Thought I’d briefly mark the passing of Ian Carmichael at the weekend.
Others will know him best from his roles in various Boulting Brothers comedies, or as Bertie Wooster in The World of Wodehouse (which was slightly before my time). I remember him best for his portrayal of Lord Peter Wimsey in the series that was shown on TV in the early seventies. I think I must have been about eleven when I saw the first episode, and for some reason I loved it. I immediately (well not quite immediately, but eventually) went out and bought the novels (in the old NEL editions with the cheap paper and the lurid covers) and I have them still somewhere. (All except Gaudy Night, which at that age I thought sounded a bit soppy – must catch up with that one). Why I liked them so much is a subject I shall return to another time.
- Oh no you won’t – you never do when you say that – (Reader’s voice)
Oh yes I will.
Anyway here is a brief clip, as illustration – the opening and closing credits for Clouds of Witness.
- He’s hardly in that at all though, is he? Haven’t you got anything better than that? (Reader’s voice)
No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m a busy man. Why don’t you look him up on the internet?
February hasn’t inspired a great many poems, not being, in general, a very inspiring month, but it did inspire this one – In February, by Alice Meynell.
Alice Meynell grew up chiefly in Italy, born to bohemian parents, and converted to Roman Catholicism at an early age. This is one of her earlier poems, part of an intense sonnet-sequence thought to have been inspired by an unrequited – or at least unconsummated - attachment to a Roman Catholic priest (who is presumably the “friend” in the last three lines). The sense of latent fertility is rather wonderful.
Frustrated in this respect, she found other outlets for her energies, moving to England, marrying the publisher Wilfred Meynell, editing various journals, having eight children, rescuing and publishing Francis Thompson, being pursued by Coventry Patmore and later in life becoming a prominent Suffragist. She clearly had a lot of energy. Her later poems were more purely devotional than this, and perhaps less interesting as a result.
In February
Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,
Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,
And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;
A poet’s face asleep in this grey morn.
Now in the midst of the old world forlorn
A mystic child is set in these still hours.
I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn.
To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat,
And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal,
And to the future of my own young art,
And, among all these things, to you, my sweet,
My friend, to your calm face and the immortal
Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart.
She also found the time to sit for a portrait by John Singer Sargent, like so:
A brief – and belated – doff of the hat to the woman I’d say has consistently been the best writer for the national press for more years than I care to remember* : a happy 80th birthday to Nancy Banks-Smith, TV and sometimes Radio critic for the Guardian. I was pleased to see that the dear old MG itself paid her an appropriate tribute, which is here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/feb/04/nancy-banks-smith-40-years
She is, I think, proof that it’s possible to write in a light (and, in her case, heavily Wodehousian) style about apparently trivial subjects and still go deeper than some of the windbags heavyweight commentators on the centre pages. I have no idea how she does it, and I’m in awe.
Nancy Banks-Smith
*Reading this back the next day, there is an element of post-alehouse hyperbole here. Perhaps “Most underrated prose stylist” would be nearer the mark. She is very good though.
Looking back – how soon nostalgia creeps in! – I see that the first thing that I wrote on this blog was a simple description of what I had been doing on the Saturday I set it up. At the beginning, before I got into my stride, I seem quite often to have produced something along these lines. I don’t think anything I’ve done today merits a post of its own, so I thought I’d revert for a moment to that earlier style. (The context here is that I’m going to Kettering to watch the football).
On my way from Kettering station to the town centre in the morning pass what used to be a rather elegant three-storey house but must, I think, have recently been home to a firm of solicitors or estate agents. It is now up for rent. In the front garden, as it were, huge piles of box files neatly labelled with the names of cases or clients. Looks rather like an art installation of some sort. Have a peek in one to see if there’s anything in it, but it’s empty. In the evening, on my way back to the station, they’ve all vanished. Scavengers?
Grazing in the charity shops of Kettering I find a section in one of them labelled “Fancy dress”. This contains all the clothes in the shop that I’d consider buying, in particular a rather nice half-belted Norfolk jacket in hairy tweed. Do I always look as though I’m on my way to a fancy dress party? (Note to self – return to this topic at a later date).
At the football, notice that only one half of the couple who normally sit next to me are there. Ask the female half “Are you here on your own today?”. Answer – “Yes, he’s in Australia”. Don’t pursue this.
