Prefaces

 I do like a good preface, whether it be Johnson's sonorous Preface to his dictionary, beginning 'It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward.  Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries...' – or, in a very different register, this one, from the reissue of John Betjeman's youthful treatise Ghastly Good Taste: 

'I wrote this book 38 years ago. I was 26, in love, and about to be married. When Anthony Blond said he would like to reprint it, I thought I had better read it, and he kindly sent me a copy. I am appalled by its sententiousness, arrogance and the sweeping generalisations in which it abounds...' 

Or here's Sylvia Townsend Warner's preface to Mr Fortune's Maggot, a story the first third of which came to her readymade in a dream – 

'I was really in a very advanced stage of hallucination when I finished the book - writing in manuscript and taking wads of it to be typed at the Westbourne Secretarial College in Queens Road.
 I remember writing the last paragraph - and reading over the conclusion, and then impulsively writing the Envoy, and beginning to weep bitterly...'

Scarcely less dramatic is Edith Sitwell's preface to her extraordinary autobiography, Taken Care Of – 

'This book was written under considerable difficulty. I had not recovered from a very severe and lengthy illness, which began with pneumonia. The infection from this permeated my body, and the bad poisoning of one finger lasted for fifteen months. This was agonisingly painful, and I could only use either hand with great difficulty, as the poison spread gradually. The reminiscences in this book are of the past. I do not refer to any of my dearly loved living friends. I trust that I have hurt nobody. It is true that, provoked beyond endurance by their insults, I have given Mr Percy Wyndham Lewis and Mr D.H. Lawrence some sharp slaps. I have pointed out, also, the depths to which the criticism of poetry has fallen, and the non-nutritive quality of the bun-tough whinings of certain little poetasters – but I have been careful, for instance, not to refer to the late Mr Edwin Muir (Dr Leavis's spiritual twin-sister). I have attacked nobody, unless they first attacked me. During the writing of certain chapters of this book, I realised that the public will believe anything – so long as it is not founded on truth.'

And here's one, short and to the point, that I read only yesterday – 

'The title of this book is meant to be "arresting" only in the literal sense, like the signs put up for motorists: "ROAD UNDER REPAIR", etc. It means that the book will have little interest for people under forty years of age. The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts, and the persons and prejudices recalled in these sketches slid back into yesterday's seven thousand years.Thomas Mann, to be sure, belongs immensely to the forward-goers, and they are concerned only with his forwardness. But he also goes back a long way, and his backwardness is more gratifying to the backward. It is for the backward, and by one of their number, that these sketches were written.'

The 'arresting' title is Not Under Forty, and the author is Willa Cather. So far I have only read the first of the collection, 'A Chance Meeting', and it's a gem. It begins like a short story, with Cather, staying at the Grand Hotel in Aix-les-Bains, becoming increasingly fascinated by a very striking old lady who is a fellow guest. They begin to talk, but it is some while before they converse properly and Cather realises, to her astonishment and delight, who the mysterious lady is – Flaubert's beloved niece Caroline, who was taken in by the author and his mother after her mother died, and was raised in the Flaubert household. What follows is a fascinating discussion of Flaubert's works, illuminated by his niece's insights and experience, and by Cather's own profound appreciation of his works. I shall read on... 
I have a feeling that even readers under forty might get a lot from this collection. 

'He clasps the crag with crooked hands...'

 I heard on the news today (even Radio 3 has some news bulletins, mercifully brief) that Golden Eagles are being seen in the far North of England, a hopeful sign that they might return to breed south of the border for the first time in many years. 
I still find Tennyson's short poem 'The Eagle' a thrilling piece of work, as I did in my boyhood – 

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Who could resist? The poem, described as 'A Fragment' but surely complete, has been subject to some fanciful interpretation over the years, with the eagle being seen as a metaphor for a corrupt ('crooked') man of power holding on to his position but doomed to fall, or even for the position of the Catholic church following the passing of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act (in the same year the poem was written). I'm quite happy to read it as an extraordinarily vivid and forceful poem about, er, an eagle – though not, as it happens, an English eagle, or even a Scottish one. It seems that Tennyson was inspired by memories of the eagles he saw circling overhead on his visits to the Pyrenees (where, as a young man, he had helped Arthur Hallam and others to deliver money and messages to the Spanish revolutionaries). The 'wrinkled sea' he invented, perhaps with the spectacular White-Tailed Sea Eagle in mind.
This was one of the poems that cemented my boyhood love of Tennyson, a love that has never quite left me. 

