Sunday, 19 October 2025

'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. 

Saturday, 18 October 2025

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...


Friday, 17 October 2025

Oscar's Library Ticket


 I suppose it was a nice gesture by the British Library to reinstate Oscar Wilde's reader's pass for what was then the British Museum Reading Room, though it is clear that its original revocation had nothing to do with the nature of his crime (as it then was). It was routine for anyone with a criminal conviction to lose their reader's pass; there is no particular need for expiation. Oscar's library card, with its 1900 expiry date,  has been handed to his grandson Merlin Holland, who, as it happens, has just published After Oscar, a great doorstop of a book about Wilde's later life.
  The British Library has various Wilde manuscripts, including that of De Profundis, which was not published in full until 1962. Merlin Holland seems to think very highly of it, saying that 'people have written to me saying, "In a moment of terrible depression about my own life I read De Profundis, and I just wanted you to know that your grandfather's letter from prison meant so much to me".' I remember reading it myself years ago, and the effect certainly wasn't cheering: it seemed to me an overlong and surprisingly dull exercise in self-justification, and indeed self-aggrandisement (at one point, I seem to recall, Wilde comes close to identifying himself with Christ). And it didn't even cure him of his dangerous addiction to the ghastly Lord Alfred Douglas. 

For something lighter on a Wildean theme, I would suggest seeking out Max Beerbohm's extraordinary early essay, 'A Peep into the Past' – you won't be sorry. 



Wednesday, 15 October 2025

Hart 100

 Born 100 years ago today was the artist and broadcaster Tony Hart. When he died back in 2009, I wrote a bit about him on this blog – 
'A talented, inventive and exceptionally deft artist, capable of working fast on a large or small scale, he presented children's art programmes that were genuinely inspiring. Everything was pitched at exactly the right level – these were projects you could attempt and actually succeed with – and of course there was the added spur of The Gallery, in which the best of the pictures sent in by viewers were displayed. But what made it all so compelling and heartening was that Tony was so transparently a nice and decent man. Sadly, in his later years, he suffered the cruellest blow an artist can face – the loss of the use of his hands – but he had already done more in inspiring generations of children to get painting and drawing than anyone ever did before of ever will in the future. As with the great Postgate [Oliver Postgate had died in the same year], we shall not see his like again.
Footnote: Some years ago, I was on an Italian bus, coming down into Positano, and as we reached the edge of town, there he was, striding along the pavement – Tony Hart. I was quite ridiculously cheered by the sight of him – but I suspect he had that effect on everybody, and that was part of his success. He spread a lot of happiness.'
   Bizarrely, a surge of tributes to Hart erupted on social media six years later, in 2015, when someone put up a newspaper report of his death on Facebook, having not noticed the dateline on the piece, and it was then republished on Twitter.  Well, Hart was worthy of all the tributes going, so fair enough. 

Tuesday, 14 October 2025

Wilbur's Precept and Richard Howard

 My most recent charity bookshop purchase was a slim volume of essays by Clive James titled Latest Readings. 'Essays' is pushing it, actually: most of these pieces are little more than jottings occasioned by James's most recent reading and rereading in the long period of relapse before his  death. As he says, 'If you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.' One of the more substantial pieces is 'Richard Wilbur's Precept', the precept being that 'in poetry, all the revolutions are palace revolutions'. Wilbur's essay, 'Poetry's Debt to Poetry' strikes James as 'the ideal lesson, for beginning students, in how to think about the way the poetic heritage is handed down through the generations'. Poetry, in other words, is born of poetry, and the way to become a poet is to read poetry – the poetry of the past, needless to say. This is a lesson anyone aspiring to write poetry should learn and inwardly digest – as too few, alas, do. 
  James moves on to consider his enduring pockets of ignorance, even after a lifetime of reading and writing poetry. Surprisingly, he had never come across Edgar Bowers, but a less surprising name perhaps is Richard Howard, a poet I had never heard of till I read this essay. His Wikipedia entry will give you the facts – including that he 'read French letters [fnar fnar] at the Sorbonne'. As James notes, 'brevity is not in his gift, or anyway not among his interests', but Howard's poems in which he imagines letters and monologues of historical figures from the 19th century seem richly rewarding.  Here is 'Venetian Interior, 1889', which James describes as 'a sumptuous piece of work, a boutique with the range of a supermarket'. Written very much in the manner of Robert Browning, it tells us all we need to know about what happened to that poet's son, Pen...