Poppies lose 1-0 to York. Game enlivened by a 21 man scrap in the centre circle (the York keeper decided not to get involved).
Discover that Helena Bonham-Carter has a tortoise called Shelley. She wasn’t actually at Poppies (though I hope – Heaven Forfend – she isn’t a Diamonds fan either) – I read this in the Guardian.
Drank in two pubs called The Cherry Tree in two different towns in the space of half an hour. Couldn’t quite catch the 5.27 from Kettering to Harborough so waited in the CT in Kettering and watched some of the England v Wales rugby match on the TV. Small group of rugby fans – one with a genuine cauliflower ear – watching the match. Three other small groups discussing ailments – “It isn’t indigestion, it’s a build-up of acid in the stomach – I can feel it bubbling around at the back of my throat and I have to spit it out.” CT in Little Bowden full of jubilant rugby fans. Think of proposal for TV series, in which I try to drink in every pub in the British Isles called the Cherry Tree in the space of a week, using only public transport. I’d have a whale of a time doing this, but I’m not sure the viewing public would feel the same way, so not sure it has legs.
And what does all this add up to? Well, nothing really, but ”Where can we live but days?”.
Let’s take a slight detour here and resume the short series I began back in November - Old Rossallians on Youtube. We’ve seen Patrick Campbell – now let’s have a look at Phil Kelsall.
I do envy people who have one single, achievable, goal in life. Philip Kelsall, from a very early age, had one ambition and one ambition only – to play the Mighty Wurlitzer in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, and he achieved it remarkably early in life. He perfected his craft playing the organ in the school chapel. Some of the stuffier masters did query his choice of “ Oh I do want to be beside the seaside” as the recessional, but – quite rightly – he refused to be bound by convention and followed his star.
In the way, I suppose, that people who grow up in London very rarely go to the Tower of London, as tourists do, I rarely had a lot to do with Blackpool Tower. I was taken up it once. I remember visiting the zoo (or possibly aquarium?) concealed in its base and I certainly remember being taken to see the circus. The star attraction here was Charlie Cairoli And His Clowns, who, I’m afraid, I absolutely hated. The main joke seemed to be that a very tall clown who looked genuinely half-witted would be hit in the face with a plank of wood or have his trousers set on fire, and I failed to see the humour in this (and, in fact, found it quite disturbing) . I don’t know whether I was an unusually sensitive child, or just an unusually ungrateful one.
Doing some research into this (i.e. checking how to spell Cairoli) I see that the once popular Leeds anarchists Chumbawamba once wrote a song comparing Cairoli to the anarchist Prince Kopotkin, although I struggle to see the resemblance. Perhaps Kropotkin hit half-wits over the head and set fire to their trousers too? Would this have been in line with his philosophy?
Anyway, here is the maestro himself. Not to everyone’s taste, I imagine, but it must have been very hard to do. (And the ballroom itself is magnificent, by the way – it’s even got an inscription from Shakespeare over the stage – “Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear” (from Venus and Adonis)).
Now that we’ve all removed our holly, ivy and mistletoe let’s look at the necessary ritual for Candlemas itself, as described, again, by Robert Herrick.
The custom described here is the burning of the Yule log that had been brought into the house at Christmas and the retention of part of it in the house for the rest of the year to be used the next Christmas to light the next year’s log (and ward off the attentions of The Fiend in the meantime). Incidentally, if anyone has any chocolate Yule log left in the house, please don’t attempt to burn it. That would would be futile and wasteful. If it is still edible, my advice is to eat it.
Ceremonies for Candlemas Day
Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunset let it burn;
Which quench’d then lay it up again
Till Christmas next return.
It must be kept wherewith to tend
The Christmas log next year;
And where ’tis safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.
A little early for this (Candlemas is on 2nd February), but I thought I’d slip it in while I’ve got the time. It will also give you time to make any necessary preparations.
Candlemas is (or was) a festival that satisfied an obvious need in the communal psyche, but seemed to have only a tenuous connection with its ostensible religious purpose. As my Idler’s diary for 2009 put it -
“Candlemas was the common name for the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary. In the morning, many candles were lit in the church, symbolically driving out the dark. In the afternoon, there was feasting all round, with much music. Candlemas marked the formal end of winter.”