'Sweet Reason rules the morning...'

 Today is the actual centenary of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's birth – I jumped the gun on Sunday – so, to stay with the musical theme, here is a poem by Dick Davis, a kind of history of music in a day, with some very clever rhyming:

Listening

Sweet Reason rules the morning – what's as sweet as
Rosalyn Tureck playing Bach partitas?

Midday's for Haydn, who loved everyone
(Except the pompous pig Napoleon) – 
Music's Hippocrates ('First do no harm'), 
An Aufklärung of common sense and charm.

Mozart and Schubert own the afternoon –
High spirits and a Fiordiligi swoon;
A sudden key change: you will die alone.
The shadow that you stare at is your own.

Then comes the night. Pandora's lid is lifted,
Each scene implodes before it can be shifted –
Longing's a tenor's accurate bravura,
Sex and Despair are Fach and Tessitura;

And heaven's where the mind's sopranos sing
In harmonies undreamt of in The Ring.


Rosalyn Tureck was a pianist and harpsichordist who was described by William F. Buckley Jr as 'Bach's representative on Earth', and acknowledged by Glenn Gould as his 'only' influence. (Incidentally, fact fans, she was a classmate and friend of Saul Bellow at Tuley High School in Chicago.) 
Here she is playing Bach – the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV895. The sound quality isn't great, but the playing is...

The Butterfly, the Book

 Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that from time to time I have referred to 'my forthcoming butterfly book'. Well, I'm happy to say that is has at last forthcome.
  It's had a long pupation (like the Orange Tip butterfly – ten months as a chrysalis!): I wrote an early version of it during the first lockdown, then some while later I was astonished when a university press expressed keen interest in it. Thus began a very long process in the course of which the book was much edited, expanded and rewritten, taking on a very different, more shapely shape – but in the end both sides accepted what we had really known all along: that it was never going to be a book that any respectable academic press would put its name to. I took it back, worked on it some more and made various changes, finally ending up with a version that adapted the reshaped work to something rather closer to my original idea. I sent it out, more in hope than expectation, to a couple of those rare publishers who will look at works that don't come via an agent. One of them – Saraband – took it, and the end result was the attractively designed and pleasingly small (duodecimo) volume that you see illustrated above. I love that colour...
After a light and painless edit – Saraband have been a joy to work with – it was duly published, though I think the official publication date is in June in the UK and July in the US. It seems to be available online already (certainly from Alibris, and of course it can be preordered on Amazon). I am delighted that it has finally emerged, in a form very much in line with my original vision, but greatly improved by all that rewriting. And I was delighted to see what Patrick Kurp had to say about it yesterday.

Fischer-Dieskau centenary

 A big musical centenary today – 100 years ago Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who became one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, was born, in Berlin. He had barely begun his musical studies when he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and obliged to tend horses on the Russian front, after which he was sent to Italy, where he was captured and spent two years as a prisoner of war, entertaining his compatriots by singing Lieder. His family home was destroyed during the war, and his physically and intellectually handicapped brother was sent by the Nazis to an institution to be starved to death, as was standard practice at the time. 
Anyway, Radio 3 will be celebrating the centenary this evening with a tribute feature presented by Fischer-Dieskau's last pupil, Benjamin Appl. It's on at 7.15, and will be available on BBC Sounds.
Meanwhile, here is the great man, with the great accompanist Gerald Moore, singing a couple of seasonal Lieder. Enjoy...

An Epic Sonnet?

 Browsing in the Sonnets section of the Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, I was amused to find a sonnet bearing the surprising title 'Epic'. It was written by the Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh, recalling the time of the Munich Crisis of 1938, and I think it's rather good, so I pass it on – 

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel –
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