Stand to one side. No, over here with me:   
out of the light but out of darkness too,   
where everything that is not odd or old
is gold and subjugates the shadows. There,   
now you will be no trouble and behold none—
anything but trouble, at first glance,
last chance to see what I say is worth a look.

This whole palazzo is the property
of a middle-aged and penniless dilettante,
Pen Browning (Robert’s son), who has made terms   
—palatial terms, in fact—with towering
premises afforded by the tact
of his New York heiress, Fannie Coddington   
Browning, dutiful daughter-in-law, doubtful wife.

Yet who would not be full of doubts, perplexed   
at having to define Pen’s talents and finance
his tastes? Their Ca’ Rezzonico itself
is dubious. The ripened fruit of centuries,
rat- and roach-infested, peeling, rank,
withers with each tide that rots the piles,
though apt withal to weather these tenants as well ...

He is painting from the model: Dryope,
undressed of course but draped against the draft   
in a looping swathe of silver-printed stuff   
that seems to move, glistening over flesh—
it does move! lapped in its silver mesh are coils   
of a python wrapped in loving torpor round   
the contadina’s undistracted torso.

The afternoon is numb: Dryope sleeps   
in her pose, the python slips a little
down the umber slope of her thigh, and Pen,   
spired, slaps a dashing curlicue
across his canvas. “I had the Jew come by   
with this brocaded velvet yesterday—
I bargained some old clothes against it, Fan,

so you needn’t ask how much it cost in dollars.”
To whom does Pen speak, his eyes intent, his hands   
“working busily”? Beyond his “subject,” look   
past the unimposing Dryope, look through
the tufts of pampas grass extending up
to the tufa vault whose patination casts
a pall of watery splendor on the scene—

if you manage to overlook the sumptuous junk,   
jasper urns, a suit of Japanese armor,
two stuffed bears, on the divan bearskins too—   
there, or in this atmosphere let me say lo!
on that very divan Robert Browning lolls,
a short and foreshortened colossus with feet of clay   
but the hardest imaginable cranium, among

his son’s possessions slightly ill at ease
though well bestowed on slippery pelts, and plays
(against the wealthy Fannie—see her white shawl?)
at draughts with agate pieces, red and green,
like a page from some old parchment of kings and queens.   
In approbation of his son’s economies   
the old man smiles now—but does she? The skull

interfering with our view of Fannie is,
I believe, or was the Mahdi’s which Pen keeps   
beside his easel (Victorians could make   
anything into a tobacco jar). “I took
my pipe through Cannareggio on a long tramp   
yesterday morning, right into the Ghetto,   
looking for likely faces, which I found!

Didn’t you say, Father, a satisfactory Jew
is worth a dozen Gentiles? The one who sold   
that velvet to me is sure to be ready by Spring:   
for Lear, you know, or Lazarus at least ...”   
Pen chatters on to charm the python, not   
Dryope or Fannie who look up
only when the poet, roused, exclaims—

as rapt before himself as a child in front   
of the Christmas tree: “A satisfactory Jew!   
Setting mere Rothschildsplay aside, Pen,   
I never saw but one in all my life:
Dizzy, I mean—the potent wizard himself,   
at Hampton Court a dozen years ago,   
murmuring at the Queen’s ear like a wasp

who hoped to buzz his way into the diamonds ...   
With that olive cast and those glowing-coal-black eyes   
and the mighty dome of his forehead (to be sure,   
no Christian temple), as unlike a living man
as any waxwork at Madame Tussaud’s:
he had a face more mocking than a domino—
I would as soon have thought of sitting down

to tea with Hamlet or Ahasuerus ...”
As if on cue, the poet’s high voice fades,
the lights on his tree go out. Yet we have seen   
enough and heard enough: the secret of losing   
listeners—did Browning never learn?—
is to tell them everything. We lose details.   
The Mahdi’s skull and Fannie’s coincide ...

