Duck Hunting on the Lagoon with Two Ladies

 The great Venetian genre painter Pietro Longhi, born on this day in 1701, painted mostly indoor scenes – including his famous Exhibition of a Rhinoceros in Venice – but he sometimes ventured outdoors, as in this typically cheery scene of duck hunters on the lagoon.

Is the smartly dressed hunter firing arrows at the birds? No, apparently the technique was to fire hard clay pellets from a bow (surely they'd have been better off using catapults?). Hunting birds on the lagoon was a popular pastime, as well as a useful source of food, and it is recorded also in a painting from 250 years earlier, by Vittore Carpaccio. 

The Carpaccio disappeared from public view until 1944, and now lives at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In 1961 an art scholar made the bold suggestion that it might originally have formed the upper half of a work of which the lower half was the famous Two Women, which hangs in the Museo Correr in Venice.  This would explain the otherwise anomalous appearance of a bunch of lily flowers at the bottom left of the duck hunting scene. It seemed a pretty wild theory, and even its originator withdrew it. However, subsequent restoration and forensic work confirmed that the two paintings were indeed originally one. This is what it would have looked like – 

Surprisingly, it seems to work, doesn't it? It would be good if the two paintings could be reunited and put on display, if only temporarily. Preferably in Venice...

'So first the faithful dog will go...'

 

On this day in 1957 a mongrel from the streets of Moscow was launched into orbit around the Earth, strapped into the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 – the first dog in space. Laika, as she was named, was never going to survive the journey, as the technology to allow safe re-entry into the atmosphere had not yet been developed. Laika's job was to show that living creatures from Earth could survive in space, thereby paving the way for human space flight. The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert paid tribute to the poor dog in this sad and beautiful poem –

First the Dog

for Laika

So first the faithful dog will go
and after it a pig or ass
through the black grass will beat a track
along it will the first man steal
who with iron hand will smother
on his glass brow a drop of fear


so first the dog honest mongrel
which has never abandoned us
dreaming of earthly lamps and bones
will fall asleep in its whirling kennel
its warm blood boiling drying away


but we behind the dog and second
dog which guides us on a leash
we with the astronauts’ white cane
awkwardly we bump into stars
we see nothing we hear nothing
we beat with our fists on the dark ether
on all the wavelengths is a whining


everything we can carry on board
through the cinders of dark worlds
name of man scent of apple
acorn of sound quarter of colour
should all be saved for our return
so we can find the route in an instant
when the blind dog leading us
barks at the earth as at the moon

The Soviet authorities, lying with every breath, gave conflicting accounts of how Laika died (it was actually overheating). She was duly memorialised as a Soviet hero, with a statue and plaque at Star City, and a place at the Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow, as well as on postage stamps and matchbox labels. But the best, most fitting memorial to this unhappy victim of human hubris is surely Herbert's poem.

Lichfield Brings Down a Prince (Maybe)

 I noticed this morning that the front page of one of the nationals claimed that the Lichfield heckle was the 'last straw' for the King, and stung him into decisive action, banishing his brother, the erstwhile Duke of York and Prince Andrew, into the outer darkness (i.e. a more than comfortable house on the agreeable Sandringham estate). In case you missed the story, what happened was that the King, who visited Lichfield last Monday, was shaking hands with wellwishers outside the west door of the cathedral when an ill-mannered republican started shouting Andrew-related questions at him, not expecting answers and not getting any from Charles, who completely ignored the heckler. 

I, along with le tout Lichfield, had regarded the incident as something of a stain on the fair name of our city, and, had I been present, I might even have joined those telling the loud-mouthed sansculotte to 'shut up'. However, if the unfortunate incident left Charles finally resolved to banish the appalling Andrew, then that, I suppose, was a good outcome. 

In other news, this morning – a sunny one, but windy and not exactly warm – I saw a very energetic Red Admiral flying past a nearby house, and then another one, equally full of beans, flying away from me in the park. November butterflies! I wonder if they will be the last of the year...

Birthdays

 Halloween, Schmalloween – here at Nigeness, 31st October is always Keats's birthday (born 1795, in Moorgate, London, where his father was ostler at the Swan and Hoop inn). 
On this day in 1818, Keats signed off on his long letter to his brother George and his pregnant wife Georgiana, who were trying to start a new life in America. His other brother, Tom, meanwhile was dying of consumption. The letter ends:

'I hope you will have a Son, and it is one of my first wishes to have him in my Arms – which I will do please God before he cuts one double tooth. Tom is rather more easy than he has been; but is still so nervous that I cannot speak to him of these Matters – indeed it is the care I have had to keep his Mind aloof from feelings too acute that has made this Letter so short [!] a one – I did not like to write before him a Letter he knew was to reach your hands – I cannot even now ask him for any Message – his heart speaks to you – Be as happy as you can. Think of me and for my sake be cheerful. Believe me my dear Brother and Sister

           Your anxious and affectionate Brother
                                                                   John.
   This day is my Birth day –
   All our friends have been anxious in their enquiries and all send their remembrances'

It was Keats's 23rd birthday, and two and a half years later he would be dead of consumption. 

