The Death of Ralegh

 On this day in 1618, having fallen foul of the monarch once too often, Sir Walter Ralegh, explorer, statesman, soldier and superb writer of poetry and prose, faced death on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, Westminster. He urged the executioner to make haste, for 'at this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear.' Inspecting the blade that was to dispatch him, he remarked, 'This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases and miseries.' With his last words, he urged the hesitating executioner to strike: 'What dost thou fear? Strike, man, strike!' Men knew how to die in those days. 

  'What is our life?' Ralegh asked in a poem – 

'What is our life? The play of passion.
Our mirth? The music of division:
Our mothers’ wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for life’s short comedy.
The earth the stage; Heaven the spectator is,
Who sits and views whosoe’er doth act amiss.
The graves which hide us from the scorching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus playing post we to our latest rest,
And then we die in earnest, not in jest.'

On the eve of his execution, he answered his question again – a dusty answer:

'Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days,
And from which earth, and grave, and dust
The Lord will raise me up, I trust.'

After his execution, Ralegh's head was embalmed and given to his wife. His body was to be buried at St Mary's, Beddington (one of my old Surrey haunts), but it ended up at St Margaret's, Westminster. Lady Ralegh reportedly kept her husband's head in a velvet bag for the rest of her life, after which it was reunited with the rest of Sir Walter's body at St Margaret's. 

Austen Statues

 I see that another statue of Jane Austen has been unveiled, this time in Winchester Cathedral close. Fair enough – it's her 250th anniversary year, and she died at Winchester and is buried in the cathedral. The statue is by Martin Jennings, who has a good record with this sort of thing, having created the excellent statue of Philip Larkin in Hull (a 'major statue of concern', according to the city council, who at the time were dancing to the tune of Black Lives Matter) and the even better John Betjeman at St Pancras station. The trouble with Jane Austen is, of course, that we have no good idea of what she actually looked like, the only reliable image being an amateurish sketch by her sister Cassandra. Jennings (who's pictured above, at the left of the group of three worthies) has posed her as a forceful, even defiant figure, with head held high and chest thrown out, her face set almost grimly as she gazes off to her left, while her right hand rests on her famous little writing table. It's certainly well done, but is it Jane Austen? It seems to me that it doesn't suggest anything of her quiet, observant humour. For that, I think the bust of Austen that stands in the town of Alton is more suggestive, though it is of lower quality as sculpture.

And there's another Jane Austen statue in Hampshire, outside the museum in Basingstoke. This one shows her in motion (like Jennings's statue of Larkin), walking across the marketplace with her outdoor clothes on and a book under her arm. As with the Winchester Cathedral statue, she seems a more angular and austere figure than the Jane portrayed in her sister's sketch, or the one that shows through in the writings of those who knew her. Not that it matters. At least none of these Austen statues have plumbed the depths of recent efforts portraying Diana and the late Queen, and for that we – and the shade of Jane – should be grateful.

[Please ignore the Google links in the above. They crept in while I wasn't looking.]

'Dignified, but flippant'

 Heaven knows how many Penguin books must have passed through my hands in the course of my reading life. They've always been there, right from my boyhood, when my father, for some reason, kept shelves of Penguins, mostly Crime, in the lavatory. I read some of those, then many many more over the years. But, in all my Penguin-reading life, I don't think it ever occurred to me to wonder how the imprint got its name – it just seemed a given. Now (thanks to a pair of penguin-related books I'm reading for review) I know how the name came about. The story goes that publisher Allen Lane, determined to bring out a range of quality paperback books at an affordable price and needing a name for it, was discussing the matter with his secretary, who suggested Penguin, because the birds are 'dignified, but flippant'. Fair enough, said Lane (or words to that effect), and sent an office junior, 21-year-old Edward Young, down to London Zoo to sketch one of the (Humboldt) penguins that were then enjoying themselves in the newly installed, Lubetkin-designed penguin pool. He returned with a sheet of sketches, Lane selected one, and the rest is history...
  This, of course, was in the dark days before highly paid brand consultants and their brilliant ideas, e.g. rebranding Royal Mail as Consignia and W.H. Smith as T.G. Jones – but somehow the 'dignified but flippant' penguin turned out to be just about the most successful brand in publishing. Ninety years on, it's still going strong. 

'All hail to the Queen of the Mist'

 On this day in 1901, Annie Edson Taylor ensured her place in the annals of human folly by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. It was her 63rd birthday, though she claimed to be 20 years younger, and she entered the barrel – custom-built of oak and iron and padded with a mattress – wearing a flowing black dress and a flowery hat, and carrying her lucky heart-shaped pillow. The barrel was launched into the water near Goat Island on the American side, and was eventually carried over at the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. Amazingly, when the barrel was opened Mrs Edson Taylor was found alive, with only a little bruising and a gash on her head. Soon after, she declared that, 'If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat ... I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall.' Which seems reasonable. 
  Annie Edson Taylor, who had fallen on hard times, was hoping that the venture would make her money. She embarked on a speaking tour and wrote a memoir, but her manager ran away with her barrel, and she spent most of her savings hiring private detectives to track it down. After it was eventually found in Chicago, it was stolen again by her next manager. She spent her latter years posing for photographs at her Niagara Falls souvenir stand, while pursuing various other abortive ventures, including trying to write a novel, and working as a clairvoyant. When she died, more or less penniless, her funeral was paid for by public subscription. A sad end, but at least she had won the distinction of being the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive. Her feat was celebrated in several poems, including this effort by one John Joseph O'Regan, with its curious rhyming  – 

'All hail to the Queen of the Mist,
Brave Anna Edson Taylor;
She has beaten all former records,
By her courage, grit and valor.'

and this, by P.M. Reynolds: 

'Since earth’s creation down the stormy way,
All human feats have been surpassed today.
Mrs Edson Taylor, in her barrel sound,
Through the wild rapids did in safety bound.'

