The Sound of Poets

 We know what poets sound like, don't we? They speak in Received Pronunciation, sometimes in a curiously strangulated form – think T.S. Eliot – or in a kind of Oxford drawl, like Philip Larkin, or in the fruitier-than-fruit tones of Dylan Thomas, or in a more relaxed version of 'posh', like Betjeman. Regional accents are allowed for Northerners – Ted Hughes (the thinking man's Sean Bean), Simon Armitage, all those Liverpudlians. But there was a time, before Received Pronunciation took over (largely thanks to the BBC), when writers, like everyone else except some members of the gentry and aristocracy, spoke in a range of provincial accents, and the world sounded very different, both from how it sounds now and from how it sounds in period dramas and historical reconstructions.
Tennyson, by all accounts, spoke with quite a broad Lincolnshire accent all his life, though he could modify it according to circumstances. He loved Lincolnshire dialect, and wrote many dialect poems (though not as many as the dialect poetry specialist William Barnes of Dorset). Johnson spoke with the accent of his native Staffordshire, and was sometimes mocked for it, good-humouredly, by his friend Garrick. Shakespeare, another great son of Mercia, no doubt spoke with a Warwickshire accent, but what exactly he sounded like we shall never know. As for Keats, how 'cockney' was he? Did he sound like a Londoner or not? Controversy rages, in a small way. In one of many hostile contemporary reviews, he was accused of using 'Cockney rhymes', such as 'thorns' and 'fawns', 'shorter' with 'water' and 'fastens' with 'parsons'. This, according to linguists, is evidence of 'nonrhoticity', the tendency to drop Rs from the end of syllables and words – though such rhymes are perfectly respectable, and have been used by poets blessed with abundant rhoticity. Keats's letters feature such usages as 'ax' for 'ask', 'ave' for 'have' and 'werry' for 'very', but these are surely there for comic effect. The likelihood is that Keats, with his intense sensitivity and easily embarrassed nature, would have adapted whatever accent he had to suit any particular social situation he found himself in. Of course we shall never know – but we do, as it happens, have some idea of what Tennyson sounded like, from a wax cylinder recording made in 1890, in which the elderly poet declaims 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. It's an eerie sound, made all the more eerie in this 'virtual reading'...

'The chestnut pattering to the ground...'

 October already, and both the Rev. Richard Coles and Bryan Appleyard have posted Robert Frost's 'October' on Facebook (great minds, etc.). 
The advance of autumn affects poets in different ways. Emily Brontë positively welcomes it, complete with its promise of winter to come –

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

But the general autumn mood is, of course, one of melancholy, of 'languid grief'. Here's Dante Gabriel Rossetti going for it, in his 'Autumn Song' –

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the heart feels a languid grief

Laid on it for a covering,

And how sleep seems a goodly thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain

Falters because it is in vain,

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf

Knowest thou not? and how the chief

Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the soul feels like a dried sheaf

Bound up at length for harvesting,

And how death seems a comely thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

But for me the most beautiful lines of autumn verse – apart from the supreme autumn poem, Keats's great ode – are these, from Tennyson's 'In Memoriam', recalling an autumn morning on the Lincolnshire Wolds...

Calm is the morn without a sound,

         Calm as to suit a calmer grief,

         And only thro' the faded leaf

The chestnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,

         And on these dews that drench the furze.

         And all the silvery gossamers

That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain

         That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,

         And crowded farms and lessening towers,

To mingle with the bounding main:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,

         These leaves that redden to the fall;

         And in my heart, if calm at all,

If any calm, a calm despair.

A Thousand!

 Well, here's an unexpected development: a recent post on this blog has attracted 1,000 views – a figure unheard of since the good old days when blogging was enjoying its golden age. The post in question was this one – and it looks as if several other posts could soon be following it into the fabled land of four figures. What is happening? Nigeness doesn't seem to be attracting the attention of unlikely countries (as has happened in the past from time to time), not does anything suspicious appear to be going on. Could it be a sign of the long overdue blog renaissance, when people finally come to their senses, abandon the delusive charms of Facebook, Instagram and X, and return to the blogosphere, natural home of that pleasing and often rewarding genre, the informal short-form essay? I doubt it, but a man can dream... 

'What they're saying doesn't matter'

 The garden of our house in Lichfield backs onto a school playing field – which is good news because (a) it means the garden has an open view and is not overlooked, and (b) we both happen to like hearing the voices of children at play, at least when they're of primary school age. 
Gavin Ewart writes about this in a poem called 'Back' –

They come back, the terrible old words,
words like 'heart-piercing', 
from the bad poems in the anthologies,
when I hear the voices of the children playing –
but not what they are saying.

