70

Today I achieve my three score years and ten. Well, 'achieve' is hardly the word: so long as you continue to breathe in and breathe out, reflect light and occupy space, these landmarks come and go. As this one arrives, I find myself hugely thankful, that I have survived and am in good health, and that my life has been so abundantly full of love and delight – and luck. I am truly blest, and know it. I hope Tom Waits is feeling the same...
And I'm also very glad that I managed to get the book out into the world before this landmark date arrived. 

'A morning dew, pearling the grass beneath'

Today on Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick Kurp writes about a treasured book – an edition of the poems of George Herbert that was a gift from the poet Helen Pinkerton. Published in New York in 1854, this collection was edited 'by the Rev. George Gilfillan' – a name that rang quite a loud bell with me.
  Sure enough, Gilfillan features in John Gross's classic The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters, where he is affectionately described as 'the McGonagall of criticism'. A man of formidable energy and self-belief, he did pioneering work in introducing the classics of English literature to a hungry reading public in the mid-19th century, but was also wildly enthusiastic about the emerging school of 'Spasmodic' poets – such long forgotten names as Alexander Smith, Philip James Bailey, J. Stanyan Bigg and Sydney Dobell, all authors of grandiose, tormented spiritual epics. This enthusiasm laid Gilfillan open to a well aimed satirical attack, William Aytoun's Firmilian, A Spasmodic Tragedy, an assault that might have ended the career of a lesser man. Gilfillan, however, battled on, dismissing all criticism of himself, producing a spasmodic epic of his own – Night, a poem in nine books – and bringing out an annotated edition of the English poets in 48 volumes, a publication supported by an impressive 7,000 subscribers.
  My own edition of Herbert, which belonged to my grandmother, is of similar vintage, but published by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. No editor is named, but the volume includes Izaak Walton's life of the poet, some Commendatory Verses by various hands, and a small selection of Herbert's letters. Browsing in these just now, I came across this beautiful letter 'for my dear sick Sister':

Most dear Sister,
Think not my silence forgetfulness; or that my love is as dumb as my papers: though businesses may stop my hand, yet my heart, a much better member, is always with you; and, which is more, with our good and gracious God, incessantly begging some ease of your pains, with that earnestness that becomes your griefs and my love. God, who knows and sees this writing, knows also that my soliciting Him has been much and my tears many for you; judge me then by those waters, and not by my ink, and then you shall justly value
           Your most truly, most heartily
                 affectionate brother and servant...

Patrick quotes Herbert's marvellous sonnet, 'Prayer', and confesses to having a weakness for such 'list poems'. Here is another, by the minor Elizabethan poet Barnabe Barnes. Like 'Prayer', and like most of Barnes's poetical output, it's a sonnet – but, unlike Herbert's, it reveals its subject not in its title but in its closing couplet:

'A blast of wind, a momentary breath'

A blast of wind, a momentary breath,
A wat'ry bubble symbolized with air,
A sun-blown rose, but for a season fair,
A ghostly glance, a skeleton of death;
A morning dew, pearling the grass beneath,
Whose moisture sun's appearance doth impair;
A lightning glimpse, a muse of thought and care,
A planet's shot, a shade which followeth,
A voice which vanisheth so soon as heard,
The thriftless heir of time, a rolling wave,
A show, no more in action than regard,
A mass of dust, world's momentary slave,
  Is man, in state of our old Adam made,
  Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade.

Scenes from Another World

On this day in 1958, two momentous events occurred – the kind of events that make a person of my vintage realise how long he's been around.
  Before this date, it was not possible to make a telephone call of any distance at all without going via 'the operator', who would connect you (if you were lucky) to the number you wanted. Then came STD (subscriber trunk dialling) and it became possible to dial direct to relatively far flung parts of the country. The maximum distance achievable was roughly that from Bristol to Edinburgh. And so it was that, on this date in 1958, the Queen (with Postmaster General Ernest Marples at her right hand) made the first STD call from Bristol's central telephone exchange to the Lord Provost's residence in Edinburgh. Happily it worked, and the Queen was able to speak the historic words, 'This is the Queen speaking from Bristol. Good afternoon, my Lord Provost.'
 On the same day, elsewhere in England, prime minister Harold Macmillan was opening Britain's first motorway – the Preston bypass, all eight and a quarter miles of it (long since subsumed into the M6). A large and enthusiastic crowd had gathered at the Samlesbury interchange to watch the historic ceremony, such as it was. Macmillan, in an Austin Sheerline limousine, then became the first person to drive (or, rather, be driven) on an English motorway, travelling the length of the bypass at a sensible speed.
  It's fair to say that Britain's first motorway was not an instant success. Many cautious drivers stayed away for fear of being overtaken by maniacs risking speeds of 70mph – or more! Traffic levels (and speeds, which averaged 38mph) were initially low, and it was to be some years before, driven by sheer necessity, British drivers got the hang of motorways. Now a Britain without motorways, and with telephone operators, is inconceivable – and yet that is exactly what we had in my own living memory. Truly it was another world.

Unhappy Scenes from Clerical Life

On this day in 1835, the novelist and critic Samuel Butler was born. Readers of The Mother of Beauty will recall that he was born at Langar in the Nottinghamshire wolds, where his father was Rector of St Andrew's, and where he spent a desperately unhappy childhood. St Andrew's church houses the Scroope monument, one of the finest of its time, and it was this, rather than the Samuel Butler connection, that first drew me to Langar. The church itself, alas, is sadly over-restored... In this exclusive extract from the chapter Scenes from Platonic England, I take up the story:

'Pevsner describes the exterior of St Andrew’s as being ‘unfortunately so vigorously restored by Thomas Butler that little of its original surface remains’. This Thomas Butler, vigorous restorer, was the Rector of Langar – and father of the late-Victorian writer Samuel Butler. Thomas, the son of a very distinguished father – headmaster of Shrewsbury School and Bishop of Lichfield – had been pressed into the Church against his inclinations and had a far from stellar ecclesiastical career. He would be quite forgotten today, had he not had the misfortune to be immortalised in his son’s autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh.

