The real thing and the bar room manoeuvre

I went to hear John Burnside read in Ely the other night. We were upstairs at Toppings, a real bookshop. I've been meaning to go there for ages: they have an excellent programme of readers. Twenty chairs just about packed the place. It's a welcoming den to idle away a few hours, in case you haven't already got enough books in the house. I was racking my brains to recall what the shop had been when I lived there back in the 80s. A bakers, a gentlemen's outfitters perhaps? There's no trace; Toppings have made it completely their own, and it feels as if they have been there forever. Fabulous! I shall be back.

I wish them every success, and they seem to have both the curatorial sense and the critical mass for it. A much smaller bookshop opened in our village in the 90s and flourished until Amazon and Tesco killed it off. The proprietor was keen on poetry, and knew someone at OUP (remember when they published poetry?), so we had a succession of readings: Michael Donaghy, Peter Porter, Anne Stevenson, Stephen Romer - and others who weren't on the Oxford list, like Katrina Porteous and Kevin Crossley-Holland. There was even wild talk of getting Anthony Hecht over. What days! It could seat about a dozen people on various chairs, tables and bar stools. Much wine was consumed (and Michael played the whistle). It closed last year, the poetry-loving proprietor having long since retired.

It's the first time I'd heard Burnside in person, and found him engaging, thoughtful and unpompous. It was interesting to hear him talk about his work as well as read from it. His publicist won't want to know that he read from his latest poetry collection, The Hunt in the Forest, as well as from the second volume of memoir he is really supposed to be promoting, Waking Up in Toytown. But if she's reading this, she should know he was worth travelling for. I'm reading The Hunt in the Forest right now. It's good to have heard his voice so I can put the poems to it.

At the reading I found myself sitting next to G, whom I hadn't seen in twenty years. We went for a swift half to a pub I'd never set foot in during all the years I lived there, as back then it was a bit too spit & sawdust even for me. It's under new ownership, so G wanted to check it out. He stepped through the lobby to the glazed inner door, and couldn't open it. Push, push, this side and that. Standing behind him, I could see what he couldn't: below his eye level, a sign that said Pull. Who ever heard of anyone pulling open the door to a bar room? That's no way to start a brawl.

It's elf and safety, you see. If there's a fire (even less likely now smoking is forbidden) then the panicking customers must be able to get out quickly. But that oddly placed handle should have been a warning.

Everything had been ripped out, every surface levelled and sanitised. There were some low armchairs and there may even have been a potted plant. Perhaps the imagination supplies that, because it resembled nothing so much as the foyer of a modern mid-market commercial hotel. While we stood at the immaculate bar supping our Adnams, reminiscing about the livestock market and trying to ignore the smell of paint, several other punters batted at the door, finding it as baffling as G had. What sort of pub was it? It was near enough. It served decent beer. It was smoke free and there were places to sit down. There was no canned music, no slot machine (but neither, as far as I could tell, dartboard, pool table or jukebox). No ugly behaviour brewing. But all the while, I felt there was something I was not getting about it. I enjoyed my beer, and was in good company, but what was this pub for? It was almost empty. There was a group of young women talking quietly in the corner, one of whom G knew slightly and nodded to. They were subdued and respectable. It didn't seem to be the sort of place where you should raise your voice.

Like a poem that evinces all superficial properties of a poem apart from actual motive, this called itself a pub, and it sold beer. It certainly provided somewhere out of the rain to yarn away with an old acquaintance. But it didn't feel like a pub. The men confounded by the door finally entered, trailing tobacco smoke, and looked round bewildered. You could tell they wouldn't be stopping long.

Antidote

[Emily asks: Did you enjoy the Blytons? Yes, like a drug. When I wasn’t reading them I’d be trying to work out how I could get away in secret for my next fix. It was the summer holiday, and my mother thought I should be out of doors. Normally I needed no encouragement, so she must have worked out that something was amiss. Inevitably, she discovered me in the act.]



- Said, said, said, said, said! My mother jabs her finger down the page. It’s so boring! She looks exasperated.
- But it’s not boring! It’s very exciting! I want to know what happens next.
- Said Julian, said Dick, said George. Didn't you notice? Proper reading is when you read the words.
She’s right. Why hadn’t I noticed?
- Look at this. She produces another red-covered book, the same size as Five Go to Smuggler's Top. My spirits lift for a moment, then I see the title: Just William. Richmal? Why do these writers all have funny names? The pictures aren’t as good as Eileen Soper’s. The boy doesn't look much older than me. He’s very scruffy. There isn’t anyone who looks as sensible as Julian. At least there’s a dog, but he’s not powerful like Timmy. I don’t think these children will be able to deal with grownup situations like smugglers and spies. But the print is small, which suggests it's for older children. It is confusing. I look again at the boy with his cap askew and his socks around his ankles. His face is grinning and dirty.
- That boy doesn’t look very reliable.
- He's got more life in his little finger than all this lot together.
I stare at his little finger, which is just a blur.
- I think you'll enjoy his company. But you can’t have it yet. Finish that Famous Five and come and tell me all about it. Then we’ll see.

