'It will be February there...'

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon, 
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will. 

This disarming opener begins Ted Kooser's collection Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems, which I have just acquired. Kooser, whom I hadn't heard of until recently, is a successful poet (as poets go) who has been much praised – by, among others, Dana Gioia – and also looked down upon by some as being altogether too much the plain-speaking down-home midwesterner (and too popular and accessible?). Having sampled his work, most of it in the form of very short poems, I can see what the harsher critics mean – some are a little flat, a little thin, a little too easy. However, many quite escape that characterisation. Take this haunting vision of The Afterlife – 

It will be February there, 
a foreign-language newspaper
rolling along the dock
in an icy wind, a few
old winos wiping their eyes
over a barrel of fire;
down the streets, mad women
shaking rats from their mops
on each stoop, and odd,
twisted children,
playing with matches and knives.
Then, behind us, trombones: 
the horns of the tugs
turning our great grey ship
back into the mist.

    – And what is going on here?  

The Skeleton in the Closet

These bones once held together
on the strength of rumour.
The jaws which bit down hard
on the truth were stuffed at last
with a velvet glove. Now
all the foolishness is dust
and mothballs and the eyes
of children darkening
the keyhole. There's nothing
to see in here but two boots
full of golden teeth
and a fancy riding cape
with shoulder pads.

    There's certainly nothing hokey about this one –

They Had Torn Off My Face at the Office

They had torn off my face at the office.
The night that I finally noticed
that it was not growing back, I decided
to slit my wrists. Nothing ran out;
I was empty. Both of my hands fell off
shortly thereafter. Now at my job
they allow me to type with the stumps.
It pleases them to have helped me,
and I gain in speed and confidence.

  And how's this for a birthday poem? Not exactly celebratory...

Birthday

Somebody deep in my bones
is lacing his shoes with a hook.
It's an hour before dawn
in that nursing home.
There is nothing to do but get dressed
and sit in the darkness.
Up the hall, in the brightly lit skull,
the young pastor is writing his poem. 

Natural Theology

 When Tennyson sat his Cambridge entrance examination, it consisted of four subjects – Latin, Greek, Algebra and Natural Theology. Of those, the first two are in steep decline, especially Greek, though 'classical studies' in various forms are still on the curriculum. Certainly the days are long gone when an easy familiarity with Latin and Greek, with ancient history and classical mythology, were part of every educated man's (and many women's) mental world. Algebra, I presume, survives as a branch of mathematics (one I could never master), and was perhaps regarded as a useful training in abstract reasoning. As for natural theology, surely nobody now would regard it as a 'core subject', but rather as something that might turn up in theology or philosophy courses, or perhaps in the study of the history of science. However, for much of the 19th century, and into the 20th, natural theology was very much alive. It's a form of theology that seeks to demonstrate that theological ideas – especially of the existence of God – can be reached by way of reason alone; that there is no need for revelation. The most famous exemplar of this approach was William Paley, whose Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature was a hugely popular and influential book. But there was always strong criticism from the likes of Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard and, more recently, Karl Barth. Not to mention God Himself, who in Psalm 50 rebukes the wicked for thinking that He is just like one of them: 'Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself'. This quotation stands at the head of a knotty, punishingly long poem by Browning – 'Caliban Upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island'. In this, Shakespeare's Caliban attempts to understand the god he worships, Setebos, through observing how the natural world works, and inevitably finds himself looking in a mirror, discovering a cruel god of arbitrary and jealous power, lording it over nature just as he does himself in his smaller realm. Here's a link to the poem, if you're feeling strong...  
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43748/caliban-upon-setebos

Some trace of natural theology perhaps survives in the idea that there are inherent 'Laws of Nature' or 'natural rights'...

Young Tennyson

One of my birthday presents, and a very welcome one, was Richard Holmes's The Boundless Deep, the first of a projected two-volume biography of Tennyson. I've just started reading it, and am enjoying it hugely. I've long been fascinated by the early life of Tennyson, partly because of his connection to a county I (mostly) love, having spent many boyhood holidays there – Lincolnshire – and in particular to the beautiful and little-visited Lincolnshire Wolds. I've written before about this 'Tennyson Country', on the blog and in this book, and Holmes evokes the young poet's life there, amid his troubled but brilliant family in the Somersby rectory, beautifully. 
  The first poem quoted in the book is 'The Kraken', a strange and unsettling work, written when Tennyson was still a student, and not published until much later –

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

This was one of the first poems of Tennyson's that brought me up short in my precocious exploration of Tennyson's verse, or those portions of it comprehensible to a boy of ten or less. Sometimes, at that stage, it was little more than those sonorous opening lines – '"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon"..., 'The woods decay, The woods decay and fall...', 'The splendour falls On castle walls...', 'On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye...', 'Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me...', 'With blackest moss the flower-pots Were thickly crusted, one and all...', and of course 'Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward...' – but I went deeper into several of the poems. Especially I was quite entranced by 'In Memoriam', reading it all through, and even learning parts of it by heart (I had a memory then). If this sounds like precocity, it is nothing to the boy Tennyson, who at the age of seven, Holmes informs us, could recite Horace's Odes by heart. Not much later, he had Pope's translation of the Iliad by heart. All of the eleven Tennyson siblings were bookish and wrote poetry: his sister Mary collected '132 sonnets and fugitive pieces', brothers Frederick and Charles were considered serious poets, and altogether eight of them (including Alfred) had their work published in adult life – this despite the 'fatal inheritance' that hung over them all, especially the boys: 'lethargic drifting, disabling depression, alcoholism, mental instability, or simply black spiritual despair'. With all of which Tennyson struggled throughout his early years – and, thanks to poetry, prevailed. 

