Globetrotting and hot air balloons with Priscilla Buckley

By CYNTHIA HOCHSWENDER

SHARON — Priscilla Buckley is about to make history, in her own quiet way: This is the third time she will be a guest author at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon’s annual booksigning fundraiser, and this is her third (and final, she insists) book written while living here in the rural Northwest Corner.

This small-town trifecta is not the greatest accomplishment of her life, of course, but Miss Buckley is terrifically friendly, and she smiled indulgently when I suggested it was, at least, notable. It was Friday afternoon, and we were at the Twin Oaks Cafe in Sharon, where three friends and I had invited her to join us for iced tea and a chat about her new book and her appearance at the July 31 book signing.

Her latest book, and the one she will be signing, is "History Writ Small: Searching its Nooks and Crannies by Barge, Boat and Balloon."

It follows her first two books, "String of Pearls" (about her early days in journalism, as a correspondent working for United Press in Paris and New York); and "Living it up With National Review," about her 43 years as managing editor of the magazine founded and edited by her famous journalist brother.

There are many reasons to admire Priscilla Buckley, but as an editor myself I admire her most for accomplishing (for more than four decades) what would probably have been an impossible feat for almost anyone else: getting William F. Buckley Jr. to turn in his copy on time.

Bill Buckley was a generally busy fellow, what with his work writing books and appearing on Firing Line on television in addition to writing articles for National Review.

He was formidable and intelligent and probably not an easy person to force to obey deadlines. Unless you were his equally formidable and intelligent elder sister, Priscilla.

For those who do not know much Buckley lore, the family had 10 children. Priscilla and James (a former senator and also a Sharon resident) were among the Big Four, the senior kids in the family.

Bill was one of the six younger Buckleys.

As we sat around the Twin Oaks Cafe enjoying a few minutes respite from the nonstop rain of recent weeks, I told Miss Buckley how I imagine a typical deadline day at National Review: Bill pops his head into the office of his managing editor (and elder sister) and informs her that he is off to Paris in a few hours to meet with several heads of state.

"That’s fine," his sister responds. "But your copy is due in a half hour and your desk better be clean before you leave; there are a number of papers there that you need to sign."

And, in my fantasy, Bill nods meekly and trots off to do as he was told.

When I described this scene, Miss Buckley laughed her wonderful laugh and confirmed that, yes, that was, sort of, the way it went.

Her newest book describes her travels, mostly after her retirement from publishing and her return to the Buckley family estate, Great Elm, on Main Street in Sharon.

Miss Buckley was a world traveler all her life, and her trips were never coach-bus tours of, say, four countries in five days. In "Living it up With National Review," she spends as much time jetting off to exotic locations with her brothers and sisters and friends as she does pinning up type galleys in the East Side offices of the magazine.

This book is only about her trips, including one of her favorites: a Nile cruise with her sister Jane and about 40 other travelers, organized by a husband and wife who taught at The Hotchkiss School.

"It was the year of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty," signed by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin and negotiated by Jimmy Carter, Miss Buckley recalled.

"We were there when it was signed, and it was a very emotional time for the Egyptians."

The group sailed up the Nile from Cairo to the Aswan Dam, she said, "and they were so friendly to us. As we sailed up the Nile, we would hear them chanting from the shore, ‘Jim-mmeeee, Jim-mmeee, Car-ter!’ And we would chant back, ‘Sad-dat! Sad-dat!’"

Closer to home, a favorite trip described in the book is a voyage in a hot air balloon over the Northwest Corner.

"I gave Jane a balloon flight for her 50th birthday,"Miss Buckley said. "And we enjoyed it so much that we hired the balloon to come up here for a week."

The Buckley sisters and various friends then took tours in the air over Litchfield County. Where did you go, I asked.

"Well, wherever the balloon took us," she laughed. "They go where they want to go."

I would be embarassed to try and draw a metaphor between Miss Buckley’s life and a hot air balloon voyage. Suffice it to say that if you would like to meet an extraordinary woman who has lived her life as a schedule-and-destination-oriented magazine editor but who also can enjoy drifting along in a hot air balloon, come to the 13th Annual Hotchkiss Library booksigning on July 31 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Tickets are $25 and there will be an open bar and appetizers. There will be 26 authors there, all of them more-or-less local, some of them famous (Michael Korda, Ann Leary, David Rabe), many of them local favorites (Richard O’Connor, Christopher Webber, Edward Kirby), all of them there with copies of their latest work.

For a full list and more details, go online to hotchkisslibrary.org.