This week, a minor divertissement; the result of a collision of ideas, which started with random musings on coups (still very much a thing, as we can see), which then jostled against considerations of politics, and letters and letter-writing, giving rise to (drum roll, pulls rabbit from hat): one, the - admittedly sexist - notion that if you want a coup done well, you should probably rope in a woman (Catherine the Great! Bloodless); and two, well, same again really, because Catherine not only delivered the gold standard, top-of-the-range, way to go if you're feeling coup-inclined, coup (reiterate: bloodless1); she was, as you know, a high-stakes political intriguante translated to Enlightenment ruler extraordinaire - and she wrote letters.

Vast quantities; but it's two which WTRI finds particularly interesting, in the way - in a few lines - they illustrate, illuminate and demonstrate many of the facets of the formal letter, through what's said, how it's said, and - most revealingly - what's not said; and how - with hindsight at a hundred per cent - we can see both behind and through them. Both letters are written to Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia:

12 March 17621

Monsieur my Brother

In thanking Your Majesty for the good wishes You have shown me on the accession to the throne of the Emperor, my Husband, I feel myself indebted to Your Majesty for the marks of attention and friendship which You have given me.

I will seek opportunities to return the compliment and to persuade Your Majesty of the high esteem and great consideration towards You in which I am, Monsieur my Brother, your good Sister

Catherine

All fairly straightforward, nothing to see here, boilerplate royal exchange one might say: except, as we know by the date, this is written only a few months before the successful execution of the coup by which Catherine seizes the throne from her husband, (Frederick the Great’s subsequent comment was that Peter allowed his throne to be taken from him, like a child being sent off to bed); and it's notable that Catherine makes sure that she gets in a response to Frederick on his ritual congratulations to her husband. (Also worth noting: those fraternal addresses are, of course, standard princely etiquette - but, at this point, Catherine, although also originally a princess in her own right, is writing as the spouse of a ruler; and, usually, fraternal exchanges are between reigning monarchs.) Catherine's bread-and-butter letter is both conforming to protocol and laying down a marker.

Some months later, a bare two weeks after the coup:

St. Petersburg the 24 July 17622

Monsieur,

The letter which Your Majesty wrote after the declaration which was made on my behalf by General Count Chernichew [Chernyshev] was delivered to me yesterday by Monsieur de Goltz, I thank Your Majesty for the hopes in my favour which you express; my intention is to preserve the peace and live in friendship and concord with Your Majesty, persuaded as I am of the same sentiments on your side. These will already be communicated by the orders which I have sent to repair the misunderstandings in Prussia which arose from an excess of zeal.

I entreat Your Majesty to be persuaded of the esteem and consideration in which I am, Monsieur my Brother, Your Majesty your good Sister,

Catherine

Here, as we can see, Catherine is all business -a brisk fencer's salute in thanks for Frederick's good wishes; then she moves swiftly on to the politically important reassurances: she will observe the treaty that ended the Seven Years’ War and returned Russian gains to Prussia; and her hope is to continue that peace (with an elegant little reminder to Frederick that it takes two to tango - persuaded as I am of the same sentiments on Your side); a dextrous smoothing over of “misunderstandings” (that suave excess of zeal and all it implies; the entire letter a tissue of implication, of course): acquisition followed by consolidation. Even at this early stage, it's very clear that Catherine knows exactly what she's doing. (Again, worth noting that, technically, we’re all Prussians here: Frederick, Catherine and Peter were born Prussian; until dynastic considerations changed the official nationalities - if not residual affinities - of the latter two. Peter never shook these off - to his detriment, as we can see; Catherine, as always, was far more sophisticated - only a couple of years after her coup, she’d stabilised an alignment with Prussia that would last nearly twenty years - but only while she saw this as to Russia's advantage.) There's an extra stroke for Frederick at the end of the letter - Monsieur, my Brother, Your Majesty (“Majesty” reiterated) - another tactical gesture, as Catherine asserts her princely equality, whilst simultaneously offering courteous deference as the newest monarch in play.

And that's it. Yet those two letters, to the same correspondent, in both the said and the unsaid, form a proscenium arch through which we can project our knowledge of what really happened; described by Catherine to her former lover Stanislas Poniatowski (later King of Poland) as

The revolution which has just come about to my advantage[,]

entering more openly into the complex, stressful, precisely calibrated detail which enabled this success (rather than the seamlessly appropriate transfer of power tacitly implied to Frederick); although - a politician forged in a hard school - she recognises her good fortune, also describing this success as

[M]iraculous. It is quite incredible the unanimous support with which this has happened.3

(Also, a wonderfully Maradona-like moment when she says that “such a large set of fortunate circumstances could only have been coordinated by the hand of God” - with, as we’ve seen, a little strategic assistance.)

There's a magnificent steeliness about Catherine that infuses everything she writes (Greene’s “shard of ice” one might say, even though she isn't writing fiction - except, of course, in a sense she is); whether it's the decisiveness and tactical accomplishment of those two letters to Frederick; or the steely insouciance with which she shrugs off Poniatowski’s offstage ambitious approaches:

I received your letter. A regular correspondence would be subject to a thousand inconveniences, and I have twenty thousand things about which I need to be cautious and do not have the time to write dangerous billets doux.4

This is a woman completely focused on the chessboard; and fully aware of her own power and value as a queen in play: if ever there was a (decisive, that word again, but so true) riposte to the Byronic “‘tis woman's whole existence” theory of love, we can agree it's here.

She strategically reassures Poniatowski, just as she took care to reassure Frederick (“I shall do everything I can for you and your family - of that be absolutely persuaded”); then, like a shark, moves swiftly on (she is, she reminds him, extremely busy and, additionally, “feel[s] the full weight of government”): what's striking throughout is her absolute ease with power; although there's an almost poignant note in her sign-off to this particular letter:

Farewell, in this world there are situations that are thoroughly strange.

Or is it? Written roughly a month after the coup (with its long build-up), it does suggest the processing of an intense - and highly dangerous - experience, brought to successful fruition; but, equally, could be another palliative sop to Poniatowski's thwarted ambitions (he nourished hopes of joining her on the throne as consort), presented in a suitably disarming feminine guise; most probably, because actions are rarely as clearcut as retrospective analysis, there are elements of both.

But, if you really want to see Catherine the Great, read her Memoirs. Written without expectation of publication (for obvious reasons); for herself; and possibly to explain herself to her estranged son, Paul; they're extraordinarily frank, riddled with political intrigue, and propelled by the narrative tension of a thriller. And there are letters - and the dangers of letters, when paper, still a primary medium of communication, was power - including the seminal, nailbiting scenes in which Catherine burns all her papers (to protect herself and others against incrimination), then is subsequently confronted by the Empress Elizabeth with a basket containing a few that got away…a political education unfolding before us, played for the highest stakes; the penalties, incarceration, at best; or death. Once more, we’re introduced into the closet as private space enabling revelatory performance; in this case by a lady very much able, in Samuel Richardson's evocative phrase, “to glare” (and happy to do so): in her letters, which offer the public performance, polished, accomplished, intellectually enquiring, ponderously playful; (understandably, because in her letters she can never ignore who she is, but must constantly - however subtly - reaffirm her royalty); and alone, with her memoirs, where she can simply be, her royalty an innate element of that being, but not something it's necessary to demonstrate or perform.

The bloodless narrative of the proscenium arch exemplifies both the bloodless coup itself; and Catherine's official sign-off to history - as phatic a performance as her observation of the formalities of regal correspondence (“I am my dear Muse, Clio, your good Sister Catherine, and this is the version for your records”). As always, it's the spaces between which offer infinitely more possibility, an insight into the situations that are thoroughly strange.

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(Another bonus reissue; didn't even have to change the title: because, frankly, who can improve on Catherine's own magnificent turn of phrase?)

4

To Stanislas Poniatowski 2 August 1762

Both Poniatowski letters from Catherine the Great: Selected Letters, translated Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, Oxford World’s Classics, OUP 2018

The corn was orient1 and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.

That’s Thomas Traherne writing in the 17thc (Centuries of Meditation, Third Century, 3), recalling his perception of the world as a child: time has no meaning, beauty is extraordinary and omnipresent (those golden shimmering waves of wheat, blaze across our consciousness, Traherne arresting our attention2 with the singularity of his description, from the outset - this is the opening sentence of the third meditation in the century): the world is wonderful.

The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world…[t]he green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me…they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubim! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty.

The softness of “dust,” juxtaposed with “stones”, picked up by the sibilance of “precious”; the continuation of the golden metaphor, dazzling us with its brightness as it bathes and illuminates its subjects (spilling over, by implication, even to the green trees); the exclamation marks (originally, points of admiration - wonder): this is sensuous, seductive writing that ravishes just as the child Traherne was ravished (borne away, too), plunging us with absolute immediacy into the immortal present of childhood; although it isn't an entirely unbounded world - “the gates were at first the end of the world”- again, the detail a perfect reminder of the perceptions of childhood. When he first observes the trees, it's through the gates, as, delicately, he draws the reader's gaze outwards with his, intimating with great subtlety, the expansion of the child’s perception - and world - with the enlargement of his visual apprehension and appreciation.

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Again, in the poem Shadows on the Water (this and the passage above are probably his most widely-known and easily available pieces), he recalls his childish wonder at the reflections seen in water - “Thus did I by the water's brink/ Another world beneath me think” - explores and depicts the vision conjured up, vividly extrapolating his thesis on the relationship between the spiritual and temporal worlds, intensified through layering the physicality of the water (perhaps pond or river, but also, definitely, puddle) and the insubstantial visions within (echoes of Proapero’s “cloud-capp’d towers” reverberate; it's certainly not impossible that Traherne read The Tempest, less likely (although, again, not impossible) that he saw it performed - he grew up under the Commonwealth (Puritanism in the ascendant); and although theatre returned in triumph after the Restoration, Shakespeare wasn't fashionable).

That puddle - “That through a little chink/Which one dry ox or horse might drink/We other worlds should see”: intimations of immortality are everywhere, Traherne is saying, it doesn't matter how apparently negligible the source. What matters is the noticing - which will lead to understanding (a constant theme - for instance, in the poem Walking “To walk is by a thought to go;/To move in spirit to and fro;/To mind the good we see;/To taste the sweet.”): understanding, to an approach to, if not oneness with, divinity.

(The seduction and enchantment of reflection in water, harks back to the Greek myth of Narcissus - as you’ll remember, the beautiful youth who, on seeing his reflection for the first time, becomes so entranced by the beautiful, heartlessly unresponsive stranger in the pool, that - unable to leave him - he pines away and dies. One difference, of course, is that, on discovering reflection, Narcissus falls in love with himself (the particular): Traherne falls in love with the world (and becomes conscious of its infinity). But there's also another way of looking at Narcissus, rather than simply as a punitively dismissive exemplar of shallow beauty destroying itself: his rejection of importunate would-be lovers an instinctive preservation of the unrecognised self (literal self-preservation), in an implicitly violent society, undercut by the fatal dawning of self-consciousness (imposed as divine punishment for his instinctual impregnability - itself a dangerous approach to divinity). This is supported by the seer Tiresias's assurance to his mother that her son will enjoy a long life “as long as he does not know himself.” (WTRI’s italics). Narcissus is at a liminal point - neither boy nor man - self-consciousness, inciting sexual love, pushes him closer to the latter; but is a state which can’t be returned from, irrevocably destroying a more innocent way of being - and seeing; and him.)

But Traherne - a consistently benevolent and joyous writer - emphatically diverges from this position (and its - reflection - in the Christian tradition of a fall from grace, resulting from corrupting knowledge, which his writing addresses) by reiterating throughout his work, his belief that innocence (and the acuteness of perception and apprehension allied to it, often inspiring wonder) not only does not have to be lost (he allies this to upbringing and teaching) but - imperatively and unusually - can be regained.

And, just to emphasise the range of didactic creative possibility in the idea of reflection, consider - looking forward to the mid 19thc - Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies, in which the debased and abused chimney sweep’s apprentice, Tom, discovers - is transported to - a whole new world beneath the river; and in consequence, is given the opportunity of moral renewal and spiritual rebirth. Kingsley's starting position is in many ways very similar to Traherne's world view, emphasised by the novel’s epigraph, which is a quotation from Wordsworth’s3 Lines Written in Early Spring: “To her fair works did/ Nature link/The human soul that/through me ran”; (interestingly, although Traherne is generally - somewhat reductively - categorised as “mystic”, Wordsworth, whose work certainly evinces a strong seam of mysticism, is not - surely, the latter (lack of) designation assumes a more nuanced approach).

The metaphors abound: Tom has an innate longing for physical cleanliness, despite the vicissitudes of his job; he only becomes aware of his “dirtiness” when he catches sight of his reflection - in a mirror - for the first time. And, of course, the whole translation to a beautiful underwater world:

Tom was now completely amphibious…and what is better still, he was clean. For the first time in his life, he felt how comfortable it was to have nothing on him but himself. But he only enjoyed it; he did not know it, or think about it…

The boy whose only religious (to be without religion in the mid-nineteenth century was still a terrible thing) lexicon was swear words; the horizon of whose ambition extended only to becoming a master sweep like his master (with a bull terrier - shades of Bill Sikes), and drinking, bullying and swaggering himself, has been “translated” to a new environment, in which he takes constant pleasure; and, consequently, reborn. (Although, he still has quite a few lessons to learn.)

Kingsley was a clergyman (quite a radical one - scientifically engaged, friend and espouser of Darwin; one of his novel’s most important digressions, about the need to question everything; possibly its most extraordinary assertion - within the tradition in which he was writing - being to present the immanence of divinity as female) writing in pursuit of social reform. Traherne (also a clergyman) was - apparently (his work unpublished4) - writing for himself; but, certainly, to discuss, argue, elucidate his world view, shaped by his spiritual beliefs; frequently returning to his childhood as the well-spring of his creative and spiritual development. His concerns often fall within the parameters of what we would now call quantum mechanics, theoretical physics, cosmology (one can't help thinking he’d have loved the title of Stephen Hawking’s PhD thesis - Properties of Expanding Universes - even though he would have parted company, theologically): he’s packed with questions regarding corporeality, time, space, the universe(s), infinity - questions often posed scientifically but, ultimately reasoned out as the exposition of his religious position.

But, these themes - of wonder, seeing and the innate beauty of the world - are constant throughout his writing, expressed with a generosity, vividness and singularity of perspective that makes his writing supremely enjoyable, whatever one’s personal perspective.

Let us age a little. No longer playing in puddles, a little more experience under our belts, veering between utter certainty and almost debilitating uncertainty; in thrall to the sublime wonder that is sleep, as only a teenager can be…seventeen.

Olivia Curtis wakes up on her seventeenth birthday, full of a consciousness that she's reached a liminal point -

Nowadays, a peculiar emotion accompanied the moment of looking in a mirror: fitfully, rarely, a stranger might emerge: a new self. It had happened two or three times already.

- almost one of the grown-ups now (people her age get married, she reflects), but still close enough to childhood to feel with its intensity; and to approach many experiences with a questioning freshness, despite the occasional spasms of jaded sophistication common to most teenagers. Invitation to the Waltz (Rosamund Lehmann) follows Olivia (and her family) throughout the week after her birthday, culminating in a dance at the “Big House” in their village, Olivia's first.

It's one of those novels about which some people complain because, they say, “nothing happens” (which always seems to offer an interesting sidelight on both their perceptions of the novel as a form and of life itself - possibly a succession of James Bond-type scenarios for the latter?), because, of course, everything happens: life happens, with all the importance of small incidents and quotidian interactions, domestic detail rendered with pointillist fidelity: everything has significance. (Naturally, the family dog claims our attention - Simpkin, a Pekingese accepting the homage that's his due with an imperial snore - we’re in the twenties, peak Peke era, their snub noses and flirting, plumy tails are everywhere, including this novel.)

One of Olivia's birthday presents is a length of flame-coloured silk (which she’ll have made up into a dress for the dance - a mini-drama in itself; especially at the fateful moment of trying-on). Flame-coloured silk for a seventeen-year-old in the twenties, though - chosen by her older sister, Kate, because she knew it would suit Olivia better than the pastel colours their mother prefers (and are generally considered suitable for young girls); allowed by Olivia's mother: Lehmann distills an entire catalogue of meaning into a single length of material; the overall accumulation of detail throughout the novel leading, almost imperceptibly (rather like geological development), to change. Olivia is not quite the same person5 at the end of the week, as she was at the beginning.

And, if questioning is the foundation of wonder, maybe the answer to the calcification of experience that blunts sensibility is: why?

A vicarious picnic? Our only proviso, good weather, something only literature can guarantee; at the moment it's rather hot but that could (probably will) change at any moment, so, some suitably summery optimism, unconfined by actual weather…

The perfect picnic, the very pineapple of picnic perfection is, of course, the one we all know and love from The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame): the Water Rat has been introducing the Mole to one of life's sublime pleasures -

“Nice? It's the only thing…there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats

- and when the Mole takes to it, like a Water Rat born and bred, they decide on a little excursion.

He looped the painter through a ring in his landing-stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after a short interval reappeared staggering under a fine wicker picnic basket.

“Shove that under your feet,” he observed to the Mole, as he passed it down into the boat…

“What's inside it?” cried the Mole, wriggling with curiosity.

“There's cold chicken inside it,” replied the Rat briefly; “coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscressandsandwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater -”

“O stop, stop!” cried the Mole in ecstasies. “This is too much!”

“Do you really think so?” enquired the Rat seriously. “It's only what I always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are always telling me I'm a mean beast and cut it very fine!”

That “briefly,” and the litany that follows are part of what ensures this picnic becomes engraved on the reader's mind: the platonic ideal of the Edwardian picnic (surely its apotheosis) manifested in the Water Rat’s sacramental gabble, underscored by the animadversions of the other animals who insist that he's “cut[ting] it very fine!”

And, because perfect beauty - whether in form or experience - always incorporates imperfection (otherwise its simply pretty), there's just the tiniest amount of grit:

“I wonder which of us had better pack the luncheon basket?” [The Water Rat] did not speak as if he was frightfully eager for the treat.

“O please, let me!” said the Mole. So, of course, the Rat let him.

Packing the basket was not quite such pleasant work as unpacking the basket. It never is…and although just when he had got the basket packed and strapped up tightly, he saw a plate staring up at him from the grass, and when the job had been done again the Rat pointed out a fork which anybody ought to have seen, and last of all, behold! the mustard pot, which he had been sitting on without knowing it - still, somehow, they got finished at last, without much loss of temper.

These tiny imperfections are part of the genetic identity of all good picnics, everything forgiven as long as the weather holds up. E. Nesbit (another Edwardian) is particularly good at the pleasures of a summer in the country - “a white house with a green garden and an orchard beyond” - and, as in all narratives of enchantment, the trials and tribulations of wishes granted. In Five Children and It, the children have wished for wings (one of their better wishes, as it happens); but there's still the problem that magnificent, feathery Victorian stained-glass angel wings do not allow for free circulation in the world below - and they become both hungry and tired; an apparently insoluble problem, until Cyril spots

“a larder window at the side of the clergyman's house, and I saw things to eat inside - custard pudding and cold chicken and tongue and pies - and jam. It's rather a high window - but with wings -”

“How clever of you!” said Jane.

“Not at all,” said Cyril modestly; “any born general - Napoleon or the Duke of Marlborough - would have seen it just the same as I did.”

‘“It seems very wrong,” said Anthea.

“Nonsense,” said Cyril. “What was it Sir Philip Sidney said when the soldier wouldn't give him a drink? - ‘My need is greater than his.’”1

So the larder raid is conducted; “paid” for by half-a-crown, and they enjoy their picnic on the roof of the church tower:

I do not wish to describe the picnic party on the top of the tower. You can imagine well enough what it is like to carve a chicken and a tongue with a knife that has only one blade and that snapped off short about halfway down…you can't imagine…how soda-water behaves when you try to drink it straight out of a syphon…

However…tongue and chicken and new bread are very good things, and no-one minds being sprinkled a little with soda-water on a really fine hot day…

Naturally, everyone falls asleep afterwards.