I think back, ten or eleven years,
when we could hear sing
our own kids' trebles – the tree of knowledge is
apt to grow too fast in any London garden –
and soon our feelings harden.

They float back, like an archaic rhyme,
brightly transpiercing
parental minds, strong as old theologies,
sweet, that all too soon will grow both sour and flatter – 
what they're saying doesn't matter. 

(A clever rhyme scheme there, with lines two and three of each stanza rhyming across the whole poem.) 'Back' is one of Ewart's more tender poems – and here is another, one to appeal to any cat-lover –

A 14-Year-Old Convalescent Cat in the Winter

I want him to have another living summer,
to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre – 
because the sun, like golden rum in a rummer, 
is what makes an idle cat un tout petit peu ivre – 

I want him to lie stretched out, contented,
revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm,
an old age pensioner, retired, resented
by no one, and happiness in a beelike swarm

to settle on him – postponed for another season
that last fated hateful journey to the vet
from which there is no return (and age the reason),
which must soon come – as I cannot forget. 

'I did not know how lucky I was'

Appended to Sassoon's The Old Century is a further memoir, Seven More Years, which carries young Siegfried's story forward into the new century. Towards the end of it comes his memorable encounter with a Camberwell Beauty, which some readers might remember from my book, The Butterfly: Flights of Enchantment. While in the large room at the top of his family home, Sassoon becomes aware of a butterfly trapped between the skylight and the gauze tacked over it...

'By standing on a chair – which I placed on a table – I could just get my hand between the gauze and the glass. The butterfly was ungratefully elusive, and more than once the chair almost toppled over. Successful at last, I climbed down, and was about to put the butterfly out of the window when I observed between my fingers that it wasn't the Small Tortoiseshell or Cabbage White that I had assumed it to be. Its dark wings had yellowish borders with blue spots on them. It was more than seven years since I had entomologically squeezed the thorax of a "specimen". Doing so now, I discovered that one of the loftiest ambitions of my childhood had been belatedly realised. I had caught a Camberwell Beauty.'

I had forgotten what it was the young Siegfried was doing when the fluttering Beauty caught his attention. He was, or intended to be, reading among the impressive books he had recently been collecting to form his own library...

'I decided that I really must read some Ruskin, in whom I had heavy arrears to make up, for during my final term at Cambridge I had  somewhat fortuitously subscribed for that Library Edition of his works which was being gradually issued in thirty-nine volumes. Thirty of them had already arrived, and they were uniformly corpulent ... Attracted by its name, I made a start with The Crown of Wild Olive, but after a few pages I lost the thread and lapsed into leaf-cutting – an occupation which was more compatible with my wandering thoughts. I might have continued cutting the leaves of Ruskin's work for the rest of the morning, but I began to be bothered by the flutterings of a butterfly....'

And there it was... I remember that 39-volume set of Ruskin from my early years, when it sat unsold and unwanted on the shelves of many a provincial second-hand bookshop, its author's reputation having sunk below the horizon. Nowadays, with Ruskin back in favour (up to  a point), you would have to pay a considerable sum to get your hands on a complete set. 
  Seven More Years is every bit as engagingly readable as The Old Century, and, having finished it, I think I'm going to have to read more of Sassoon's memoirs. Here is the closing scene of the book, in which young Siegfried is in the garden of the family home, on the edge of the Kentish weald...

'Meanwhile this September morning looked as if nothing could change its meridian prosperity. As I turned to go up to the house, I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to be more than twenty-one. Lucky to be in love with life, I did not know how lucky I was.'

'A called-for falling glide and whirl'

 I have rather too much going on at the moment, including some soul-sapping technical difficulties resulting from a change of computer, and a couple of books to read for review at something of a breakneck speed (for me) – but, on the positive side, I did manage an epic day trip down to the south coast and back yesterday to see an old friend who also happens to have a magical ability to fix bad backs, of which I have had one, in a small way, lately.  
  Anyhow (a word Siegfried Sassoon uses surprisingly often in The Old Century at the beginning of paragraphs), somewhere along the way I came across this short poem by Richard Wilbur (from Things of This World), a vivid miniature that struck me as, well, just beautiful...

Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning

            I can't forget
   How she stood at the top of that long marble stair
   Amazed, and then with a sleepy pirouette
Went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square;

          Nothing upon her face
But some impersonal loneliness, – not then a girl,
    But as it were a reverie of the place,
       A called-for falling glide and whirl;

   As when a leaf, petal, or thin chip
Is drawn to the falls of a pool and, circling a moment above it,
           Rides on over the lip – 
     Perfectly beautiful, perfectly ignorant of it. 

To me, the image in that last stanza recalls Wilbur's masterpiece, 'A Baroque Wall Fountain in the Villa Sciarra'.