It's an unusual sonnet, both in what it describes and in its loose, barely half-rhymed form – though there is a definite division between the first octave and the closing sestet. 
The world of Duffys and McCabes and pitchfork-armed clans was the one in which Kavanagh grew up in rural County Monaghan. The son of a cobbler and farmer, Patrick left school at 13 to work on the land and as a shoemaker's apprentice. He started to write poems in his twenties, and was noticed by George William Russell (known as 'AE', a leader of the Irish literary revival), who took him under his wing. Kavanagh soon began building a successful writing career, though it was not without setbacks, including being sued for libel by Oliver St John Gogarty. He settled in Dublin when war broke out in 1939, where (according to his biographer), 'he realised that the stimulating environment he had imagined was little different from the petty and ignorant world he had left'. However, he caught the eye of John Betjeman, who was in Dublin, officially as a press attaché, less officially as an agent for British intelligence (in which capacity he was briefly an IRA assassination target – until their head of civilian intelligence read Betjeman's collection Continual Dew and decided to spare him). Despite their very different backgrounds and styles, the two men seem to have got on well and admired each other's works. Kavanagh even wrote a poem, 'Candida', to celebrate the first birthday of Betjeman's daughter –

Candida is one to-day,
What is there that one can say?
One is where the race begins
Or the sum that counts our sins;
But the mark time makes to-morrow
Shapes the cross of joy or sorrow.

Candida is one to-day,
What is there for me to say?
On the day that she was one
There were apples in the sun
And the fields long wet with rain
Crumply in dry winds again.

Candida is one and I
Wish her lots and lots of joy.
She the nursling of September
Like a war she won't remember.
Candida is one to-day 
And there's nothing more to say.

Another Cather!

 Four years ago, I lamented that I had reached the end of one of the great (and late) reading journeys of my life: I had read every one of Willa Cather's novels. Or had I? It seems not...
   Yesterday morning I was walking past the Oxfam bookshop (one of my regular haunts, though it's a charity about which I have serious reservations – of course not serious enough to stop me buying books from their shelves) when I felt my bibliophile antennae twitch, so in I went. And straight away I spotted a little cluster of Cathers – My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and, in a World's Classics paperback edition... Alexander's Bridge? That was a title I'd never heard of – and, picking it off the shelf, I discovered that it was in fact Willa Cather's first novel, serialised in McClure's magazine in 1912, then published in the same year. By the time Cather wrote the preface to the reissued Alexander's Bridge ten years later, she was regarding it as an artistic failure, and neatly diagnosing what was essentially wrong with it – the same thing that is wrong with many first novels – 'the fact that it is not always easy for the inexperienced writer to distinguish between his own material and that which he would like to make his own. Everything is new to the young writer, and everything seems equally personal. That which is outside his deepest experience, which he observes and studies, often seems more vital than that which he knows well...' But is is from his (or her!) 'life line', his deepest experience and sense of life, that true art will emerge, 'when his "life line" and the line of his personal endeavour meet'. As they did, to wonderful effect, in Cather's next novel, O Pioneers!
 Is Alexander's Bridge as deficient as its author thought it? Well, I'll soon find out. This novel is more like a novella in length – ninety-odd pages – so even I should have it read before long. 

Beerbohm's Kipling

 On this day in 1956, Max Beerbohm died, at the age of 83, at the Villa Chiara, a private hospital in Rapallo, the Italian seaside town where he had lived since 1910. He had recently married his former secretary and companion Elisabeth Jungmann, his second wife. Beerbohm was cremated and his ashes interred in the crypt of St Paul's, where his memorial plaque describes him as 'Caricaturist and writer', in that order – which gives me my cue to post another example of his skill as a literary caricaturist (drawing on J.G. Riewald's Beerbohm's Literary Caricatures). This one – one of his best and most amusing – is captioned 'Mr Rudyard Kipling takes a bloomin' day aht, on the blasted 'eath, along with Britannia, 'is gurl.'

  Kipling's work, unsurprisingly, was not at all to Max's taste – but, as he wrote to Holbrook Jackson (author of The Eighteen Nineties), 'I carefully guard myself by granting you that Kipling is a genius. Indeed, even I can't help knowing him to be that. The schoolboy, the bounder, and the brute – these three types have surely never found a more brilliant expression of themselves than in R.K. (Nor, will I further grant, has the nursery-maid.) But as a poet and a seer R.K. seems to me not to exist, except for the purpose of contempt. All the ye-ing and Lord-God-ing and the Law-ing side of him seems to me a very thin and trumpery assumption; and I have always thought it was a sound impulse by which he was driven to put his 'Recessional' into the waste-paper basket, and a great pity that Mrs Kipling fished it out and made him send it to The Times.' A harsh judgment – particularly of 'Recessional' – but true enough of Kipling at his worst. At least Max recognises that there was real genius in him too. 