This picnic is even more impromptu than Ratty and Moley's (although it conforms to key elements of the ur-picnic template - cold tongue, cold chicken…). In addition, there are ethical implications which they’ll have to grapple with (“Twilight is very beautiful; but it is chilly”) when they wake up after sunset (when the results of their wishes end), wingless and stranded (the tower door is locked), “three-halfpence in their pockets, and a doubtful act about the necessities of life to be accounted for if anyone found them with the soda-water syphon.”

Yet this moral ambiguity is also very much part of the picnic's inheritance: there has always been an element of subversion, disruptiveness inherent in the concept of “picnic.” Probable etymology starts with les frères Bacchiques de Pique-Nique, which makes them sound rather jollier than they were - fictional hypocritical revolutionary gluttons in a 17thc French satire - the original champagne socialists written by someone who really didn't like them. Still, the idea of pique-nique (generally assumed an elision of “bite” and “nothing of any kind”) caught on as an emblem for the daringly informal in a highly codified social world, ranging from bringing your own dishes and/or splitting the bill to “Piquenic” subscription balls (which sounds rather like attaching the new fashionable word to an event to make it more attractive), to - leaping across the Channel - a short-lived and extremely raucous Pic-Nic Society founded by a bunch of young aristocrats in late Georgian London, that, as well as lavish refreshments, included high-stakes gambling and theatrical performances (in other words, all the most fashionable amusements of the time, spliced together). The key element is that all these picnics took place indoors. The picnic, initially at least, wasn't Romantic in its daring - it was fashionable.

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The Pic-Nic Society was shut down by a consortium headed by Richard Sheridan (the dramatist and owner of Drury Lane Theatre), overreacting to a perceived threat to their control of the theatrical landscape; supporting their position by an energetic press campaign that included citing Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary definitions as authority for asserting

that I presume that by a Pic-Nic Supper, must be intended an Entertainment ‘consummately villainous, seasoned and imbued highly with everything bad; and where the object is to cozen at Dice or Cards.’2

We’re a long way from the river-bank idyll; but, on the plus side, the Concert of Ancient Music - six oratorios a season, three guineas a performance - which shared the street, possibly the same building, as the Pic-Nics must have been relieved. It was a bit like placing the club of the moment next to the Wigmore Hall.

When did the picnic move outside? Where else could it go? Moving along from our cave and plain beginnings, people have always eaten outside, of course - work, travel, as the corollary to organised outdoor sport (a hunt, for example). Moving the entertainment itself outdoors, also has a long track record: the extraordinary court “magnificences” of Catherine de’ Medici, which incorporated pastoral and classical fantasias, lavish banquets, and flash-mob style dances by beauties ablaze in gold and silver - the fantasy and banquet elements taking place outdoors (in a meadow by a dairy at Fontainebleau; on an island), the dancing bringing things back indoors; the subsequent tradition of fêtes champêtres and fêtes galantes (the former leaning towards an idea of the pastoral - which could include sitting around a white tablecloth with a lute (as in Dirck Hals’s 1627 painting Fête Champêtre), or something rather more relaxed (Titian’s Concert Champêtre 1509/10) - the latter, leaning more towards courtship and seduction; consequently including costumes, masks, disguise, in a word, Watteau: all outdoors.

The wild young Pic-Nics were really just harking back to a courtly past, allying lavish entertainment and performance with picnic’s ad hoc, potluck aesthetic: all if which made it a prime contender for a new alliance with the Romantic ideal of nature and naturalness; activities could also appear to spring “naturally as the leaves to a tree3.” By bringing the constructed looseness and informality of the picnic into a direct relationship with the natural world (indeed, making it a way of experiencing the natural world), the picnic gained an implicit (though optional) spiritual dimension, renewed its radical credentials - and, with its new egalitarian top-dressing, became respectable.

But, because the new rock’n'roll is never really that new (more out of sight, out of mind restored to prominence), even this supposedly new incarnation - sitting on the ground, eating - was a repeat of the 15th and 16thc Venetian hipsters who joined Compagnie della calza (Companies of the Stocking - this was obviously a bit catchier then, when stockings for men were still a thing), organised banquets, fêtes, theatrical performances - and sat on the ground, eating: almost certainly referred to by Titian in his Concert Champêtre4; which in its construction (and naked girls, a neoclassical fantasy) influenced Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, another wildly disruptive picnic manifested, three hundred years later.

Still, a few hundred years after Titian and considerably less than that before Manet, the picnic, shorn of its wild, aristocratic leanings, was aspirational enough to attract that bellwether of aggressive aspiration and social mountaineering, Mrs. Elton in Jane Austen’s Emma. We all know the disastrous “exploration” to Box Hill where “every prospect pleases/ And only Man is vile5”; this is preceded by the somewhat less fraught but still tricky strawberry picking at Donwell, Mr. Knightley’s estate; an invitation wrung out of him by Mrs. Elton snapping up a casual remark.

It is to be a morning scheme, you know, Knightley; quite a simple thing. I shall wear a large bonnet and bring one of my little baskets hanging on my arm…probably this basket with pink ribbon…There is to be no form or parade - a sort of gipsy party. We are to walk about your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and sit under trees…it is all to be out of doors.

Despite her professed pursuit of artlessness, because Mrs. Elton's life is predicated on performance (designed to bring her the applause of acknowledged high social status), her precise planning and highly conscious, constructed “natural” concept (pink ribbons and little baskets), are in reality small-scale repetitions of the courtly confections of the past. (There's nothing she'd like less than an actual gipsy party; most people aren't very keen on real life gipsies, as we know from Harriet's nervous encounter that leads to her “rescue” by Frank Churchill.) She even toys with the idea of arriving on donkeys - rather naughtily encouraged by a straight-faced Mr. Knightley - because it would be in keeping with her idea of naturalness and simplicity, rather than anything natural or simple in itself. (Catherine de’Medici’s shepherds and shepherdesses cast a long shadow.) “Everything as natural and simple as possible. Is not that your idea?” she says. Mr. Knightley replies

Not quite. My idea of the simple and natural will be to have the table spread in the dining room. The nature and simplicity of gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture, I think is best observed by meals indoors. When you are tired of eating strawberries in the garden, there shall be cold meat in the house.

Mr. Knightley in a few sentences acknowledges the game-playing that drives confected naturalness, allows it space - then brings it firmly indoors; like Mrs. Elton he’s also reflecting the past, but not for the purposes of performance: rather comfort, consideration of others (the hypochondriac Mr. Woodhouse), practicality.

The strawberry picking itself is presented through a sublime modernist stream of consciousness from Mrs. Elton, starting buoyantly with

“The best fruit in England - every body's favourite - always wholesome - These the finest beds and freshest sorts -

which runs down like an expiring timer, as heat and tiredness take their toll

- delicious fruit - only too rich to be eaten much of - inferior to cherries - currants more refreshing - only objection to gathering strawberries the stooping - glaring sun - tired to death - could bear it no longer - must go and sit in the shade.”

Mr. Knightley’s unfashionably practical scheme of eating indoors begins to seem attractive.

There's a circularity to the shifting ideals of al fresco that find their expression in “picnic”: like a salmon returning upstream to its spawning grounds, the varying forms - whether the exquisitely constructed diplomatic power-plays of Catherine de’Medici, designed to shock and awe, or the ostensibly artless “impos[ition] of a new freedom in relation to the subject,”6 nature (also to be admired in its original sense of inspiring wonder), of the new-wave picnic - all of them evince and retain at their core an element of disruption. (The Edwardian picnic probably represents its most perfect incarnation because - practice making perfect - it so successfully straddles the two: a “fine wicker picnic basket” that can be generously packed up in a “short interval”, on a whim.) And stripped of furbelows and fashionable moods, the true disruption remains constant: it's not simply the eating outside - people in hot countries do this all the time, eating adjacent to their homes - rather it's the eating outdoors away from home, pretending we're the nomads most of us no longer are (so, rather surprisingly, Mrs. Elton hit the nail on the head); people accustomed to lives exemplifying the flux of existence every day, simply by moving on. (Later on, in The Wind in the Willows, Toad with his brief caravan craze (reflecting a wider Edwardian craze) - before it's superseded by a motor-car - also illustrates this subliminal craving to holiday in a life that most people in most societies have now rejected, in favour of a more static perception of security. So, really, fashion can't obscure what's significant; here, it even accentuates it. Elsewhere, rather appositely, Tissot calls one of his picnic paintings, the consciously archaic, Holyday7.) Picnic - as Mr. Knightley recognises - is a game we play and a story we tell ourselves.

Whatever the weather outside, we can close our eyes and, like the Mole, become “intoxicated with the sparkle, the ripple the scents and the sounds and the sunlight” as we trail a vicarious paw in the water “and [dream] long waking dreams.” (Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major would be good here.) But, if it's raining or miserable, and cold: we can retreat indoors - and party as if it's 1799. Or 1564. Or - now.

WTRI is not a gardener; but has frequently been struck, when reading rose catalogues (my mother was), how their descriptions suggest latent 19thc novels just waiting to be revealed (some actually refer directly to 19thc novels: Eustacia Vye, Gabriel Oak); the potential three-decker in three lines. The “strong and upright” Comte de Chambord, for instance, the “excellent…upright and vigorous” Harlow Carr (rather Brontëish don't you think?), the “tough [and] reliable” Hyde Hall (neither of those last two are people’s names but they could be…). And the women! The “very beautiful, vigorous” Mme. Lauriol de Barny who's “a climber”; the “most beautiful…magnificent, full-petalled” Comtesse de Murinais; the “glistening” Mme. Hardy with her “green eye”; the distinctive Mme. de Zoetmans, another full-petalled beauty, “graceful…of free growth”, with “a button eye” and seductive blush tint. Who could resist? Or not want to know more; imagine their histories, interactions, lives?

Another random observation: WTRI first encountered Francis Bacon’s On Gardens1 as the epigraph to a children's book, The Half-Brothers by Ann Lawrence (a delightfully playful and inventive comedy by an author who, sadly, seems to have disappeared almost without footprint. Playful inventiveness was very much her thing; and although she didn't write many novels, each one was distinct in style, subject and ideas). Anyway, the epigraph is from Bacon’s very first sentence

that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater perfection.

and sets out his stall nicely. He’s already confirmed the - to him - obvious “God Almighty first planted a garden” (that “planted” conjuring up an engagingly industrious and hands-on vision of divinity), following on from the creation of the world: consequently, “it is the purest of human pleasures, it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man”. So, the pursuit of perfection (both earthly and divine), Michelangelo’s Adam straining towards God’s extended index finger and the spark of life; gardens and gardening offering the possibility - just - of touching.

Bacon has strong opinions and is determined to be helpful, his advice (to a non-gardener, at least) seems practical, with plenty of recommendations of what to grow when - “In May and June come pinks [as you’ll have spotted, that’s Bacon enjoying a little pun, that linguistic craze of the expanding language in the late 16th and early 17thcs: pinks were also carnations] of all sorts, especially the blush-pink roses of all kinds” - where to place things; design hints and tips (OK, quite forceful recommendations - but for our own good). He suggests “whole alleys” of aromatics, whose scent is enhanced by ”being trodden upon and crushed…to have the pleasure when you walk or tread”; and is rather keen on a wild garden element - “I like also little heaps in the nature of molehills (such as are in wild heaths) to be set some with wild thyme, some with pinks -”: extraordinarily avant-garde in an age of knot-gardens and mazes, anticipating Capability Brown and his followers instructing art to follow nature, by more than a century. But “I for my part do not like images cut out in juniper or other garden stuff, they are for children” (so, not a fan of topiary); while “[a]s for the making of knots and figures, with divers coloured earth…they be but toys, you may see as good sights many times in tarts.” Gardens, in Bacon’s view, are no place to be too clever by half (keep that for the banqueting stuff whose base destiny is consumption): the approach to (and absorption into) perfection requires a more rigorous selection and restraint - or as a 20thc couturière2 said: “Elegance is refusal.”

It's a pursuit that inspires Bacon to lyricism

And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (when it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand

even as he (unconsciously) underlines his radicalism - sweeter in the air…than in the hand: flowers are preferable uncut (in a state of nature). He's also extremely forward-looking in his approach to animal welfare

For aviaries, I like them not, except that they be of a largeness as they may be turfed and have living plants and bushes set in them, that the birds may have more scope and natural nestling

but pragmatic too: good, natural conditions mean “that no foulness appear in the floor of the aviary effectively”. He's delighted by fountains “a great beauty and refreshment” (that word again, with its resonance - at the time - of religious refreshment and renewal); but doesn't allow this to obscure his recognition that practical steps are necessary to ensure that this is an undiluted pleasure, “without fish or slime or mud…the main point [being] …that the water is in perpetual motion”; or states simply “nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn (the long hegemony of the lawn in English gardening explained); “ver perpetuum” (in context, constant green) being the ideal he’s guiding us towards because in “the royal ordering of gardens, there ought to be gardens for all the months of the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then seen”. (“Royal” and “prince” are used repeatedly as synonyms for the acme of creation; understandable in a divinely ordered hierarchy where the next step up from royalty is divinity.)

And, at the end, he admits that this is a fantasy garden (although influenced by practical considerations and specific conditions) - “These particulars are for the climate of London but my meaning is perceived that you may have ver perpetuum as the place affords” - the platonic ideal of a garden, with no expense spared.

So I have made a platform of a princely garden, partly by precept, partly by drawing, not a model but some general lines of it and in this I have spared no cost.

But, he adds tartly, the expense would be nothing to an actual prince who undoubtedly “after taking advice with workmen” (does this sound familiar?) would end up spending at least as much, as well as adding a lot of unnecessary statues “and such things for state and magnificence, but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden.”

The true pleasure of a garden and gardening as the greater perfection also preoccupy Andrew Marvell (he was not alone, gardening as metaphor, spiritual experience and approach to sublimity has a long track-record that was eliciting particular engagement over the period both he and Bacon were writing). In Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax, he picks up Bacon’s contention of the inferiority of architecture, setting it against nature generally, though, rather than the cultivation specific to gardening; with the added twist of a fancy foreign architect, racking his brain so that “Whole columns should so high be raised / To arch the brows that on them gaz’d” (shading in his chiaroscuro with the charming witty resonance of the raised brows mimicking the raised columns); the big question Marvell says, being why? Why, having complete autonomy, do we build so terribly (not even “stately”, here)? (It's a question we might still ask - for every Diébédo Francis Kéré there's always…the other one.) He goes on to run through examples of the animal kingdom doing things so much better - “No creature loves an empty space / Their bodies measure out their place”- leading us to the ultimate rightness of nature:

But nature here hath been so free
As if she said leave this to me,
And would more neatly have defac'd
What she had laid so sweetly waste;
In fragrant gardens, shady woods 
Deep meadows and transparent floods.

Leave this to me, with its easy demotic imperative, Marvell on first name terms with nature and her projects; but also nature exhibiting in her scope; and - specifically - her fragrance (scent having a longstanding traditional role as a means of access to divinity - the original purpose of incense), intimations of immanence, made approachable through “fragrant gardens.”

These intimations recur throughout his work (consider To his Coy Mistress - “My vegetable love should grow / Vaster than empires and more slow”, as just one example); reaching its apotheosis in The Garden, whose compact form encompasses an extent that is indeed [v]aster than empires”. It's a work of infinite movement, starting with a race - the pursuit of worldly success - and ending with a sundial; but the true resolution and determination of everything is nature, whether expressed through a garden; the synthesis of man’s longings, being (nature) with the natural world (and consequent transcendence of mortality); or simply nature itself, en plein air, in plain clothes, still supremely beautiful, the yardstick against which everything is measured; the ultimate transformer of everything. Marvell points out that all worldly success is represented solely by some twig or sprig (laurel wreath); that mortal girls pursued by gods, escaped through transformation into plants (Greek myths); men assault trees by carving their mistresses’ names into the bark, although the “white [and] red” deemed classic beauty (the ladies’s - painted - cheeks) can never rival “the lovely green”: (Francis Bacon's “nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green” ). Here, of course, the implication ranges wider than what's literally in sight). Then we approach the extraordinary stanzas, frequently quoted:

What wond’rous life is this I lead?
Ripe apples drop upon my head...
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnar'd with flow'rs I fall on grass.

The garden - as an ideal, as spiritual metaphor - offers a retreat from pleasure into happiness, allowing the mind to transcend its parochial limits and create “Far other worlds and other seas; / Annihilating all that's made / To a green thought in a green shade”, through a meditative oneness that’s instantly recognisable - most of us are fortunate enough to have enjoyed such moments occasionally in nature, the self recessive but completely present; Marvell’s brilliance - and our pleasure - is the perfection of his encapsulation, its economy and power, providing a dazzling illumination of his argument.

Of course, not everyone appreciates this kind of thing. Roughly a century later, Samuel Johnson embarked on a survey3 - “About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets” - banding them together and christening the resulting movement simultaneously (rather like the naming of the “Impressionists”, who weren't a clearly defined group, and didn't call themselves anything). He didn't like what he saw. If poetry is defined as an imitative art “they cannot be said to have imitated any thing: they neither copied nature nor life”; if Alexander Pope’s definition of wit is correct (“What oft was thought but ne’er so well express’d” - Johnson misquotes slightly, expanding poetic brevity into prose; you get the sense of him writing in a hurry; deadlines; money): “they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it”- But, then Johnson enters one of his increasing number of caveats - Pope’s definition of wit is too limited, “reduc[ing] it from strength of thought to happiness of language”; and anyway, Johnson’s already said that those “who deny them to be poets allow them to be wits”; besides, they're “men of learning”, which he automatically respects. This is the bind he finds himself in: his intelligence and critical faculties in a constant argument with his taste (formed, naturally enough, by the age he's born into; another period of the linguistic Great Leap Forward, this time polished into triumphant neoclassical balance and Latinate circumlocution; and influenced - naturally enough - by his reaction to the literary equivalent of the jeans of yesteryear: flared when they should be straight, skinny when they should be flared; incomprehensible as fashion to anybody looking back); the struggle given energy by his fundamental integrity4. In the interests of fair play, he redefines wit as “a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult [secret] resemblances in things apparently unlike” - in which case “Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough.” (It's rather engaging to see Johnson having fun with his somewhat ambivalent takedown.) His problem is that he's placed himself in the extraordinary position of a reluctant impresario, who hates the work of his troupe, but feels morally obliged to present it to the world, because of the innate respect and value he accords talent; despite the fact that his personal view (or, at least, his conscious one) is that the price of the ticket is an imposition on the public; a position that can only be resolved through this ongoing, onstage argument with himself. If this is his da capo aria, he’s really going to town on the third part trills and twiddles; even indulging in a spot of virtuoso improvisation (why? Like a reigning star reminding his audience of his powers? Or just asserting that he could if he would - “Elegance is refusal”, again?)

He doesn't take it easily. “[T]hey never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which…fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment” (one to ring down the centuries), he says crossly. (But what about, say, The Garden?) Yet, “their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises”. ‘[T]hey broke every image into fragments,” he complains; followed immediately by the extraordinary

[They] could no more represent with their slender conceits and laboured particularities, the prospect of nature [both the natural world and what is natural] or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer moon.

Extraordinary - because either through total immersion; instinct; competition; or a desire to offer exemplary commentary (the last, the least likely) - Johnson has conjured up a mini conceit if his own, in pursuit of his argument; breaking his own image into the fragments he claims to abhor.

