Max Gate

 Well, my impulse purchase of Damien Wilkins's Max Gate turned out to be a good one. Since I last mentioned it, I have finished reading it (at my usual snail's pace), and found it thoroughly enjoyable (apart from a few jarring anachronisms – 'Okay', 'in denial', 'basically'). It's actually the second Thomas Hardy-related novel I've read, the other being Howard Jacobson's scabrous Peeping Tom, the narrator of which is obsessed by Hardy, whom he regards as a 'prurient little Victorian ratbag' – a case he makes rather effectively. Hardy doesn't come out of Max Gate too well either: the great man is self-absorbed, touchy, obsessed with his reputation and his legacy, grossly insensitive to those around him, especially the women (unless he has a crush on them), and apparently more caring about animals than his fellow humans. The narrator, Nellie Titterington, a housemaid, is very clear-eyed about her master, but she is telling the story with the benefit of hindsight: the action is set in 1928, and Nellie, who escaped domestic service, is writing some decades later. 
   The second half of the book is more interesting than the first, as Florence Hardy, the author's unfortunate (and much younger) second wife, comes to the fore. This poor woman, condemned to type out her husband's autobiography in the third person and pass it off as her biography of him – and obliged to endure his fixation on his dead first wife and his moping over a young actress – is in an awkward position, having begun life at Max Gate as Hardy's typist, so she has some fellow feeling with the servants, and they with her. The other major figures in the narrative are Sydney Cockerell and Sir James Barrie, who are hovering around the dying author, determined to secure him a burial in Westminster Abbey, despite his wish to be buried in his family plot. Florence has a sad crush on Barrie, and Nellie pities her for being 'married to a corpse and swooning over a bronchial eunuch'. The story of what happened to Hardy's body is well known, and has perhaps been slightly embroidered, but it makes a good, if ghoulish, story. Wilkins handles all this material deftly enough, though he has sometimes to modify the narratorial voice with moments of omniscience. The book works well as a black comedy, as well as a convincing window on the airless world of Max Gate, and it is, as I said, a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Best Dog in Italy

 'Imagine if we won the World Cup,' said my seven-year-old grandson yesterday. 'Ah, my child,' I replied, laying a grandfatherly hand on his innocent head, 'we have won before – and I was there.' Actually, of course, I made no such reply, not least because my memories of the great victory are hazy, and I could hardly claim to have 'been there'. While the final played out, I was in fact in deep cover, in a patch of woodland in the local park, with my then girlfriend (I was sixteen, and we weren't botanising). We emerged later and stepped into a café, where the match commentary was playing on a radio. It was only that evening that I saw footage of England's dramatic victory. 
   What I do remember – and told my grandson – is that, at some point, the World Cup (i.e. the Jules Rimet trophy) was stolen, then dug up in woodland by a dog called... what was it? Of course – Pickles. All of thirteen years ago, I wrote about Pickles and his heroic excavation of the 'not very World Cuppy' World Cup, a feat that was once celebrated in a Picklefest event in South Norwood. Here's the link – 

               https://nigeness.blogspot.com/2013/03/south-norwoods-finest-son.html

Sadly, Pickles died just a year after playing his part in football history: his choke chain caught on a tree branch while he was chasing a cat. His collar is on display at the National Football Museum in Manchester. As for the trophy itself, lessons were learnt after its theft (from Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, where it was on display along with a stamp exhibition): it was replaced by a replica for public display. Then, in 1970, the original was presented in perpetuity to Brazil, that year's winners. Perpetuity, alas, lasted only until 1983, when it was stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation, and most likely melted down. 