Ghostly Trees

This is not a winter scene, nor has anyone been spraying these trees with silver paint or Halloween cobweb spray. I took the photograph at the National Memorial Arboretum yesterday, where quite a number of trees were similarly affected. The ghostly webbing is all the work of the Small Ermine moth, an insect with a wingspan of less than an inch, which likes to build extensive webs in which to raise its caterpillars – and extensive is the word. I've never seen such a thing, at least not in this country or on such a scale. The official line on it is that the web-coated trees will not suffer any ill effects, even if, like several I saw, they are completely covered. I hope they're right about that; it would be sad if there were arboreal casualties at the National Memorial Arboretum – though I guess they could have their own memorial...
This was my second visit to the arboretum, and it was noticeable how much the trees had grown in the seven years since I was last there. It's maturing nicely, though it would benefit from rather less mowing. My thoughts on the place were much as they were last time, when I wrote this piece.

Countertenor Wins Eurovision!

 I gave up watching the Eurovision Song Contest long ago, round about the time when it stopped being funny, but I was interested to hear that last night's winner, name of JJ, is a countertenor with (some) Viennese classical training. A countertenor! Who saw that coming? Well, perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising, as the high male voice – usually categorised as falsetto – has been a remarkably persistent presence in pop music, from Frankie Valli and the Bee Gees to Prince and Antony (when he was Antony), not to mention Justin Hawkins and Tiny Tim. Until the nineteenth century, countertenor was a standard male voice in all forms of music, but by the mid-twentieth, when my musical taste was being formed, it was generally seen as something rather freakishly archaic and quaint, at least in the classical field. How times have changed – now fine countertenors are everywhere, playing a major part in the explosion of interest in Baroque music, and generally sweetening the soundtrack of life. 
  Having watched last night's winning performance – so you don't have to – I cannot say that it does much to sweeten anything, but heaven knows, worse things have won Eurovision. Immediately after watching it, I hastened to soothe my soul with my favourite countertenor Phillipe Jaroussky. Here he is, singing Handel with his perfect musical partner, Nuria Rial – glorious...

Two Poems

 This morning an online friend, a trusty source of good stuff, sent me a translation (or version) by Drew Nathaniel Keane of a poem by Cavafy that I didn't know. It's based on an anecdote about Nero in Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars...

He gave a careless shrug when he had heard 
The Delphic Oracle’s prophetic word: 
“Beware, my lord, the age of seventy-three” 
(For Delphi was renowned for verity). 
“I’m thirty now with years to plan for knives 
Before the gods’ appointed day arrives.” 
Reclining in his litter, bound for home, 
Delighted Nero journeyed back to Rome. 
 
When he returned, he felt a little drained; 
With news like this, how could he be restrained? 
Surrendering to pleasure on the way — 
To gardens and gymnasia by day, 
By night to dance and poetry and drink 
In torchlit theatres where bodies slink 
Whose dancing ever animates and soothes, 
The naked bodies of Achaean youths. 
 
Thus Nero rests, while on an arid plain 
Far to the west of Rome, in distant Spain, 
Old Galba drills his legions secretly, 
Old Galba who was spry for seventy-three. 

Historical irony hangs over this poem, for Nero was barely to reach 40 before he died, in an undignified assisted suicide (according to Suetonius), while Galba, his successor, was to reign as emperor for just seven months, before dying – in his 73rd year. 

My friend is an Emily Dickinson specialist, so I'll reciprocate with one of hers – also new to me – that I came across this morning: a fine poem about faith and doubt, and the great mystery that lies at the heart of things...

This World is not Conclusion.

