Cigars beneath the stars...

'I LIKE cigars
Beneath the stars,
Upon the waters blue.
To laugh and float
While rocks the boat
Upon the waves,--Don't you?
To rest the oar
And float to shore,--
While soft the moonbeams shine,--
To laugh and joke,
And idly smoke,
I think is quite divine.'

Who wrote those lines? Some pleasure-loving chap, no doubt - though 'quite divine' strikes a less than manly note... In fact, this celebration of the pleasures of a lazy smoke was written by the once hugely popular poet of moral uplift, good cheer and positive thinking, Ella Wheeler Wilcox (born on this day in 1850).
  If Wilcox is remembered at all, it is for the much more characteristic lines (from Solitude)

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth
But has trouble enough of its own.

In her lifetime the popularity of her verse was immense, but the death of her baby son and her husband led Wilcox to take an increasing interest in the occult, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, spiritualism and the fashionable New Thought Movement. Her (prose) writings in this field proved almost as popular as her verse. Wilcox was very much a woman of her time - hence her enormous popularity then, hence her obscurity now. However, she is memorialised  in (of all places) Jack Kerouac Alley in San Francisco, by the City Lights bookstore, where a paving slab is inscribed with her words 'Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes.'

William Denis Browne

I caught a very beautiful song setting on Radio 3 yesterday, by a composer I'd never heard of. You can listen to it here, sung by Ian Bostridge -  Richard Lovelace's Gratiana Dancing and Singing, set to music  by William Denis Browne.
  Browne, I have since learnt, was killed in action in the Gallipoli campaign, at the age of just 26, shortly after having buried his close friend from schooldays, Rupert Brooke (who refused to take up his commission unless Denis Browne was given one too). Browne, full of promise as a composer, pianist, organist, teacher and music critic, was briefly a favoured student of the great Busoni, until (in Wikipedia's words) 'excessive piano practice led him to injure his hand'.
  Denis Browne chose the site for Brooke's grave and was with him when he died of septicaemia. In Browne's wallet, which he passed on to a petty officer before dying of his wounds (his body was never found), was a note to his friend and mentor Edward Marsh, which began 'I’ve gone now too; not too badly I hope. I’m luckier than Rupert, because I’ve fought. But there’s no one to bury me as I buried him, so perhaps he’s best off in the long run...'
  Here are the words of Lovelace's poem:

I.

See! with what constant motion

Even and glorious, as the sunne,

Gratiana steeres that noble frame,

Soft as her breast, sweet as her voyce,

That gave each winding law and poyze,

And swifter then the wings of Fame.

II.

She beat the happy pavement

By such a starre-made firmament,

Which now no more the roofe envies;

But swells up high with Atlas ev'n,

Bearing the brighter, nobler Heav'n,

And in her, all the Dieties.

III.

Each step trod out a lovers thought

And the ambitious hopes he brought,

Chain'd to her brave feet with such arts,

Such sweet command and gentle awe,

As when she ceas'd, we sighing saw

The floore lay pav'd with broken hearts.

IV.

So did she move: so did she sing:

Like the harmonious spheres that bring

Unto their rounds their musick's ayd;

Which she performed such a way,

As all th' inamour'd world will say:

The Graces daunced, and Apollo play'd.

Hood: Chieftain of the Punning Clan

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--
No road--no street--no "t'other side this way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--
No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!
No traveling at all--no locomotion--
No inkling of the way--no notion--
"No go" by land or ocean--
No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No Park, no Ring, no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds--
November!

Well, let's hope November won't be quite that bad...
  The above is a poem by Thomas Hood that I remember reading and enjoying many years ago while I was still in short trousers and such poems were in schoolroom anthologies.
  Over on Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick has been writing in defence of puns, with particular reference to Myles na gCopaleen's Keats and Chapman tales - and Charles Lamb, and indeed Keats. Now, Thomas Hood was the punster supreme - for much of his career, pun-heavy comic verse was his stock in trade, and very good he was at it.
  A hugely prolific author, Hood began his writing life among the Romantics and ended it as a very Victorian early Victorian, mixing whimsy with melodrama, punning humour with sentimental verse. His first effusions were Odes and Addresses to Great People (1825), co-written with John Hamilton Reynolds, his brother-in-law, who was the friend of John Keats and recipient of some of his finest letters. Hood persevered for some while with serious verse and dramatic romance before drifting into humour and becoming a successful comic writer, turning out annuals and magazines full of his own work year after year, despite the ill health that eventually forced him to take to his bed.
  However, Hood scored his biggest hit with the eminently serious poem, The Song of The Shirt, an impassioned protest against the wretched poverty in which seamstresses were obliged to live and work. This was a sensational international success, was dramatised and even printed on pocket handkerchiefs. His poem The Dream of Eugen Aram, about a murderer tormented by his guilt, was also extremely popular, becoming a favourite recitation of Henry Irving. And the sentimental I Remember, I Remember was long an anthology favourite  - and inspired the very different poem of the same name by Philip Larkin.  But back to puns - here's Hood in full flow, with Faithless Nelly Gray: A Pathetic Ballad. Enjoy -

Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.