Wes

 Last night I found myself watching Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums again. I say 'again' but I hadn't seen it since I watched it, in a cinema, when it was released, all of 25 years ago. It was the first of his films I'd seen (I only caught up with Bottle Rocket and Rushmore later), and I remember being mightily impressed by the distinctive Wes Anderson style. Since then I've become more familiar with his tricks and mannerisms, that unmistakable look, but I still likes me a bit of Wes, and I greatly enjoyed watching The Royal Ts again, not least for its terrific ensemble cast – Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny Glover, Ben Stiller, Owen and Luke Wilson, all at their best. Two things struck me this time, one being the bookishness of the enterprise – it's framed as the reading of a physical book (as in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) and books are everywhere in the interior scenes (most noticeably Royal Tenenbaum's set of Encyclopaedia Britannica) – and the other being the music. The soundtrack is wonderful, featuring everything from Satie, Ravel and Enescu to the Beatles and Stones, Dylan, Paul Simon, Nick Drake, and – oh yes – Nico, a voice (if that is the word) that blasted me straight back to my youth. She features twice, with haunting songs written by the teenage Jackson Browne: 'The Fairest of the Season' and this... 

Time Well Spent

 Well, I am back, and it was a joy to see Gloucester cathedral again – if not the city of Gloucester, which is now, sadly, the very model of English urban degeneration, dereliction and decay. A sorry fate for a once fine town, and one that is all too common, thanks to terrible urban planning, bad architecture, drugs and 'welfare' dependency, among other things. But the cathedral – and indeed its close – that is a very different matter. Not only is it a building of quite staggering beauty – especially for those of us who love the architecture of the 14th and 15th century – it is also unusually well presented and accessible, offering the hugely rewarding experience of walking around the triforium and viewing the building from a height of something over 30ft, looking down into the nave and transepts, up at the amazing vaulting, and around at the complex structure of piers, buttresses and braces that give the building a strength belied by its airy grace. 
   The cathedral is famous for its vast and beautiful east window, known as the Crécy window, which is as large as a tennis court and was made, amazingly, at the time of the Black Death. When the second world war broke out, it was dismantled and all its thousands of pieces of glass were individually labelled and taken into safe storage in the cathedral crypt. Alas, when the war was over, it was discovered that the paper labels had come adrift from the pieces of glass, so there was no clue as to how the window was to be put together again – or rather, there was one clue: a coloured postcard of the window in all its glory. With this as their only pictorial reference, the craftsmen managed to reassemble the window exactly as it was. Two thoughts: if it had been the Germans dismantling a window such as this, every piece would have been meticulously catalogued, photographed and numbered, and there would have been no chance of anything going wrong. And, if the window had to be taken apart today, it would likely take months just to get authorisation to put up the scaffolding. Another of the ever growing number of things that we could not do today. 
   Anyway, there was also some walking, this over the border in Herefordshire, where we walked (in the morning, before the heat became intolerable) uphill from Ross-on-Wye to Brampton Abbotts – locked church, wonderful panoramic views – then down to the river and back into town, where an old friend of mine joined us for lunch at a riverside pub and a stroll around the rather delightful town. This was all time well spent – and there were butterflies galore on the morning walk: abundance of peacocks and red admirals, meadow browns and gatekeepers, with commas and painted ladies, clouds of whites, and, near the end of the morning walk, a single clouded yellow, flying busily past, as they always do – my first (on this side of the channel) in several years.      

Gloucester and Gwynn

 Early tomorrow I'm heading for Gloucester for a couple of days' walking (or not) with my walking friends. Gloucester is very high on my list of favourite cathedrals, so I'm looking forward to seeing it again after too many years. I'm travelling by train, so, knowing my luck, I'll probably end up in Tamworth again...
   Meanwhile, here is another by R.S. Gwynn – a perfect Petrarchan sonnet about a woman with the most difficult job in the business.

God's Secretary

Her e-mail inbox always overflows.   

Her outbox doesn’t get much use at all.   

She puts on hold the umpteen-billionth call   

As music oozes forth to placate those   

Who wait, then disconnect. Outside, wind blows,   

Scything pale leaves. She sees a sparrow fall   

Fluttering to a claw-catch on a wall.   

Will He be in today? God only knows.   

She hasn’t seen His face—He’s so aloof.   

She’s long resigned He’ll never know or love her   

But still can wish there were some call, some proof   

That He requires a greater service of her.   

Fingers of rain now drum upon the roof,   

Coming from somewhere, somewhere far above her.   