'To live is so startling...'

 It's Emily Dickinson's birthday today (born 1830, in Amherst). She wrote that 'To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else' – but it left her time to write, in her short life, large numbers of the most extraordinary poems of the nineteenth (or any) century.
Let's celebrate the birthday with one of her cheerier numbers – 

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged — a Summer Afternoon —
Repairing Everywhere —

Without Design — that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers — understood —

Her pretty Parasol be seen
Contracting in a Field
Where Men made Hay —
Then struggling hard
With an opposing Cloud —

Where Parties — Phantom as Herself —
To Nowhere — seemed to go
In purposeless Circumference —
As 'twere a Tropic Show —

And notwithstanding Bee — that worked —
And Flower — that zealous blew —
This Audience of Idleness
Disdained them, from the Sky —

Till Sundown crept — a steady Tide —
And Men that made the Hay —
And Afternoon — and Butterfly —
Extinguished — in the Sea —

Speaking of butterflies – if I may lower the tone for a moment, don't forget this little book, perfectly proportioned to be a Christmas stocking-filler...

'An echo of what the light said...'

 R.S. Thomas wrote the justly famous Advent poem 'The Coming' (which has appeared here before) – 

'And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.'

Thomas also wrote another fine poem simply titled 'Coming', which seems to be more about the Second Coming, but considers the coming of Christ to Earth as something recurrent, part of a mysterious creative process of unfolding, 'invisible as a mutation'...

'To be crucified
again? To be made friends
with for his jeans and beard?
Gods are not put to death

any more. Their lot now
is with the ignored.
I think he still comes
stealthily as of old,

invisible as a mutation,
an echo of what the light
said, when nobody
attended; an impression

of eyes, quicker than
to be caught looking, but taken
on trust like flowers in the
dark country toward which we go.'

Birthday

Today Tom Waits and I complete 76 years on this Earth. I've written a song for the occasion – it goes to the tune of 'Seventy-Six Trombones' –

Seventy-six years old, and I'm feeling fine,
Seventy-six years old, and I'm glad – 
And when I've lived eight more, I'll be all of eighty-four,
And the prospect doesn't seem half bad.
etc.

All yours, Tom. 

Others, especially those afflicted with a tender conscience, have taken their birthdays rather more seriously. Take the seventeenth-century nonconformist cleric Philip Henry (whose father had the delightful job title Keeper of the Orchard at Whitehall Palace)...

'He was born at White-hall, in Westminster, on Wednesday, August 24, 1631. being Bartholomew-day. I find usually in his Diary, some pious Remark or other upon the Annual Return of his Birth-day: As in one Year he notes, that the Scripture mentions but two who observed their Birth-day with Feasting and Joy, and they were neither of them Copies to be written after: viz. 𝑃ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑜ℎ, Gen. 40.20. and 𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑑, Mat. 14.6. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 (saith he) 𝐼 𝑟𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝐷𝑎𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐻𝑢𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑖𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑆𝑖𝑛. And when he had completed the Thirtieth Year of his Age, he noted this, 𝑆𝑜 𝑜𝑙𝑑, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑛𝑜 𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑒𝑟, Alexander 𝑤𝑎𝑠, 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 (saith he) 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑦𝑒𝑡 𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑑𝑢𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑, 𝑚𝑦 𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓. At his Thirty third Year he hath this Humble Reflection; 𝐴 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑝𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒, 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝐼 𝑑𝑜 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑚 𝑖𝑡? And at another, 𝐼 𝑚𝑎𝑦 𝑀𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝐶𝑎𝑒𝑠𝑎𝑟 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑢𝑝𝑜𝑛 𝐴𝑙𝑒𝑥𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟'𝑠 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝐴𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠, 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝐼 𝑎𝑚, ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐺𝑜𝑑, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑦 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒. And (to mention no more) when he had lived Forty two Years, he thus writes; 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝐼 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑌𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑦 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝐸𝑎𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛. This last Note minds me of a Passage I have heard him tell of a Friend of his, who being grown into Years, was asked how old he was, and answer'd, 𝑂𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝐹𝑖𝑓𝑡𝑦: Which (said Mr. Henry) he should not have said; for if he was going to Heaven, it was the 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 side of Fifty.'
— 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐰 𝐇𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐲, 𝐴𝑛 𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑟. 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑝 𝐻𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑦, 𝑀𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑜𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑙 𝑁𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ 𝑖𝑛 𝑆ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑒, 𝑊ℎ𝑜 𝐷𝑦'𝑑 𝐽𝑢𝑛𝑒 24, 1696, 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑖𝑥𝑡𝑦 𝐹𝑖𝑓𝑡ℎ 𝑌𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝐻𝑖𝑠 𝐴𝑔𝑒 (1698). 