   

An Unlikely Editor

 I've been  reading Siegfried Sassoon's memoir of his early years, The Old Century (and a very good read it is).
Being born a Sassoon, Siegfried was vaguely aware that he had a lot of rich relations, but he saw nothing of them – with one exception, Auntie Rachel, his father's sister, who was Mrs Frederick Beer, and who lived with her husband in an oppressively grand Mayfair mansion.  There were footmen and a butler, electric lighting, expensive furnishings and antiques galore. In the grand dining room, 'The food was a series of succulent surprises, and there were wonderful pictures on the walls. But every time we went there the floor became more densely occupied by piles of books. They were stacked all around the room and none of them had ever been opened, though they ought to have been because they were, to be precise, review copies sent to the Sunday Times, of which Auntie Rachel was the editor.' This nugget caught me up short – how could Auntie Rachel, 'well known for always being late for everything' and described by Sassoon as 'vague and desultory', be editing a national newspaper? 
 Sassoon explains: 'At that time both The Observer and the Sunday Times, which in those days were rather unobtrusive and retiring newspaper, belonged to Mr Beer, whose father had been a financier.' What is more (as he doesn't mention), Auntie Rachel was also the editor of The Observer – and was indeed the first woman to edit a national newspaper. The world of journalism was obviously very different in the 1890s, but even the young Sassoon found it hard to believe that his aunt could be editing a paper: 'I have often wondered how the Sunday Times managed to appear once a week under her editorship. I have also wondered how the printers succeeded in deciphering her handwriting, which was the most illegible hieroglyphic I have ever puzzled over.' Despite her husband becoming increasingly ill, she continued to edit both papers until 1901. On Frederick Beer's death in 1903, the papers changed hands again. Rachel herself was ill for many years, and when she died she left a large bequest to her nephew Siegfried, with which he was able to buy Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, where he lived for the rest of his life, forever grateful to Auntie Rachel. 

Degas's Apotheosis

This curious photograph – a silver print from a silver gelatine glass negative, dated 1885 – is titled 'The Apotheosis of Degas', and shows that artist sitting on the steps of a house in Dieppe surrounded by worshippers. Created with the help of a Dieppe portraitist and photographer, Walter Barnes, it is a parody of 'The Apotheosis of Homer', a heroic history painting by Ingres, one of Degas's artistic heroes.

Degas sent the photograph of his own apotheosis to his friends, partly as a joke but partly, one suspects, as an assertion of the artistic continuity between Ingres and himself – and indeed as a half-serious assertion of his own greatness; he was a man with a good conceit of himself. 
Ever the perfectionist, Degas later criticised his own composition: 'My three muses and my choir boys should have been grouped against a white or pale background, the costumes of the women in particular are lost. And the figures should also have been closer together.' Still, it works well enough.

A Centenarian

 It's not every day that you get to mark the centenary of someone still living – but today is the 100th birthday of the still very much alive broadcaster, actor and DJ Pete Murray (born Peter Murray James). His father was a Great War veteran who was injured in a gas attack at the Somme, and Murray claims to have been an unhappy and intensely shy boy. However, he got into RADA, despite a complete lack of experience, and even survived an attempt by the school's director to throw him out. According to Wikipedia, his early acting roles included a bit part in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but by 1950 his career as a disc jockey had begun, with a five-year stint at Radio Luxemburg ('fabulous 208'), during which he discovered Bill Haley's 'Rock Around the Clock', played it four times in 15 minutes and thereby became (probably) the first man to introduce European audiences to rock'n'roll. Many successful years on BBC radio and television followed, until in 1983 the Corporation cancelled all his radio shows and Murray walked out, to start again with LBC. He is still broadcasting, and is reported to have presented a show today, on his 100th birthday. 
In a memorable appearance on the BBC's Breakfast Time back in 1983, reviewing the papers, he declared that 'a vote for Labour is a vote for communism. May God have mercy on your soul if you don't vote Conservative.' Wow. 

Practical Misfit

 

Last night I had a typically convoluted dream, of which, mercifully, I remember only one brief moment. A character rather like Sheldon Cooper (from that excellent sitcom The Big Bang Theory) is in a bit of a spin, frantically looking for something. 'Where is my Practical Misfit magazine?' he wails. 
Perhaps it's just me, but this struck me as very funny – which is presumably why I remember it. It made me wonder if a stable of magazines could be built around Practical Misfit, full of handy lifestyle tips. How about Practical Slacker? Practical Loner? Practical Nihilist? Practical Existentialist? Any more? Or maybe I've gone mad...

The Rest Is Noyes

 Born on this day in 1880 was Alfred Noyes, a poet now largely forgotten, but for the gloriously melodramatic ballad 'The Highwayman', which regularly features in anthologies and in polls of the nation's favourite poems – and why not? It's pretty irresistible...

PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,   

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.   

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

         His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.

He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.   

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there   

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.   

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,   

But he loved the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,   

Then look for me by moonlight,

         Watch for me by moonlight,

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;   

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

         (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

PART TWO

He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;   

And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,   

When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,   

A red-coat troop came marching—

         Marching—marching—

King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.   

But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!   

There was death at every window;

         And hell at one dark window;

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.

They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!

“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—

Look for me by moonlight;

         Watch for me by moonlight;

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!   

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years

Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,

         Cold, on the stroke of midnight,

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.   

Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.   

She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;   

For the road lay bare in the moonlight;

         Blank and bare in the moonlight;

And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;   

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?

Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,

The highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!   

Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.

Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,   

Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

         Her musket shattered the moonlight,

Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood   

Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!   

Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear   

How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.

Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;

When they shot him down on the highway,

         Down like a dog on the highway,

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

.       .       .

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,   

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

A highwayman comes riding—

         Riding—riding—

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.

He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.   

He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there   

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

But there was more to Noyes than 'The Highwayman'. His first volume, The Loom of Years, was praised by Yeats and Meredith, and was published just after he left Oxford – without a degree, as he had had to miss a crucial exam in order to attend a meeting with his publisher. Nice work. 
   Noyes successfully published five more collections of his verse between 1903 and 1913. A long poem called 'The Barrel Organ' was especially popular (and includes the lyric 'Come down to Kew in lilac time'). Then there was a 200-page epic, Drake, and Noyes's only drama, Sherwood, which contains another of his popular lyrics, 'A Song of Sherwood'. His first wife was American, and with her he began to pay frequent visits to the States, becoming a visiting professor at Princeton, where his students included F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson. His views on literature were robustly traditional: he rated Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson and Tennyson the greatest writers in the language – a perfectly reasonable position – and disliked most modernist work, expressing a strong distaste even for Arnold Bennett, H.L. Mencken and Proust, let alone Joyce, whose Ulysses he described as 'the foulest book that has ever found its way into print'. 
   Rather surprisingly for one of his conservative views, Noyes was a pacifist who deplored war and lectured against it and in favour of world peace and disarmament, though he supported Britain in both world wars. In the wake of the Great War, he was particularly disgusted by the Victory Balls held by members of the aristocracy, and his disgust found expression in an extraordinary poem, 'The Victory Ball' – 

The cymbals crash,
And the dancers walk,
With long white stockings
And arms of chalk,
Butterfly skirts,
And white breasts bare,
And shadows of dead men
Watching ’em there.
Shadows of dead men
Stand by the wall,
Watching the fun
Of the Victory Ball.
They do not reproach,
Because they know,
If they’re forgotten
It’s better so.
Under the dancing
Feet are the graves.
Dazzle and motley,
In long white waves,
Brushed by the palm-fronds
Grapple and whirl
Ox-eyed matron,
And slim white girl.
Fat wet bodies
Go waddling by,
Girdled with satin,
Though God knows why:
Gripped by satyrs
In white and black,
With a fat wet hand
On the fat wet back.

See, there’s one child
Fresh from school,
Learning the ropes
As the old hands rule.
God! how the dead men
Chuckle again,
As she begs for a dose
Of the best cocaine.

"What do you think
We should find”, said the shade,
“When the last shot echoed
And peace was made?”

“Christ” laughed the
Fleshless jaws of his friend,
“I thought they’d be
Praying for worlds to mend,
And making earth better
Or something damn silly
Like whitewashing hell
Or Picca-damn-dilly.
They’ve a sense of humour
These women of ours,
These exquisite lilies,
These fresh young flowers”.

“Pish”, said a statesman
Standing near,
"I’m glad they keep busy
Their thoughts elsewhere!
We mustn’t reproach 'em,
They’re young, you see”

“Ah”, said the dead men,
“So were we”.

Victory! Victory!
On with the dance!
Back to the jungle
The new beasts prance!
God, how the dead men
Grin by the wall
Watching the fun
Of the Victory Ball.

This is a poem that reads more like a poetic analogue of a George Grosz painting than the work of a popular traditionalist English poet of his time. 
  Noyes carried on writing voluminously, in prose and verse, tackling ever larger themes, to the end of his long life (he died in 1958). In his later years, he took to writing for children – and produced one more popular anthology piece, the poem 'Daddy Fell into the Pond'. The contrast with 'The Victory Ball' hardly needs pointing up...

Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
And there seemed to be nothing beyond.
THEN
Daddy fell into the pond!

And everyone's face grew merry and bright,
And Timothy danced for sheer delight.
"Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!
He's crawling out of the duckweed."
Click!

Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,
And doubled up, shaking silently,
And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft
And is sounded as if the old drake laughed.
O, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond
WHEN
Daddy fell into the pond!