This date is also the birthday (1632, in Delft) of Johannes Vermeer. By Keats's time, he was an almost completely forgotten painter (awaiting rediscovery by the French), so the poet would never have seen his work. One can only imagine what he would have made of the Girl with a Pearl Earring, a painting that, in its sensual intimacy and lovingly observed, all but tangible textures, seems almost a visual analogue of a Keats poem... 

The Death of Ralegh

 On this day in 1618, having fallen foul of the monarch once too often, Sir Walter Ralegh, explorer, statesman, soldier and superb writer of poetry and prose, faced death on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, Westminster. He urged the executioner to make haste, for 'at this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear.' Inspecting the blade that was to dispatch him, he remarked, 'This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases and miseries.' With his last words, he urged the hesitating executioner to strike: 'What dost thou fear? Strike, man, strike!' Men knew how to die in those days. 

  'What is our life?' Ralegh asked in a poem – 

'What is our life? The play of passion.
Our mirth? The music of division:
Our mothers’ wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for life’s short comedy.
The earth the stage; Heaven the spectator is,
Who sits and views whosoe’er doth act amiss.
The graves which hide us from the scorching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus playing post we to our latest rest,
And then we die in earnest, not in jest.'

On the eve of his execution, he answered his question again – a dusty answer:

'Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days,
And from which earth, and grave, and dust
The Lord will raise me up, I trust.'

After his execution, Ralegh's head was embalmed and given to his wife. His body was to be buried at St Mary's, Beddington (one of my old Surrey haunts), but it ended up at St Margaret's, Westminster. Lady Ralegh reportedly kept her husband's head in a velvet bag for the rest of her life, after which it was reunited with the rest of Sir Walter's body at St Margaret's. 

Austen Statues

 I see that another statue of Jane Austen has been unveiled, this time in Winchester Cathedral close. Fair enough – it's her 250th anniversary year, and she died at Winchester and is buried in the cathedral. The statue is by Martin Jennings, who has a good record with this sort of thing, having created the excellent statue of Philip Larkin in Hull (a 'major statue of concern', according to the city council, who at the time were dancing to the tune of Black Lives Matter) and the even better John Betjeman at St Pancras station. The trouble with Jane Austen is, of course, that we have no good idea of what she actually looked like, the only reliable image being an amateurish sketch by her sister Cassandra. Jennings (who's pictured above, at the left of the group of three worthies) has posed her as a forceful, even defiant figure, with head held high and chest thrown out, her face set almost grimly as she gazes off to her left, while her right hand rests on her famous little writing table. It's certainly well done, but is it Jane Austen? It seems to me that it doesn't suggest anything of her quiet, observant humour. For that, I think the bust of Austen that stands in the town of Alton is more suggestive, though it is of lower quality as sculpture.

And there's another Jane Austen statue in Hampshire, outside the museum in Basingstoke. This one shows her in motion (like Jennings's statue of Larkin), walking across the marketplace with her outdoor clothes on and a book under her arm. As with the Winchester Cathedral statue, she seems a more angular and austere figure than the Jane portrayed in her sister's sketch, or the one that shows through in the writings of those who knew her. Not that it matters. At least none of these Austen statues have plumbed the depths of recent efforts portraying Diana and the late Queen, and for that we – and the shade of Jane – should be grateful.

[Please ignore the Google links in the above. They crept in while I wasn't looking.]

'Dignified, but flippant'

 Heaven knows how many Penguin books must have passed through my hands in the course of my reading life. They've always been there, right from my boyhood, when my father, for some reason, kept shelves of Penguins, mostly Crime, in the lavatory. I read some of those, then many many more over the years. But, in all my Penguin-reading life, I don't think it ever occurred to me to wonder how the imprint got its name – it just seemed a given. Now (thanks to a pair of penguin-related books I'm reading for review) I know how the name came about. The story goes that publisher Allen Lane, determined to bring out a range of quality paperback books at an affordable price and needing a name for it, was discussing the matter with his secretary, who suggested Penguin, because the birds are 'dignified, but flippant'. Fair enough, said Lane (or words to that effect), and sent an office junior, 21-year-old Edward Young, down to London Zoo to sketch one of the (Humboldt) penguins that were then enjoying themselves in the newly installed, Lubetkin-designed penguin pool. He returned with a sheet of sketches, Lane selected one, and the rest is history...
  This, of course, was in the dark days before highly paid brand consultants and their brilliant ideas, e.g. rebranding Royal Mail as Consignia and W.H. Smith as T.G. Jones – but somehow the 'dignified but flippant' penguin turned out to be just about the most successful brand in publishing. Ninety years on, it's still going strong.