Zebra Finch Musicians

This is rather cheering - play the video. Extraordinary...

Chrysoprase

The last day of a dismal February and, true to the spirit of the month, it's raining relentlessly, on already sodden ground. I don't remember ever feeling such a powerful longing for spring and sunshine - and the butterfly season - as I have felt these past few weeks... This morning I was leafing through Emily Dickinson - who seems greater, and stranger, every time I look at her - and came upon her butterfly poem -

THE BUTTERFLY’S assumption-gown,
In chrysoprase apartments hung,
This afternoon put on.

How condescending to descend,
And be of buttercups the friend
In a New England town!

Chrysoprase? This was a new one on me (though I remember Othello's 'one entire and perfect Chrysolite'). Apparently it's a green version of chalcedony - 'apple green' according to the OED - with (hem hem) remarkable properties, if you believe in that kind of thing. But what could Dickinson's butterfly be, with its 'chrysoprase apartments'? Greens are unusual in butterflies - certainly among British species, though we have this beauty. 'Apartments' suggests something like the beautiful hindwing of the Queen of Spain - but in green. I wonder if any of my American readers might have an idea what butterfly it was that Dickinson saw that afternoon, feeding on buttercups?

Centenary

Today is the centenary of the birth of Peter De Vries. Having marked the anniversary of his death a while back, I could hardly let the date pass. The accompanying illustration is a piquant reminder of how De Vries was marketed at the height of his fame, at the time when, as he put it himself, 'Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked'. Those were the days...

Any Pastries with That?

I've only just found out about this - it's an Espresso Book Machine (there's more about it here), and it might soon be replacing a bookshop near you (assuming there are any left). It's a beguiling idea, with the potential to deliver any book you fancy into your hands, printed and bound, in a matter of minutes and at very little cost. It might even mean that authors see a bit more money, but you wouldn't want to count on that. On the other hand, it's surely a move too far along the road already set out by the internet - the availability from somewhere in the wired world, via a few keystrokes, of virtually any book you're likely to want (usually at way below bookshop price). The adventurous realm of epic book searches and serendipitous finds on the shelves of real bookshops is dwindling all the time, as even charity shops become increasingly market-savvy - again largely thanks to the internet. No doubt bookshops will always survive in some form (if only selling second-hand POD book from Espresso machines), but there will surely be even fewer of them. Will most of our future book buying be via a glorified photocopier, with booksellers reduced to the role of baristas? It's not a very cheering thought.

White Walls

Apologies for the scant posting - the toad work is squatting on my life especially heavily these days. However I did manage an evening out last night - albeit a work-related one. It was a do in the Saatchi Gallery on the King's Road, in what used to be the headquarters of the Duke of York's Regiment - a fine building, now gutted, stripped and painted stark white in the approved modern art gallery manner. I had a bit of a mooch around, and was struck chiefly by how lost and insignificant most of the artworks seemed in those vast white spaces. They looked more like decor than anything, and pretty bland decor - well, either bland or ugly. No doubt this is an unfair and hasty judgment, but my brief experience of this gallery left me dispirited and vaguely annoyed - which is certainly never the way I feel after a visit to, say, the National Gallery or the Courtauld or Dulwich or even Tate Britain (Tate Modern is another matter). I wonder if galleries of the Saatchi/White Cube kind might one day come to seem as bewilderingly awful as those plush Victorian galleries hung with acres of sentimental genre scenes did to the next generation. Oddly, though, Charles Saatchi himself not so long ago attacked the white wall gallery concept as 'antiseptic' and 'dictated by museum fashion' - a rare case of the pot calling the kettle white?

Clemence Dane - One of Life's Innocents

Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton), a playwright and novelist very successful in her time, was born on this day in 1888. Despite being a prolific screenwriter, she seems to have remained (as her rather sweet features suggest) one of life's innocents. In his cheering memoir, Life's Rich Pageant, Arthur Marshall recalls her...
'The physical side of life had passed her by, together with the words, slang and otherwise, that accompany it. She had no idea at all why people laughed, or tried tactfully to conceal laughter, as time and time again she settled for an unfortunate word or phrase. Inviting Mr Coward to lunch during the war when food was difficult, she boomed encouragement down the telephone: 'Do come! I've got such a lovely cock.' ('I do wish you'd call it a hen,' Noel answered.) Asking her friend, Olwen, what she had secured for a summer picnic, she was heard to yell up the stairs, 'Olwen, have you got crabs?'... To use correctly, in a literary sense, the words 'erection', 'tool' and 'spunk' was second nature to her. When wishing to describe herself as being full of life and creative energy, she chose, not really very wisely, the word 'randy'. To hear a large and imposing women of fifty announcing to a roomful of actors that she felt randy was really something. She never cottoned on to the fact that the name 'John Thomas' had a hidden significance, and she was heard one day expatiating about the different sides to a person's nature: 'Yes, every man has three John Thomases - the John Thomas he keeps to himself, the John Thomas he shares with his friends, and the John Thomas he shows to the world.' 'Of course, Winifred,' people said, when they could speak.'
Talking of such matters, this Appleyard piece has reconciled me to the back pain that's been giving me gip, off and on, this past week or two - it could be worse...

More Sad News

Less than a fortnight after the death of Ian Carmichael comes news of the passing of another fine actor and thoroughly decent man of the same generation, Lionel Jeffries. His most lasting legacy will probably be the classic 1970 film of The Railway Children, which he directed and scripted, but he put in some wonderful performances too, both comic and dramatic. As Prison Officer 'Sour' Crout, he was an essential element in that great comedy caper Two Way Stretch; he did a similarly brilliant job as Inspector 'Nosey' Parker in The Wrong Arm of the Law; he was suitably appalling as the Marquis of Queensberry in The Trials of Oscar Wilde; and, much later in his career, he gave a memorable performance opposite Peggy Ashcroft in Dennis Potter's bleak Cream In My Coffee. He had a 'good war', too, serving in Burma. Another good man gone.