Those fragments... They're the feathering of Bacon’s fountains, a “curiosity and beauty” achieved with “fine devices”; “the bottom finely paved with images…embellished with coloured glass and such things of lustre”; the “perpetual motion” of the water flickering and sparkling into the inconstant restlessness of Marvell's The Garden, with its delicately calibrated adjustments of speed and course; its innate amorphousness as an (anti) love poem (“Fond lovers, cruel as their flame” dismissed for the Eden as “happy garden state / While man there walk’d without a mate…/ Two paradises ‘twere in one / To live in paradise alone”: perhaps its heart); mystic experience; and metaphysical disquisition. Gardens and gardening, as a perennial metaphor are infinitely protean, shape-shifting continuously in their expression of truth; even the sub-metaphors they engender - “green shoots” for hope, say - verdant, vivid, alive (tautology intended), suggesting some of the reasons we garden: engagement with the cyclical nature of existence, the pleasure of nurturing life, and an ancillary role in the creation of beauty; for the really grand, immortality through mortality.

Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost; if they frequently threw away their wit in false conceits, they, likewise, sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage.

Eventually, Johnson gives in (partially, anyway). Moreover, “To write on their plan it was, at least, necessary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphysical poet.” Reading and thinking, amongst his highest accolades; made not born: the self-created (cultivated, gardening) artist, striving through “far-fetched” conceits, Johnson's final self-refutation - because what is far-fetched but an aspiration towards more? More clarity, more truthfulness, more life, greater understanding? What else is astonishment (Johnson's admitted fundamental criterion)? We’re back at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The reluctant 18thc impresario and the swashbuckling 20thc one5, ultimately share the same manifesto: “Astonish me!”

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WTRI is “On Diversion” as London Transport (or the more self-consequential Transport for London) used to describe its compulsory “Discover London” divagations: diversion because, although this is a reissue, it wasn't intended to be this reissue. But then the algorithm got involved, really quite insistently it has to be said, kept “reminding” me; also, “It's seasonal.” Hmm. Not a bad point actually… So here we are.

Do like, comment, share, subscribe if you aren't already (how could you not be!). Please note, all strolls in the garden absolutely at own risk: be aware of potential abundance and adjust your behaviour accordingly. (But WTRI would definitely take gardening advice from Sir Francis Bacon - well, would if gardened - interested to know what the real gardeners think…)

Because after the dogs of last week it would clearly be remiss not to consider the feline species: here a magnificent tabby(ish) Egyptian 18th Dynasty hunter, ears alert and whiskers a-splay, almost certainly emitting triumphal and warlike sounds (that wide-open mouth revealing a flash of pink), in full flight as it does one of the things which cats are very good at - hunt. The other, of course, is sleep.

Any consideration of cats brings to mind the old joke summing up the difference between cats and dogs in their relationship with humans: we feed, water and care for them - the dog assumes we're gods; the cat knows that it's a god. Not so far off; and extremely apposite, since in Ancient Egypt, as we all know, they were; worshipped as manifestations of various deities; and generally treated with the extreme devotion, reverence and respect that - naturally - they deserve. Most engagingly, WTRI was charmed to discover that the Ancient Egyptian for cat is miw (masculine) or miwt (feminine): he or she who miaows. The linguistic dexterity of this onomatopoeia is delightful, not only for its success, but also because it evinces a genuine attempt to cross linguistic boundaries in defining form; an indicator of affinity which one could also infer as the affection born of close knowledge; lives lived side by side.

(It's quite fun roaming the animal onomatopoeias anyway; impressive what a good job so many of them do, fascinating - and illuminating - the degree of consensus: for instance, cats seem pretty equally divided between an “n” or “m” initiator but otherwise - In Ancient Greek, cats said “niaou”: but so do modern cats in Swahili (nyau); and Japanese (nyao); or it's Team Miaow/Miaou/Miao. (It's similar for dogs; the delight, back in the day, of learning - through a quasi-comic scene, because Cerberus, yes, quite a few barking heads - that Ancient Greek dogs said bau bau; which is exactly what modern Italian dogs say, minus the accent; literally, when written down. And so on.) And the excellent (French) “miaule” is very much the elocution Tobermory would have deployed when courting the entrancing tortoiseshell inhabitant of the stables at the Towers…)

These affinities of close existence and language - and the ensuing complications - are the springs on which Saki’s (Hector Hugh Monroe) short story Tobermory turns.

An Edwardian houseparty is electrified when the apparently dull, scholarly Cornelius Appin, reveals his great coup:

“And do you really ask us to believe,” Sir Wilfred was saying, “that you have discovered a means of instructing animals in the art of speech, and that dear old Tobermory has proved your first successful pupil?”

It turns out that Tobermory is “a ‘Beyond-cat’ of extraordinary intelligence.” There's great excitement - Cornelius Appin is very convincing - but an overall scepticism.

“Hadn't we better have the cat in to judge for ourselves?” said Lady Blemley.

Sir Wilfred departs to investigate, and returns a shaken man.

“By Gad, it's true! [Having found him] dozing in the smoking room…I said ‘Come on Toby; don't keep us waiting’, and by Gad! he drawled in a most horribly natural voice that he’d come when he dashed well pleased! I nearly jumped out of my skin!”

This encounter sets the tone for future interactions with Tobermory, “dear old Tobermory” no longer but a force to be reckoned with. When he eventually strolls into the drawing-room “with velvet tread and studied unconcern”, a sudden awkwardness paralyses the party -

Somehow there seemed an element of embarrassment in addressing on equal terms a domestic cat of acknowledged dental ability.

“Will you have some milk?” asked Lady Blemley in a rather strained voice.

“I don't mind if I do,” was the response, couched in a tone of even indifference. A shiver of excitement went through the listeners.

From then on, the shocking realisations come thick and fast. Tobermory is blasé, sophisticated, completely self-confident (and self-contained), and brutally direct. When Lady Blemley apologises for spilling the milk (her shaking hand), he merely replies with an implicit shrug “After all, it's not my Axminster.” When Miss Resker asks in “her best district-visitor manner if the human language had been difficult to learn”

Tobermory looked squarely at her for a moment and then fixed his gaze serenely on the middle distance. It was obvious that boring questions lay outside his scheme of life.

Things get even worse when Major Barfield rashly (very rashly as it turns out) decides to attempt a little man-to-man joviality:

“How about your carryings-on with the tortoiseshell puss up at the stables, eh?”

The moment he had said it, every one realized the blunder.

“One does not usually discuss such matters in public,” said Tobermory frigidly. “From a slight observation of your ways since you’ve been in this house I should imagine you’d find it inconvenient if I were to shift the conversation on to your own little affairs.”

The panic that ensued was not confined to the Major.

A terrible certainty descends on the houseparty. They will have to take (what they see as) defensive action.

One of the pleasures of Tobermory is its density, allied to a dazzling economy in execution. Nothing is wasted or superfluous. (Although, A.A. Milne is right in noting in his introduction, that Clovis is pretty much shoehorned in sometimes - as here - although he has some great lines. Ah, the exigencies of publishing - some things never change.) From an apparently leisurely start on a rainy, grey August afternoon inherently suggestive of the kind of traditional houseparty languor and longeurs, a suggestion almost immediately subverted, each witticism, interaction and revelation ratchets up the narrative tension until the inevitable, but still slightly unexpected - although not unflagged - ending: everything has an application both particular and general, an inward and outward meaning and delineation. That spilt milk. Mrs. Cornett’s outraged cry:

“Adelaide! …do you mean to encourage that cat to go out and gossip about us in the servants’ hall?”

followed by the swift and powerful reversal of such de haut en bas attitudes; still exemplified in Lady Blemley’s earlier “Hadn't we better have the cat in to judge for ourselves?” - but not for much longer: first, degeneration into an exculpatory every-man-for-himself; then an uneasy pact of temporarily aligned interests.

The realisation that all human relations are predicated on a strong foundation of not-saying; and the inevitable corollary - triumphantly exemplified by Tobermory - how can one know anyone, if they don't speak; or rather, you don't understand them when they speak? Tobermory is only “dear old Tobermory”, whose drowsing in the smoking -room (again, noteworthy), and strolls along the balustrade outside “most of the bedroom windows…[to] watch the pigeons” are apparently harmless, because he has no means of communicating his acute observations - at least not in any way that will disturb his auditors - until the fatal intervention of Cornelius Appin. Yet he remains at all times completely a cat: his behaviour, interests and perceptions feline; only now, these infuse his listeners with an anxiety that has them sitting tensely awaiting his return from who-knows-where, inviting the embittered observation that

“He won't turn up to-night. He’s probably at the local newspaper office at the present moment, dictating the first instalment of his reminiscences. Lady What’s-her-name’s book won’t be in it. It will be the event of the day.

Which is funny; but also a complete misunderstanding: Tobermory really isn't that interested. He’s an acute (and enjoyably acid, it has to be said) observer because he's a cat - so also a hunter, a lover, a fighter (as with a Shakespearean hero, all these innate aspects of his being will influence his fate). Like most people, his human cohabitees imagine themselves far more fascinating than they are - and act accordingly.

Saki clearly knew and appreciated cats; The Chronicles of Clovis (the collection in which Tobermory appeared after first being published in the Westminster Gazette) announces “To the Lynx Kitten, With His Reluctantly Given Consent, This Book is Affectionately Dedicated”; an appropriately humble submission from a cat owner (sorry, typo, that should be ever-evolving job description, including but not limited to courtier/servant/researcher and provider of food, and others, unspecified; which takes up a bit more room, of course) who knows his place. Another interesting, minor, detail about Tobermory: none of the humans are described (the closest we get is Sir Wilfred going white under his tan). All the cats are - the tortoiseshell, the big yellow tom from the Rectory - except Tobermory. It's true that - apart from a brief flicker through the shrubbery by the Rectory cat - the others remain offstage. But Tobermory is also the only one to speak human.

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No strychnine here (if you know…): so feel free to like, comment, share (speed-dial the newspaper office to dictate your own memoirs)…

First: here's Giovanna Garzoni’s Canina con Biscotti - because what could be nicer than a clearly much-loved 16thc Florentine lapdog, sporting a spectacularly ornamented collar, overseeing with a happy complacence that's most engaging some of the good things in her life: biscotti (two kinds), and an elegant Chinese porcelain cup from which to drink her water. And just to make sure that we, if not she - because she's a dog, that's what they do naturally - remember that all life is contingent and uncertain, seize the day: a couple of flies crawling across one of the biscuits as the traditional memento mori. But not very big ones. We don't need to be too worried - the happy smile with which she surveys her territory, encompassing the artist and the viewer beyond the artist in her impartial benevolence, is far more prominent.

Now let us hear from the first Duchess of Marlborough, writing with characteristic briskness in her commonplace book about dogs; specifically her dogs:

I am very fond of [my] three dogs, they have all of them gratitude, wit, and good sense. Things very rare to be found in this country. They are fond of going out with me; but when I reason with them, and tell them it is not proper, they submit, and watch for my coming home, and meet me with as much joy as if I had never given them good advice.

One can see her chain of thought proceeding with great naturalness - the tiny pause offered by the full stop, followed by what's clearly an additional idea Things very rare to be found in this country - but this doesn't mean that her thoughts are without direction: or subtext. Quite an aggressive subtext. Her dogs have gratitude as well as wit and good sense. When she reasons with them - despite that reasoning being against their desires - they submit, most graciously as well, greeting her later with as much joy as if I had never given them good advice. The Duchess was writing in her old age, when her inherent courage, drive and forcefully directed intelligence - which had propelled her family to the political and aristocratic heights from which she was now looking back - had also, inevitably, intensified and hardened with age; equally inevitably alienating many of those around her, including close members of her family. What she saw as devotion naturally expressed as knowing best (of course she knew best! How could she not? Look at where they were today), they (especially her family) now tended to see a bullying steamroller, destroying all before; ignoring as people so often do in such situations, what had made her, and what they owed her. Sarah was not an easy woman but - as her affectionate tribute to her dogs reveals - she had feelings which could be hurt; and she still needed to give as well as receive affection. As so many people discover, for so many differing reasons, dogs are excellent companions.

Finally - because our little Florentine canina has a Chinese tea dish as her water bowl - two extremely handsome gentlemen, painted by the Jesuit priest and Chinese court painter, Giuseppe Castiglione, also known as Lang Shìníng; part of an album called Ten Prized Dogs; understandably, because look at them, truly magnificent. Clearly fond of going out, and would undoubtedly meet with much joy - look at those alert, questing noses.

Humanity may currently be doing its best to remind us of all the bad stuff: but look at the dogs!

Sir David Dalrymple ed. The Opinions of Sarah Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, pub. 1788

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Crack out the dog biscuits and encourage the Starlight Barking, that splendid canine communication network one can only admire with awe… all likes, comments and shares a Good Thing and greatly appreciated. (The Canina reminds WTRI a little of the Cadpig in Dodie Smith’s The Starlight Barking.)

Since election season continues (in various places), a little old-school electioneering for you, courtesy of Emily Eden.

[A] sudden change of affairs took place...all over England, to say nothing of Scotland and Ireland. The hapless individual who filled the office of Prime Minister under the gracious King of the above-named countries, having borne the fatigues of the situation for five years, long enough to have become unpopular with the people, wearisome to the King, and odious to all his own private friends, took one decided step to regain all he had lost with others, and to obtain a little rest for himself–he took to his bed and died.

Wild excitement on all sides and a General Election in prospect. Much pontificating.

All the idle men in London rushed to their clubs, and such high betting had not been known since the last Epsom races.

One-half of St. James’s Street said that England was lost, that the real crisis had come at last (there is generally a false crisis every Easter, in which England is all but lost, but she is found again towards Whitsuntide), and that Church and State, King and kingdom, Lords and Commons, were all to be knocked on the head at once. The club on the opposition side of the street was in ecstasies...

You will note, of course, what modern polling institutions and focus groups would refer to as the demographic engaged in this feverish outbreak of activity.

The former Prime Minister is picked over:

His Cabinet was broken up. It had been, after the usage of all Cabinets, divided into two factions, opposed on all important points to each other, but forming what is by courtesy called a united Cabinet, under the gentle sway of the worn-out nonentity at their head. He was gone. Six or seven newspapers, with broad black borders, announced the death of one of the greatest men of the age,–recommended Westminster Abbey,–a subscription for a monument,–and one of his colleagues for a successor. An equal number of papers, after professing, with becoming candour and humanity, that they warred not with the dead, raked up all the old scandal they could collect against the deceased, denied him any talent whatever, and explained away all his virtues; they prophesied the utter annihilation of the ministerial party, and announced that in twenty-four hours they should be able to give a correct list of the New Cabinet about to be formed by the powerful leader of the Opposition.

The stage is now set for a series of duels and trials by combat which will take place over the entire country in the next few weeks; exemplified here in the small and prosperous market town Boroughford and the ‘polite rivalry and civil hatred’ between its great landowner, Lord Eskdale and the Lord Lieutenant of the county, the Duke of Broughton. Each is determined to bring in his own man [sic] at this election; Lord Eskdale reasoning that

[h] e should bring another vote in aid of the great G. cause; he should have the honour and glory of possessing, to all appearance, a borough of his own; and he should inflict a mortal blow on the Duke of Broughton...who at the last election had contrived to insinuate one of his own nephews, Captain Luttridge, into the borough.

A nice combination, then, of political and social rivalry; in which each side is prepared to invest considerably: conveniently, "if by any degree of exertion or expense–a gentlemanlike term for bribery–he could return his nephew for the second seat, it would be in many respects a clever stroke of policy" can apply to both Lord Eskdale and the Duke of Broughton; (although our principal perspective throughout - another naturally assumed illustration of the partisanship engendered by these contests - is from the Eskdale camp); and he's rather worried that it's going to be a hard job to get his indolent nephew, Colonel Beaufort, out canvassing. Fortunately, he's underestimated the invigorating powers of political contest (as with the excitement in clubland we've just seen): 'There is no stage of inertness and don't-carishness from which an Englishman may not be roused by the stimulus of politics; and a contested election is perhaps one of the finest remedies that can be applied to a confirmed languor, either of mind or body.' Colonel Beaufort and his cousin, Lord Eskdale's son (who wants to retain his seat), fling themselves into canvassing with enthusiasm:

Ernest [Colonel Beaufort] caught eagerly at his uncle's proposal, travelled all night from town, and started on his canvass with his cousin an hour after his arrival, passed eleven hours on visits to the electors, and ended the day by making a speech at the Eskdale Arms to two hundred and fifty dirty-looking men, all smoking bad tobacco, and drinking worse beer; and most of whom were sufficiently drunk to insist on shaking hands with him four or five times in the course of the evening. And yet when he and Lord Beaufort returned home at night, thirsty, tired, and smoke-dried, they declared they had had a "glorious day," and never saw a finer set of fellows than the electors of Boroughford.

"We shall beat the Duke out of the field," said Lord Beaufort to his father. "Luttridge was going sneaking about the town with only half the number of supporters he had last time; and I cannot hear of a second candidate on their side. Besides, we have gained a valuable friend; Tom Rogerson is heart and soul with us."

"That is indeed a great coup," said Lord Eskdale, "He has cut the Pinks dead, and is on our committee."

"What a clever speech he made at the Magpie and Stump!" said Ernest. "Eh, Beaufort, did it not strike you as something out of the common way?"

"Yes, excellent; but in election matters Tom Rogerson has not his equal on earth."

"Who is he, my dear?" said Lady Eskdale. "Where does he live?"

"Don't you know him?" said Ernest. "Well, I am astonished. I should have thought you must have known Mr. Rogerson, a neighbour; a man of talent, and a voter."

"No, my dear, I never heard of him till this moment; but I will ask him to dinner forthwith."

"Oh! Pray do, there's a dear; he will be delighted to come: perhaps your hours are later than he is used to; but for once he might put up with that."

"Or we might dine earlier. I should not mind dining at seven to oblige a friend of yours; but where is he to be found?"

"I can give him your card when I see him to-morrow; he is very little at home now, but his ordinary abode is the front attic of No.4, Hopscotch Alley, near the old market. I am not quite sure of the number, though I know Hopscotch Alley is the place."

"Now, my dear Beaufort, what does he mean?"

Eden, the political professional, is having great fun in exemplifying the clashes between social groups and their inherent expectations, innate to any election, focused on the person of Tom Rogerson and the received formalities of calling and dining, contributory definitions of the Beaufort world, contingently of the Rogerson one: because '"Tom Rogerson is a valuable ally, solely from his intimacy with all the rogues and knaves in the borough. He once kept an ale-house, and is now a very idle cobbler; but he is one of those odd shrewd characters who in all times of popular excitement make the fortunes of the party to which they attach themselves. We expect Rogerson will bring us in at least forty votes."' Tom Rogerson is the local fixer. And fix he does, as the hustings become heated, and Boroughford goes to the polls, accompanied by loud and preemptively triumphant music from the Pinks and the Blues; stage-managing

in grand procession, eight men bearing a bed, on which was laid an unfortunate master chimney-sweeper, who had broken his leg the day before, and who now was borne along, stretched at full length, with his wife's red cloak over his shoulders, and her flannel petticoat turbaned round his head, his, face partially streaked with white, thanks to his forced seclusion from soot, and a blue flag thrown over his bed to conceal the patchwork quilt. Tom Rogerson was walking beside him, with a bottle of spirits (to be used in case of faintness) in one hand, and with the other making most imperative signs to the people not to agitate the sick man with their applause[;]

hauling along a disabled voter to cast his very public vote (as you'll recall, there was no privacy originally in voting; with the obvious results), as a ruthless demonstration of performative impartiality:

an iron-monger by trade, whom he had by dint of threats and brandy forced to the hustings; and who with faltering voice, and eyes fixed on Tom, voted for Colonel Beaufort and Mr. Douglas. "I allow the little wretch one vote," said Tom, with an air of condescension, "because he is his Grace's private tinker, and it does us no harm; but in a general way, I don't like to see such little hatomeys go for to think for theirselves."