It was also the day when people took down their Christmas decorations – the holly, ivy and mistletoe they’d brought into the house at Christmas – and replaced them with other greenery that suggested the coming of spring. I suppose the contemporary equivalent would be buying a bunch of daffodils and sticking them in a vase. (My daffodils, which, as I noted on here, made an appearance as shoots in November seem to have woken up again after the snow and are making renewed efforts to grow).
A poem that gives some helpful tips on how to prepare for it is Robert Herrick’s “Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve”. Herrick’s best-remembered poems are probably the gently erotic ones he wrote as a young man, which often had a carpe diem theme, but he also wrote also wrote in a not incompatible way about the changing seasons and the rhythms of rural and devotional life. A clergyman, he was deprived of his living during the Protectorate for his Royalist sympathies (and possibly his saucy verses). In his own day he seems to have been seen as unsophisticated as compared to the likes of Donne, but was enormously popular with the Victorians for the sweetness and simplicity of his verse (he had eight poems in the Golden Treasury, for instance, to Donne’s one). I’ve always liked him, and am making a mental note to go back and read him properly.
CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE
Down with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the misletoe;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.
The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer,
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easter’s eve appear.
Then youthful box, which now hath grace
Your houses to renew,
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.
When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside,
Both of a fresh and fragrant kin,
To honour Whitsuntide.
Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oaken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.
(This, incidentally, is what he looked like. Perhaps a slight hint of Harry Enfield’s Scousers here?)
I don’t know whether the following anecdote has anything to tell us about The Way We Live Now, but it’s been an uneventful week, so I thought I’d report it anyway.
A few evenings ag0 I was hurrying for the tube near Moorgate when a chap approached me and asked me if I had a couple of quid so he could get a taxi to Homerton Hospital, as he’d come off his bike and hurt his arm. Inevitably my first thoughts were that this was a scam of a familiar sort, but he then rolled up his sleeve and revealed a gaping wound the length of his forearm. This wasn’t some feeble scratch, he appeared to have removed most of the top layer of skin. In these situations I tend to do a quick subconscious calculation involving the likelihood that the problem is genuine and the gravity of the consequences if they are telling the truth and I don’t give them the money. Teenager in party clothes in distressed condition late at night near train station gets the full amount. Bloke with can of Diamond White in town centre at midday claiming he needs a fiver to go his granny’s funeral in Arbroath gets 10p.
In this case I was thrown completely. Obviously these requests are usually scams, but if so he must have -
Been a theatrical make-up artist down on his luck. This didn’t look like the kind of joke shop effort that the Harlequins might use to cheat their way to victory. I didn’t actually ask to stick my fingers in the wound, but it looked genuine.
Have developed the wound in some other way and decided to make use of it for the purposes of begging.
Have deliberately inflicted the wound on himself for that purpose.
I have read stories of professional beggars in India who mutilate themselves (or worse, their children) to improve their chances of making a living, but I didn’t realise that had caught on in this country. I’d certainly prefer not to believe that that was the case, and I think the likeliest explanation is that he was telling the truth. And, yes, I did give him the money.
This is one of the things that the Vagrancy Act of 1824 was designed to discourage, criminalising, as it did
“Every person wandering abroad, and endeavouring by the exposure of wounds or deformities to obtain and gather Alms”.
This part of the Act was intended to deal with the “problem” of wounded veterans of the Napoleonic wars who had been unable to obtain employment and had taken to exhibiting their injuries (their severed legs and so on) to solicit contributions. No doubt some of the casualties of our current foreign adventures will find themselves in a similar situation before too long.
The Act was also, incidentally, used by Nottingham Council to prosecute a branch of Virgin Records for selling copies of “Never Mind the Bollocks”, though John Mortimer managed to get them off on that one.
A reasonable excuse, I think, for another tune from Steeleye Span. This is, I think, what we would nowadays call a mashup of two songs. The “verses” are English, the “chorus” from the Irish song on a similar theme “Johnny we hardly knew you”.
“You haven’t an arm, you haven’t a leg, the enemy nearly slew you, you’ll have to go out on the street to beg…”
One of the problems with this time of year (the period between Christmas and Easter) is the lack of festivals, high days and holy days to celebrate. There is Candlemass, which is no longer widely celebrated and, a little later, I suppose, Ash Wednesday which has its own austere beauty but does not lend itself well to theme nights in the local pub (though I’d be interested to see someone try).