Well, there'll be none of that chez Nige...

'The harsh rumour of yesterday' – and today...

Here is a poem for our time – a time when Jew-hatred, the oldest hatred of all, is resurgent yet again. This simple, touching account of a family celebrating Passover is by Charles Causley. 

Seder

The room is at first sight a winter room:
The tablecloth a fresh snowfall ordered
With frail matzot that splinter at the touch
Like too-fine ice, the wine glasses of hard
Snow-crystal. To the shifting candle-flame,
Blood-glint of wine against the polished green
Of garlands, white of bitter herbs, and on

Its ritual dish the shankbone of the lamb.
A chair stands empty for the celebrant,
Unfree, who cannot celebrate; the wine
Poured for Elijah; the half matzah snugged
In a napkin for a young child to find.
The reading of the Haggadah begins.
Let those who are an hungered come and eat

With us. Those who are needy come and keep
The Passover with us. Though we dwell here
This year in exile and in bondage, next
Year we are free. Prayers in a mash of tongues.
Why does this night differ from other nights?
A boy is asked. Another at the door
Open it that Elijah enters in

To blazon the Messiah, drink the wine
Of the unending promise, share the hope 
Of Passover. Kisses, embraces as
The feast is ended. We disperse beneath
Uncounted stars as measureless as those 
Children who marched into the wilderness.
Laughter. Yom Tov. A Good Yom Tov, they say,

This family, sometime traders in salt
In Novgorod: doctor, attorney, truck-
Driver, schoolteacher, mail-clerk, student, nurse,
The smiling grandparents, from whom God hid
His face, their eyes in shadow from the harsh 
Rumour of yesterday. Every one
A trader still in necessary salt. 

Causley, a poet admired by the not-easily-pleased Philip Larkin, was much more than a 'Cornish poet', or a 'children's poet'. 'Seder' comes from the late collection A Field of Vision, which also includes the beautiful 'Eden Rock', about which I have written before. 

Christmas Movies

 I see the British Board of Film Classification has conducted a poll to find the nation's favourite Christmas film. The results are pretty bizarre. I suppose if It's A Wonderful Life didn't exist, you might go for The Muppets Christmas Carol or Elf, or even, at a pinch, Home Alone – which in the event came top by a considerable margin – but mark what 'the nation' voted into the number two spot: Love Actually, one of the most powerful emetics in cinema history. Has the world gone mad? (Yes, of course it has, but what can you do?). 
As it happens, the other night I watched, on my son's recommendation, what turned out to be a very fine Christmas movie. This was The Holdovers, a comedy drama from 2023, directed by Alexander Payne and starring the great Paul Giamatti (whose performance as John Adams was one of the best I ever saw on TV). The Holdovers is set in 1970 at an upmarket boys' boarding school in Massachusetts, where Giamatti is Paul Hunham, a dedicated old-school classics teacher trying to uphold standards in an institution largely dedicated to raising money from rich parents and ensuring that even their stupidest sons never fail their exams. Hunham finds himself forced to stay behind through the Christmas break to supervise a handful of pupils who have nowhere to go, mostly because their parents don't want them around. This unhappy group soon dwindles to one – the unhappiest of them all, a troubled older boy called Angus Tully. The film follows the evolving relationship between Hunham and Tully and the black cafeteria manager  Mary Lamb, who has lost her son in Vietnam. As we learn more about these three, each of them in some way bereft, a fascinating drama (with plentiful moments of comedy) develops, one that kept me gripped through to the richly satisfying end – and with absolutely no Yuletide schmalz along the way. Highly recommended. 

Christmas Is Coming...

 December already, and Advent. I was in the cathedral yesterday for a candlelit ceremony of readings and music, including the Great 'O' Antiphons. The choir was on top form, creating some quite extraordinary harmonies; the cathedral was chock full; and the whole occasion was beautiful, numinous and joyful. I'll be back, at least for the Festival of Lessons and Carols. 

And meanwhile, in parallel with Advent, the Xmas juggernaut of consumer excess, which got under way at least a month ago, trundles on, more oppressive and dispiriting (at least to me) every year. Soon I shall be writing Christmas cards, one of the less irksome tasks of the season – and, as it happens, have just come across this apposite poem by the Midwestern poet Ted Kooser – 

Christmas Mail

Cards in each mailbox,

angel, manger, star and lamb,

as the rural carrier,

driving the snowy roads,

hears from her bundles

the plaintive bleating of sheep,

the shuffle of sandals,

the clopping of camels.

At stop after stop,

she opens the little tin door

and places deep in the shadows

the shepherds and wise men,

the donkeys lank and weary,

the cow who chews and muses.

And from her Styrofoam cup,

white as a star and perched

on the dashboard, leading her

ever into the distance,

there is a hint of hazelnut,

and then a touch of myrrh.

 

Kooser, who is still with us (in his 80s), is a poet I had not heard of before, a writer of short, accessible but subtle and very accomplished verse. His poems, to quote Dana Gioia, offer 'small but genuine insights into the world of everyday experience' and he makes no effort to court 'the specialised minority readership that now sustains poetry'. I'm going to be seeking out more of his work, and might well pass some of his poems on to the specialised minority readership that sustains Nigeness. 