The joke here being that the iron-monger casts his vote for both sides; and Tom Rogerson allows it because he doesn't see it as having any negative effect on the party he's espousing - and it's a way of keeping in with the Duke of Broughton: just in case; the manoeuvres contingent on a lasting political career manifested with playful relish by Eden.

And now war was declared in good earnest.

Mr. Douglas himself is a reluctant rival: former calling acquaintance with the Beauforts, co-opted by the Duke's party, and his competitive wife (who exists in a gently seething state of unacknowledged -and mainly one-sided- frenemyship with the ladies of the Beaufort family) into taking up the Pinks's standard; lacking the common touch and disliking the performance. 'The Blues pitied "poor old Douglas" from the bottom of their souls for being mixed up with a paltry set of scamps, and for looking so "like a guy" himself.' They, meanwhile, 'every day...were received with cheers and applause by all the little dirty boys of the place, screaming like so many animated hurdy-gurdies, "Beaufort for ever! The Colonel for ever!"'; a performance naturally invigorated by Tom Rogerson tapping into the general excitement and flow of energy; also by one of those ineluctable not entirely rational truths that striate all such contests: it's never really about what the candidates say or offer, and barely about what they represent; ultimately, it's an ideological beauty contest, shorn of ideas (and ideals, although in later generations world peace may well be on the crib sheet):

The Duke's nominees, as the opposite party of course termed Mr. Douglas and Captain Luttridge, were backed by many of the richer tradespeople, but they were unpopular with the mob; and, therefore, whatever might be the real results of the strife, its pleasures, while it lasted, were for the Beauforts. Ever, while you live, choose the popular side in an election; that is, if you have no particular political prejudices of your own; for there is no comparison between a reception of cheers, applause, and good-will, and one of cabbage-stalks, groans, and bad eggs. Besides, there is something exhilarating in the real, genuine affection (while it lasts) of a mob for their favourite of a day.

The Beaufort ladies help this along by suddenly discovering a desire for frequent, expensive shopping expeditions into the town, consequently making significant advances for their party; to the extent of viewing the hustings from the first floor window of the milliner 'Mrs. Harris [who] was overflowing with politeness, proud to receive "the Countess," prouder that she should be consulted on the probable results of the election, and proudest that she had made Harris vote against his conscience and inclination for my lord and the colonel.'

The ladies are highly professional in their approach to vote-gathering generally; and, like all the parties, hold strong views on electoral corruption:

"Yes, we have each got a polling-book, a list of voters, or whatever you call it, and have been studying them all day to see if there are any of our tradespeople or old friends in the village whom we could persuade to vote for you."

"No, have you really? What treasures you all are! ...And there are several cases in which you may be of use to us. We want you to order a bonnet, which you need not wear, at Mrs. Vere's. Vere pretends to have opinions about Church reform."

"Yes, and Giles the ironmonger would not give us any promise to-day."

"Impossible, my dear Beaufort," said Lady Eskdale; "he has just finished all the ornamental wire-work for my new garden; he ought to be devoted to us."

"He ought, but he is not; for the duke has been speaking to him about iron flues for his hothouses."

"That is actual bribery," said Lady Eskdale, rising into real election energy; "but, if it comes to that, your father is going to have iron hurdles all round the pleasure-ground, and I may as well speak to Giles about them to-morrow."

Swift adaptive and preemptive action by a professional co-ordinating a tough campaign. Nowadays, she'd be allocated the spin doctor, political strategist or spad slot: then she was simply pursuing her allocated role, as she saw it - and as she chose to define it; political activity amongst women - whether tradespeople such as Mrs. Harris (the milliner who welcomes the Eskdale party to election viewing, laying on generous refreshments), or Mrs. Vere, the other milliner mentioned, who, by implication, clearly has considerable power in influencing her husband who has 'views' on church reform, or gentry like Mrs. Douglas, or aristocrats such as the Beaufort ladies - being far more prevalent and authoritative than might be assumed from women's declared position in the pecking order: legally subservient to their husbands and disenfranchised. (Of course, this doesn't mean that the negatives implicit in the above didn't also - frequently - play out; a recognition that Eden makes plain in another strand of her narrative; and which we'll consider when we revisit The Semi-Attached Couple. Oh yes, we shall.) But right here, right now, in this novel, we have Lady Eskdale running the numbers (sympathetically, the mental arithmetic is a slight struggle; although, of course, also a comment); and trying to interpret the opposition, in this case the local doctor who, despite having the prospect of vaccinating her granddaughter dangled enticingly before his eyes, is proving disappointingly equivocal:

"I do not exactly make him out; he said he should not like to disoblige the family, but that he would rather not pledge himself; that the duchess had asked Mrs. Birkett to her last ball, and that this was a great political crisis, and so on. I do not know what plot is hatching, but I fully expect the duke's agent will start a second candidate, and that people are hanging back till they see who he is. Mr. Douglas was rather stiff, I thought, to-day."

On election day,

The Pinks marched by the window with their band playing and their banners streaming, and the mob groaned...

Lord Beaufort himself put his head in and said "Don't be afraid, all's right"; and Ernest, who was strutting about the town with Tom Rogerson, who had a very red face, and a great hole in his coat-sleeve, looked up and nodded a nod of encouragement.

There was of course the most shameful bribery and intimidation on the other side; but Mullins would stake his head, and Dickson would pledge his life, and all the rest of the committee would hazard stakes of equal value, that all would end well.

Later, Lord Beaufort doesn't even have time (or perhaps the confident inclination) to dash up the milliner's ship stairs to reassure the ladies, all they have is 'a distant view of Ernest shaking hands with two pink butchers, who were giving up their colours; Tom Rogerson standing by, his arms folded, Coriolanus fashion, and his torn sleeve nearly detached from his coat by the force of his previous gesticulations.' The numbers aren't good though, and when the first day's poll closes, neither of the Beaufort candidates is in the lead. The reluctant and apolitical Mr. Douglas 'who ma[de] his entry into the town, preceded by two pink banners, and followed by...ten shabby-looking men on horseback, riders and steeds covered with pink ribbons' is actually second.

Who will win?

But also: how much has changed?

Of course, there's the valuable and highly significant development in recognising the association between autonomy and privacy in voting; which should not be underestimated. But otherwise, in the performance? Raucous behaviour, specious promises, bribery (overt, covert, you don't say!), corruption, manipulation; muckraking; media polarity and splashy posturing; popular tunes co-opted into service (and frequently unedifying performance of the those of a sensitive nature look away now variety); wild excitement: followed by relapse into the old dispensation, even if - technically - it transpires that this is intended to be the new dispensation...

Eden was brought up at the heart of Whig politics (daughter and sister), born at the end of the 18thc (so well past their heyday but not the aspiration to regain past glories; before a triumphant metamorphosis into the Liberal party, which she lived to see); as an adult, acting as political hostess for her brother. She knows from the inside the world of which she writes: but, by the time The Semi-Attached Couple was published, ostensibly, that world had gone; as she herself recognises in her introduction to the novel in 1860:

This story was written nearly thirty years ago, before railroads were established, and travelling carriages-and-four were superseded; before postage stamps had extinguished the privilege of franking1, and before the Reform Bill...

With her usual attunement to the nuances of social development (and discourse), she homes in on the transformative power of technology, the revolutions of both structure and experience automatically contingent on its wake, rather as we might refer to an era before mobile phones or the internet, and their equally far-reaching consequences; yet, its precisely that attunement, and her precision in its expression that allow us to see - again with precision - that although the ancillary details may have changed, along with the hats and the milliners's shops, the fundamental game itself hasn't: nor have the people or the playbook. The same old rivalries, endorsed under different names (so perfectly metonymised as the Pinks and the Blues, meaningless in affiliation in themselves, but excellent rosettes); and populists - because blatantly irresponsible - have more fun.

Consequently, Eden's further explanation,

In rewriting it, I might easily have introduced these and other modern innovations; but as I believe the manners of England to be as much changed as her customs, there would have been discrepancies between my scenes and characters: the background would not have harmonized with the figures...

while clearly the correct decision artistically, represents only a partial truth from which its author tactfully circles away with the strategic apologia of a diplomatic professional:

When I wrote it, I thought it a tolerably faithful representation of modern society; but some young friends...who have read it with the indulgence of happy youth, condescendingly assure me that it is amusing...as...a curious picture of old-fashioned society.

Eden knows perfectly well that, although it's certainly a sepia-tinted snapshot of a world whose full colours now only exist in memory ('I trust that to my own contemporaries it may have the charm of reminding them of their youth'), it's a sharp, clear image, executed professionally, and with some cleverness. The astute and witty observer of the intersections of social manoeuvre (and mobility) and political ambition (and rapacity) does not innocently drop in the adverb 'condescendingly.' Eden knows exactly what she's doing: and because of her skill in sharing it, so do we.

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And vote for WTRI! All you’ve ever wanted! (More than you bargained for!) Stylish rosettes! Gooseberry wine on tap during all hustings…

Some springtime dalliance; especially now the pigeons have started strutting and cooing - is there a sound more seductive? - clearly the effect (and the result) that Marlowe’s Shepherd is aiming at in his swooningly romantic verse seduction The Passionate Shepherd to His Love1:

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow Rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of Roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and Ivy buds,
With Coral clasps and Amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

What nymph could resist? Especially when even the birds are hey nonny nonnying with extreme sophistication in proper Elizabethan madrigal-style. There’re coral clasps, amber studs and “buckles of purest gold”, along with caps made of flowers (someone else's clever weaving one suspects), and beautiful leafy embroidery. The few “realistic” touches - a woollen dress (but “the finest wool”), slippers lined against the cold - merely serve to emphasise the enchantment being woven with as much accomplishment as the creation of a cap made of flowers: we are, of course, frolicking in the great pastoral tradition where rural life and its accoutrements becomes a game and a metaphor; but only commits itself to a two-cheek kiss with reality.

Consequently (and because works of literature love conversation with other works), the Nymph’s reply2. She is, WTRI is pleased to observe, a realist:

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move,
To live with thee, and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
To wayward winter reckoning yields,
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of Roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten:
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds,
The Coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee, and be thy love.

There was, of course at this time, a tradition of poetic exchange - conversation, duel, riff, argument - and this reply is written on the Nymph's behalf by Sir Walter Ralegh; although even allowing for the aspect of the literary culture just mentioned, he still made sure to do it after Christopher Marlowe's untimely death; possibly reluctant to take on an acknowledged titan directly (but not necessarily - he was never backwards about coming forward with a swagger; and, in the Elizabethan cultural landscape, the swagger was, if not all, close to it). Marlowe's enticement is in the classical Arcadian tradition; naturally attractive to a Renaissance author, steeped in the narratives and iconography of the new learning, that is, the old learning represented by the classics; but, as we know, an artistic ideal - to be realised in words, paint, dress, performance, and life as performance - that would run and run. (This is the point, leaping ahead a couple of centuries, where Marie Antoinette frequently gets trotted out; but it's worth noting that, although she enjoyed relaxing within an artifice of refined simplicity, the model farm was also intended as instruction for the royal children (rather like model farms today used to educate city children): so well-intentioned, if not ultimately realistic. Marlowe, of course, is not educational; except perhaps in the Lyn Barber young woman and the world sense, something Ralegh stresses.)

Ralegh, on the other hand, infuses his riposte with melancholy; and, in the “folly ripe in reason rotten”, deploys the imagery of the fashionable memento mori, foregrounding the skull beneath the skin in the artful manner of Holbein's portrait The Ambassadors, where, viewing from the right slant, springs into three dimensions the huge skull beneath the diplomats’s feet. You too will come to this.

Time (and its passing; the implication that death has its season too) is further stressed in the almost metronomic beat, as Ralegh subverts Marlowe's joyous iambic impulsion into a litany of negation and denial: if only, if only, if only; a rhythmic reassertion of the imagery expressly giving the lie to Marlowe's pastoral enchantment; including the reminder that - if she's an English Nymph (which presumably she is, since even Marlowe feels obliged to give her a woollen gown, even if it is the finest) - the English weather can be very chancey. No lounging around naked but for a residual wisp of drapery, while fending off fauns, shepherds and hunters (take your pick) like the Italian nymphs depicted by Titian and Giorgione. The life of a nymph (as we know anyway, instructed by classical mythology), tended to be a tough one, fraught with sexual hazard. Here, without even advancing beyond Marlowe's wooing (considerably more seductive than in the classics; at least she's being offered beds of roses rather than forcibly metamorphosed into a rose bush as her best option if she wants to avoid a sexually predatory god), Ralegh, by focusing on the practical elements, pulls the implicit into focus as well.

Yet, his Nymph isn't entirely averse to the persuasions of her swain -

But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee, and be thy love.

- offers a distinct shift in mood from the more straightforwardly rebarbative; a longing - for constancy, certainty, continuance: all the things that romantic love can never offer (or only the illusion; there the risk, gain, adventure). This wistfulness and extreme consciousness of time also permeates the writing of the subsequent generation of poets (Had we but world enough and time and so on); perhaps partly naturally concomitant on love poetry (which many of them favoured); also possibly fuelled later by a sense of urgency accelerated by living through a period of national warfare (the English Civil Wars); although obviously this doesn't apply to Thomas Carew who, writing in the Cavalier tradition of beautiful and witty importunity, died before they started).

But pastoral nature in all her glory - romantic pastoral, as we know, does not focus on icy landscapes and blasted heaths (unless we're being shown the effect on our pitiable poet’s heart; behold, shortly, Thomas Carew) - is a natural partner for romantic love, for all the obvious reasons: blossoming, unfurling, fecundity (implicit in Marlowe's pleasures to be proved - all of them - explicit in Ralegh’s breeding love; and Carew’s sacred birth); sex both sublimated and before our very eyes (those strutting pigeons manifested); but also, at a time when people were arguably closer to the harshest imperatives of existence, a joyous reminder of renewal that we still embrace, because - Light! Warmth! Action!

Here's the Cavalier, Sir Thomas Carew’s, lovely The Spring3;

Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful Spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.
Now all things smile, only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.

Of course, it's not all joy and cowslip balls: just as Ralegh's Nymph, his mistress lours upon him (that wonderful June in her eyes, in her heart January that drags us back into the dead of winter). But the earth has shrugged off her snow-white robes, going for an Italian nymph deshabillée carelessness that emphasises the revival as the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth.

It's Spring.

It would be a good idea never to publish anything, but if this mistake really has to be made, my view is that the dedication should be to the wind.

That’s the witty, inventive and iconoclastic 16th-17thc Neapolitan author (and condottiere and professional courtier and - because writers have to eat) Giambattista Basile, used as part of the dedicatory forward1, to the mock epic of his friend and fellow Neapolitan Giulio Cesare Cortese; touching upon some of the hazards of the writing life, with which he was only too well acquainted.

This week was going to be about something else; but then, the whole Helen DeWitt kerfuffle (including the polarised responses it provoked); which produced thoughts.

To be clear, WTRI has not followed this closely, so, big picture - the novelist, Helen DeWitt was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize but felt obliged to turn it down because it transpired there were publicity requirements which she felt unable to fulfill - but, stepping away from the personal (and the often personal reactions) what seems to WTRI really significant here is the wider questions this situation raises. What is the purpose, and intention, of a literary prize?

You can truly say that you have served the wind...

Is it to reward a performance (a work), or the performance (Look, we have live authors! They walk, they talk. They are available)?Whom is the prize promoting? The author? Or the bestower of the award? Is the prize celebrating a career? A body of work? Is it a publicity campaign? (For whom?) Is it a tax write-off: further monetised as good works and cultural support PR?

These aren’t just valid questions (and all valid foundations for an award, of course): they fundamentally define the parameters of any award, making redundant the kind of personal negotiation-explication where - for example, Helen DeWitt - an author feels that, say, neurodivergence has to be cited in support of rejection of participation in a publicity campaign; when, of course, it (and any other conditions, personal traits) should be irrelevant: if the prize is for literature. To state the obvious, there's a difference between contingence and objective.

Of course, any body or person establishing an award can choose the terms and conditions under which it will operate - but that doesn’t seem to be what happened here; it seems a far more ad hoc, after-the-fact reaction - no publicity, no prize - to the breaching of an assumption so apparently obvious (to those assuming) that alternative ways forward never occurred; including the rather obvious, is it actually good PR for a prize apparently designated as support for talented but ill-rewarded writers, to double down on withdrawing proffered support - on grounds that have nothing to do with literary output or ability? Contrary to the truism, not all publicity is good publicity. (And DeWitt presumably would have welcomed the prize or she wouldn't have - publicised - the circumstances of her deselection.) Also worth noting that literary prizes in general have a history of flexibility in observing their own initial parameters, in pursuit of - you’ve guessed it - a higher public profile. Autres temps, autres moeurs - times change. (WTRI always feels rather sorry for the late Betty Task whose original somewhat controversial bequest (a prize to reward the kind of classic romantic fiction she enjoyed but felt was no longer available) has been developed into a sharp little prize with a sophisticated - and resolutely unromantic - profile on the serious literary landscape. This is in no way a reflection on anyone who may have won a Betty Trask Prize; and undoubtedly all the necessary adjustments were made appropriately. But it does seem unlikely that the prize - although rewarding talent - is rewarding the kind of fiction that Betty Trask actually liked reading.) It also goes without saying that any author who is happy to participate in publicity, even enjoys it (and there are authors who not only do, but do it magnificently, giving great pleasure to many) is as admirable and autonomous as an author who is not (or whose additional talents lie elsewhere). But: additional talents. We are, presumably, here for the writing.

Reactions to the Windham-Campbell hoo-ha seem to be quite neatly disposed: just do it, it’s a prize; why should she do it, it’s a prize. Although WTRI naturally has more sympathy with the latter, the first argument seems fallacious anyway; especially in relation to a prize predicated on providing authors with much-needed support. (There have been some very good discussions of this on Substack.)

And so the poor poet - sonnets over here, verses of every other sort over there, madrigals for this one and barzallette for that one - as soon as he collects his wits finds himself with an empty head, a shrunken stomach, and ragged elbows... Everything he does goes to the wind, just as my own affairs have.

Authors have always needed support, of course. Fortunate is the writer who can subsist solely on their own work, without either patronage (ancient or modern) or diversification; Alexander Pope writing roughly a hundred years after Basile - privileged by inherited money allied to deserved critical and commercial success - understood this only too well (and, of course, not much has changed); addressing the subject (and his dear friend and doctor) with witty astringency - and generosity - in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped,
If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.
Seiz'd and tied down to judge, how wretched I!
Who can't be silent, and who will not lie.
To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace,
And to be grave, exceeds all Pow'r of face.
I sit with sad civility, I read
With honest anguish, and an aching head;
And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,
This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years."

"Nine years!" cries he, who high in Drury-lane,
Lull'd by soft Zephyrs thro' the broken pane,
Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends,
Oblig'd by hunger, and request of friends:
"The piece, you think, is incorrect? why, take it,
I'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it."

Three things another's modest wishes bound,
My Friendship, and a Prologue, and ten pound.

Pope, of course, is also discussing the variable quality of literary output (I read with honest anguish); but the straits so many writers find themselves in are not necessarily contingent on merit: just pounds, shillings and pence; although, because desperation tends not to elicit popularity, they're forced into the jaunty equivocation encapsulated as Oblig’d by hunger, and request of friends. Every author their own PR. Pope’s brilliance lies in his pithy yoking together of the inherent comedy and tragedy in one tight, perfectly calibrated phrase. It's interesting and encouraging to observe how - despite the various internecine feuds, jealousies and general sillinesses - artists of all kinds (if in a position to do so) would bail each other out; almost certainly because anyone operating in the trenches understood just how hard survival could be, even for the ostensibly successful; (Dr. Johnson's career, for instance, is punctuated by a positive litany of desperate notes imploring immediate financial succour. Samuel Richardson, writer and publisher, comes out particularly well.) Pope is an artist who’s rich anyway; but he’s both kind in tactfully responding to unwanted literary advances, despite his reputation for waspishness; and generous in the dishing out of subsidies, even including those not obviously deserving of his support -

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Pitholeon sends to me: "You know his Grace
I want a Patron; ask him for a Place."
Pitholeon libell'd me, — "but here's a letter
Informs you, Sir, 't was when he knew no better.
Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine,
"He'll write a Journal, or he'll turn Divine."