The scene blurs and the sounds become no more   
than exaggerated silence. Stand with me
another moment till our presence is
sacrificed to transitions altogether.
Time will not console—at best it orders
into a kind of seasonable chaos.
Let me tell you, it will not take much

longer than a medical prescription—
give you ingredients, no cure ...   
Visitors to the palazzo used to speak
of the dangerous ménage—the menagerie!   
yet the Costa Rican python that cost Pen
(or Fannie) sixteen pounds was the first to go,   
untempted by the rats of Rezzonico;

Dryope followed Dryope underground,   
the girl carried off by a chill and buried   
at San Michele, the great daub interred   
in the cellars of the Metropolitan ...
“Dear dead women, with such hair, too,”   
we quote, and notice that hair is the first
of ourselves to decay before—last after—death.

In a year Robert Browning too was dead, immortal;   
in another, Fannie dropped her shawl and took   
the veil and vows of an Episcopalian nun;
and Pen? Oh, Pen went on painting, of course—
buono di cuore, in yellow chamois gloves,
obese, oblivious, dithering into debt
and an easy death. The sale of what we saw

or saw through in Venice realized, as they say,   
some thirty thousand pounds at Sotheby’s.   
I told you: first glance is last chance.
Darkness slides over the waters—oil sludge   
spreading under, till even Venice dies,
immortally immerded. Earth has no other way,   
our provisional earth, than to become

invisible in us and rise again.
Rezzonico ... Disraeli ... We realize our task.   
It is to print earth so deep in memory
that a meaning reaches the surface. Nothing but   
darkness abides, darkness demanding not   
illumination—not from the likes of us—
but only that we yield. And we yield.


   And here is John Ruskin writing a letter home...

1851: A Message to Denmark Hill

The writer is John Ruskin, on his wedding journey in Venice.