'Not the worship of ashes...'

 Recently I wrote about Richard Wilbur's precept: 'In poetry, all the revolutions are palace revolutions' – in other words, all true revolutions take place within the living tradition, the poetic heritage; nothing is overthrown, the tradition lives on (this applies only to true revolutions, not rebellion for its own sake, which leads nowhere). Yesterday I came across another quotation that I think expresses perfectly the value of tradition: 'Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.' This formulation was coined by a musicologist called Constantin Floros, and is taken from his study of Mahler's symphonies (which I haven't read, being no great fan of those works). 'The preservation of fire' is indeed what a living tradition is all about, and when it is based on the worship of ashes it is no longer alive – at which point the time is ripe for another palace revolution. Poetry could probably do with one now, though heaven knows where it would come from or what it would look like. At present the living tradition appears to be very much more alive in music than in poetry... 

Radical Harmony

  Yesterday I was in the wicked city, having lunch with an old friend and visiting the pointillism exhibition, Radical Harmony, at the National Gallery. This display of paintings from the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, seems to have had lukewarm reviews, for some reason – I guess it's a style of painting that can seem rather sterile and limited. For myself I love it, largely because it was favoured by Seurat, one of the greatest of all late-19th-century painters (IMHO). The National Gallery has one of his that has never before been seen in Britain – Le Chahut (the Can-Can), a late and intriguing work that seems to suggest that Seurat, towards the end of his too-short life, was going to move off in new, unexpected directions, perhaps towards something more geometric and abstract, less naturalistic. 

I was glad to see a small-scale version of Les Poseuses (for my money, one of the great paintings of its time) and several of the coastal views painted by Seurat and Paul Signac. There is also Seurat's extraordinary portrait drawing of Signac, a miracle of ultra-delicate draughtsmanship. 
For me the revelation of the exhibition was Theo Van Rysselberghe, a Belgian artist I had barely heard of. The stricter pointillists were sniffy about his work, as he strayed from the technique, mixing it with other, looser manners of applying paint to canvas – but the results, especially in his portraits, could be rather wonderful. Among the large portraits on display are a lovely one of his wife –

and an equally impressive portrait of Anna Boch, an artist and collector, who has the distinction of being the purchaser of the only painting Van Gogh sold in his lifetime (La Vigne Rouge) –

And here, for good measure, is Maria Sèthe at the Harmonium . Maria was the wife of the Belgian architect and designer Henry Van de Velde – 

Van de Velde also painted, and his restful, vaguely melancholy Twilight caught my eye – 

Needless to say, these are not paintings that reproduce very well, and you really do need to see them. The exhibition, which is on a manageable scale and is not attracting blockbuster crowds, is on until February. I'd recommend it to anyone at all interested in post-impressionist art. 

What Would Captain Mainwaring Say?

 Born on this day (in 1920) was the actor Buster Merryfield, who achieved fame as 'Uncle Albert' in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses, which I rate as the best long-running British sitcom ever (though, like most, it ran a little bit too long). His career path was quite extraordinary, indeed unique, as I wrote here back in 2013... 

'Born on this day in 1920 was Henry Merryfield. A big strapping 9lb baby, he was immediately nicknamed Buster by his granddad, and Buster he remained, to the point where scarcely anyone knew his real name. As Buster Merryfield, he achieved fame late in life, playing the seafaring Uncle Albert (catchphrase 'During the war...') in the massively successful sitcom Only Fools and Horses.
 Something of a fitness fiend, Buster had been a boxing champion in his day, and was a PT and jungle warfare instructor 'during the war' - at which time he also got his first taste of the biz we call show, serving as an entertainment officer. However, when hostilities ceased, he was already married and about to become a father, so he elected to take the safe option – returning to the then National Westminster Bank, where he had been employed before the war.
  The amazing thing is that he stayed there until his retirement. While spending much of his spare time in amateur theatricals, Buster Merryfield didn't turn professional until after he had retired from what was by then NatWest. He had clocked up 40 years of service, man and boy, and risen to be manager of the Thames Ditton branch in Surrey. Surely this was the most unlikely bank manager ever – and surely the only bank manager ever to make the switch to much-loved sitcom stalwart. He must also have been alone among bank managers in having his face framed by such a mighty beard – what would Captain Mainwaring say?

'Busy, curious, thirsty fly!'

 The recent cold snaps have put paid to the last of the summer's wasps and flies, though the latter have hung around rather longer. When it come to flies, I (unlike Mrs N) take the line favoured by Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy: 

'Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzz’d about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;—I’ll not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going a-cross the room, with the fly in his hand,—I’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—go poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?—This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.'

For all their deplorable habits, flies are marvellous little creatures, wonderfully made, even beautiful if looked at closely and without prejudice, and their habit of scrupulously 'washing their hands' is endearing. Their vision operates at such a speed that our attempts to catch them are usually doomed: they see our approaching hand moving in slow motion and escape at their leisure.
Uncle Toby was not the only one with a soft spot for the fly. Browsing in my recently purchased India-paper anthology, I came across this, by William Oldys: 

On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup

Busy, curious, thirsty fly!
Drink with me and drink as I:
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up:
Make the most of life you may,
Life is short and wears away.