- still laughing good-humouredly even when confronted by double threat )either starting a magazine, or taking religious orders - sermons - and boring everyone into submission that way) and gracelessness (I want a Patron; ask him for a Place2). Probably, not unconnected is the fact that he knows (because any decent artist has to be able to estimate their own work) how good he is (I lisp’d in numbers for the numbers came).

An aristocratic patron, however passionate about the arts, was unlikely to share this visceral understanding - how could they? their entire upbringing militated against it; also their experience (even if pursuing creative endeavours) - they might be sympathetic but the empathy that would recognise the terrible immediacy snapping at the heels of so many artists would be beyond most of them; even allowing for a general tendency to perceive the art as for their benefit. (Aha! Only connect…) Consequently, they tended to be dilatory when it came to paying up or paying out; changeable generally; frequently bending to the winds of fashion, unless they had very good and discriminating taste indeed.

The Latin epigraph3 Pope chooses to introduce the Epistle also offers apposite commentary for anyone considering the question of literary prizes:

Neither abandon yourself to the chatter of the masses, nor place your hope of your affairs in human rewards; Virtue herself by her own attractions should draw you to true merit. What others say about you, let them look to themselves, they will talk anyway.

For the writer, it really has to be about the work. And if there are prizes? One could hope that Virtue herself by her own attractions should draw you to true merit; and that would be enough.

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All those who read only for amusement are, in my opinion, more worthy of attention than those who open a book merely to find fault, to the former I address myself, and for their entertainment commit the following pages to the press, without being in the least concerned about the severe criticisms of the latter.

If you wanted someone to show you a good time, Anthony Hamilton, author (but not subject) of the Memoirs of Comte de Grammont1 (quoted from above), was very much your man: a man who would whisk together a sprightly little novel2 to mark a lady's plan to change the name of her house (not move house, you note), featuring a giant, an enchantment and a princess, despite (or perhaps because, he got very good value out of these tropes) also being well-known as a man who laughed at the fashionable romances then at their height - which, naturally, were very fond of giants, enchantments and princesses, preferably in an “exotic” setting - dismissing them (using the terminology of the time), as “more Arabian than Arabia.” The lady was his sister, married to the comte de Gramont. When it came to choosing the lucky winner to share his fascinating story with the world, Gramont didn't have far to look; and Hamilton had already proved in this - and other novels - his accomplishment in extracting entertainment even from the most minor social endeavours fuelling life at and around Versailles. As he's already told us in his vicarious address to potential readers of the Memoirs: he's here only for amusement. (Naturally, there's more.)

Consequently, no better literary partner-in-crime could be found for the comte de Gramont - a man who emphatically is the good time. Gramont is one of those characters whom everyone knows about for a while, until they stop knowing; the living, breathing, louche and swashbuckling 17thc example that offers an épée disarm to Andy Warhol's everyone famous for fifteen minutes, exposing it as vernacular repackaged for the “atomic age”, the Campbell's Soup tin of aphorisms, before swaggering off for a hand of cards (probably brag).

At an age when he had quite a lot to look back on, also realising that he'd lived through the “interesting times” of the proverb, as well as being privy to a rich cache of top-notch Court gossip (both England and France), Gramont decided it was time to share himself a bit more with the world; and deftly co-opted his literary brother-in-law, Hamilton, to do the honours. Their relationship on the project is one we would find analogous to the modern celebrity “autobiographer” and his or her ghostwriter, (the kind which honestly acknowledges that this is not all the celebrity's own work); with the additional proviso that in no way does the memoir ever pretend to inhabit its subject. This is, emphatically, not memoir as self-revelation, in the sense of deep inward delving - a much later ambition and preoccupation, related to, you’ve guessed it, developments in perception and ideas of the self, and subsequent centralisation of the unique sensibility contingent upon the individual experience (as we've talked about here before3); to give an example, later in the century, Wordsworth found these considerations so important that he wrote what became an epic poem (it started as a two-part introduction to another poem), examining his psychological development - The Prelude - and continued adding to it throughout his life, literally, a life’s work; because, as Stendhal so justly observed, there are epochs in the history of one’s mind. As far as Gramont is concerned, there may be epochs - why not, if he is swaggering through them, emanating what we might now call “main character energy”? - the interest lies in getting down all the good stuff about what he got up to.

So this is memoir - and selective memories - as record; ordered by a professional into a polished succession of court dances that place Gramont centre stage. You will recall the saraband, composed by the musician Francisco, which fuelled the guitar craze at Charles II’s Court, observed by Gramont. A saraband is a stately dance (originating in Spain), that favours dazzling in performance; close relative of the minuet (another dance that showcases the performance - in both, people sat around the edges of the dance floor and watched the couple dancing at the time, very much in the manner of the grand classical ballets now, during a pas de deux); set in triple time (when it was danced, almost certainly 3/4 time, which would make it insanely catchy in a magnificent kind of way - as we have seen - also, remember the saraband used as a theme in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon?4); frequently leaning in towards the second beat, creating the saraband’s characteristic yearning mood: which, is of course, very much what Gramont and Hamilton are doing in their co-production: putting on an entrancing performance, leaning in towards what we might now refer to as Gramont’s second act, from the vantage point of his (almost) all-seeing third, imbuing that performance with feeling (as well as wit and charm); displaying the ease and talent of the performers - here, Gramont and Hamilton, the dancing brothers-in-law; Gramont telling (or even, selling), Hamilton retelling.

It gets better, because like Gramont, the saraband has a racy past: in its wild youth in 16thc Spain5 known as zarabanda, a fast, furious dance, so popular - and supposedly lascivious - that it was banned by the Inquisition; lying low for a while, before reappearing in France, after a makeover, as a stately court dance. If you're conjecturing that this sounds remarkably like Gramont (definitely louche, change of title - upgrade from chevalier - and banned quite a lot, including his own Memoirs), you’d be absolutely right. Also, just to add the gold lacing to Gramont's full-skirted coat, naturally he’s stepping out sword at hip (“His advances at the siege at Arras”, and so on), so fencing (both as art - beats, cadences, phrases - and science - an efficient way to kill a man) is the dance behind the dance here, (apparently Nature and Art really can blend that seamlessly sometimes); allied to saraband an elegant exemplification of Gramont's progress through life; (although, obviously, that observation regarding Nature and Art is disingenuous), because, of course, the reason that Nature and Art are entwined so inextricably is: art. A life lived as performance. Precise choreography and polished easy performance are part of the Memoirs’s DNA, a means of displaying and expressing the comte’s personality, and his courtly affinities (if not gentlemanly ones). This is memoir as the elective seduction of the peacock's unfurling tail - but a painted peacock, all art, no chance - as Hamilton makes clear:

It being my design to convey a just idea of my hero, those circumstances which most tend to illustrate and distinguish his character shall find a place in these fragments just as they present themselves to my imagination, without paying any particular attention to their arrangement. For after all, what does it signify where the portrait is begun, provided the assembly of parts forms a whole which perfectly expresses the original?

This kaleidoscopic vision of creative integrity, prefigures considerably the modernist sensibility that declares exactly that (and engages in stylistic experiments such as stream-of-consciousness in pursuit of it); it's fascinating how easily Hamilton's narrative can slip into a subliminal dialogue with Eliot's Waste Land (as we’ve already observed - O city, city, I can sometimes hear…/The pleasant whining of a mandolin) - or again here: These fragments I have shored against my ruins6); because, of course, both Hamilton and Eliot are dancing in and out of the same territory, conjuring and commenting on worlds through skewering, cynical social observation; mythologising as they go; both works vibrant with music - which we could encapsulate as jazz and baroque, shared equally, allied to brilliantly feigned improvisation - Eliot taking on the whole world (as he knows it); Hamilton creating (or recreating) a world as he's been told it, laughter nearly always latent, no “rhythmical grumbling” (as Eliot later described it, doing his work less than justice, of course), stressing the importance of the voice he’s suggesting:

It is therefore to the Comte we must listen, in the agreeable relation of the sieges and battles wherein he distinguished himself…and it is on him we must rely for the truth of passages the least glorious of his life, and for the sincerity with which he relates his address, vivacity, friends, and the various strategies he practised in either love or gaming. These express his true character, and to himself we owe these memoirs, since I only hold the pen while he directs it to the most remarkable and secret passages of his life.

As well as the obvious - a disclaimer regarding reliability and veracity (Hamilton's relying on Gramont as his source); armour against accusations of libel or spite (a reiteration: Hamilton is relying on Gramont as his source); allied to a teaser trailer - remarkable and secret passages of his life - this is an assertion of a life displayed in action, and the selective recounting of those actions, creating a reality - an expression of true character - with a life of its own: because even if Gramont is lying, or inventing, or buffing up his ‘facts’ for his brother-in-law, it doesn't matter, because that tells us about him anyway. He will still be on display. (And happy to be so, to be fair.) A portrait will emerge.

At moments, sitting seems a almost embarrassingly physical affair: an enterprise that concerns the model’s skin, muscles, flesh and also, I suppose - if there is such a thing - self7.

That's an early 21stc account by the art critic, Martin Gayford, of sitting for his portrait by Lucian Freud (interestingly - and surprisingly - uncertain regarding the self); the sitting a staging of Gayford’s presence that will lead to an impression or expression (or both). Gramont, on the other hand, is fleshed out for us through his actions, and his accounts of these, the flesh and sinew that embody his self, without any of the uncertainty; the skillful arrangement of these (as with Freud) the staging and realisation of his presence before us, his audience.

I further declare that the order of time and disposition of the facts, which gives more trouble to the writer than pleasure to the reader, shall not embarrass me in these Memoirs.

Also, in acknowledging the possibility of unreliable source material, Hamilton is giving himself - as he makes clear in the various declarations of intent seen here - the permissions of fiction: truth isn't only to be realised through a strict adherence to the marching orders of the established record; and he takes pleasure in both reminding the reader of this, and using that reminder to comment on his narrative (and his narrative form):

“This” said Matta, “smells strongly of romance, except that it should have been your squire’s part to tell your adventures.” “True,” said the Chevalier [Gramont], “however, I may acquaint you with my exploits without offending my modesty. Besides, my squire’s style borders too much upon the burlesque for an heroic narrative.”

Here, the jokes come thick and fast: a metatextual conversation about literary form, commentary about storytelling generally, and the comte’s style in particular; on the comte himself as a character (and a character in his own story)… Hamilton's playfulness (and relish in that playfulness), also offers us another sidelight on Gramont, of course, a man whose preference was always for the lighthearted, displaying “an uncommon presence of mind and facetiousness of temper in the most imminent dangers of war…[;] practis[ing] his inconstancy”; and sailing rather close to the wind at cards. Practising his inconstancy. Hamilton's accomplished performance, expresses the definitive social moves of the time - mincing (to walk with style then perceived as a mark of breeding, especially as it would literally include “backwards in high heels” for both sexes if they were habitués of courts), elegantly extending a leg (the all-important bow), or placing a hand on hip (sword or “good” posture), demonstrating the proper handling of a hat (important social skill) - as the wit and witty arrangement of his material to the best advantage: in other words, his hero displaying all the currently desirable qualities of a sophisticated man-of-the-world, plus the extra that makes Gramont charismatic within his age (but also, beyond it); fascinating to potential readers. Note that these skills do not include writing: contemporary comment says that “he wrote almost worse than anyone”4; an observation of wry amusement but no particular criticism; the subtext that perceived sophistication did not have to embrace any high degree of literacy, nor was it necessary to make one's mark in the world - as a gentleman. As demonstrated here, one could get other people to do that, if necessary (unsurprisingly, Gramont's much-vaunted wit also seems to have lain more in the way he told ‘em); and Hamilton delivers with considerable panache (Francisco, perhaps, to Gramont's Duke of York).

Because, to state the obvious, it’s his accomplishment that brings Gramont (and his world) to life.

This Russell was one of the most furious dancers in England, I mean for country dances, he had a collection of two or three hundred in print, all of which he danced at sight; and to prove that he was not an old man, he sometimes danced until he was almost exhausted: his mode of dancing was like that of his clothes, they had both been out of fashion full twenty years.

This amusing, but rather touching sketch, exemplifies in its apparent artlessness Hamilton's skill - the deft character sketch in a sentence, the comic timing, the apparent demotic naturalness (I mean) - whilst it proffers the anti-Gramont: effortful in pursuit and display of the accomplishment that displays refinement; out-of-date, as well, so no longer relevant (unlike the comte admired by all ages), except as a good laugh (that well-placed furious) - again, unlike Gramont whom it's always with, not at - a deft illustration of the importance of talent (in this case, Gramont's ability to present himself to the world) above practice alone. Poor old Russell knows all the steps by heart - and can dance by sight-reading, no mean feat - but he lacks the ease which completes the seduction, and enslaves a willing audience. No-one’s going to want to copy his dance-moves; and not really because he's old-fashioned: Gramont, no longer young, is also technically old-fashioned, in the unavoidable manner of age, as he looks back - but he wears it so well that, as usual, everyone either wants to be like him, or spend time with him; and we know this from the rapturous reception of the Memoirs when they were first published (and for a long time afterwards). In a phrase: Still got it.

Gramont, of course, was delighted at the Memoirs’s success; especially as, rather entertainingly, he’d initially had a little difficulty in having them cleared for publication by the censor (in France): a well-intentioned act by this generally steely-hearted functionary, on the grounds they portrayed Gramont as an unprincipled gambler and all-round lowlife. Yes! enthused Gramont, aren't they wonderful? and immediately complained to the Chancellor, who passed them for publication. (This always reminds WTRI of the scene in the film Love in the Afternoon, when Maurice Chevalier (ladies's man, naturally), confronted by Gary Cooper's supposed lothario exclaims in awed admiration, his statement of the obvious: “Doesn't a lover of modern art admire Picasso?”) Anyway, sold for a lot of money and instant bestseller, so Gramont undoubtedly skipped all the way to his banker’s; whilst always making a point of acknowledging his literary debt to Hamilton; as accomplished in writing, as Gramont at impressing himself on life; and in capturing that impression for posterity. Gramont picked well: Hamilton was much admired in his time (and for some time afterwards); writers as diverse as Voltaire, Pope, and Gibbon praised him, Gibbon citing “the ease and purity of Hamilton's inimitable style8”; Horace Walpole and Sir Walter Scott admired him so much they translated the Memoirs (again).

Gramont, as we've seen, was also greatly admired - and enjoyed himself - his perspective: always centre-stage, owning the dance-floor; to us, maybe, closer to Prufrock9 (an attendant lord), with infinitely better clothes, high self-esteem, and an entirely different personality; yet perceived as so unique by his contemporaries (less so, perhaps, to the reader distanced by time), even the epigraph for the English translation was kept in its original French, presumably as an acknowledgement of Gramont's general untranslatability (although we, as readers can amuse ourselves by considering the interpretive and contextual possibilities inherent in a memoir, written on behalf of its French subject by an English writer, in French, translated into English); but could - very roughly - translate as: One can come back as a Condé/ One can come back a Turenne/ Vain to ask for a Comte de Grammont one day/ For Nature it would be too much of a pain10.

Dance!

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It's one of life's pleasures to observe something done superlatively well; also a seduction; and, possibly, enticement to emulation: (well does WTRI remember the seductive bravura of Cossack dances; the dashing and enthusiastic attempts we all made on them - in my extreme youth, when George the Third was king, obviously; the discovery - You get the idea. We managed to squat, stick out a leg, then haul it back and repeat on the other side whilst maintaining a semblance of balance.) This, of course, if persevered in, is a large part of the way skills are acquired.

At Charles II’s court in the 1670s there was a craze. Court life in general was dominated by the need to display oneself and to make one’s mark -

all studied to set themselves off to the best advantage: some distinguished themselves by dancing; others by show and magnificence; some by their wit, many by their amours, but few by their constancy.1

However,

There was a certain Italian at court, famous for the guitar: he had a genius for music, and he was the only man who could make anything of the guitar

- which, naturally, didn't stop other people from trying, as a guitar craze swept the court:

The king’s relish for his compositions had brought the instrument so much into vogue, that every person played upon it, well or ill; and you were as sure to see a guitar on a lady’s toilet [dressing-table] as rouge or patches.

But, of course, possession of a guitar does not automatically bestow with it the ability to coax from it musical delights - Francisco’s [sic] “style of playing was so full of grace and tenderness that he would have given harmony to the most discordant instruments” - but, well or ill: obviously that didn't apply to everyone at court; although honourable mentions go to the King's brother, the Duke of York, who plays “tolerably well”; and the Earl of Arran: “like Francisco himself.”

This Francisco had composed a saraband, which either charmed or infatuated every person; for the whole guitarery at court was trying it; and God knows what a universal strumming there was.

One can just hear it. (“O city, city, I can sometimes hear…/The pleasant whining of a mandolin”2 - but with more dud notes.) There's also something about guitars (and their relatives) which seems to particularly inspire a belief in ease of emulation (one only has to think of Bertie Wooster and his ukulele - also part of a craze - a few centuries later); something about the strumming and simple chords, perhaps; but, of course, the whole illustrative of Pope’s irritable assertion - in another context - that “True Ease in Writing comes from Art not Chance/As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.”3 Great accomplishments may wreathe enchantment, but there's no magic wand.

Meanwhile, over in Italy - generally acknowledged at this time as the centre of excellence for the making of stringed instruments - Evaristo Baschini, a painter who frequently included people playing musical instruments in his work (fairly common), had been experimenting for a while with still-lifes - portraits one might say - of instruments alone: very unusual; the current understanding being that he is the trailblazer here. The instruments - guitar, lute, spinet and more are staged with a loving sumptuousness: silky inlaid woods, fecund swelling bodies full of music. In one panel of his Agliardi triptych, he even carefully incorporates the identifier that informs us that conte Alessandro is playing a guitar by the master Venetian luthier, Giorgio Sellas, so important is it that we should see this. Just as at Charles II’s court, all are stud[ying] to set themselves off to the best advantage: performing, and the performance are all; (although one can entertain hopes that in the land of Amati et al., at least some of the players are rather closer to Francisco/Francesco than the average English courtier). A modern gallerist, Maurizio Canesso, has described this as Baschini creating a theatre to stage [italics WTRI] the culture of his clients.

Another interesting element of Baschini’s work is that, in the instrument still-lives, the instruments tend to be face down - one could argue better displaying a beautiful shape - but also: without music. The music has stopped: the moment become closer to the Romantic idea of the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling recollected in tranquillity; we are to observe and imagine something that is inherent but no longer happening; (although it could be said he's simply borrowing from a standard classic still-life dialogue, the memento mori, that doesn't seem to embrace the sophistication of what's suggested); especially as he adjusts the emphasis of this over-the-shoulder reflection, in one painting where the instruments are all covered in a light velvety coating of dust, to illustrate exactly this: Golden lads and girls all must/As chimney sweepers come to dust, intimated by (literally) the lightest of touches.

‘Tis not enough no Harshness gives offence, The Sound should seem an Echo to the Sense.4

Baschini's dexterity allows us both to hear the latent music in his compositions, and to interpret its and their messages; and, of course, his accomplishment in suggesting these, and his adventurousness in repurposing a genre to meet his own requirements, are partly the result of a facility born of experience and long practice.