My dearest father, it is the year’s First Day,
      Yet so like the Last, in Venice, no one
            Could tell this birth from the lees.
                  I know it is some while
Since you received a word of mine: there has been   
      The shabbiest sort of interruption   
            To our exchanges (to mine
                  At least) in the shape
Of a fever—nights of those imaginings,   
      Strange but shameful too, of the Infinite   
            By way of bedcovers and
                  Boa constrictors,
With cold wedges of ice, as I thought, laid down   
      At the corners of the bed, making me   
            Slip to its coiling center
                  Where I could not breathe.   
You knew from my last, I think, I had again
      Gone to the Zoological Gardens
            And seen the great boa take
                  Rabbits, which gave me   
An idea or two, and a headache. Then
      I had too much wine that same night, & dreamed
            Of a walk with Nurse, to whom
                  I showed a lovely
Snake I promised her was an innocent one:
      It had a slender neck with a green ring
            Round it, and I made her feel
                  The scales. When she bade
Me feel them too, it turned to a fat thing, like   
      A leech, and adhered to my hand, so that   
            I could scarcely pull it off—
                  And I awakened
(So much, father, for my serpentine fancies)   
      To a vermillion dawn, fever fallen,
            And the sea horizon dark,
                  Sharp and blue, and far
Beyond it, faint with trebled distance, came on   
      The red vertical cliffs in a tremor
            Of light I could not see without   
                  Recalling Turner
Who had taught me so to see it, yet the whole   
      Subdued to one soft gray. And that morning   
            I had your letter, father,
                  Telling of the death
Of my earthly master. How much more I feel   
      This now (perhaps it is worth noting here   
            The appearance of my first
                  Gray hair, this morning)
—More than I thought I should: everything
      In the sun, in the sky so speaks of him,
            So mourns their Great Witness lost.
                  Today, the weather
Is wretched, cold and rainy, dark like England   
      At this season. I do begin to lose
            All faith in these provinces.
                  Even the people
Look to me ugly, except children from eight   
      To fourteen, who here as in Italy
            Anywhere are glorious:
                  So playful and bright
In expression, so beautiful in feature,
      So dark in eye and soft in hair—creatures   
            Quite unrivalled. At fifteen
                  They degenerate
Into malignant vagabonds, or sensual
      Lumps of lounging fat. And this latter-day
            Venice, father! where by night
                  The black gondolas
Are just traceable beside one, as if Cadmus
      Had sown the wrong teeth and grown dragons, not
            Men. The Grand Canal, this month,
                  Is all hung, from end
To end, with carpets and tapestries like a street
      Of old-clothes warehouses. And now there is
            Even talk of taking down,
                  Soon, Tintoretto’s   
Paradise to “restore” it. Father, without
      The Turner Gallery, I do believe
            I should go today and live
                  In a cave on some
Cliffside—among crows. Oh what fools they are, this
      Restoring pack, yet smoothing all manner
            Of rottenness up with words.   
                  My Turner would not
Phrase like these, and only once in all the years
      I knew him said, “Thank you, Mr. Ruskin.”
            My own power, if it be that,   
                  Would be lost by mere
Fine Writing. You know I promised no Romance—
      I promised them Stones. Not even bread.
            Father, I do not feel any
                  Romance in Venice!   
Here is no “abiding city,” here is but
      A heap of ruins trodden underfoot
            By such men as Ezekiel
                  Angrily describes,
Here are lonely and stagnant canals, bordered
      For the most part by blank walls of gardens
            (Now waste ground) or by patches
                  Of mud, with decayed   
Black gondolas lying keel-upmost, sinking
      Gradually into the putrid soil.
            To give Turner’s joy of this
                  Place would not take ten
Days of study, father, or of residence:
      It is more than joy that must be the great   
            Fact I would teach. I am not sure,   
                  Even, that joy is
A fact. I am certain only of the strong   
      Instinct in me (I cannot reason this)   
            To draw, delimit the things
                  I love—oh not for
Reputation or the good of others or
      My own advantage, but a sort of need,
            Like that for water and food.
                  I should like to draw
All Saint Mark’s, stone by stone, and all this city,   
      Oppressive and choked with slime as it is   
            (Effie of course declares, each
                  Day, that we must leave:
A woman cannot help having no heart, but   
      That is hardly a reason she should have   
            No manners), yes, to eat it
                  All into my mind—
Touch by touch. I have been reading Paradise
      Regained lately, father. It seems to me   
            A parallel to Turner’s
                  Last pictures—the mind
Failing altogether, yet with intervals
      And such returns of power! “Thereupon   
            Satan, bowing low his gray   
                  Dissimulation,
Disappeared.” Now he is gone, my dark angel,
      And I never had such a conception
            Of the way I must mourn—not
                  What I lose, now, but
What I have lost, until now. Yet there is more   
      Pain knowing that I must forget it all,   
            That in a year I shall have
                  No more awareness
Of his loss than of that fair landscape I saw,   
      Waking, the morning your letter arrived,
            No more left about me than
                  A fading pigment.
All the present glory, like the present pain,
      Is no use to me; it hurts me rather
            From my fear of leaving it,
                  Of losing it, yet
I know that were I to stay here, it would soon
      Cease being glory to me—that it has
            Ceased, already, to produce
                  The impression and
The delight. I can bear only the first days   
      At a place, when all the dread of losing   
            Is lost in the delirium
                  Of its possession.
I daresay love is very well when it does not   
      Mean leaving behind, as it does always,
            Somehow, with me. I have not
                  The heart for more now,
Father, though I thank you and Mother for all   
      The comfort of your words. They bring me,
            With his loss, to what I said
                  Once, the lines on this
Place you will know: “The shore lies naked under   
      The night, pathless, comfortless and infirm
            In dark languor, still except
                  Where salt runlets plash
Into tideless pools, or seabirds flit from their   
      Margins with a questioning cry.” The light
            Is gone from the waters with
                  My fallen angel,
Gone now as all must go. Your loving son,
                                                 JOHN


(And here –  nothing to do with Howard's poem – is John Ruskin again, in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, revealing an unexpected taste for... penguins! 
'
When I begin to think at all I get into states of disgust and fury at the way the mob is going on (meaning by mob, chiefly Dukes, crown princes, and such like persons) that I choke; and have to go to the British Museum and look at Penguins till I get cool. I find Penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous; one can’t be angry when one looks at a Penguin.'
If only the London zoo had had living penguins and a penguin pool in Ruskin's day, the great sage might have been spared a deal of mental anguish.)
   Another, even longer Richard Howard poem, 'Wildflowers', imagines Walt Whitman receiving a visit from Oscar Wilde. It's very long, but a great read.