Both alike are mine and thine
Hastening quick to their decline:
Thine's a summer, mine's no more,
Though repeated to threescore.
Threescore summers, when they're gone,
Will appear as short as one!

 Oldys was an important antiquarian and bibliographer, but a man of irregular habits, whose debts landed him in the Fleet prison for two years, before he was rescued by friends who paid off all he owed. The Duke of Norfolk appointed him Norfolk Herald Extraordinary and Norroy King of Arms. However, the College of Arms describes him as 'a noted antiquary and bibliographer but wholly ignorant of heraldry and known for being "rarely sober in the afternoon, never after supper" and "much addicted to low company".'

What the Camel-Sparrow Ate

 The excellent Public Domain Review recently posted a photograph, from around 1930, of the contents of an ostrich's stomach, extracted post mortem. It's a fascinating collection of objects, including two handkerchiefs and a buttoned glove (this was a zoo ostrich), a length of rope, and various metal objects – coins, tacks, staples, hooks and a four-inch nail (which, sadly, was the cause of death). Here's a link –  https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/contents-of-an-ostrich-s-stomach-ca-1930

It would seem, than, that there is some truth in the idea that the ostrich 'digesteth hard yron', as in the poem by Marianne Moore –

He 'Digesteth Hard Yron' 

Although the aepyornis
   or roc that lived in Madagascar, and
the moa are extinct,
the camel-sparrow, linked
   with them in size—the large sparrow
Xenophon saw walking by a stream—was and is
a symbol of justice.

   This bird watches his chicks with
   a maternal concentration—and he’s
been mothering the eggs
at night six weeks—his legs
   their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
as a hoof; the leopard

   is not more suspicious. How
   could he, prized for plumes and eggs and young
used even as a riding-beast, respect men
   hiding actor-like in ostrich skins, with the right hand
making the neck move as if alive
and from a bag the left hand strewing grain, that ostriches

   might be decoyed and killed! Yes, this is he
whose plume was anciently
the plume of justice; he
   whose comic duckling head on its
great neck revolves with compass-needle nervousness
when he stands guard,

   in S-like foragings as he is
   preening the down on his leaden-skinned back.
The egg piously shown
as Leda’s very own
   from which Castor and Pollux hatched,
was an ostrich-egg. And what could have been more fit
for the Chinese lawn it

   grazed on as a gift to an
   emperor who admired strange birds, than this
one, who builds his mud-made
nest in dust yet will wade
   in lake or sea till only the head shows.

	.	.	.	.	.	.	.

   Six hundred ostrich-brains served
   at one banquet, the ostrich-plume-tipped tent
and desert spear, jewel-
gorgeous ugly egg-shell
   goblets, eight pairs of ostriches
in harness, dramatize a meaning
always missed by the externalist.

   The power of the visible
   is the invisible; as even where
no tree of freedom grows,
so-called brute courage knows.
   Heroism is exhausting, yet
it contradicts a greed that did not wisely spare
the harmless solitaire

   or great auk in its grandeur;
   unsolicitude having swallowed up
all giant birds but an alert gargantuan
   little-winged, magnificently speedy running-bird.
This one remaining rebel
is the sparrow-camel.

This is a poem that vividly evokes the ludicrous but admirable flightless bird (not the last large flightless bird, pace Miss Moore), but is also about much more: the persistence of the past, endurance and survival, heroism and greed. The notes are impressive in themselves, citing Lyly's Euphues – 'the estrich digesteth hard yron to preserve his health' – and a range of other sources, notably George Jennison's Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome.  Maybe the 'poet friend' quoted by Kay Ryan in her essay on Moore* was right: 'They should have taken away her library card.' But she is magnificent, formidable. Ryan goes on: '... how can we not find Marianne Moore formidable since she's so hard to understand? I think we just have to read her until we can contain the complexity that we cannot resolve. That is a bigger kind of understanding. At that point, the poet is no longer "formidable". A word or two becomes sufficient to invoke the complex spirit. We feel, now, an affection, a human affection, and a receptiveness which we could not feel when we were fighting with particulars.' Very true, I think, and of other poets than the magnificent Miss Moore.

*Collected in the wonderful Synthesizing Gravity (2020).   

Everyone's writing about this, so feel free to ignore...

