'The writer of some infidel poetry'

 This day in 1822 was the date of the most archetypically, even iconically, romantic of all the Romantic poets' deaths – that of Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned in the Ligurian sea, and cremated on the beach by his friends. Unmoved, the London newspaper The Courier marked his death thus: 'Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned; now he knows whether there is a God or not.' 
  The famous littoral cremation did not go entirely smoothly. I tell the story in my book, The Mother of Beauty (still available on Amazon or direct from me), writing of
'Shelley’s dramatically informal ‘pagan’ cremation on the beach at Viareggio, an event stage-managed and later much mythologised by the writer and adventurer Edward Trelawny. Shelley drowned when the boat he was sailing was caught in a sudden storm, and his body was washed up ten days later at Viareggio, along with his two sailing companions. They were identifiable only by their clothes – and, in Shelley’s case, a volume of Keats that he had crammed into his pocket. With the help of Italian soldiers who were on hand, guarding the bodies, Trelawny built the funeral pyre and set it alight, while his friends Byron and Leigh Hunt looked on. The fierce heat of blazing resinous pine took Trelawny by surprise and drove the onlookers away to a safe distance. As the flames began to die down, Trelawny poured on frankincense and salt, then wine and oil, in the manner of the ancient Greeks, and that was that. The three men then took a long swim out from the shore, and, in one final romantic gesture, Trelawny seized Shelley’s heart from the embers of his pyre. (That heart now resides in the Shelley family vault at St Peter’s, Bournemouth, along with the body of Mary Shelley and the remains of her parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, dug up from the churchyard of Old St Pancras).'
The volume of Keats was Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and other poems (1819). There is some doubt over whether the unburnt remnant snatched from the pyre was actually Shelley's heart or some other organ, perhaps his liver. Either way, Trelawny gave it to Leigh Hunt, who for some while refused to hand it over to Mary Shelley, but finally relented. There is doubt too about the final resting place of the presumed heart, which might be at Christchurch Priory rather than St Peter's, Bournemouth. A piece of jawbone, also retrieved from the pyre, was eventually donated to the Keats-Shelley Memorial in Rome.  

Gerontius, and a Jarring Phrase

A while back, having read a devastating German and a sour Austrian novel back to back, I vowed to return to English fiction with my next selection from the charity shop fiction shelves. Those trusty shelves duly obliged by delivering into my hands Gerontius by James Hamilton-Paterson, a novel that I remembered having intended to read when it came out (in 1989 – 35 years ago now!).  
  Gerontius is a beautifully written, psychologically convincing account of a sea voyage undertaken in 1923 by an ageing Sir Edward Elgar, taking him over the ocean to Brazil and on into Amazonia as far as Manaus. He is known to have visited and admired the grand opera house there, but otherwise the whole unlikely episode is barely documented, so Hamilton-Paterson has free rein to make of it what he will. So far, I am only about halfway through – it's a fat book and I'm a slow reader – but I am impressed and thoroughly engrossed. As well as being an account of a sea voyage, Gerontius is also a journey around Elgar's life and mind, his anxieties and preoccupations, his uneasy relationship with his muse and with the social world, his grief for his wife, his many exasperations, his love of tinkering and 'japes', his susceptibility, perhaps, to something like late-life romance... I've read nothing else by this author – described on Wikipedia as 'the most reclusive of British literary exiles' – but I'm strongly tempted by a novel titled Cooking with Fernet Branca., which sounds very different indeed from Gerontius. 
  Anyway, to the point, if it is a point. There I was, reading away in Gerontius, when I was snagged by a jarring phrase that struck me as surely an anachronism. A character uses the expression 'economical with the truth', which I don't recall ever having heard before it entered the mainstream in 1986 after a senior civil servant (Sir Robert Armstrong) used it in the 'Spycatcher' trial. Surely no one in 1923 would be using the phrase? The idea itself, but not the wording, can be found in Mark Twain – 'Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economise it' (1897) –  and Edmund Burke: 'As in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth' (1796). It seems the actual words 'economical with the truth' might well have been in circulation, but are only recorded in obscure sources – The Iron and Metal Trades: Birmingham, 1897 ('One can say without being economical with the truth that they are in a state of "masterly inactivity"'), The Weekly Underwriter, 1897 ('The insurance superintendent of Kansas is said to be very economical with the truth'), and the record of debates in the New Zealand House of Representatives, 1923 ('It is not well to be too economical with the truth'). So the use of the expression in Gerontius is perhaps not anachronistic; it just sounds that way. Not that it matters. 