Art not chance. Both the author - Anthony Hamilton - and the subject (comte de Gramont) of this charming court feuilleton recounting the guitar craze were well aware of these imperatives: and what, after all, is a published memoir, but a long backward glance, performed for an audience; possibly seeking meaning? The Memoirs of Comte de Grammont [sic], were actually written by his brother-in-law (Anthony Hamilton, an established writer); commissioned by the comte, who recognised that leading a rakish, bon mot bestrewed life was his forte, rather than writing about it; and wanting justice done to his magnificence before the instruments were turned face down and started gathering dust, called in a professional.

Stay tuned.

Look up to the stars above. Sing to a small guitar… (And, of course, like, share, comment, subscribe, before carefully mooring your beautiful pea-green boat…)

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A springy reissue to bring good cheer.

An Easter egg for you; encrusted with rubies if you will, Fabergé, why not?

The Making of a Marchioness (Frances Hodgson Burnett), obviously. This delicious novel has a strapping heroine built like a ship’s figurehead (those were the days!), making her way in Edwardian London (acting as a kind of Universal Aunt before that company even existed; she clearly knows how to identify a gap in the market; but also, how to create a good life for herself within a very limited range of possibility).

When Miss Fox-Seton descended from the twopenny bus as it drew up, she gathered her trim tailor-made skirt about her with neatness and decorum, being well used to getting in and out of twopenny buses and to making her way across muddy London streets. A woman whose tailor-made suit must last two or three years soon learns how to protect it from splashes, and how to aid it to retain the freshness of its folds.

Kind sensible, poor, hardworking, Emily Fox-Seton’shard-won independence is unexpectedly jeopardised in the random way of so many disasters. She meets these setbacks with courage and determined resourcefulness, despite the abyss gaping before any single woman without family or independent means at this time.

She was a woman of good blood and of good education, as the education of such women goes. She had few relatives, and none of them had any intention of burdening themselves with her pennilessness. They were people of excellent family, but had quite enough to do to keep their sons in the army or navy and find husbands for their daughters. When Emily's mother had died and her small annuity had died with her, none of them had wanted the care of a big raw-boned girl, and Emily had had the situation frankly explained to her.

Consequently, Emily's worked since she was eighteen, surviving in a world in which the genteel fiction is that ladies don't work work; no safety net; until a stroke of good fortune, after a “bad winter” slightly recalibrates her trajectory.

A resolutely undistinguished (but supremely confident) hero; a house-party (including an ambitious, social-climbing mother and daughter from Cincinnati; and, the equally ambitious, society beauty Lady Agatha Slade, who knows how to pose with a borzoi); and bucket-loads of intricate social detail (generally used as character illustration).

The man who had driven himself over from the station in the cart was coming towards them across the grass. He was past middle life and plain, but was of good height and had an air. It was perhaps, on the whole, rather an air of knowing what he wanted.

Emily Fox-Seton, who by that time was comfortably seated in a cushioned basket-chair, sipping her own cup of tea, gave him the benefit of the doubt when she wondered if he was not really distinguished and aristocratic-looking. He was really neither, but was well-built and well-dressed, and had good grayish-brown eyes, about the colour of his grayish-brown hair.

…Lady Maria seemed to like him and to be pleased to see him. He himself seemed, in an undemonstrative way, to like Lady Maria. He also was evidently glad to get his tea, and enjoyed it as he sat at his cousin's side. He did not pay very much attention to any one else. Emily was slightly disappointed to see that he did not glance at the beauty and the Borzoi more than twice, and then that his examination seemed as much for the Borzoi as for the beauty.

The end is rather rushed (infuriatingly; it was written as a magazine serial): having leisurely extracted meaning, insight and commentary from the minutest detail, Hodgson Burnett suddenly abandons these and cuts to the chase: you can almost see her thinking, OK, let’s wrap this up now.

Oh yes, and there’s a marquis; and a ruby as large as a pigeon’s egg.

(There’s also a sequel - The Methods of Lady Walderhurst - a dark, brooding, Gothic novel, the trapped heroine under attack; and a genuine attempt to portray seriously and sympathetically, what was then called an Anglo-Indian character (bi-racial). Burnett demonstrates her accomplishment in ratcheting up the tension in an extremely internalised narrative, in which inner volcanic upheavals sputter out as increasingly dangerous overflows of lava. We are, of course, on tenterhooks for the presaged great eruption. Who - or what - will survive?)

Read while you walk (oh, hang on, isn't that what everybody does with their phones…) And, of course, like, comment, share, subscribe, if you feel so inclined…

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(An earlier version of this egg has been published here in a different form.)

“I have a view, I have a view.”

A Room with a View (E.M. Forster) is suffused with sunlight: both (as it were) as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling - Tuscany, Florence, falling in love - and recollection in tranquillity: the Home Counties, friends, family, neighbours, the obstacles of love. It’s possibly Forster’s happiest book, while still displaying all his capacity for bleakly clear-eyed lack of sentiment and dry humour.

“The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view, close together, instead of which here are north rooms looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!”

Youthful Lucy Honeychurch is introduced to the wonders of Florence (in the early 20thc century) - and the English who enthusiastically infest it; dabbling in a little Stendhal Syndrome, if they can; that is, being overcome physically when confronted by extraordinary beauty; which, you probably recall, is how it took that great Italophile, Stendhal.1

Although, according to the swashbuckling Miss Lavish, who cries “Buon giorno!” to everyone she passes, and spurns Baedeker, one comes to Italy to experience life, promising Lucy “an adventure” (as she sings the praises of the “sweetly squalid” Prato) - “I revel in shaking off the trammels of respectability” - Lucy initially finds Florence - as represented by the Pension Bertolini - disappointingly English.

She looked at the rows of English people who were sitting at the table; at the row of white bottles of water and red bottles of wine that ran between the English people; at the portraits of the late Queen and the late Poet Laureate that hung behind the English people, heavily framed; at the notice of the English church (Rev. Cuthbert Eager M.A. Oxon.), that was the only other decoration of the wall.

Even the perfidious Signora is a Cockney, who married an Italian; and returned home with him.

“Charlotte, don't you feel, too, that we might be in London? I can hardly believe that all kinds of other things are just outside.”

Luckily there are.

Lucy is overcome in the Piazza, but not by Stendhal Syndrome; and later still, her sudden, unexpected romantic encounter with a devastatingly romantic-seeming (and “unsuitable” - exactly, literally so) young man, triggers repercussions that follow her all the way home.

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean, though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffin's and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in the unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno gurgling against the embankment of the road.

The eponymous view from the window of Lucy's shared room at the pension: that opening window - view, no view, achieving a view; retaining it - all highly symbolic, of course; as is Lucy's vernal state (budding, hopeful, each tiny unfurling illustrative of that potentially expansive, liminal state, the passionate intensity of youth in its development). Lucy's always rushing towards the window, flinging it open: she does the same on their first night at the Bertolini when they've finally acquired a view, courtesy of the socially dubious Emerson's, breathing in “the clean night air” and relishing “the lights dancing in the Arno and the cypresses of San Miniato, and the foothills of the Appenines black against the rising moon.” Meanwhile,

Miss Bartlett, in her room, fastened the window-shutters and locked the door, and then made a tour of the apartment to see where the cupboards led and whether there were any oubliettes or secret entrances.

Understandably, in view of the myriad stresses of Abroad, she will have a headache the following day; unlike Lucy who “was determined to enjoy herself on the morrow.”

But even back in the stolid Home Counties, the Italian sunshine still exerts its entrancing, enhancing, antiseptic charms, exposing the meretricious; nourishing possibility; and, in “mixing memory and desire”, giving life to ways of being in life and the world unthought of before the Italian adventure.

How will Lucy cope with this, what will she learn - and will she snatch - or surrender - happiness from convention?

Bask. Fling open the window.

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(This is an expanded version of material that's previously appeared on Substack in a different form.)

A goose-featherbed for you to subside into, this week; only the faintest of offstage political rumblings (because: people); precursors of the Reform Act that would, in its excision of rotten boroughs, redistribution of parliamentary seats and expansion of the franchise, literally redraw the political landscape; a harbinger of political promise; although definitely not promise realised (because, as you’ll recall, no women, no working people, and so on). But a good start: one which will shake up the relationships and certainties of the world Elizabeth Gaskell so precisely depicts in Wives and Daughters; and - as she allows us to see - ineluctably inherent to those relationships and certainties at this particular moment in time. The future is now, even as we look over our shoulders.

A magnificently detailed, leisurely discussion of “three or four families” in a country town rather than a village; set a little later than Jane Austen, in the 1820s (Gaskell is very specific, saying it’s before the Reform Act of 1832, which would transform the society she was describing); and written quite a lot later (as a serial in the Cornhill Magazine): this is also a novel that looks back into the past.

It starts when Molly Gibson is twelve (that’s how leisurely we’re going to be), living contentedly with her widower father, the local doctor, but extremely gentlemanly (a distinguishing qualification necessary in an age when doctors somewhat uneasily straddled the divide between gentleman and tradesman): Mr. Gibson is regularly invited to dinner with their local great family, the Cumnors; could visit them far more often than he does. He remarries, the Cumnor’s former governess, now a widow, giving Molly a not-entirely congenial stepmother - worldly, socially ambitious but not deliberately unkind - and a charming, fascinating stepsister, Cynthia, who both intrigues Molly - and draws her into intrigues.

And that’s it. There’s Squire Hamley and his family (Molly’s in love with his younger son, Roger); and the various local ladies: these are the axes on which the novel turns, as Gaskell lovingly explores the minutiae of their lives with precision, affection, psychological and social acuity and humour, allied to a strong sense of place and the rhythms and patterns of country life (from the pre-eminent Victorian chronicler of the industrial north - she really was versatile); although leisurely, she’s not unnecessarily prolix; and she can sum up a character in a few sentences.

Mrs. Kirkpatrick, the erstwhile governess, is charmingly caressing towards twelve-year-old Molly when put in charge of her by the Cumnors at a party - but she eats all the food provided for Molly (Molly’s too upset at being accidentally left behind), then pretends it was Molly; and, after promising to wake her up from a nap to be chaperoned home, forgets all about her.

She has other fish to fry, of course, being on the make in a world that’s not particularly kind to unsupported or self-supporting women; and pretty open about it, as well: on her late husband: “he was only a curate, poor fellow, but he was of a very good family, and if three of his relations had died without children, I should have been a baronet’s wife.”

Unfortunately, it was a gamble that didn’t pay off - “Two of his cousins married and had large families; and poor dear Kirkpatrick died, leaving me a widow.” We note the focus of both those sentences: charming Mrs. Kirkpatrick is completely self-centred.

(This wistful exemplification of the inheritance lottery as a fundamental truism underpinning transmission of aristocratic privilege is given an ebulliently witty outing by P.G. Wodehouse in Laughing Gas, his hapless earl Reggie’s trajectory to the jackpot very similar to the one Mrs.Kirkpatrick so wistfully envisaged - but without the investment, Reggie had no particular expectations:

I started at the bottom and worked my way up…The field was full of seasoned performers who could give me a couple of stone.

But, you know, how it is. Uncles call it a day. Cousins hand in their buckets and spades. And little by little and bit by bit, before you know where you are - why, there you are, don’t you know. [)]

Back with Mrs. Gaskell: there’s one proviso. This seductive expansiveness terminates abruptly. The novel is unfinished (not incomplete, because it’s so nearly at the end; and, in addition, Gaskell’s detailed notes enabled her editors to provide an outline of her intentions - which are pretty apparent); allowing readers the consolation of knowing what’s meant to happen; and, if nothing else, offering a stimulus to imaginative ventriloquism. But one does yearn to hear it in her voice.

Lounge. Eat all the chicken sandwiches. (And - of course - do like, comment, share, subscribe…)

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  Say not the struggle naught availeth,
    The labour and the wounds are vain,
  The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
     And as things have been, they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

Arthur Hugh Clough (1849)

Many people are introduced to this poem at school - easy to see why, its sturdy, well-made Victorianness perfect for the neophyte to cut teeth on lit. crit. It’s also an excellent example of the theory of coextensivity in literature (something WTRI has touched on here before, as some of you will remember): the accretion of the reader’s experience having the potential to increase the force of the poem exponentially. (Andrew Marr has written entertainingly about this facet of literature in The Times, this weekend, if you're interested1.) WTRI would also argue that another aspect of its power is its sheer ordinariness (despite the faux archaisms - after all, nobody, even in 1849, was using 16thc verb forms and reversed sentence structures in everyday speech, it wasn't the olden days - then). Yet it's the simple (yet perfectly placed and escalating) metaphors, repetitions, unfussy rhyme scheme and metre - limitations (or limits) - that ensure its universality.

And here's Margaret Drabble:

This poem by Arthur Hugh Clough unfailingly brings tears to my eyes. It speaks of hope, and effort, and disappointment, and perseverance. As I read it, it is a poem about social hope, about hope for humanity. Most of my political hopes have been, in my lifetime, disappointed, but this poem tells us not to lose faith. The imagery is profoundly beautiful, and reminds me of the great beaches of my childhood, of Wordsworth’s immortal shore. I can feel those ‘tired waves, vainly breaking’, and then the flooding fullness of the sea. The double movement, the double crescendo of redemption in those last two stanzas, of sea and of light, is astonishingly affecting.

Westward look!

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Also thanks to (who proffers excellent bookish and doggish Notes btw) for an exchange that made me think of this.

It seemed the right moment to reintroduce this to your attention (minor tweaks included), since not many people saw it first time round: and it will not have escaped your notice that the world is currently - “enjoying” isn't really the mot juste is it? - let's say, in the throes of a turbulence, exacerbated by either aggressive declarations of forthcoming electoral possibility (imposed), or the actual onset (for some) of election season: elections to the right of us, elections to the left, and (quite possibly, as we're seeing) the Valley of Death thrown in as well as an optional extra - because what politician can ever resist playing with fire? As you can see, this is shaping up to be one of those cheery, feel-good pieces that leave you with a smile on your lips (and a song in your heart, no cliché unturned, because we're talking about politics); because (again): who can possibly contemplate the assorted tergiversators and recidivists currently on offer for most of us, without thinking that maybe it's time to bring back that magnificently expressive, extremely old-fashioned phrase: “What a shower!” Who are these people?

As, of course, you know - ‘twas ever thus. Amongst the plentiful graffiti at Pompeii are various political exhortations, ranging from the demure Vote for Gaius Blah, he's a good chap, to the more loaded “The petty thieves urge you to elect Vatia as aedile,1” testimony to Pompeii’s vigorous political culture; but also a masterclass in the multiple meanings and readings inherent in any political statement. It's entirely possible, for instance, that Gaius is just a popular bloke. It's also possible that this is a paid-for promotional “poster”, authorised by his campaign manager - so just campaign wallpaper, of a type we’re all too familiar with. Similarly, Vatia (who’s also popular with Late Drinkers United) may simply be a hard-partying type who favours louche company - thus earning the support of a unionised, politically literate criminal fraternity - which, of course raises questions in itself: is this really what you want in your political representative? Or his endorsement could be an actively libellous commentary on his behaviour and politics.

Everyone always thinks we're all going to hell in a handcart. Politicians are always terrible (they're politicians). There's always at least one dodgy populist, leveraging the lowest common denominator and whipping up “unity” through factionalism and discrimination. Them’s the rules. The brilliant Roman satirist, Juvenal had a nice line in anti-Greek invective: coming over here, taking all our jobs, showing off by speaking - wait for it - perfect Greek (a sign of cultivation and sophistication in the Roman world); or, if you’re Juvenal, a symbol of an effete, decadent society in thrall to a bunch of dodgy foreign incomers. Rome is overrun. And no, he's not hysterical, he's a good and vigilant Roman (populists are always something responsible and defensive), doing his best to preserve its Roman “identity.” (Good luck with that one, at the heart of empire.) The enduring topicality of this particular trope is illustrated by the ethnic substitutions offered in the many “modern” renderings of the Third Satire: Dr. Johnson (see below) favours that Anglo-classic the French fop; a mid-18thc version2 goes for a wave of Scots; an early 20thc one3 - set at Oxford (the university) - introduces an influx of Indian and African students (to provide some context, apparently there were 32 Indian students at Oxford in 19074; the Oxford poem was first published in 1910). Interestingly, the latter two align most closely with Juvenal's original, because the displacement is directly related to England’s/Britain's territorial expansions; ultimately resulting in empire; meaning that the early 20thc contention will run and run, the manifest fall-out of that empire’s collapse.

But Juvenal also has important things to say about poverty, housing, the dangers of a city where daily life is founded on a punitive inequity, which we can take seriously; and - sadly - are still entirely relevant today: apartment buildings regularly collapse, killing their residents, because jerry-building and poor maintenance are more profitable for landlords; fires rip through; poverty is a trap. One of the Third Satire’s most famous observations is “it's not easy to rise in the world for those whose straitened domestic circumstances obstruct their abilities”; capitalised by Samuel Johnson in his magisterial “Imitation,” London: A Satire (1738), it's so important: “SLOW RISES WORTH, BY POVERTY DEPRESS’D”5; a truth which should, of course, be universally acknowledged, but is far more frequently denied; especially by politicians - because then they might have to try and do something about it; which isn't easy. Far better (most politicians) to make poverty the poor person's responsibility:

All crimes are safe, but hateful poverty.

This, only this, the rigid law pursues.

(Johnson again.)

Or, skipping ahead to the nascent struggles of the party system in early 18thc England (when politicians began to roughly align under the novel designations Whig or Tory), how about William Shippen’s gloomy assessment that ”all around is Hell and Anarchy,” in his pamphlet poem Moderation Display’d? Shippen, like Juvenal (when he's obsessing about Greeks), is combining press and PR for the nasty party - there’re complicated political manoeuvrings regarding Jacobitism, religious conformity and so on, which we don't need to take into account here, for the general argument which is:

How Civil Discord and Intestine Rage

Have boil’d in ev’ry Nation, ev’ry Age…

Now Plots are form’d, and publick Tempests rowl…

while, also, like Juvenal, taking the precaution of presenting contention in anonymous literary guise (although there's no comparison between their poetic abilities); a political negotiation in itself to ensure survival. Political assessment though?

They stick at nothing to Secure their Ends,

Caress their Enemies, betray their Friends.

Their Medley Temper, their Amphibious Mind

Is fraught with Principles of ev’ry kind.

Sounds all too familiar, doesn't it?

Of course, so much concerning politics is smoke and mirrors (and everyone loves a good performance). These are lessons the young, idealistic and (relatively, he's had a diplomatic career) inexperienced Balint Abady has to acquire in The Writing on the Wall: They Were Counted, the first novel in Miklós Bánffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy6. Balint doesn't realise that when the local Prefect asks him to stand for Parliament at the upcoming elections, it's not because of Balint’s personal qualities (or even his political stance): it's because the Prefect wants to keep out the opposition and ensure that the district isn't “represented by some ‘foreigner’ who had bought his seat from the party leaders in Budapest”. To this end, the elections are rigged:

Aspiring politicians, with money in their pockets, [would] come from the capital to win the seat. They would be welcomed, and their pockets emptied, by the Prefect and his friends, to an apparently vicious contest with a loud-mouthed demagogue who…had been employed to contest the seat. On one occasion the rich candidate from Budapest had tired of paying and retired; and, to the province’s shame and embarrassment, the phoney candidate had been elected.

Bánffy has great fun with Balint's political education, and politics in general; whilst making serious points; and recreating the drama of - now - historical events as they happen. As an insider, he's only too aware of how much political activity is fuelled by gossip:

Every day there was something new, and the following day it would be contradicted. Today the Speaker had resigned, tomorrow he had hired special bodyguards to eject trouble-makers from the House; the day after he had had a stroke, and the day after that he was taking fencing lessons preparing for the inevitable duels that the next session would bring.