 I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw the headline – 'Lockdown could have been avoided entirely'! Had the farcical Covid 'inquiry' at last, having expended just shy of £200 million of our money, managed to produce a glimmer of sense? No, of course not, as I soon discovered. The gist was that lockdown could have been avoided if we'd, er, locked down a week earlier: it was the predetermined narrative of 'too little, too late' yet again. Earlier and more drastic action, it was said, would have saved 23,000 lives, according to 'computer modelling' – the same deeply flawed computer modelling that came up with such preposterous projections throughout the epidemic. There's an interesting graph on the Spectator website, showing a mighty Himalaya of projected deaths – projected by computer modelling – looming over something more like an alluvial plain, the near-flatline of actual Covid deaths. This 'inquiry' was set up with its conclusions ready made – that Boris Johnson's government fouled up and must be blamed, and that the only thing wrong with the harsh and oppressive measures taken was that they weren't harsh and oppressive enough, or go on for long enough. In the teeth of all the evidence, lockdown is unquestioningly presented as a life-saver on a grand scale, with no acknowledgment that, overall, the countries with the lightest (or non-existent) lockdown regimes had the best outcomes in terms of mortality, and those with the tightest regimes had among the worst. So, nothing has been learnt, and the next time will be even worse – especially if it happens under Starmer, who, when the final lockdown was belatedly lifted, predicted that this 'reckless' act would lead to 50,000 extra deaths in what would forever after be known as the 'Johnson variant'. This, oddly, did not come to pass. 

'The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr Dickens...'

 Good news from Birmingham (for a change) – the city is to unveil a Blue Plaque at its fine neoclassical town hall to commemorate Dickens's first public reading of A Christmas Carol.
A contemporary report chronicled the event thus: 

'The first of the Readings generously given by Mr Charles Dickens on behalf of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, took place on Tuesday evening, December 27, 1853, at the Birmingham Town Hall, where, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two thousand persons had assembled. The work selected was the CHRISTMAS CAROL. The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr Dickens enabled him to personate with remarkable force the various characters of the story, and with admirable skill to pass rapidly from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to trusting and thankful Bob Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of Scrooge's nephew, to the hideous mirth of the party assembled in Old Joe the Ragshopkeeper's parlour. The reading occupied more than three hours, but so interested were the audience, that only one or two left the Hall previously to its termination, and the loud and frequent bursts of applause attested the successful discharge of the reader's arduous task. On Thursday evening Mr. Dickens read THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. The Hall was again well ruled, and the tale, though deficient in the dramatic interest of the CAROL, was listened to with attention, and rewarded with repeated applause. On Friday evening, the CHRISTMAS CAROL was read a second time to a large assemblage of work-people, for whom, at Mr. Dickens`s special request, the major part of the vast edifice was reserved.
.........
At the close of the reading Mr Dickens received a vote of thanks, and "three cheers, with three times three". As soon as the enthusiasm of the audience would allow him to speak, Mr Dickens said:-"You have heard so much of my voice since we met tonight, that I will only say, in acknowledgment of this affecting mark of your regard, that I am truly and sincerely interested in you; that any little service I have rendered to you I have freely rendered from my heart; that I hope to become an honorary member of your great Institution, and will meet you often there when it becomes practically useful; that I thank you most affectionately for this new mark of your sympathy and approval; and that I wish you many happy returns of this great birthday-time, and many prosperous years."

Not only was this Dickens's first public reading of the Carol; it was his first public reading of any of his own works. It clearly gave him a taste for such performances, to which he devoted much of his later career, exhausting himself in the process with readings of terrific emotional intensity – notably his famously terrifying reading of the murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist. Dickens judged the success of that one by how many ladies had fainted with horror in the course of it. 

In our own day, a public reading of all three hours of A Christmas Carol would be unlikely to attract many takers (even if it was given by Andrew Scott, whose one-man Chekhov, Vanya, was such a hit). But we do have the inimitable Count Arthur Strong currently touring the country with his, er, somewhat tangential take on A Christmas Carol. Here's a preview...

'And then they clearly flew...'

A slight thing this, but it caught my eye, and I think it does say something, or enact something, true about the line between prose and poetry... 

Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry
by Howard Nemerov 

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

The House of Peace

 Yesterday I visited, with my Derbyshire cousin, the National Holocaust Centre and Museum. You can be forgiven if you've never heard of it – neither had I – as it is not widely publicised, and it is located in what could with some justice be called the middle of nowhere. To be precise, it is deep in rural Nottinghamshire, near the village of Laxton, where England's last working example of the medieval open field system of cultivation is to be found. The National Holocaust Centre, or Beth Shalom (house of peace), was established by a Christian family, the Smiths,  who were inspired by visiting Yad Vashem, Israel's national holocaust memorial. Their aim was to educate visitors – children in particular – in the realities of the Shoah, as part of the great effort to ensure that it is never forgotten and never repeated. The museum building, which used to be the Smith family home, stands amid gardens which were naturally not looking their best on a drear November day. The museum tells the story of the Holocaust in two permanent exhibitions: one is an excellent historical display with good use of oral testimony, audio, visuals and artefacts, and an emphasis on survivors' stories; and the other, aimed at children, in the form of The Journey, a more immersive and interactive telling of the story of a Jewish boy who manages to escape the Nazi persecution on a Kindertransport. 
  The main display makes a good job of setting the Holocaust in its historical context, as one manifestation – the worst and most deadly – of a deep-rooted, ongoing hatred of Jews. Though it gives the facts and figures, it is reticent about the details of what actually went on in the camps, but that is perhaps just as well – the display packs enough of a punch to make its point. The only real weakness, I thought, was that it did not carry the story up to the present, taking in the great surge in antisemitism that followed the 7th October pogrom (perhaps there are plans to do so?). As it happens, though, that job is being done at present (until next spring) by Fabricated?, a rather wonderful exhibition of works and artefacts by Caren Garfen, who specialises in embroidery, often of texts reproduced in tiny stitches, forcing the viewer to come in close and absorb the message. Some of the work illuminates the past, but much of it chronicles the terrible things that have been happening since October 7th.  One of the exhibits, for example, is an old-fashioned typewriter from which spills a roll of paper bearing a list of recent antisemitic incidents, all of it, incredibly, embroidered in tiny stitches (and the 'paper' is of course cloth). It's hard to describe Fabricated?, but you can read more about it here. It is an intensely moving exhibition, and makes a visit to this extraordinary museum even more worthwhile. It's the only museum of its kind in England, and it deserves to be better known. 