The commercial world does its best. According to Cadbury’s (R.I.P.) the creme egg season starts on January 1st and continues until Easter. Valentine’s day is made much of and Shrove Tuesday is a boon to the supermarkets.
One possible opportunity for revelry, though, is Burns night (which is tonight) and I have noticed that – rather in the way that we English have latched on to St Patrick’s day – various pubs and restaurants have started to offer Burns night events which can’t really be aimed primarily at those of Scottish extraction. One of my local pubs, for instance, is offering a Burns night menu at £25.00 for 5 courses. I personally have about enough Scots blood to fill my left calf, but have never really felt entitled to break out the tatties and the neeps and get slaughtered on whisky. But any excuse will do, I suppose, in these dark days.
Burns is a poet I always like when I read him, but I’ve never really got round to reading him properly. I thought I’d offer this, though, in commemoration – it’s a song of his – Such a parcel of rogues in a Nation, sung by the electric folkies Steeleye Span.
The object of Burns’s wrath was the 1707 Treaty of Union (though he wrote it in 1791). It’s hard not to think of P.G. Wodehouse’s observation that “it is never hard to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine”. It could, too, be seen as an early manifestation of that perennial Scots football-related complaint “We wuz robbed”. As a sustained expression of contempt (something the Scots seem particularly good at), though, it’s exemplary and I can feel my left foot tapping resentfully as I listen to it. I also find the phrase “Such a parcel of rogues in a nation” comes to mind quite frequently these days – particularly when watching the news.
Some authorities ( basically me), believe that Parcel of Rogues is a play on words relating to the popular eighteenth century collective noun Parcel of Hogs. Another expression that could come in handy.
This can also stand as a tribute to Tim Hart – a multi-instrumentalist founder of Steeleye Span (and another son of the vicarage) - who died recently. The Spanners (as I’m sure no-one at all called them) could sometimes be twee, clodhopping or gimmicky, but they did also make some truly wonderful recordings of traditional music (usually when the instrumentation was reined in a bit) and I was interested to see the Fleet Foxes citing them as a primary influence, even though, as their singer says “British people think this band is dorky”. Well, I don’t.
Snow’s verses did not meet with universal approval from the dreaded Poetry Establishment, who, in those days, could be a rough lot when riled, as the following clip illustrates.
This is from England’s 1970-71 Ashes tour of Australia, when Snow was subjected to a fusillade of bottles and cans thrown by spectators, one of whom tried to pull him over the boundary rope and assault him.
The usual explantion for this incident is that the bottle-chuckers were Australian cricket fans incensed by Snow’s felling of tail-ender Terry Jenner. The truth is that the trouble was started by a group of English poets and critics who happened to be visiting Australia on a British Council tour and had decided to come down to the ground to remonstrate with Snow about the quality of his versifying.
The first bottles are believed to have been thrown by Sir Stephen Spender, who had been getting stuck into the tinnies since shortly after breakfast and had been taunting Snow with cries such as “Oi, Snow – your diction’s archaic and your scansion’s all over the shop“. Ted Hughes, who had a marked influence on the commentary style of Geoffrey Boycott, joined in with comments such as “Call yourself a poet? Mah old moom could have written that wi’ a stick of rhooobarb!”.
Things turned really ugly when Snow began to answer back, saying to Spender “Your best work was done in the ‘thirties. Why don’t you just give up!” and “You’d never have got anywhere without your pal Auden!”. Inevitably Spender invited Snow to “Come here and say that!” – he did so and ugly scenes ensued. The man who grabs Snow and tries to drag him into the crowd is believed to have been the notoriously belligerent critic Geoffrey Grigson.
(This clip isn’t from my usual suppliers – Youtube – but seems to be kosher. Doesn’t seem possible to embed it, but the link should work. It all kicks off at about 1 minute 40 if you want to skip the cricket action).
Cricket fans will note that the batsman who is beaned by Snow in the first part of the clip is Terry Jenner who, after a varied career, including a spell in prison, went on to mentor Shane Warne. Perhaps it would have been better to have annoyed someone else, in retrospect.