  This is one of the most savage accounts of an oppressed childhood ever written, and Butler Senior, a physical and emotional bully, comes out of it very badly indeed, as does his wife, Samuel’s mother. The author considered both of them ‘brutal and stupid’, and wrote of his father that ‘he never liked me, nor I him; from my earliest recollections I can call to mind no time when I did not fear him and dislike him’. The unhappy Thomas Butler might well have been taking out the frustrations of his own failed life on his son, re-enacting his own father’s dominance over him in still harsher form – but that, of course, was no consolation to the son on the receiving end, who was never reconciled with his parents.

  Surprisingly, the young Samuel Butler allowed himself to be steered towards the same career as his father and grandfather. However, after Cambridge, his religious doubts began to prevail – much to his father’s wrath – and, to make a radical break with his parents and the future that had been laid down for him, Samuel emigrated to New Zealand, where his experiences inspired his first literary success, the satirical novel Erewhon.

  The Way of All Flesh was considered too incendiary to be published in his lifetime, but after its posthumous publication came to be seen as a minor classic. As a novel, it’s a bit of a mess, but the earlier chapters offer an unforgettably vivid picture of the life of gloomy and stultifying piety, reinforced by brutal punishment, that was once lived in Langar rectory. Platonic England, house of solitudes, had – no doubt still has – its dark side.'

O tempora, o mores

For anyone not yet entirely convinced that (a) the world has gone mad and (b) events in the 'woke' world have moved way beyond the reach of satire and parody, I pass on this story.
I don't think any further comment is required...

'Ewart is very frivolous and brittle...'

Well, I've read Gavin Ewart's Penultimate Poems, and by and large it has confirmed my memory of reading Ewart as being an entertaining, engaging experience but seldom anything much more. He was wonderfully fluent and productive – facile even – and a fine practitioner of what is called 'light verse'.
 The last of the Penultimate Poems is a handy piece of good-humoured auto-criticism by a poet who knows he's now outdated and out of critical favour (though outselling most of the poetical competition, even so) and doesn't much care. The line 'Ewart can do very little' is decidedly wide of the mark: Ewart could do practically anything, and with ease. He was versatile to a fault.


A Critic Speaks

Ewart is very frivolous and brittle.
Ewart can do very little –
though every once in a while
he might raise a weary smile.

A stallion neighing at a filly?
His best poems are silly.
Some find them not very nice.
Perhaps they're just worth the price.

But only just. It must be said,
The first thing that comes into his head
is what he writes about,
with rhyme and rhythm, or else without.

What, no insects? And no flowers?
No Heavenly or Earthly Powers?
No pike, no plaice, no crabs, no cod?
No fish at all! And, worse, no God!

Where is the secret narrative, the myth?
The mysticism? The concentrated pith
of Martian Arts? The learned story
of the proud High Tory?

The surrealist touch, quite gay
when the boys come out to play?
Animals, landscapes? Not a hint.
One wonders wanly: Why, why print

all this sad old-fashioned stuff?
It was once new enough –
but now, as fresh modes come in,
we drop it, fastidiously, in the bin!

Apostrophes: A Battle Lost

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, the Apostrophe Protection Society has closed down.
  This little pressure group was founded 18 years ago for the sole purpose of resisting the incorrect use of the apostrophe in English, as in 'it's' for 'its' or the all too common 'greengrocer's [or indeed greengrocers'] apostrophe', as in 'Best Carrot's 50p lb', etc. The founder of the society, who is now 96 years old and, reasonably enough, cutting back on his activities, has concluded, with regret, that the battle is lost, and that 'the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won'.
I fear he is right that this particular battle is lost: I come across 'it's' for 'its' all the time, often used by otherwise perfectly literate people, and the conviction, especially among traders, that an apostrophe denotes a plural remains firmly entrenched. A striking example of the latter can be seen on the approach to the west terminal at Victoria, where some years ago a railway worker painted on the wall the warning 'Mind Spike's'. Whatever he wrote it in, it has proved remarkably durable, quite possibly outliving the spikes themselves and no doubt infuriating many a passing apostrophist. Spike's what?
  Does the apostrophe matter that much? Although it's clearly preferable that it's used correctly, I don't think it's ever likely to result in a confusion of meaning or a loss of nuance. Other lost battles have robbed the language of useful distinctions, e.g. the now ubiquitous 'forever' used indiscriminately to cover both English usages: 'for ever', meaning for all time, and 'forever', meaning all the time, or continually, as in 'I'm forever blowing bubbles'. Another battle now almost completely lost is that for 'different from': even upmarket journalists are now happy to use not only 'different to' but even 'different than'. Though it grates, it doesn't matter too much, but it does separate the adjective from its verb of origin and slightly blurs the sense of that word. And then there's the almost universal use of 'amount of' for countable things, as in 'the amount of people'. It seems that not a lot of people [spot the deliberate error]  know this is incorrect. But that's enough pedantry from me.
  I hope the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society is wrong in his broader point and that 'the ignorance and laziness present in modern times' have not won. Or at least not anywhere it really matters.