A Find

 Feeling a sudden urge to have a classic poetry anthology by my bedside, I took a look in one of my local charity shops, and straight away found this beauty. I believe I already have it somewhere, in its familiar large format and in a later edition – but this version is duodecimo, printed on India paper, all 1,000-plus pages of it contained in a volume of no great thickness, the pages of which are edged with still-fresh gilt. The typeface looks pleasingly old-fashioned, probably a version of Fell, and this handsome volume – an edition of 1930, inscribed 'To Mary, with love from Maude, Sep.1934' – was mine for just £3. The original Oxford Book of English Verse, it covers the period from 1250 to 1900, and is edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch, aso known as 'Q' (though he was not, as far as is known, a spymaster). He states his aims clearly and rather charmingly in the opening paragraph of the Preface: 
'For this Anthology I have tried to range over the whole field of English Verse from the beginning, or from the Thirteenth Century to this closing year of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best. Nor have I sought in these Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse has followed the tongue which among living tongues she most delights to honour. To bring home and render so great a spoil compendiously has been my capital difficulty. It is for the reader to judge if I have so managed it as to serve those who already love poetry and to implant that love in some young minds not yet initiated.'
According to Wikipedia, this India-paper edition was carried around the Empire by poetry-loving Brits, and was a popular 'knapsack book' among the military. 'Q' later revised the 1900 edition considerably, thinning out the late 19th century and adding more poems from earlier periods and from 1900 to 1918. Anyway, it will be good to have it at my bedside, where it will join another India-paper classic, my single-volume edition of Carlyle's French Revolution, which I am now nearly halfway through. 

The Incorrigible BBC

As the BBC's lawyers try to find a form of words that will appease the Orange Man Across the Water – to the BBC an embodiment of all that is wrong with the world – and thereby avoid having to pay him extremely hefty damages, I find myself experiencing a strong sense of deja vu. 

This blog was but a few months old when, back in 2008, Radio 2 saw fit to broadcast obscene prank messages left by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross on the answering machine of the elderly actor Andrew Sachs. The Corporation's reaction to the inevitable row managed, as ever, to make a bad situation worse. Here's what I wrote at the time...

'Well, it seems that edgy old BBC has mishandled this one so spectacularly that the story's still making headlines and they've even lost one of these two precious specimens of 'talent' (and, for the time being, have as good as lost the other). This time the old tactic of issuing anodyne statements, setting the bureaucratic mills grinding and waiting for it all to blow over haven't worked. The BBC assumption that the real problem is not with them but with the Public's silly benighted attitudes never fitted the case this time, and they should have dealt with it swiftly and decisively. Yes, I know – 'swiftly and decisively' are words that don't belong in the same sentence, the same world, as BBC management. Now that they've allowed it to blow up into a colossal row, they have predictably drawn their wagons into a circle. Astonishingly (well, it would be if this wasn't the BBC) no senior executive (with one minor exception) has given an interview anywhere in the media. The gaze of the sclerotic, hypertrophied, barely mobile BBC is, as ever, turned inward on itself. The controller of Radio 2 has let it be known that she'll resign if any of her production people are sacked. This can only mean that she thinks the Ross/Brand broadcast was acceptable – in which case it would be better if she did go. We should remind ourselves that what those two did was probably illegal, and the broadcasting of it was certainly a massive editorial misjudgment – and symptomatic, as the scale and duration of this row have demonstrated, of something very wrong with the BBC.'

In 2012, the Corporation made a massive mistake in promoting one George Entwistle to be Director General. He lasted 54 days, creating yet another crisis at the top of the BBC. The night before he departed I happened to catch a documentary about Lord Reith, the effective creator of the BBC...

'... the giant Reith was also a full-blown megalomaniac, who created the BBC in his own  megalomaniac image – and the megalomania survives in the institutional DNA of the Corporation. Having worked for a (mercifully) few years inside the BBC, I  must say that I have never encountered  an organisation with such delusions of grandeur, so unshakably convinced of its manifest destiny and its innate, self-evident superiority, despite all the human evidence to the contrary seated around its meeting tables (which is where most BBC staff seem to spend most of their time). Megalomaniac organisations are fine so long as they are dominated by personalities and talent, however maverick (some newspapers still fit this image), but the BBC has become over the years an organisation so dominated by structures, by faceless management, navel-gazing  and endless bureaucratic procedures that it rewards mediocrity – hence the rise of Entwistle to the top – while stifling originality and creativity. And of course it continues to pat itself on the back – insisting that it is still has the public's 'trust', whatever that means – even as it falls apart. Clearly the BBC is in need of a radical shake-up; incredibly, those who appointed him thought Entwistle, the 'insider's insider', was just the man to do the job. Only the BBC could delude itself on quite such an epic scale.'