Bánffy is fully alive to the comedy inherent in those “inevitable duels” - but also the incipient tragedy: a little later, he describes “a sad, absurd, unnecessary and, had it not ended in tragedy, ridiculous incident” in which an elderly, principled member of Parliament has a duel forced on him by a brash young thug (supported by a baying opposition) eager to make his mark - “They had found a whipping boy…and whip him they would!” - he’s killed by a sword-thrust so violent the blade is driven through his back.

Violence is a constant subtext in nearly all political discourse and manifestations of political activity (another universal truism): whether exemplified in the behaviour of politicians - as Bánffy allows us to see - or in the policies they seek to enact. There are official government announcements which are, in themselves, complex, morally dubious political negotiations; and a superbly revelatory scene when Balint is exposed most forcefully to the general skulduggery and dirty dealing of the political life, manifested as the members - literally - tear up the Parliamentary Chamber:

All shouting at once they bragged about their behaviour and their misdeeds, roaring and stamping…

‘We beat the hell out of them’

‘Did you see how I hit him with the inkpot?’…

‘We’ve had a real battle here my friend.’

Their leader slips effortlessly into his usual tropes of public speaking, as if shrugging on an old coat -

he launched into one of his usual rabble-rousing speeches full of slogans like ‘Girded with the Nation’s Right’, ‘The Power of the People’, ‘Irresistible Force’, and ‘Spurred by the Sacred Flames of Hungary's Freedom’ until…one of his henchmen…interrupt[ed] this flow of self-praising oratory, came up and said: ‘Chief! Did you see how I beat them off the platform with this?’

Ah, the exhilarating cut and thrust of democratic politics! (Or ‘Hear! Hear!’, plus feet-stamping, as they like to play it in Britain's House of Commons.)

Another political insider is Emily Eden (sister to and hostess for); and, in The Semi-Attached Couple, she deploys a great political dinner to telling effect. There are - naturally - speeches galore (politicians tend to enjoy holding forth); and the inexperienced, recently married Helen sees her husband in a new light, impressed by the ease with which he responds to his fellows (these were the days when every speech was accompanied by a toast7), not realising that he’s employing a ritual form; and, like the locals, she completely accepts the “impromptu” nature of their MP’s gracefully confiding speech (planned, learned by heart, rehearsed to maximise effect); so that everyone is horrified by the very unsportsmanlike reporting and commentary on these “private” remarks in the press - exactly what was intended, of course:

As it was intended less for the edification of his hearers, than for an answer to the present attacks of the opposition papers, and a declaration of an important change in the commercial relations of the country, every word had been well weighed.

But Mr. G. (or Glorious Apollo, the tune his speech is heralded by) knows exactly how to deliver

with a slight hesitation of voice and manner, as if he had no idea what he was going to say, nor how to say it, and with an air of extreme surprise and gratitude at having his health drank at all…

William Shippen describes this type of career politician as “A Dapper Animal”; whilst excoriating

A Modern Coward Principle design’d

To stifle Justice, and unnerve the Mind.

A Trick by Knaves contriv’d, impos’d on Fools…

yet, whatever one thinks of his politics (and one could argue that their mixture of reason and unreason perfectly exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of the party system), ultimately he was a good egg. Shippen was a die-hard Tory; but when - as with all political careers - the House of Commons turned on the Whig behemoth, Sir Robert Walpole (caveat re politics multiplied), Shippen refused to vote against him, saying:

Robin and I are two honest men, he is for King George and I for King James; but those men with the long cravats only desire places either under King George or King James…[I] will not pull down Robin on republican principles.

A political career doesn't have to be predicated on whacking your opponent over the head with the balustrade of the Strangers’ Gallery. We seem to have rather an overabundance of the long-cravated, at the moment - but here's hoping.

(And, a charming reminder that the only certainty in politics is failure: according to The Times (30.06.24; Tim Shipman), the Lib Dems once gained a vote (election unspecified) because the voter had scrawled “wanker” next to all the other candidates’ names, excepting the Lib Dem. Almost certainly apocryphal; but still…)

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So this is possibly slightly niche, almost recherché one could say except - no, there’re probably scores of people on Substack who’re here for an insanely ebullient detective-ballet story hybrid: and they're all reading WTRI. Of course.

But first, let us consider the inspiration. There's been a fair amount of film conversation here lately; but it was the discussions about Hamnet (the film, just to be clear) which also gave rise to conversations about other films featuring Shakespeare as a character; which led to references to Shakespeare in Love; which - finally! - for WTRI immediately brought to mind the writing partnership of Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon (their No Bed for Bacon a very close relative to Shakespeare in Love).

We’re not going to talk about No Bed for Bacon. Rather, it's the trio of novels (A Bullet in the Ballet, Casino for Sale and Envoy on Excursion) featuring the Ballet Stroganoff that WTRI finds interesting; also wildly entertaining in an engagingly unhinged yet confidently seductive manner. First published in the nineteen-thirties, smack bang in the heart of what's now referred to as Golden Age detective fiction, they evince remarkably little interest in conforming to the boundaries of a genre in the process of being established, and endorsed by reiteration - they kick off A Bullet in the Ballet with the breezy assertion

Since it is probable that any book flying a bullet in its title is going to produce a corpse sooner or later - here it is.

and take it from there.

Someone has killed Anton Palook, the dancer playing Petrushka in the eponymous ballet; Detective Inspector Adam Quill of Scotland Yard investigates. It's a closed circle narrative - because the murder took place onstage during a performance, it can only have been committed by a member of the company, or someone closely associated with it - so far, so classic detective story. We also have the classic tropes of an outsider character - Quill - introducing the reader/audience to a world they may be unacquainted with through his own enquiries and discoveries; and a culture clash: we’re in a world where ballet is Russian (consequently Ernest Smithsky); and, in England, has recently and excitingly been recognised as art, rather than simply somewhere you picked up your new girlfriend. Then, like the Red Queen in Alice, Brahms and Simon throw all these cards in the air and let them fall as they will.

To an extent, they observe the rules of detective narrative - there's a plethora of suspects, constant revelations of suspicious detail or behaviour, dramatic reversals of perspective - except they're also all a joke, part of the constant affectionate ripple of laughter that animates their loving depiction of the Ballet Stroganoff and its cohort, led by the larger-than-life ebullient impresario Stroganoff; obviously related to Diaghilev, but probably kinder (maybe not). He certainly has the required wiliness, approaching a dancer with blandishments, champagne and - most strikingly - an agreement for lavish fiscal support, when dancing Petrushka has become a high risk undertaking and he's trying to finesse a dancer, any dancer, into agreeing to the role. It's that sharp eye on the money (every impresario’s bane) that’s responsible for his first clash with Inspector Quill, understandably suspicious when he discovers that not only has Palook’s body been moved, the entire set has been changed: there is no crime scene (or not anymore anyway). At first, Quill imagines he's caught Stroganoff out. Stroganoff, on the other hand, is quite offended that Quill should imagine he's so unprofessional as to ignore what he sees as the imperatives: the show must go on; the decor for his avant-garde choreographer Nevajno’s ballet Ajax is entirely different from that of Petrushka; and - most importantly - if he halted the performance, he’d have to give people their money back. (He's also quite upset with Quill later for putting him to the trouble of trying to mislead him about something he already knew. Why didn't he say so?)

It's this backwards and forwards dynamic that drives the slight but lively narrative, every joke a riposte, every act of detection an interrogation; and, of course, what's also being interrogated subliminally is art. As we laugh at the petty vanities and rivalries, the obsessions, the passions, the underlying questions, to be considered at will, become: what is a good artist, what makes a great artist, is art moral, is there a moral aesthetic, if so how and where and why… They tumble out endlessly in the wake of Nevajno, roaming the corridors of the Collodium Theatre wreathed in inspiration, occasionally asking passers by (especially newcomers) if they’ll “schange small cheque”; the divine Arensakya, darling of the Mariinsky (and of a magnificent cohort of ex-lovers, including Quill's boss, professionally presenting as The Snarl, but transformed into the most simpering of stagedoor johnnies when unexpectedly reunited with her); her husband (indulged by Stroganoff as the “poor old one”) basking in glorious memories of the admiration of ur-Ballet Russes choreographer, Mikhail Fokine); “that English girl with the impeccable technique and the impregnable mother” (professionally rechristened as Rubinska); the meretricious escalations of the tabloid journalists who swarm around the company like flies, artfully deployed in the service of debased myth and money making (sometimes as simple as changing a tense, so that “I loved him” becomes the impassioned “I love him”), and their proprietor, the nefarious Lord Buttonhooke (who will also be Stroganoff’s attempted nemesis in Casino for Sale). Even the opening description of that “you asked for it, you’ve got it” corpse serves multiple purposes: after a careful description of said corpse, an exchange discussing the moment of death:

“Did you see Palook die?”

“Yes, and for once he died beautifully, just on the beat.”

A ballet exchange: the performance.

Then, a classic detective story exchange (although it's still ostensibly about the performance):

“Were you struck by anything unusual in his death?”

“Unusual? And how! Usually, Palook dies two beats late.”

Except, as it shortly transpires (regardless of the desirability of dancing on or off the beat, a fevered ballet argument in itself), that performance also expresses a grimmer reality: Anton Palook really is dead; the critical assessment of his stage death becoming a comment on his death; as we’ve seen, this is the backwards and forwards dynamic that will drive the entire narrative; and we’re introduced very early - no complaints about money back here. It’s a detective story: so Detective Inspector Adam Quill of Scotland Yard will appear and start asking the questions that form the basis of an investigation; but it’s also an affectionate portrait of a ballet company. But absolutely not “funny foreigners”: Quill's career has a backstory magnificent in its logical maladroitness that follows him around; influencing both him and The Snarl; he and his sidekick, Sergeant Banner are also the products of a world with its own idiosyncrasies. And that's before we even get started on the English balletomanes… Plenty of running jokes as well: performances lined up in the hope of the attendance of the titan designer, Alexandre Benois (“if ‘e come” the catchphrase); the hospitable (and again, Alice in Wonderlandish) leitmotif offering of “wiskyansoda” to allcomers, despite the fact that there isn't any; Stroganoff's “near misses” at getting Covent Garden for his seasons (it's almost certainly too expensive); Nevajno's cheques; and his great work Gare du Nord deliberately uncorrupted by anything so mundane as reality - he insisted on being led through the station blindfold, to protect his inspiration. (And the denouement itself offers a perfect synthesis of character and commentary).

It's perhaps also significant that it's a portrait by insider-outsiders: Brahms and Simon were both English, descended from Jewish families who’d left imperial Russia; Brahms was a musician, turned journalist and ballet critic; Simon a journalist and bridge expert and innovator. The received wisdom is that Brahms wrote the ballet and Simon supplied the plot; which seems a little too reductive: their short-lived writing partnership (sadly Simon died very young) evinces what P.G. Wodehouse described as an “oomph and espièglerie” indicative of the collaborative holy grail - sparks striking off each other so powerfully they become a firework display.

In London, in Hampstead, for a long time there was in existence a small institution, a Hungarian pâtisserie called Louis; founded by a Hungarian refugee; faithful, in its crowded panelled room, its red plush, gilded chairs and gilded trolley displaying the ravishing confections of a vanished empire, to an idea that no longer existed except in the doing: the dynamism of the exchange (and the participation it allowed) giving that idea currency and making it contemporary. (You came, you ate, you were in a platonic MittelEurope.) Sadly, that Louis no longer exists, debauched into a simulacrum of ersatz caff (a real caff a splendid thing on its own terms). But, in its heyday, it was very much the kind of place where one might catch sight of Stroganoff, or perhaps Arensakya holding court, before rushing off to something very important (also the landscape of their creators); and the dynamism inherent in that creative exchange - not aspic or amber - exemplifies what Stroganoff (and all the real Ballets Russes and their offshoots) is doing; what Brahms and Simon are doing: through them, we get to experience the idea of something as something alive, kicking, laughing (holding its sides).

The novels (also Casino for Sale - the title a reference to the early 20thc joke about naive marks - in this case, Stroganoff - being flogged casinos by smooth conmen) - set in the South of France; and once again playing with the idea of mise-en-scène, this time through the demise of a venemous critic; and Envoy on Excursion, a Second World War divertissement, with Quill pursuing the rare mineral Gardenium into the central European country, Insomnia; appropriately a fascist outpost) have always been popular, that is they’ve always attracted a tight-knit group of fierce aficionados - unsurprisingly, those with a theatrical background: Sir Peter Hall, Sir John Gielgud; Dame Alicia Markova (who, ex-Ballets Russes, knew of what she wrote when she said “Witty and hilarious…based on truth”); but also, perhaps unexpectedly, a former editor of the satirical magazine Punch, Alan Coren, who declared them “sheer joy…for balletomanes and balletophobes [suggesting that possibly he belongs to the latter camp] …anyone who wants to roll helplessly in the aisles.” (WTRI has a particular fondness for former dancer (Royal Ballet when it was Sadlers Wells; star of The Red Shoes which, of course, features a positive bevy of real life Stroganoff dancers, including Alexandra Danilova and Leonid Massine) Moira Shearer’s review, which is simply: “My frustration is as great as ever. Why didn't I dance with the Ballet Stroganoff?”

Let us leave our magnificent impresario, writing affectionately to Inspector Quill from La Bazouche (and setting up the sequel in the South of France):

Alas, that we could not secure Covent Garden. But that is for another year…

With us all is well. …Volti is a reformed character - he always watch the stage now. No one is dead since London.

We are bringing with us a big new ballet by Nevajno. It is called Civilisation. It is symbolic. There is a scene where the corps de ballet is shot with a machine-gun. London will be shaken.

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Here are your comps - so do like, share, comment, if so inclined, so that the algorithm can invite other like-minded people to the matinee (maybe even presided over by the spirit of Benois, “if ‘e come”…)

From ten to eleven ate a breakfast for seven;
From eleven to noon, to begin was too soon;
From twelve to one, asked 'What's to be 
                                                             done?'
From one to two, found nothing to do;
From two to three, began to foresee 
That from three to four, would be a damned
                                                              bore.

Ah, the joys of office life, circa 1820-something! eating too much to pass the time, procrastinating and generally pootling around. (So what's changed?) That's an undated little squib by Thomas Love Peacock (the Romantic-adjacent poet, friend of Shelley, who found his métier in the satirical novel), about life at the India Office: a sinecure which he was lucky to get (as he recognised); and essential, if he was to pursue a literary career; especially, initially, as a poet. (Poetry, for a long time, was the aristocratic1 wing of literature for that very reason: no money in it generally (give or take the occasional best-seller such as Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage), so required a private income, patronage or some other means of support. The Romantic movement probably represents the tipping point at which poetry’s remit widened dramatically; and its major names - except Shelley, who exemplified a continuation of the aristocratic tradition - all had day jobs.)

Writing to Shelley, Peacock is at some pains to present his job in a more positive light than in his little jeu d’esprit above:

“It is not in the common routine of offices but is an employment of a very interesting and intellectual kind…”

(Also interestingly, his junior at the Office, the philosopher and economist, John Stuart Mill, says something very similar:

“[It’s] sufficiently intellectual not to be a distasteful drudgery, without being such a strain on the mental powers of a person used to abstract thought, or to the labour of careful composition.”

In other words, plenty of mental energy left for the real work.)

In these days of presenteeism and instant communication, with the relentless monitoring concomitant on these, the true sinecure probably no longer exists below boardroom level (and, some might argue, in the legislature); but even in its heyday, as we can see in Peacock’s playful honesty - as opposed to his more upbeat public-facing version - it’s hard to see the author of sharp anarchic satires (Sir Oran Haut-ton, the gentlemanly ape who puts the supposed “gentlemen” around him to shame, and is elected MP for the rotten borough of Onevote, anyone?) truly enjoying the codified imperatives of a civil service existence, except as an expedient; a sinecure was by no means perfect.

So this week, a bit of frolicking around the working life, both in and out of the office (detection included).

First, the deliciously sharp and detailed portrait of office life at an advertising agency in the thirties in Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy L. Sayers). Lose yourself in a world in which first names are unknown amongst colleagues one sees every day; in which office boys with catapults in their pockets are overseen by a matron (this is a responsible, paternalistic company); and in which office dramas like the Great Nutrax Row flare up to devastating effect. Plus ça change, hmm? (Re the last, anyway - there’re always office rows.) There’re office badinage; office rivalries; office outings; an office cricket match; and, of course, the great central question: how did Mr.Dean come to tumble down the dangerously spiral wrought iron staircase and break hia neck. Lord Peter Wimsey applies hia intelligence whilst realising commercially his talent for persiflage. (“BIGGER AND BUTTER / VALUE FOR MONEY” goes down well for margarine.) As with advertising itself, the real story behind Dean’s untimely demise is one that infiltrates multiple social strata, circles overlapping as dizzyingly as the spiral staircase in its descent; (including a splendid and heroic cat, member of a nightwatch team; newspaper interview subsequent to act of heroism - “anguished and intelligent mewings” warning of incipient fire - reported but, sadly, unshared).

Still, on the plus side, most readers, even toiling over a hot desk, are unlikely to suffer attempted assassination on the way home from work.

Now a big hand for the buoyant Sally Jay Gorce, heroine of The Dud Avocado (Elaine Dundy). Sally is an American in Paris in the fifties, strolling down the Boulevard Saint-Michel in a ball dress, first thing in the morning because, like all her compatriots at this time, she’s running wild away from home, and this is the kind of thing they think is cool. Sally hangs out, meets up with friends, goes to the country - as you can see, ostensibly not a lot happens: the real force of this novel lies in Sally Jay’s ebullient voice and acute observation (which, of course, tell us a lot); including suddenly and extremely shockingly (especially considering when this was written) an unflinching recognition of domestic violence.

It does somewhat fizzle out, with the introduction of Sally Jay’s hero (unless Kenneth Tynan represents your ideal man - true word, Dundy based it on her own meeting; and yes, reader, she married him). But it’s still hugely enjoyable.

Finally, a charming feuilleton: Business as Usual (Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, both pseudonyms.) A North Country maid - well, Scottish - strays up to London to seek her fortune: that is (it’s the 1930s) to get a job and lead an independent life, while she waits out her engagement to an Edinburgh surgeon, rather than arranging the flowers at home. Hilary’s background is an academic household, she’s clearly been brought up to think for herself (she’s also an Oxford graduate) - so we’re back in Dorothy L. Sayers territory here (both fictional and actual) - she’s one of a small but increasing cohort of highly-educated, independent-minded women; and this is a novel that focuses - entertainingly - on everyday working life. (It’s dedicated To The People Who Work From Nine Till Six.)

After various trials, she manages to get a job at Everyman’s, (clearly based on Selfridges), the big department store - this at a time when “ladies” emphatically did not work as “shopgirls” (but she is backstage). The novel reflects lightheartedly the petty vicissitudes of working life and their extraordinary and disproportionate importance in the environment and at the time; shows Hilary’s increasing confidence and success (as well as her disasters); her various moves from respectable residential hotel, to boarding house, to the triumph of her own little flat in Chelsea; the challenges she overcomes (and helps others with); her friends; and falling in love.

It’s an epistolary novel (playful with form, using everything from telegrams, to inter-office memos, to Post Office Recorded Delivery slips); clear-eyed and socially aware (accidental pregnancy; the perils of age and illness at a time when there was almost no safety net; good housekeeping and how to manage on a limited income - although, of course, Hilary does have a safety net and is fully aware of her good fortune). And anyone who’s ever worked in an office will sympathise with her early attempt to leave for lunch after only half an hour - because it feels as if she’s been there all morning.

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(This is a sort of reintroduction of very early WTRI, hitching up its skirts a bit more, clutching a handful of cigarette cards, and lingering in the Gift Department.)

Well, it's certainly been raining. Quite drear and dark as well. Probably timely for this reissue - unless wish-fulfillment and domestic comedy aren't your thing; in which case: bonus Margery Sharp which is actually a psychological thriller trailing a fox fur.