Corvo Ludens

 In Worthing, the dogs are back on the beach (from which they are banned from May to September) and are happily chasing balls thrown by their obliging owners. And now the crows, of which there are legions, are joining in. Keeping a beady eye on what's going on, as they always do, they have taken to swooping down and grabbing the ball before the dog can reach it, flying off a little distance, then tossing it down to the ground again for the dog to retrieve (or not, if the crow changes its mind and picks it up again). The crows seem to be having as much fun as the dogs, playing this game. I didn't see it myself, but it has been reported by reliable witnesses, and, really, it's not all that surprising: as well as being highly intelligent, crows do seem to enjoy a game. Among other frivolous pursuits, they particularly enjoy sliding down slopes, hanging upside-down from branches, and hiding non-edible objects just for the hell of it. Playing with dogs on the beach might  be seen as just another step in the triumphant progress of the corvids. In my boyhood, crows (Carrion Crows) were a country bird that didn't often show up in town, and it was still true that if you saw a solitary bird it would be a crow, and if you saw a flock they'd be rooks. Now huge numbers of crows are all over our towns and suburbs, along with other former country-dwellers – magpies, jackdaws, jays. Even ravens are now turning up in town, and only the rook remains a country bird. The corvids, love them or loathe them, have been a huge avian success story. For myself, I've always been fond of crows, for all their deplorable ways. I'm with Kay Ryan on this one – 

Felix Crow

Crow school

is basic and

short as a rule—

just the rudiments

of quid pro crow

for most students.

Then each lives out

his unenlightened

span, adding his

bit of blight

to the collected

history of pushing out

the sweeter species;

briefly swaggering the

swagger of his

aggravating ancestors

down my street.

And every time

I like him

when we meet.

'The air deals blows...'

 On a blustery, rainy, altogether miserable afternoon, I found myself thinking, inevitably, of Philip Larkin. I knew his uncollected autumn poem of 1961 – 

'And now the leaves suddenly lose strength.
Decaying towers stand still, lurid, lanes-long,
And seen from landing windows, or the length
Of gardens, rubricate afternoons. New strong
Rain-bearing night-winds come: then
Leaves chase warm buses, speckle statued air,
Pile up in corners, fetch out vague broomed men
Through mists at morning.

And no matter where goes down,
The sallow lapsing drift in fields
Or squares behind hoardings, all men hesitate
Separately, always, seeing another year gone –
Frockcoated gentleman, farmer at his gate,
Villein with mattock, soldiers on their shields,
All silent, watching the winter coming on.'

But there is also this one, 'Autumn', another uncollected poem, written in 1953, which emphasises the violence of the season –

'The air deals blows: surely too hard, too often?
No: it is bent on bringing summer down.
Dead leaves desert in thousands, outwards, upwards,
Numerous as birds; but the birds fly away,

And the blows sound on, like distant collapsing water,
Or empty hospitals falling room by room
Down in the west, perhaps, where the angry light is.
Then rain starts; the year goes suddenly slack.

O rain, o frost, so much has still to be cleared:
All this ripeness, all this reproachful flesh,
And summer, that keeps returning like a ghost
Of something death has merely made beautiful,

And night skies so brilliantly spread-eagled
With their sharp hint of a journey–all must disperse
Before the season is lost and anonymous,
Like a London court one is never sure of finding

But none the less exists, at the back of the fog,
Bare earth, a lamp, scrapers. Then it will be time
To seek there that ill-favoured, curious house,
Bar up the door, mantle the fat flame,

And sit once more alone with sprawling papers,
Bitten-up letters, boxes of photographs,
And the case of butterflies so rich it looks
As if all summer settled there and died.

The image of the 'London court one is never sure of finding' sends the poem into unexpected, mysterious territory. What is 'that ill-favoured, curious house', with its sprawling papers and bitten-up letters? Perhaps it's an image of Larkin's imagination, or his life – but then the blaze of colour with that case of butterflies! That is quite a way to end an autumn poem...

And tomorrow I'm off to Worthing again for a few days, where the autumn wind will be fierce. I should be posting again in a few days. 

That Book

I've just realised that it was six years ago today that I announced to the world that my book The Mother of Beauty was available on Amazon. Looking back, I'm amazed that I managed to produce the whole thing, unaided, on Microsoft Word, and – not unaided – get it onto Amazon. Those two endeavours were far harder than writing it. As I remember, the book sold a hundred or two at a steady trickle, but then came a rave review in a certain national newspaper, my stocks disappeared over one weekend, and I found myself trying to organise a quick reprint while I was out of the country, staying with the New Zealand family. Demand was such that a Portland, Oregon, outfit with the same name as my nominal publisher was besieged with inquiries and had to put up a prominent notice declaring that it had nothing to do with my book (in fact it specialises in books on 'love, sexuality and relational ethics' – not quite my line). By the time the reprint was available, demand had of course fallen away, so the moment had gone, along with my chances of even covering the printing costs, let alone making any money. Hey ho, that's life.
Anyway, as a result of all that, I still have a couple of boxes of The Mother of Beauty under the bed. It appears to be still available on Amazon, though they tell me my account has defunged. If anyone still wants a copy, it's yours for a tenner, including postage and packaging. Just mail me at nigeandrew@gmail.com. Christmas is coming...