A Species stands beyond – 

Invisible, as Music –

But positive, as Sound –

It beckons, and it baffles – 

Philosophy, dont know –

And through a Riddle, at the last – 

Sagacity, must go –

To guess it, puzzles scholars –

To gain it, Men have borne

Contempt of Generations

And Crucifixion, shown –

Faith slips – and laughs, and rallies –

Blushes, if any see – 

Plucks at a twig of Evidence – 

And asks a Vane, the way – 

Much Gesture, from the Pulpit –

Strong Hallelujahs roll – 

Narcotics cannot still the Tooth

That nibbles at the soul –

Siena

 Much have I travelled in the realms of gold... Well, a little, in the realm of gold that was the world of 14th-century Sienese art. Yes, I have been to see the great exhibition at the National Gallery – Siena: The Rise of Painting – and it was wonderful. My knowledge of Sienese art was sketchy, and I had somehow formed the impression that it was rather austere and forbidding. As I now know, this is very far from the truth: the Sienese art of this period is often intimate, humane and accessible, clearly feeling its way toward the naturalistic glories of the Renaissance that was to come. 
  The triptych above is by the first great Sienese master, Duccio. In it the Christ child is not much like a human baby, more a Pantocrator in miniature, but he is reaching out to play with his mother's head-dress, seeking, like any baby, to engage her attention. A couple of decades later, Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted his Madonna Del Latte, in which a decidedly real baby sucks happily at a decidedly real breast, and looks out at us, defiantly possessive. 

And here is Simone Martini's rendering of Christ Discovered in the Temple, in which Joseph, having recovered the missing youngster, is all repressed rage, and the young Jesus all surly defiance – a psychologically realistic scene that any parent of an errant child will recognise. 

These paintings have to be seen in the original, not in reproduction, partly because of the prevalence of gold backgrounds, which are often worked into sculptural shapes and decorative surfaces, presenting a rich textured world, not a flat radiance. Their impact is extraordinary, and this exhibition does them justice, with thoughtful hanging and captions that tell us enough but not too much (and not a whiff of woke anywhere). It's an exhibition that feels like a blockbuster but is actually on a fairly small scale. I left it feeling not exhausted but exalted. It was a joy. 
If you want to catch it, it is on for a while yet, until June 22nd. 

A Great Walk and A Real Pain

Last weekend I was walking in Ladybird Land again – that land of abundant may blossom, tall cow parsley and gambolling lambs. This time it was in Derbyshire, where, because of the more northerly latitude, things were very much as they had been in Buckinghamshire on Mayday. Happily the weather was every bit as glorious, with warm sunshine and blue skies (populated by crazily energetic swifts and graceful swallows and martins). With my cousin, I enjoyed a long (by my present standards) walk, taking in Lathkill Dale, Youlgrave and Bradford Dale, ending at the pub/hotel at Over Haddon, with its magnificent views – one of the best walks in all of the Derbyshire Dales, though at present the river in some stretches of Lathkill Dale is dry. The chiffchaffs and other warblers were singing lustily, and Orange Tips, Brimstones and Peacocks were flying in good numbers – also, much to my delight, my first Common Blues of the year, three of them, looking fresh and lovely, in Bradford Dale (last year I only saw one in the whole year). The following day began with the grand surprise of a Wall Brown (once common, now scarce) settling to bask briefly in my cousin’s garden, and continued with my first Small Copper of the year (last year I didn’t see a single one) at a nearby nature reserve, along with my first definite Red Admirals of the year – and they were very definite, as is the way of Red Admirals. But it was not all butterflies and walking: we also watched a superb film, which I heartily recommend to all who haven’t seen it – A Real Pain, the directorial debut of actor Jesse Eisenberg.
  As all the world probably knows by now, this tells the story of two mismatched cousins, once close, now far apart, who use their recently deceased grandmother's legacy to go on a Jewish heritage tour of Poland. Eisenberg co-stars as the more sane and settled of the pair, while Kieran Culkin plays his maddening but strangely charismatic loose cannon of a cousin, who at every point seems about to throw the whole tour into jeopardy. Both performances are superb, but Culkin's is simply astonishing. 'Funny, heartfelt and moving in equal measure,' one critic said of A Real Pain, and it is all of those things. I'm already looking forward to watching it again.

'The spinner of fine cobwebs!'

Browsing in the (excellent) bookshop of the Samuel Johnson House yesterday, I found Beerbohm's Literary Caricatures: From Homer to Huxley, selected, introduced and annotated by J.G. Riewald (Allen Lane, 1977). It's a generous selection, with helpful notes by Riewald, a Dutch academic and Beerbohm specialist, setting each caricature in context. Naturally I bought it – for a mere £6 – and I'm sure it's going to provide me with much innocent entertainment. 
  The caricature above shows Mr Henry James Revisiting America, and was inspired by the author's final visit to the land of his birth, in 1905. A variety of stereotype Americans are responding to the great man: an Indian chief exclaims, 'Hail, great white novelist! Tunibaya – the spinner of fine cobwebs!' A negro mammy is in ecstasies: 'Why, it's Masser Henry! Come to your old nurse's arms, honey!' A plainsman remarks: 'Guess 'e ken shoot char'cter at sight!' An effete Harvardian wonders 'What's – the matter with – James?' A Beacon Hill hostess answers, 'He's – all – right!' And so on. As for James, Beerbohm transcribes his unspoken thoughts in a fine parody of his late style: 