Now, as they bore him off the field,
Said he, "Let others shoot;
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot!"

The army-surgeons made him limbs:
Said he, "They're only pegs;
But there's as wooden members quite
As represent my legs!"

Now, Ben he loved a pretty maid,
Her name was Nelly Gray;
So he went up to pay his devours,
When he devoured his pay!

But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off!

"O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray!
Is this your love so warm?
The love that loves a scarlet coat
Should be more uniform!"

Said she, "I loved a soldier once
For he was blithe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave!

"Before you had those timber toes,
Your love I did allow;
But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now!"

"O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty's call I left my legs
In Badajos's breaches !"

"Why then," said she, "you've lost the feet
Of legs in war's alarms,
And now you cannot wear your shoes
Upon your feats of arms!"

"O, false and fickle Nelly Gray!
I know why you refuse: --
Though I've no feet -- some other man
Is standing in my shoes!

"I wish I ne'er had seen your face;
But, now, a long farewell!
For you will be my death; -- alas
You will not be my Nell!"

Now, when he went from Nelly Gray,
His heart so heavy got,
And life was such a burden grown,
It made him take a knot!

So round his melancholy neck
A rope he did entwine,
And, for his second time in life,
Enlisted in the Line.

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs,
And, as his legs were off -- of course
He soon was off his legs!

And there he hung, till he was dead
As any nail in town--
For, though distress had cut him up,
It could not cut him down!

A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out why he died--
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads
With a stake in his inside!

Hallowe'en Hill

Hallowe'en seems to have cast its dark shadow before it this year: the last three charity-shop books I've bought were Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate (a novella inspired by the Pendle Witch Trials) and Henry James's The Jolly Corner, in a handsome edition with suitably eerie etchings by Peter Milton (Terra Nova Editions, 1979).
 I've just read The Woman in Black, which is commendably short and very readable. A first-person narrative, it's essentially a pastiche of a golden age ghost story - the period is vague but the feel is  Edwardian/Twenties - and it's very expertly done, as you'd expect with Susan Hill, the location and atmosphere skilfully and convincingly evoked. The narrative is cleverly paced, but it's a mostly predictable and well worn storyline that promises more than it delivers in terms of chills and thrills. More overtly Gothic in style than M.R. James's stories, it has none of the genuinely creepy and unsettling effects that James achieves - but then, very few ghost stories come anywhere near his. But The Woman in Black is a rattling good read and, if I wasn't chilled, at least I was entertained and kept turning the pages. I've never been able to resist a story that starts, as this does, with a train journey (steam of course) to a remote and mysterious location.
 And now I'm reading The Daylight Gate, which is a very different kettle of fish...

Ms Munt's Warning

Life goes on, I see, in all its radiant absurdity - and what could be more radiantly absurd than an obscure Lib-Dem MP getting her name in the headlines by warning of  'the end of the British breakfast as we know it'? What has prompted this rallying cry to the plain people of Britain? Why, the government's iniquitous proposal to cut the minimum (note, minimum) sugar content of jams and marmalades. Yes, there's a real risk that honest, breakfast-loving British folk might be exposed to jams and marmalades that actually taste of fruit. At present, as Ms Munt notes, 'we know exactly what to expect' when we buy jam or marmalade. Indeed we do - a mighty sugar hit with little evidence of fruit - which is why many of us buy lower-sugar, higher-fruit continental preserves instead. Funny old world.

Hiatus

Apologies for the blog hiatus; normal service will, I am sure, be resumed very soon.
My hitherto indestructible mother finally succumbed, in the early hours of this morning, to her 92 years. It was a calm and peaceful death - a good death, ending a good life, one that, until very recently, had been rich, active, happy and fulfilled. She was (as she frequently professed) more than ready to go; she had had her life and was impatient with the tedious coda. Requiem aeternam...

Bitters: Fashion catches up with Nige and HM

Once again, it seems, the world scampers along in the trend-setting footsteps of this blog - not to mention those of HM the Queen. A characteristically encyclopaedic item on the BBC News website informs us that all the bright young things nowadays are turning their backs on the sweet stuff and knocking back the bitters. I was at it myself in Venice recently, enjoying many an Aperol spritz and Campari, but I've always been up for any bitters going, from Dubonnet to Suze and anything I can get my hands on that delivers that bitter medicinal hit. A few years ago, as the BBC News piece reminds us (to save you the effort, it's right near the bottom), the Queen's taste for Dubonnet seemed outlandish. Not now - it's bitters all round. Cheers! Mine's a Cynar with a Fernet chaser...