* * *

My mother is right of course. She is always right. There is an art to writing that doesn’t draw attention to itself. But now she’s pointed it out, I can’t help noticing the saids, and that’s done for it.

William hardly ever just “says” anything. He’s forever exclaiming, proclaiming, conjecturing, expostulating, reasoning, arguing, protesting and even ejaculating. (Ah that will get me some Google traffic. But those were the days when social intercourse was polite.) I get the impression of a boy with a very mobile face.

Sometimes I need to ask the meaning of a word, and the tubby, child-sized COD has become a dear friend. But that's another story.

Torch under bedclothes

By balancing the stool on the chair, I can just reach the top of the wardrobe. I know it’s silly and dangerous, but I’m sensible and a good climber. I’ll get into trouble if anyone catches me.

It’ll be worth it.

Up there under the ceiling is a cardboard box full of books the new vet carried into our kitchen when he arrived for supper yesterday, announcing: Anne would like these. Out of politeness he’s allowed to show what’s in there: a glimpse of maroon, occasionally light blue bare boards, dust jackets long gone: a dozen fat volumes – twenty perhaps. All the same size, the same but different. A collection! On the bottom right hand corner is impressed an almost illegible signature, which seems to say Cuid Blyton. Cuid is a funny name, I think, but the titles are irresistible: Five on a Treasure Island, Five Go to Smugglers’ Top. For me! All night, and all the next day, unread adventures torment me: Five Go to Mystery Moor, Five Go Off to Camp, Five Go to Billycock Hill.

My mother deems them “unsuitable”. You can read them when you’re old enough, she says.

It’s not fair. She knows I am a good reader. The headmaster calls us in for reading tests. He says, I don’t know why I bother with you and Christine Simpson, I only call you in to cheer myself up. He puts his arm round me in a fatherly way. I have a reading age of fourteen.

It is only years later that I realise my mother meant when you’re old enough to recognise them for the trash they are.

Meanwhile, here I am, tiptoe on the stool balanced on the chair, stretching for the forbidden books in the cardboard box just too high for me to reach. I try jumping. The stool rocks alarmingly. Only by tugging and tearing a corner of the cardboard can I get a hold on one. It’s alright, no one will look on top of the wardrobe until Christmas time, by when I’ll be old enough to say I was much younger when I committed the crime. They might even think the box was torn already. So I dip in and grab a book.

Five On a Treasure Island. The vet is a methodical man. It’s the first in the series.

How different from the home life of an ordinary person

For reasons we won't go into, this morning I found myself listening to William Shawcross being interviewed by Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour about his new biography of the late Queen Mother. What an extraordinary piece of radio. The Royal Family is an anachronism, useful as trade ambassadors and tourist attraction. And - in principle anyway - it is a good thing for the Prime Minister to have someone to defer to. (Imagine Blair as head of state. Or Cameron for that matter.) But, while Murray has no time for this gilded, profligate life and sense of entitlement, Shawcross adores his subject. I'm on Murray's side in this. Yet through Shawcross's passion one can also glimpse Murray from his point of view: shrewish, petty, practically philistine. But she keeps her cool.

After the abdication, the war, Diana, the alleged colostomy - the fun starts at around 11 minutes in:

JM: One of the other things she was criticised for was her profligate lifestyle, and she seems to have almost gaily announced that she might go bankrupt. Why did she live in such splendour?
WS: Because she enjoyed it. Because she grew up to that. She was one of the last of generations of people, of aristocrats, who weren't ashamed of their birth and the concept of noblesse oblige, she wasn't ashamed of giving employment to lots of people and having a jolly good life. And she enjoyed it, she could afford it, and she certainly lived better than you and I do. And why not?
JM: Could she afford it?
WS: She gave a huge amount of pleasure -
JM: She did have an overdraft
WS: Of course. Have you never had an overdraft?
JM: (Pause) I'm not the Queen Mum.
WS: I've had overdrafts. I couldn't live without an overdraft. (laughs) Always begging the bank manager not to come down too heavy on me
JM: But she had thirty three staff and she had -
WS: (interrupting) Why do you go on about this?
JM: - she had - Because it's fascinating -
WS: It's so silly, Jenni, this is an incredibly important woman, who epitomised this country through the whole of the second world war. She held the country together after the abdication, she created - she enabled her husband who was a hesitant, but adorable man, whom she was devoted to, she enabled him to take over the throne in very difficult circumstances, when a lot of people thought the monarchy was finished in 1936. She personified and symbolised this country. Churchill won the war for us but she and the King sustained the British people through six years of terror and horror, and that's what matters, and you go on about her staff. It's pathetic actually,
JM: - it -
WS: that doesn't really matter, I'm really surprised at you.
JM: - if she -
WS: You're one of the, you're the Queen Mother of Broadcasting and all you can think about is her staff and her illnesses. (fiercely) It's very very funny -
JM: I think people would be fascinated if they thought I had my menus hand-written in French every night, don't you?
WS: No - I well, they might well be fascinated if you do but why shouldn't she?
JM: You met her didn't you -
WS: Yes
JM: - on a couple of occasions and you clearly adored her.
WS: Yes I do adore her! And everyone adored her! Her staff stayed with her for thirty years. Nobody wanted to leave her. One of her pages who'd been with her for twenty five, twenty six years, um, on her hundredth birthday, he was very very ill, he stayed with her till her hundredth birthday so he could take her her morning coffee but went into hospital and died two days later. He kept himself going for her, just to be there for her hundredth birthday. And I hope this is what this book puts over, that she was a woman who was much loved, not just by the millions of people who didn't know her, but even more importantly by the people who worked for her, who knew her well, and I think that's - well, I mean - that's a celebration, something to be celebrated, and I was jolly lucky to be able to have this treasure trove of all her letters of a hundred years.