'So that in fine, let, without further beating about the bush, me make to myself amazed acknowledgment that, but for the certificate of birth which I have – so very indubitably – on me, I might, in regarding, and, as it somewhat were, overseeing, à l'oeil de voyageur, these dear good people, find hard to swallow, or even to take by subconscious injection, the great idea that I am – oh, ever so indigenously! – one of them...'

Indeed.
The original of this caricature can be found at Lamb House, James's home in Rye.

Swifts and Mowing

 Time was when this blog could be relied on to hail the arrival of the first swift of the summer – a moment as thrilling and heart-lifting (for me) as the sighting of the first butterfly – but somehow I seem to have got out of the habit. For the record, though, I saw my first Lichfield swift this year on the 2nd of May, a little earlier than usual, no doubt because of the unusually welcoming spring weather. Just the one, passing over, but then, the next day, a pair putting on a fine aerial ballet as they circled and swooped, fluttered and raced, chasing down the airborne insects.  
   These have been busy days chez Nige, with much family activity, but this afternoon I had time for an activity I find quietly therapeutic and, in its way, pleasingly productive – mowing the lawn. The whole business has been so much more pleasurable since I ditched the electric mower and converted to manual – no cables, no fuss, no hideous noise, just a soft nostalgic clatter and rasp as the blades rotate and cut. Now I am on to my second hand mower, much superior to the first, and bearing the reassuringly English name of Webb (the first was a Bosch, of all things). Always, inevitably, when I'm mowing, Larkin's 'Cut Grass' comes into my head – one of the very few poems I still have by heart: 

Cut grass lies frail:
Short is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

They die in the white hours
Of young-leafed June 
With chestnut flowers,
With hedgerows snow-like strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace. 

Larkin was a reluctant but diligent mower, who, when he moved to a house in Newland Park, Hull, had a lot of lawn to deal with ('for I have premises to keep, and miles to mow before I sleep' – not Larkin but a wag in a Peter de Vries novel). 'It has a huge garden –,' he wrote to Judy Edgerton, a regular correspondent, 'not a lovely wilderness (though it soon will be) – a long strip between wire fences – oh god oh god – I am 'taking over' the vendor's Qualcast (sounds like a character in Henry James).' It was an incident involving the Qualcast – a machine that is now preserved for posterity in the Larkin archive in Hull – that inspired Larkin's other great mowing poem, 'The Mower' – 

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence   

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   

While there is still time.

This would not have happened with a hand mower – just sayin'. 
(Incidentally, the ending of 'The Mower' was once quoted on The Archers – a moment almost as surreal as the time Nigel Pargetter, not the sharpest knife in the box, suddenly started spouting lines from the Georgics, in the original Latin. Even more incidentally, Larkin was a fan of The Archers, and used to fantasise about writing for them. That might have been interesting...) 

Mayday Walk

Yesterday – the warmest May Day on record – I was walking in the Buckinghamshire countryside. The hawthorn blossom was so richly abundant that it was like walking through an illustration of spring from a Ladybird book – and not just hawthorn: cow parsley in flower everywhere ('lost lanes of Queen Anne's Lace'), blue drifts of forget-me-nots, late bluebells still in flower, white comfrey, green alkanet, jack by the hedge, 'daisies pied and violets blue' in the fresh green grass. The horse chestnut candles were in full flower, the trees in young leaf, the sun shining gloriously – and there were butterflies galore: orange tips, brimstones, speckled woods, holly blues, peacocks, commas... All this and some peaceful towpath walking – no belligerent cyclists – and, from time to time, magnificent views across miles of rolling countryside. Although it was almost too hot for walking, it was a marvellous day, one to remember. 

  We covered no great distance, and our route was circular, beginning and ending in a village called Stoke Hammond (church locked, alas). This, as a plaque proudly announced, was one of the Thankful Villages of the First World War, one that lost none of its men. It's a subject I've written about before – here – so I won't repeat myself (but will correct my assertion that France has only one Thankful Village – it has 12).