That was 13 years ago, but it was only a couple of years back, in December 2023, that the BBC was told a few home truths in a research report it had itself commissioned. Both the charges against the BBC and the Corporation's response almost exactly parallel the recent furore. This is an organisation that is apparently incapable of learning, let alone adjusting its world view to something a little closer to that of the majority of those who pay its licence fee. The trouble is... well, I come to that here –

'Back in May 2021 the BBC board commissioned a survey to monitor its output and ensure that impartiality reigned and a wide range of viewpoints was represented. The results are now in, and show clearly that – and I know you're going to find this hard to believe – the BBC feeds its viewers (and listeners) 'a steady diet of woke bias', with slavery (i.e. Britain's historical role in the triangular trade tout court, nothing else) and issues of gender and race (only one attitude permitted) relentlessly overemphasised and shoehorned into all kinds of programmes. Who knew? And here is the BBC's response: 'Cherry-picking a handful of examples or highlighting genuine mistakes in thousands of hours of output does not constitute analysis and is not a true representation of BBC content. We are proud that our output seeks to represent all audiences and a range of stories and perspectives. Across the entirety of our services there will, of course, be occasions when people disagree with or want to challenge what they have watched or heard and we have well-publicised routes for them to do that.' So that's all right then, nothing to see here. The trouble is, I fear, that the BBC is now so completely imbued with woke bias that it sees its own worldview as simple, middle-of-the-road, non-controversial common sense, therefore those who dissent from it can only be crackpots, fanatics or ignorant deplorables. The result is that it simply cannot see its own bias, and, while it continues to exist in its present form, I don't suppose it ever will.' 

'The brighter visions brought music...'

 On Armistice Day, the mind inevitably turns to the 'war poets' – a mixed bunch, some of whom overtly took war and 'the pity of war' as their subject, approaching it head-on, while others, notably Edward Thomas, were more tangential in their approach. Although he was at his creative peak during his years of war service and was killed in action, Thomas wrote little that can be readily classified as 'war poetry'.  Similarly, Ivor Gurney, a poet of the Great War who often gets overlooked, tended to write obliquely of his experiences at the front, but one of his best-known poems is a direct recollection – and an unusually heartening one, finding 'human hopeful things' and 'a strangely beautiful entry to war's rout': 

'After the dread tales and red yarns of the Line
Anything might have come to us; but the divine
Afterglow brought us up to a Welsh colony
Hiding in sandbag ditches, whispering consolatory
Soft foreign things. Then we were taken in
To low huts candle-lit, shaded close by slitten 
Oilsheets, and there but boys gave us kind welcome,
So that we looked out as from the edge of home,
Sang us Welsh things, and changed all former notions
To human hopeful things. And the next day's guns
Nor any Line-pangs ever quite could blot out
That strangely beautiful entry to war's rout;
Candles they gave us, precious and shared over-rations—
Ulysses found little more in his wanderings without doubt.
'David of the White Rock', the 'Slumber Song' so soft, and that
Beautiful tune to which roguish words by Welsh pit boys
Are sung—but never more beautiful than here under the guns' noise.'

'That beautiful tune' was probably 'Ar Hyd Y Nos' – 'All Through the Night'. Music was at least as important as poetry to Gurney, who was a gifted composer whose song settings – 'Sleep', In Flanders', 'Severn Meadows' and many more – are some of the most beautiful of their time. Gurney said of his dual vocation, 'The brighter visions brought music; the fainter verse.' Often music finds its way into his verse, as in this poem recalling sentry duty on the front: 

Bach and the Sentry

Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood

   On that most dearest Prelude of my delight.

The low-lying mist lifted its hood,

   The October stars showed nobly in clear night.

When I return, and to real music-making,

   And play that Prelude, how will it happen then?

Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking,

   With a dull sense of No Man's Land again?

Gurney, who studied music under Herbert Brewer (and alongside Herbert Howells) at Gloucester, then under Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College, was devoted to Bach. What was that 'most dearest Prelude'? Gurney wrote that the Prelude in G Minor 'sticks to me in solemn moments', but added that, in 'Bach and the Sentry', he had no particular prelude in mind (and which G minor prelude did he mean? There seem to be at least two to choose from.)
As it happens, Radio 3 this morning ushered in the Two Minutes' Silence with a Bach prelude and fugue – in C major, played by Angela Hewitt. Here she is, in lockdown, playing the Prelude...

Ivor Gurney survived the war, but ended his days in an asylum. His wartime experiences, and a failed love affair, might have tipped him over the edge, but it is generally thought now that Gurney's mental disorder – probably what we now call 'bipolar' – was already in evidence in his prewar life, and might well have led to the same sad outcome.