Some cities, through hardship or glory or a combination of both, produce extraordinary women. Richmond in the early twentieth century, dominated by its prominent families and still haunted by the ghosts of its Confederate past, produced a galaxy of such characters, including Ellen Glasgow, Mary Cooke Branch Munford, and Lila Meade Valentine. Elisabeth Scott Bocock, Victorian in values but modern in outlook, carried on this tradition with her unique combination of family wealth and connections, boundless energy, eccentricity, and visionary zeal. Her daughter Mary Buford Hitz's candid memoir reveals the pleasures and frustrations of growing up with a woman who expected so much from her children and from the city whose self-appointed guardian she became. Elisabeth Bocock's vision was of a city that would take historic preservation seriously, of a society that would accept the importance of conservation. Impatient with process and society's conventions, she used her enormous personal magnetism to circumvent them when founding many of the institutions Richmond takes for granted today. In the creation of the Historic Richmond Foundation, the Carriage Museum at Maymont, the Hand Workshop, and the Virginia Chapter of the Nature Conservancy she played the dual roles of visionary and bulldozer. While part of a tradition of strong southern women, Elisabeth Bocock's tactics were unique, as she sought to convince others of both the practical and aesthetic links between preservation and the environment. One of the "five little Scotts," children of the founder of the investment firm Scott & Stringfellow, she grew up with great privilege, and she schooled her children in how to take advantage of such privilege and how to ignore it. Whether in their winter residence at 909 West Franklin Street in Richmond or at their summer home, Royal Orchard, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in her household she insisted both on achievement and on avoiding boredom at all costs. As Mary Buford Hitz recounts with intelligence and feeling, her mother often seemed like a natural force, leveling anything that stood in its way but leaving in its wake a brighter, changed world. Never Ask Permission is not only a daughter's honest portrait of a charismatic and difficult woman who broke the threads of convention; in Elisabeth Scott Bocock we recognize the flawed but feisty, enduring character of Richmond.
I have been fascinated by the backlash from Hurricane Camille in Nelson County ever since it happened August 19th, 1969. How COULD 29 inches of rain fall in 5 hours, which NOAA says is close to both the physical and theoretical limit of the possible. In the heart of the county I care deeply about, lives were eclipsed and landscapes devastated in the blink of an eye. So a combination of fascination, love and a too-vivid imagination pulled me into writing a novel set during the backlash of Hurricane Camille. These characters are fictional, but what happens to them comes right out of the histories recorded at the time. I am passionate about horses, so naturally the horses in this book have personalities too. They and their riders take off on a camping trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains ignorant of what they are riding towards. A just-ignited love affair between the outfitter, Sam, and his summer intern, Lisl, is a secret held from Lisl’s Swiss boyfriend who has come with her for the summer, but not from Sam’s wife, Elsie, whose peculiar upbringing has left her in a self-protective cocoon of apathy. The guest riders bring their own anxieties, pre-dispositions and luckily, courage. Sam is a headstrong, impatient leader who tangles with Lenore, a writer who has come on the trip to write an article about it. When Meg, another guest, breaks her leg, the group must separate in order for Sam to get her back to civilization. The storm hits and Lisl finds herself in charge of the remaining riders and horses. She gets in trouble trying to rescue the horses, and Elsie is presented with a terrible choice while trying to rescue Lisl. When Sam catches up to them no one knows who is alive and who is dead, and Sam himself is a changed man from what he has witnessed while separated from the group. There isn’t anyone in this story who comes out of the experience of this ride the person they were when they went into it. They have witnessed horrors that will take them a lifetime to absorb, and have come face to face with the knowledge of how insignificant human life is in the great scheme of geologic time.
Some cities, through hardship or glory or a combination of both, produce extraordinary women. Richmond in the early twentieth century, dominated by its prominent families and still haunted by the ghosts of its Confederate past, produced a galaxy of such characters, including Ellen Glasgow, Mary Cooke Branch Munford, and Lila Meade Valentine. Elisabeth Scott Bocock, Victorian in values but modern in outlook, carried on this tradition with her unique combination of family wealth and connections, boundless energy, eccentricity, and visionary zeal. Her daughter Mary Buford Hitz's candid memoir reveals the pleasures and frustrations of growing up with a woman who expected so much from her children and from the city whose self-appointed guardian she became. Elisabeth Bocock's vision was of a city that would take historic preservation seriously, of a society that would accept the importance of conservation. Impatient with process and society's conventions, she used her enormous personal magnetism to circumvent them when founding many of the institutions Richmond takes for granted today. In the creation of the Historic Richmond Foundation, the Carriage Museum at Maymont, the Hand Workshop, and the Virginia Chapter of the Nature Conservancy she played the dual roles of visionary and bulldozer. While part of a tradition of strong southern women, Elisabeth Bocock's tactics were unique, as she sought to convince others of both the practical and aesthetic links between preservation and the environment. One of the "five little Scotts," children of the founder of the investment firm Scott & Stringfellow, she grew up with great privilege, and she schooled her children in how to take advantage of such privilege and how to ignore it. Whether in their winter residence at 909 West Franklin Street in Richmond or at their summer home, Royal Orchard, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in her household she insisted both on achievement and on avoiding boredom at all costs. As Mary Buford Hitz recounts with intelligence and feeling, her mother often seemed like a natural force, leveling anything that stood in its way but leaving in its wake a brighter, changed world. Never Ask Permission is not only a daughter's honest portrait of a charismatic and difficult woman who broke the threads of convention; in Elisabeth Scott Bocock we recognize the flawed but feisty, enduring character of Richmond.
I have been fascinated by the backlash from Hurricane Camille in Nelson County ever since it happened August 19th, 1969. How COULD 29 inches of rain fall in 5 hours, which NOAA says is close to both the physical and theoretical limit of the possible. In the heart of the county I care deeply about, lives were eclipsed and landscapes devastated in the blink of an eye. So a combination of fascination, love and a too-vivid imagination pulled me into writing a novel set during the backlash of Hurricane Camille. These characters are fictional, but what happens to them comes right out of the histories recorded at the time. I am passionate about horses, so naturally the horses in this book have personalities too. They and their riders take off on a camping trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains ignorant of what they are riding towards. A just-ignited love affair between the outfitter, Sam, and his summer intern, Lisl, is a secret held from Lisl’s Swiss boyfriend who has come with her for the summer, but not from Sam’s wife, Elsie, whose peculiar upbringing has left her in a self-protective cocoon of apathy. The guest riders bring their own anxieties, pre-dispositions and luckily, courage. Sam is a headstrong, impatient leader who tangles with Lenore, a writer who has come on the trip to write an article about it. When Meg, another guest, breaks her leg, the group must separate in order for Sam to get her back to civilization. The storm hits and Lisl finds herself in charge of the remaining riders and horses. She gets in trouble trying to rescue the horses, and Elsie is presented with a terrible choice while trying to rescue Lisl. When Sam catches up to them no one knows who is alive and who is dead, and Sam himself is a changed man from what he has witnessed while separated from the group. There isn’t anyone in this story who comes out of the experience of this ride the person they were when they went into it. They have witnessed horrors that will take them a lifetime to absorb, and have come face to face with the knowledge of how insignificant human life is in the great scheme of geologic time.
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