Butterflies and Waldemar

 Another glorious spring day, and this morning I took a walk in hope of seeing more butterflies. There was much to enjoy – birdsong (including chiffchaffs now), flowers and early blossom – but, as it turned out, the slight touch of chill in the breeze was enough to deter the butterflies, fussy creatures that they are. However, I did see my first tortoiseshell of the year – Small Tortoiseshell I should say, as the lovely Large Tortoiseshell is now re-established as a British species. And later I was entertained by two Peacocks and a Brimstone (all at the same time) in the garden. 
  Talking of butterflies, I saw one on television last night, in a most unlikely setting – acting as a fig-leaf over the nether privities of the dwarf Nano Morgante, in a startling double-sided portrait by Bronzino (the butterfly was of course highly stylised). This featured in Waldemar Januszczak's typically lively and entertaining series on Mannerism. I hadn't really thought much about Mannerism as such (though I've written here about Moroni, Parmigianino, Andrea del Sarto and others), but Waldemar brings home its extraordinary, intense energy and all-encompassing range, from utterly grotesque sculpture and wildly over-the-top ceiling paintings to hauntingly beautiful portraits – definitely Mannerism's strong suit. Self-portraits too – I was interested to learn about the prolific and prodigiously gifted self-portraitist Sofonisba Anguissola, who painted the remarkable family group below (Sofonisba on the left). However, Januszczak was surely stretching things too far when he tried to enlist Palladio in the Mannerist ranks. Really? 

Sebastian

 And the birthdays just keep on coming – this time it's John Sebastian, of Lovin' Spoonful fame, and he's 82 today. I loved the Spoonful from the first time I heard them, and still regard Sebastian as a fine songwriter. Here is one of my favourites – a good-time song with some very clever lyrics...

Bertie Wooster and the Old Fifteener

 A proper spring day at last: blue sky, a warming sun and a drying wind – and butterflies! Peacocks flying or basking everywhere, including two at once in the garden, one nectaring at length on a primula. I can't say I've noticed any burnished doves, but....

"In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove."
"So I have been informed, sir."
"Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green Homburg. I'm going into the Park to do pastoral dances."

That's Bertie Wooster (in The Inimitable Jeeves) slightly misquoting a well known line from Tennyson's 'Locksley Hall', a poem little read these days, but one that's well worth a look.  It's written entirely in rhyming couplets, in an unusual meter – technically a modified version of trochaic octameter, which Tennyson called 'the old fifteener line'. A monodrama, like the more famous Maud but ranging more widely. Indeed it is remembered also for apparently foreseeing the coming of both commercial and military aviation, when the narrator 
'Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue...'
It is a long poem (nearly 200 lines), full of anger and looming depression (to escape which the protagonist turns to thinking about the world as it might be in the future – hence the heavens filled with commerce). I think the opening lines at least – which include the one dimly remembered by Bertie Wooster – are rather fine and evocative of the coastal landscapes of Tennyson's Lincolnshire youth...

'Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,

Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;

When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;

Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.—

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turn'd—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs—

All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong";

Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,

And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,

And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!

O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!'

Ry

 It's Ry Cooder's birthday – 79 today! – so, heck, why not? 

It Works!

 It is an oft lamented fact of modern life, at least in 'Broken Britain', that nothing seems to work any more. Lord knows, I've lamented it myself often enough – so it is good to be able to report that I've found at least one thing that still works, and actually works far better than it used to...
  Some time last week I noticed that my passport was running out. Unable to face the dread prospect of applying online (such things never go well for me), I decided to get a passport photo taken and fill in an application form at the post office. So, this Monday past, I presented myself at the photographers' and told them I needed a photo for this purpose – at which point they informed me that the post office – the main post office – did not take passport applications. (This main post office, I should explain, is housed in a branch of W.H. Smith – now renamed T.G. Jones, but still, with Boots, England's joint worst high-street retail chain.) However, this excellent photographers' was happy not only to take my photo there and then but to perform the entire online application process for me, sparing me the pain – I could hardly believe my ears. This was all done in a short time, for a small fee, I handed them my old passport to return to the Passport Office, and went on my way a happy man. What happened next is quite astonishing: after several updates in the course of the week, my new passport was delivered today! I had got a new passport in five days, in an entirely painless process. I'm still blinking and rubbing my eyes incredulously. There is at least one thing, then, that still works in Broken Britain (in addition to that excellent photographers') – and, wonderfully, it's the Passport Office. 

De La Tour

 Born on this day in 1593, in the Duchy of Lorraine, was the painter Georges De La Tour, a somewhat mysterious figure of whom little is known, and who was quite forgotten until his work was rediscovered in the early 20th century. He's generally classified as a follower of Caravaggio, but that influence came indirectly, most likely by way of the Dutch Caravaggists. Personally, I've always preferred followers of Caravaggio to the man himself, most of whose work is too flashy and melodramatic for my taste. De La Tour, by contrast, tended towards something stiller and plainer. His chiaroscuro paintings – mostly genre scenes and nativities – are more serene than dramatic, and his drawing is simple and unshowy.
I owe to De La Tour one of the most memorable surprises of my gallery-going life. In the small, out-of-the-way town of Bergues in northern France, near the Belgian border, there is an art gallery called, oddly, the Mont de Piété (the French name for a state-controlled pawnshop – which it once was). I went in with no great expectation – French provincial art galleries can be dispiriting places – but, entering one of the rooms, I was stopped in my tracks by a large, arresting painting of a hurdy-gurdy player and his dog, a monumental work, with a commanding presence and an air of mystery about it. It was a De La Tour, one of several treatments of the same theme, but by far the largest and, I think, the best. For some while I couldn't take my eyes off it...
And it turned out that this out-of-the-way gallery had another fascinating masterpiece – the more fascinating for being by an unknown artist: a wonderfully accomplished and expressive Portrait of a Young Man (below). How I miss my French journeys – though I live in hope of making more, and, as it happens, have just renewed my passport. 

Hardy in March

 The month of March really should have been called January, after the double-faced Janus, looking both backward and forward. March looks back to winter, giving us frequent reminders of its cold and gloom, and forward to spring, offering tantalising glimpses of what is to come. It is the true hinge of the year, a threshold – to use a popular five-dollar word, it is 'liminal'.
Writing in March 1913, Thomas Hardy – the great poet of looking back – recalls a March day in 1870, and a cliff-top ride with the unfortunate woman who was to be his first wife. Now that she is dead and no longer obtruding on his life, Hardy finds himself experiencing a great surge of love for her – mixed, one hopes, with remorse and regret – out of which he writes some of his finest poetry. This one paints a beautiful picture of a 'clear-sunned March day' on a wild Cornish coast...

Beeny Cliff

I
O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free —
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.


II
The pale mews* plained below us, and the waves seemed far away
In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,
As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.


III
A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain,
And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,
And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.


IV
— Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,
And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,
And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?


V
Nay. Though still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,
The woman now is — elsewhere — whom the ambling pony bore,
And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will see it nevermore.

* Seagulls. Specifically the Common Gull.