(Etc.)


...an incredibly important woman... What?
Do listen again before it disappears.

That story of the servant disturbs me. What was his name? Was his loyalty, sense of duty, misplaced? You'd think a sensitive employer would have had him off to the doctor sharpish, but people are not easily or kindly separated from their objects of veneration. He might have been cruelly disappointed if denied the opportunity to serve. Perhaps HMQM was working on that assumption.

By the way, Shawcross and Pan MacMillan are getting a lot of mileage on the BBC today. Nice publicity if you can get it.

William Shawcross is 63.

Do you like to Kipple?

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But - we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring summer in!
And we bring you news by word of mouth -
Good news for cattle and corn -
Now is the Sun come up from the South,
With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

The nights are starting to draw in.

An Anthology of Modern Verse

chosen by A. Methuen, with an Introduction by Robert Lynd

This is a curiosity I picked up from my local Oxfam a while back. Unfortunately the online text is totally scannered, so there are idiocies like "rliythm" for "rhythm" - you just have to use your wits.

This "fine and catholic collection of modern verse" was first published May 12th 1921. It's dedicated to Thomas Hardy, O.M. Greatest of the Moderns. It went through seven editions in that first year. My copy is the thirtieth edition, published in 1940. I don't know how much longer it continued in publication.*

The poets are all from the British Isles. (Well, OK, Eliot's La Figlia Che Piange sneaks under the wire of date and residence.) Of the 92 names represented, more than half would be recognised today. How much of this familiarity was because of the persistence of the anthology, and how much did the anthology persist because of the popularity of the poets? The two must have fed off each other. At any rate, people were buying it.

I enjoy old anthologies not just for seeing reputations in the making, but for the snapshot - or rather, flickr stream - of history. There's a glimpse of people hardly read these days - eg Alice Meynell, JC Squire (I'm including them in the category "recognised") - consigned to a label "Catholic/Suffragette", "Georgian/fascist", but who had a way with words that merits a glance even if you don't share their politics or religion. And right next to Squire is James Stephens, and after him RL Stevenson.

The poets are presented in alphabetical order. No dates are given. It's rather touching to consider the publishers of each (Mr. John Lane, Mr. Wm. Heinemann, Sir Henry Newbolt, Mr. Basil Blackwell, Lord Desborough, Messrs Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd and so on). The compiler, Methuen, says nothing about his criteria for selection. His 1921 note remarks that "considerations of copyright have prevented the inclusion of one or two eminent writers", that "roughly, the pieces chosen are either the work of living poets, or with rare exceptions, poets who have died within the last fifteen years. It is hoped in any case that the spirit of the new poetry inspires this little book."

It was rather a shock to discover that Methuen's first name was Algernon, and that his surname was really Stedman. I'd love to know the story behind that. He didn't write the introduction though. Robert Lynd, who did, was a name new to me, but felt familiar:

Every child is a poet from the age at which he learns to beat a silver spoon on the table in numbers. He likes to make not only a noise, but a noise with something of the regularity of an echo. He coos with delight when he is taken on an elder's knee and is trotted up and down to the measure of "This is the way the ladies ride," with its steady advance of pace till the ultimate fury of the country clown's gallop. Later on, he himself trots gloriously in reins with bells that jingle in rhyme as he runs. His pleasure in swings, in sitting behind a horse, in travelling in a train, with its puff as regular as an uncle's watch and its wheels thudding out endless hexameters on the line, arise from the same delight in rhythm.

Well, that's a cosy middle class childhood, from back in the days when the middle class weren't forever pretending not to be, before they grew ashamed of themselves.

After suggesting that poetry can be distinguished from verse by its exercise of imagination, and from prose by its music, he makes the case for popular poetry:

Whichever may be the sense in which we use the word, there is a good defence of poetry as, not the possession of a select few, but as part of the general human inheritance. Poetry is natural to man: it is not a mere cult of abnormal or intellectual persons.

Hear, hear!

*Perhaps not for many years longer, as Lynd himself edited an anthology for Methuen's firm in 1939. It had considerable overlap with Methuen's own but as well as including Housman (curiously omitted from Methuen's), it edged into the modern with Auden, Day Lewis, MacNeice, Spender, Dylan Thomas and others - and the fifteenth woman, Ruth Pitter.