'I humbly hope to meet again and to part no more'

 I've dropped in on the little church of St Chad's, overlooking Stowe Pool in Lichfield, several times, but had somehow failed to spot these two Johnsonian tablets on the South wall until the other day. The upper one (harder to read in the picture) commemorates Johnson's stepdaughter, Lucy Porter, daughter of his wife 'Tetty' and her first husband, and the lower commemorates Catherine Chambers, 'the faithful servant of Michael Johnson [Samuel's father] and his family'. Catherine Chambers's tablet was erected long after her death, but Lucy Porter's is contemporaneous. It reads: 'In a Vault near this Place are deposited the Remains of LUCY PORTER, who died the 13th of January 1786, aged 70 Years. To whose Memory, in Gratitude for her liberal Acts of Friendship conferred on him, this Monument is erected by the Revd J.B. Pearson.'
  Pearson had reason to be grateful. He and Lucy Porter had become close friends in her later years, and at times he was the only person she would admit to visit her. His visits, and their games of piquet, apparently cheered her, though there were times when he exasperated her. Mrs Thrale/Piozzi relates, on the authority of Johnson himself, how 'being opposed one day in conversation by a clergyman who came often to her house, and feeling somewhat offended, cried out suddenly, 'Why, Mr. Pearson,’ said she, ‘ you are just like Dr. Johnson, I think: I do not mean that you are a man of the greatest capacity in all the world like Dr. Johnson, but that you contradict one every word one speaks, just like him.’
However, their friendship was strong, and Lucy Porter's gratitude real. Pearson, who was Curate of St Chad's, was the principal beneficiary in her will, inheriting a handsome sum of money and many Johnsonian relics – her final 'liberal Acts of Friendship'. 
   Johnson's relations with his stepdaughter were not entirely easy. Though he was, by all reports, 'ever attentive and kind' to Lucy, she was generally indifferent. He told Mrs Thrale that Lucy 'considers me one of the external and accidental things that are taken or left without emotion', though she seems to have warmed somewhat to him later in life. Recently a New Year letter from Johnson to his step-daughter came up for auction. It begins: 'Dearest Madam – I ought to have begun the new year with repairing the omissions of the last'. Johnson wishes Lucy 'long life and happiness always encreasing [sic] till it shall at last end in the happiness of heaven'. He meanwhile is 'pretty much disordered by a cold and cough', has just been 'blooded' [bled], and asks her to give his love to 'Kitty'.
  This 'Kitty' is the same Catherine Chambers memorialised in the lower tablet in St Chad's. She was officially Johnson's mother's maid, but became much more than that, living with her for 35 years, and caring devotedly for her in her last illness. Johnson always held her in very high regard. He is quoted on her memorial tablet (erected in 1910): 'My dear old friend Catherine Chambers; she buried my father and my mother and my brother ... I humbly hope to meet again and to part no more.' 

'A chartered member of Blandings'

 For some unfathomable reason, I continue to be bombarded with Bertrand Russell material on Facebook, invariably accompanied by photographs of the Great Man sagely sucking on a pipe. Today's bit of Russelliana did, for once, pique my interest. It quoted from a fan letter that Russell wrote in 1954 to P.G. Wodehouse, in which he declared that, 'In common with the rest of mankind, I derive great pleasure from reading your books.' He goes on to proudly outline what he has in common with Bertie Wooster:
'My name is Bertie; I had an aunt called Agatha and an uncle called Algernon; I came within an ace of being called Galahad; and my great grandfather put a plaque in his garden to commemorate a victory over his head gardener.'
Galahad Russell? Could he have had a career in philosophy with a forename like that? it would have been uphill work...
Wodehouse, in reply, declares that 'I am very proud to think that you have enjoyed my books', and goes on to tell Russell that 'You are certainly qualified to rank as a chartered member of Blandings!'.
The letter, the only one between the two men, is in the Russell Archives at McMaster University, which also has eleven Wodehouse volumes owned by the illustrious 'chartered member'. 

Painted by a Norwegian

 I don't often look at the stats for this blog, but when I do I always check to see which countries are giving Nigeness the most views. Today I was surprised to find that Hong Kong, a territory that I don't think had ever featured before, is now in second place – way, way ahead of the US, which itself is way ahead of the UK, which is not far clear of, er, Singapore. And who is in the coveted number one spot? Why, it's Norway again, a whisker ahead of Hong Kong (who I suspect will fade fast). 
  I've observed the strong Norwegian interest in this blog before, and put up obliging posts (this one, for example). So now here is another painting by a son of Norway, though it doesn't look in the slightest degree Norwegian. The picture above, titled Turner Fernisserer, shows J.M.W. Turner on a 'varnishing day', an occasion which he invariably used to finish his paintings in public, doing a great deal more than just applying varnish, while onlookers marvelled at the last-minute magic he wrought. Turner Fernisserer was painted, on a visit to London, by a Norwegian artist  with a very English name – Thomas Fearnley. He was a painter mainly of Romantic landscapes, and he owed his English name to a grandfather, also Thomas Fearnley, a merchant who emigrated from Canada to Norway. The painter Fearnley's brother was an astronomer, and his son founded a dynasty of shipping magnates. 
  Once again I salute you, Norway!