“If you do well, you’ll get no thanks and if you get into trouble, you’ll get no help. Does that suit you?” “Perfectly.”

This exchange is actually between a nascent spy and his recruiter in W.S. Maugham's Ashenden; but it struck WTRI - especially when considering the following novels - that it could apply equally to a certain pattern of female existence.

Because it might not suit you. You might be fed up to the back teeth with your day-to-day existence, feel trapped but unable to imagine an escape route. Supposing then, on a dark, dismal, rainy afternoon you saw an advertisement offering a “small mediaeval castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to let” to “Those who appreciate sunshine and Wisteria”?

It's with this delicious enticement that Elizabeth von Arnim lures both her readers and her characters into The Enchanted April. Four women (two middle-aged, unhappily married, one older, widowed, one young, escaping romantic persecution; all feeling trapped in some way), club together to rent the castle; and, of course, succumb - as so many have succumbed - to the charms of Italy and springtime. It isn't all plain sailing, of course: there are petty irritations and power struggles (they're not friends at the outset, it's a joint enterprise of expedience - yes, our old friend); but gradually, the experience, the new place, new people, begin to alter each woman's perspective; and they find their lives changing for the better.

Of course, this is a fantasy, so the forms that improvement takes avoid too much rocking of the boat (a modern reader might think that in at least one case, divorce might offer a greater prospect of ultimate happiness - except this is the 1920s, so probably not). But von Arnim is acute enough about character and relationships (as well as providing the Italy-in-the-spring spoonful of sugar) to make this slip down easily enough. And, even allowing for the fantasy, it's a kindly reminder that change is always possible: if you don't like where you are, you don't have to stay.

But maybe you prefer more domestic pleasures? Crack open The Diary of a Provincial Lady (E. M. Delafield) in which the eponymous (nameless) heroine records the minutiae of her day-to-day life between the wars, with gently sardonic self-deprecation. Her apparently artless account is really a consummate seduction, with pithily mordant tales of awkward encounters; dreadful dinner-parties; the servant problem; and planting the spring bulbs; her conclusion, the essentials for a reasonably comfortable life are “Good teeth and a sound bank balance.”

Love and money are the driving factors in Margery Sharp’s The Eye of Love. Set in the thirties, self-christened Dolores Diver (née Dorothy Hogg) is happily ensconced in a small house in Paddington (with her orphaned niece, Martha), as the mistress of Harry Gibson, a well-to-do furrier. Middle-aged, unbeautiful, each adores the other, truly believing them the acme of romance. (They met at the Three Arts Ball at the Royal Albert Hall. He was a Paper Bag being subjected to a certain amount of rowdiness. She was a Spanish Lady…)

But the advent of the Depression knocks Harry's business for six; he has an elderly mother to support (and his standing in the community to uphold): he’s going to have to marry money - and Dolores is going to lose her lover: and have to leave her home. She faces the prospect with true heroism (despite being too old to be employable in her previous (happily abandoned) avocation as shop assistant; and the necessary, forcible abandonment of all her artistic leanings - she believes herself the “Spanish type” - this reversal will entail, never voicing (or feeling) reproach for Harry.

Her niece Martha, a stolid child, is neither charming nor affectionate (although she has certain friendly acquaintances amongst the local shopkeepers). Her driving and devouring passion, is the careful observation of the shapes and patterns things make, and then, drawing them. Faced with their pending upheaval, she decides to try and translate art into commerce.

Dolores (pretty much abandoning any confidence in art - although she doggedly continues her ritual dusting of her ornaments), takes in a lodger, for the remainder of her lease, a young man of ambitions (and possibly, few scruples). This may prove to be a disastrous mistake…

Sharp interweaves the strands of her narrative - love, money, art (what is it? How do we create it? What does it mean? Does it mean anything?) - with complete mastery; whilst ratcheting up the tension with the force of a thriller. There are near misses, significant meetings, risks unwittingly taken, as characters meander along the edge of a precipice they believe is on the other side - all written with Sharp’s revealing and affectionate wit (she’s never unkind, allowing people their delusions, even as she forensically observes and dissects them); and acuteness of social observation. (Harry - short for Harold rather than Henry - condenses this perfectly.)

It's not perfect - she rather over-eggs the whole Eye of Love analogy, driving it home where she doesn't need to, because her writing has been enough - but it is perfect for plucking hope and possibility out of adversity. Not only do things fall apart - they change.

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Louisa Mary Datchett was very fond of men.

Not all women are, not even those to whom matrimony is the only tolerable state; for these often like men as husbands, as other women like them as lovers, and others again as small boys. Louisa liked men. If a bus driver halted for her at a pedestrian crossing, her upward glance was disinterestedly affectionate - there he sat, hot and conscientious, minding his own masculine business - and there stood Louisa, liking him.

WTRI first made the acquaintance of Margery Sharp as a child, through the annals of the Mouse Prisoners’s Aid Society and its alumni, starting with the slim volume The Rescuers which introduces key players Miss Bianca and devoted swain, Bernard. Miss Bianca is a pampered pet mouse who (literally) lives in a gilded cage (in retrospect, sounds very much like 18thc chinoiserie), companion of the Boy, until the importunities of Bernard - young, unsophisticated, sterling salt-of-the-earth house mouse - on behalf of the Society and a prisoner they wish to succour, reluctantly awaken her social conscience. They're joined on their expedition by the dashing - but sensible - Norwegian seafaring mouse Nils. Adventures and flick of the whisker escapes ensue.

Delightful, clever, witty - although written for children, the series reveals all the qualities Sharp showcases in her adult novels: the crisp observation, social acuity, characterisation, playfulness; here calibrated to youthful readers (the whole concept of the Mouse Prisoners's Aid Society a joyous flirtation with every famous narrative of heroic prisoners in durance vile; counterpoised by its bustling committee activities (of course it has a committee), headed by a strong-minded Madam Chairwoman. She has a Hat. And that's before one even broaches Miss Bianca's Pompadour-like existence; the exigencies of diplomacy; each mouse’s very precisely calibrated, perfectly appropriate background…). These are jokes that may escape the youthful reader (without in any way diminishing their enjoyment); but, as with all good children's writing, the wider hinterland offered by an adult perspective is capable of recessively surrendering additional pleasures. So there are very good reasons to read Margery Sharp for grown-ups. Her oeuvre is large (so there will, inevitably, be weak points) but the following suggestions display her strengths with considerable panache: consequent enjoyment, the enlivening astringence of a well-mixed aperitif. One of the recurring pleasures she offers is her wide-ranging social viewpoint - unusually for someone who started publishing in the thirties she repeatedly includes, as real people, characters from a spread of social backgrounds; particularly strong on bringing out the sturdy sense of self-worth evinced by skilled artisans and tradespeople; the fact that aspirations aren't only recognisable or realised in the established cursus honorem favoured by the (then) customary book-protagonist classes. The magnificent moment in Fanfare for Tin Trumpets when Alistair and Henry (come to experience Life with a capital “l” in what would now be euphemised as a studio flat in Paddington) are introduced to the great man of their lodging house by their landlady's daughter (having already made the acquaintance of a commissionaire at the Komfy Kinema, an assistant at Sammy's Sandwich Bar, and an aspirant boxer currently manning a newspaper stall on the Underground):

“That's Mr. Hickey,” said Winnie. She spoke with that deep reverence usually reserved for Primates and successful financiers. He drives one of the General ‘buses. He’s very well off.” Respect, it appeared, prevented her from detailing any more human traits, but they all took a good look at him and felt the better for it. For there majestic in flesh and blood, sat one of the pillars of society: one saw at a glance that he voted Conservative, wore natural wool underwear, enjoyed a friendly pint…

“It must be very exacting work,” said Alistair respectfully.

“Ooh, it is. Mr. Hickey says you wouldn't believe, till you’ve driven a 15, what fools people are.”

In Harlequin House, there are the Walkers,

a family of well-to-do but slightly Bohemian pastry-cooks. The three Walkers - a father and two sons - were at the top of their profession: they were employed in one of the great Park Lane hotels, and could toss off a basket of marzipan fruit, or an ice-pudding in the shape of an aeroplane, as easily and casually as the average confectioner tosses off a doughnut. It was their great regret that they did not work in France - and not from any lack of patriotism, but simply because, being artists, they desired recognition for their work. There was a centrepiece of old Mr. Walker’s, made for a Coronation Banquet, which in Paris would almost certainly have won him the Legion d’Honneur; his phlegmatic countrymen merely consumed the whole (this paying indeed a certain brutish tribute to the confection…,) and passed on to the savoury without the least idea of recommending Mr. Walker for an O. B. E. He was a man who took himself very seriously [.]

And, of course (in the eponymous novel) there's Cluny Brown, niece, and administrative assistant, of upstanding and successful professional plumber Mr. Porritt: who doesn't “know her place.” Instead, driven by insatiable curiosity, an irrepressible desire to explore and experience life, she takes herself to the Ritz and has “tea…all on her own, to see what it was like. Two-and-a-tanner it cost her, and not even bloater-paste.” Or, having “read a piece in the paper about how it rested the nerves and toned the system to stay a day in bed eating oranges”, she tries it (although not neglecting her professional responsibilities); the repercussions from this last, resulting in her finally being packed off to discover the protective improvements offered by a life in service under a “good housekeeper.” Even then - entirely inadvertently - she manages to make her entrance into her new life in a Rolls Royce, accompanied by an obstreperous and affectionate labrador, and a retired colonel who

under the influence of Cluny’s gaze [“indeed no more than the look of any young woman feeling thoroughly sorry for herself”] a strangely unorthodox notion - his first in years - struck him: what was the use of treating servants well, giving ‘em good food and all that, if you wouldn't let them keep a dog? He felt really disturbed.

Published just before the end of the Second World War (1944), of course Cluny is a precursor, embodying the ongoing social debate which would result in a dramatically changed post-war landscape (inevitable, one could argue) that, rather than attempting to revert to a prewar existence as after the First World War, resulted in (amongst other changes in perspective and expectation) a landslide Labour General Election victory; and the founding of the National Health Service. Sharp’s playful relish is for the unexpected - both in exposition and as a way of looking. She's mistress of the elliptical, subliminal discussion (despite her occasional determination to underline what’s already been implicitly discussed): she's particularly good at considering women's lives (and at all stages); as we’ve seen, she spreads her social canvas wide; and she writes with a clear-eyed yet benevolently ruthless observation, that also withholds judgement. It's true that her characters are unlikely to bulge forth, confined by the plots in which she so elegantly and precisely defines them; but within these, they're real, believable - and enjoyable.

Back to Louisa, professional dog photographer, in Something Light (which delivers exactly what it offers, grounded in a discourse that's still ongoing, expressed with delicious bite), who

only [had] to stand still in any public place, at a bus stop or outside a telephone booth, and as to Red Riding Hood up came a wolf.

- Yet did she respond, and Louisa usually responded, how many a wolf turned nursling! To be listened to (wife not understanding wolf), to be found employment (wolf out of work), to have musical instrument (wolf potential member of dance band) got out of hock! It was extraordinary how swiftly they appreciated her special temperament.

Older acquaintances took it for granted. In June ‘56, Louisa gave evidence as to character three times in one week. This was a record, but only in its own field; no-one, least if all Louisa, ever counted that times she got suits back from the cleaners, washed socks, or carried prescriptions to the chemist…

Bachelors in lodgings going down with influenza employed their last spark of consciousness to telephone Louisa. Sometimes their landladies telephoned her. Publishers of books commissioned but overdue telephoned Louisa. She was constantly being either sent for, like a fire engine, or dispatched, like a lifeboat, to the scene of some masculine disaster; and fond of men as she was, by the time she was thirty she felt extremely jaded.

Having confided this to the milkman (his auntie was a suffragette), she reaches the conclusion that “I spend as much time running about for men as if I were a Victorian nanny.” The solution, she decides (having taken a yoghurt for the impoverished vegetarian flautist in Number Ten, to go down on her bill “as per usual”) is a radical change of course:

“It's not the suffragettes who'd be proud of me,” thought Louisa bitterly, “ it's the Salvation Army. I may be the modern woman, the femme sole with all her rights, and I’m very fond of men, but it's time I looked out for myself. In fact it's time I looked for a rich husband just as though I’d been born in a Victorian novel…

Again, with superb economy (and comedy) Sharp sets up for discussion the tug-of-war implicit in the assigned roles imposed in relationships between the sexes; again, her character a harbinger, just before the sixties started swinging, free love, free practically everything (depending on your point of view, of course; Something Light was published in 1960), Louisa has already realised the great truth: someone always pays for lunch.

The Victorian novel talks back.

(Sharp’s always entertaining whilst filleting received expectations of women's roles with demure astringency: in Instead of the Thorn, elderly Sir Philip Kerr, confronted at his dinner table by ex-flapper Lesley Frewen, naturally assumes

“You’ve been on the stage, I believe?” he said hopefully, as they went in to dinner.

By the standards of 1913, there was indeed no possible room for doubt: she lived alone, had an unexplained child; painted her face, dressed like an actress, smoked cigarettes and was free with her tongue.

Consequently, it's as a conditioned reflex that he reaches for her foot with his “beneath the walnut”; a conditioned reflex that also represents the preconditions and boundaries of the social order which Lesley is breezily confounding.)

Now some nuggets for your delectation:

Julia, by marriage Mrs. Packett, by courtesy Mrs. Macdermot, lay in the bath singing the Marseillaise. Her fine robust contralto…was less resonant than usual…

Julia, the original goodtime girl, sometime chorus girl, past the first blush of youth, still in thrall to “the thrill of the-other-side-of-the-curtain” is surrounded by clouds of verbena-scented steam and as many of her worldly goods as possible, lustily singing the French National Anthem in the bath while broker's men from the Bayswater Hired Furniture Company remove the hired furniture; (conforming to custom rather than defiant, she always sings in the bath); despite the fact that “she possessed exactly seven-and-eightpence, and she had to leave for France in the morning”: her world, perspective, character, temperament, history, summed up with crisply timed economy; and subliminal wit.

Julia has a daughter (now adult, engaged and in the South of France) whom (after a valiant stab at maternity) she gratefully surrendered to her paternal grandparents -

The first time Julia had seen her future husband by daylight was on a spring morning in 1916, when she woke at about half-past ten to find him still sleeping at her side. She knew his name, Sylvester Packett, and that he was a first lieutenant in the Gunners…

…she had regretfully (but philosophically ( come to the conclusion that he danced with her simply because he couldn’t sleep Boys got like that in 1916; she wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’d come back with her the night before just to see if he could get some sleep that way.. . Julia, at eighteen considered this idea without surprise or rancour; it was simply, like so many other things, the War.

- following an intoxicatingly reminiscent encounter in the stocking department at Selfridge's with an old friend of chorus days, an evening at the Café Royal, and an offer of crowd work in the “then struggling British film industry”. (Once again, Julia is delicately placed with the utmost precision within her range, ambition, and pleasures.)

Julia's pathos as a widow is not that required by convention -

one of the worst elements of her boredom was the lack of someone to love. She had her child indeed, and was very fond of it; but “someone”, to Julia, meant a man. Loving some man or other was her natural function: only the man had to be alive, and there, and kissing her back.

It's almost inevitable that between the Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon she’s almost (inadvertently as usual) derailed from her journey to the South of France by a romantic adventure; even as she internally chastises herself for being distracted; but Sharp neither patronises nor criticises her (even implicitly): this is who she is; just as Ronny, in Harlequin House, momentary and unsuccessful coke dealer is shown to us quite simply in his weakness, good intentions (or not bad ones) and collateral damage. He's almost certainly a ne’er-do-well; but young enough to be on the cusp (and interestingly, Sharp here allows herself that element of ambiguity; possibly because the precision lies in the ambiguity). Julia's present tense existence and intense but ephemeral feelings are not downgraded by a moral implication that superficiality means lack of genuineness. Part of Sharp’s talent for the organically unexpected undoubtedly derives from her lack of interest in imposing traditional templates of received behaviour on her characters, whilst simultaneously acknowledging their existence and authority in everyday life.

She had no money, no proper wardrobe, and a creditor about to foreclose. But none of these things mattered when Susan wanted her…

“ But she was christened Suzanne!” thought Julia suddenly.

Again, Sharp intimates, with a kind of cogent reticence, that this may not be the story, or the mother and daughter reunion, suggested by either sentiment or circumstance. When Julia finally meets her daughter again

Susan described the beauties of the neighbourhood, Julia (with expurgation) the incidents of her voyage. The lacunae were necessarily so great that there was practically nothing left to her…

(Sharp's strong on these maternal complexities in Instead of the Thorn, as well, which (partly) examines motherhood and bringing-up children from the unexpected adoption of orphaned Patrick by die-hard flapper, Lesley, who lives in a tiny, expensive, desirable service flat in London, and goes to parties comprising “[a]n agreeable press, a stimulating Babel: the complicated atmosphere - of electric heating, scent and good furs - at once so familiar and so exhilarating in the nostrils”; then moves to Suffolk with the little boy. Again, the story developed isn't the one one might assume.)

Or Miss Tibbald, the unlikely Maecenas to Alistair, aspiring writer, in Fanfare for Tin Trumpets, on a beautiful day in the Park:

“Quite like Rome,” observed Miss Tibbald happily.

She had, of course, only a novel-reader's acquaintance with that beautiful city, but thanks to the circulating library there were few parts of the world in which she won't not have felt immediately at home. This vicarious globe-trotting made her a very interesting conversationalist, often surprising strangers by a casual reference to the Sudan; and indeed, before the War put a stop to everything, she had frequently been to Dieppe.

One of the literary coteries Alistair falls in with:

There were in London at this time countless trios of young women living together in top-floor flats and addressing one another as Pooh, Eeyore, and Christopher Robin. Many of them earned their own living; others painted book-ends, or attended courses at the University.

The charms of Paddington (Sharp is inclusive and affectionately descriptive of then unfashionable parts of London) reiterated in Harlequin House:

The district in which the Campions (and Mr. Partridge) found a home was not disreputable. It was simply broad-minded. … It was also peculiarly urbane. Landladies (who required a week’s money in advance, but who never asked for references) and tenants (who locked up their correspondence but always passed the time of day) ceased, within its purlieus, to be natural enemies, and worked in alliance against such common foes as duns and gas-inspectors.

Sharp too is broadminded, generous to her characters even as she skewers them with her unblinking observation and multilayered economy of expression; in her quiet subversion she shares some of the qualities of her quiet middle-aged widower Mr. Partridge, in Harlequin House, owner of a twopenny library in Dormouth Bay - and completely “lawless”. He walks on the grass; cuts himself a buttonhole from the municipal flowerbeds; plays hookey from his own business (and is shortly to decamp for a Bohemian existence in London with two new young friends). There's an exhilarating “lawlessness”, a serene iconoclasm in Sharp’s engagingly elliptical perspective on a very precisely defined social world; the rungs of its hierarchies precisely acknowledged. Anyone who succumbs, like one of Mr. Partridge's customers, balked by his impromptu closure (and ignoring the social amenities that he believes equate a commercial “Back Shortly” notice with a social “Not at Home”), may start seeking what they might devour:

One of them, who had just discovered the works of Ethel M. Dell, and who had hastened back for more, rattled the knob with such violence that the “BACK SHORTLY” notice fell to the ground.

Like old Mr. Thirkettle in her comedy of academics in pursuit of folklore, The Stone of Chastity (predictably - amongst other things - they sully the integrity of their own field of research by their intrusion; as always with Sharp, the application is wider than the ostensible), through her, we too can enjoy the recondite pleasures latent in the everyday when perceived from an obtuse angle:

he had outlived the desire for mere cash: what he wanted was change, excitement, joie de vivre. He demanded to be taken to the cinema.

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(Woman with dog JH Lartigue)