing:
For visiting Americans, it was a dream of England to walk out one’s front door and have a picture-book pub down the drive. In January the fireplace that took up much of one wall was roaring, the low beamed ceiling just a fingertips reach away, the booths and tables ideal for sociable crowding, the bar itself inviting. We went there for drinks and meals and quiz nights that befuddled us with questions about English TV and football. Some of us even held student conferences there.
We’ll miss that pub, those of us who spent many hours there since 2003 during the annual January English residency of the Fairleigh Dickinson MFA in Creative Writing Program at Wroxton College in Oxfordshire. All we had to do was walk down the drive from the 17th-century mansion of the North family that is now home to the college, cross Mills Lane, climb a few steps, and take the path to the pub door. Like the college building, Wroxton Abbey, the North Arms structure is historic, along with most of the thatched-roofed village of Wroxton.
For years the packed room was alive with a happy chatter, the fire too warm when Percy was the landlord, smoke-filled before Britain had the wisdom to ban smoking in public places, the food at its best when Chris and Anneka were its final landlord and landlady. Ironically, Anneka gave birth just days before the North Arms closed, one of several landlady’s to do so during our years there. Beyond babies, the pub turned out to be fruitful for writing.
From the perspective of a literary traveler, the North Arms was a destination with a history of writers’ presences, the aura of hundreds hovering on the benches, clinging to the walls, in the pint glasses no matter how many times they were washed. Of course, many pubs in London and throughout the land have been the haunts of authors. But I wonder, collectively, how many have hosted a number as large as the North Arms, what with the several hundred MFA, then student, now published, writers who ate and drank there in nearly a dozen years. The growing list of their books and work in many magazines may have been nourished by their hours in that pub. And they were accompanied by faculty authors and visiting writers from Britain and Ireland, prize winners, with a number on National Book Award and Man Booker long lists and short lists, maybe even a winner or two.
The British and Irish writers would read from their works and answer questions in the college rooms, then retreat to the pub for post-performance refreshment. Colm Tóibín came twice, as did Ali Smith, novelist-rock star John Wesley Harding (Wesley Stace). Zadie Smith and her poet/novelist husband Nick Laird sat in a booth with several of us. Just a few weeks ago Tessa Hadley joined faculty and students. I don’t recall how many other visiting writers were able to join us—Geoff Dyer, Chris Arthur, Sebastian Barry, Paul Durcan, Mark Ford, Andrew O’Hagan, Edward Carey, Elizabeth McCracken, Hisham Matar. Jon McGregor. I’m sure Ruth Padel, Jeanette Wintersen, Hanif Kureishi, and Kate Summerscale had to catch trains or drive home right away. But they all were at the North Arms in spirit as we discussed what they read and what they said.
Much talk of books and writing, publication and prizes, works in progress and work stalled, hopes and goals. Recently the conversation has often turned to the future of books in a digital world, the audience for literary fiction and poetry, the fate of bookstores and publishers—and pubs. It’s a time of uncertainties.
For the world of writing, we hope the fate of the North Arms is not a predictor. It’s not just one pub closing after centuries in one small English village. Peter and Diane, landlords of Wroxton’s other pub, the White Horse, explained the transformation of the society. One-third of the country’s pubs are estimated to close soon. People aren’t congregating at their locals the way they did for generations. The young seek clubs with music and action. Elders now choose to drink at home with beer, wine, and spirits purchased in supermarkets much less expensive than the prices pubs have to charge to eke out a small profit. The Green King brewery that owned the North Arms sold the building outright. Village gossip has it being converted into a residence though some may petition to have it continue as a pub. But that’s unlikely for a money-losing operation with scant chance of surviving on nostalgia.
Perhaps the parallel to writing is not the end of imbibing or reading but rather the venues of acquisition. People stock up their alcohol at markets. They order their books online and download to their readers. Consumption continues. The means is becoming very different.
Still, even though the North Arms could not survive economically, Wroxton offers a surviving pub, the White Horse, five minutes up a steep street beyond the college from the North Arms, located on the Banbury-Stratford road. Writers will congregate there as they have in the past. And another five minutes beyond the White Horse is the Wroxton House, a hotel in yet another historic building, featuring its own bar and gourmet dining as well as simple pub grub. In any event, writing, drinking, and literary socializing will survive, alas without the hospitable charm of the North Arms.