Unsuspected Kindness

 On today's Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick Kurp writes of the 'unsuspected kindness' of which, happily, the world still has abundant supply. He leads up to the subject by way of an anecdote about an exemplary act of kindness – of Christian charity – by that great poet and man, George Herbert, as recounted in Walton's life of Herbert, and turned into poetry by R.S. Gwynn, in a fine poem, 'Music at Midnight'. I must confess I had never heard of R.S. Gwynn, an American poet and anthologist who is, according to Wikipedia, 'associated with New Formalism', which is generally a good sign. He is, according to Dana Gioia, 'an effortless master of verse forms', and he seems to have a way with humorous and 'light verse'. Here is one, a paraphrase of Hopkins, that actually had me laughing out loud –

Fried Beauty

Glory be to God for breaded things—

   Catfish, steak finger, pork chop, chicken thigh,

         Sliced green tomatoes, pots full to the brim

With french fries, fritters, life-float onion rings,

    Hushpuppies, okra golden to the eye,

            That in all oils, corn or canola, swim

Toward mastication’s maw (O molared mouth!);

    Whatever browns, is dumped to drain and dry

             On paper towels’ sleek translucent scrim,

These greasy, battered bounties of the South:

                            Eat them.

   As for unsuspected kindness, Mrs Nige, who has similar mobility problems to Patrick, is often pleasantly surprised by the kindness of strangers, even in that wicked city, London. Here in the city of philosophers, of course, the milk of human kindness flows abundantly in every soul. 

This and That, Not Including London

 Well, I didn't make it to London on Friday. The Euston train got no further than Milton Keynes (of largely evil memory), where damage to overhead cables up ahead had ended all serious possibility of getting to London, short of limping in very late, packed into a cattle-truck train and with no guarantee of a smooth return. After almost an hour amid milling crowds on that depressing station, I found an escape route – northwards, back the way I had come. I would get off at Tamworth, a stop before Lichfield, and take a look around the newly reopened castle. This should have been straightforward, but at Rugby (of entirely evil memory), the train ground to a halt for half an hour and more, thanks to a broken-down train ahead. By the time I 'alighted at' Tamworth, I was fast losing the will to live, but I made my way to the castle, paid the entrance fee, and climbed to the entrance (the castle was built on a pretty impressive motte). From Norman to Victorian, with something of every period between, the building – or rather buildings – has plenty of architectural interest, and the interiors, more or less convincingly reconstructed, reflect the range of periods. It's a castle that was lived in continuously from medieval to Victorian times, so is a good deal more interesting than some castles I have dutifully trudged around. The whole thing is, as one would expect these days, very child-friendly and interactive, but I made my studious way along the prescribed tour route, unmoved by the opportunity to dress up as a Marmion knight or test the weight of a broadsword. I even made it to the top of the tower, from where the views are impressively wide. This experience, followed by a stroll around the more agreeable parts of Tamworth, almost made up for the earlier ordeal by railway. 
  The upside of all those hours on trains and stations was the opportunity it afforded of getting on with my reading. I had with me a volume I'd picked up on the bookstall outside the Samuel Johnson House – a novel called Max Gate, by a New Zealand writer I'd never heard of, Damien Wilkins. As the title suggests, the action is set in the hideous house that Thomas Hardy built for himself in Dorchester. The narrator is a housemaid, Nellie Titterington, looking back on her time at Max Gate in the winter of 1928, when the great man lay dying. It's a fascinating and convincing reconstruction of the gloomy, claustrophobic Hardy ménage, and I'm looking forward to reading on. No doubt I shall return to this one. Meanwhile, having finally done with Carlyle's French Revolution, I have new bedside reading, in the form of a book recommended by a friend, Their Ancient Glittering Eyes: Remembering Poets and More Poets by Donald Hall. The first essay, on Robert Frost, is a splendidly incisive, but sympathetic and fair, portrait of that deeply flawed, often deeply unpleasant genius. The title of the book, by the way, comes from Yeats's Lapis Lazuli:
There, on the mountains and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient glittering eyes, are gay.