A Chunk of my new novel (part one).

The next few days I shall post a section of the novel I am currently working on. This section deals with The Ragged Street Preacher, who instigates the climax of the novel. This will be posted in three instalments and this is the first one.

All comments are very appreciated. 

THE LIFE OF THE RAGGED STREET PREACHER OF ST PAUL’S CHURCH, COVENT GARDEN. 

Containing many scenes that are greatly pathetic for the Discernment and Enjoyment of those with Great Sensibility.

 I was born in the Village of Willesden, which lay within a few hours ride of the City of London and was formally a place of Catholic pilgrimage. After the Catholic Church had been ejected from this country, the statue of the Black Madonna, which had been in the village for as many years as could be remembered, was destroyed and the shrine pulled down. In its place the village grew into a hotbed of levellers and fifth monarchist men, my Father being the grandson of one of their leaders and was a strict puritan himself,

I spent my childhood in fear of my father, especially when he talked about the evils of the City. When he ranted, he always talked about dens of vice where loose women parade on the stage in revealing clothes, while the men strode forth in tight breeches, making loving eyes at the women and gyrated their hips. At these dens of sin, oranges were eaten and orgies enacted. Words with the power to thrill and excite the audience were thrust into the auditorium in thundering voices. These were places of deception and wrongness, they were places where Satan stalked the stalls, luring the hapless individuals away from the narrow path of right. They were called Theatres.

The more my Father raved against the theatres, the more I wanted to be part of them. Where my Father saw Deception, I saw the magic of Transformation; where my Father saw Lewdness, I saw honest acknowledgement of Human Sexuality and where my Father saw only drunkenness and chaos, I saw the joy of creating, of presenting, of performing. I wanted nothing more than to become an actor, an ambition that my Father would have heartily disagreed with.

When I was sixteen, an acting troupe entered our village and set up on the common. My Father led the protest against the actors, loudly declaiming the facts of their evil while they performed, until the audience grew unhappy and forcibly ejected him. During the second performance, my Father instructed me to enter the field in which they performed and to throw rotten fruit at the actors but when the time came I couldn’t do it. I stood at the front, my mouth open wide, as Hamlet saw the ghost of his own Father wander the lonely battlements; I gasped as the old man was pierced through the curtain and I wept as the young lady lost her mind slowly before drowning in a brook. Rather than denounce the actors and throw fruit at them, I went right up to the chief of them and asked him if I could join them on their journey. The lead actor was a kind man, who could obviously see in my eyes the desperation with which I wanted to be one of his number and accepted. From that night I became and actor and the most wonderful part of my life began. 

The troupe travelled around the country and I with them. At first I only played small parts, I carried spears and played the servant. As I grew to feel more comfortable and learned the techniques of fine acting, I began to discover I had a talent for fine comedy. This first showed itself as I played comedy servants and soon as I played comic Gentleman. As I learned to act the gentleman for the stage, so I learned to act the Gentleman off it. I became sought after by every maiden in every town we visited and soon I was affianced in almost every big town on our route. I also learnt the pleasures of wine and with it, the pleasures of singing and throwing up.  However, even as much as I caroused and learnt all the evil habits that my Father had promised me, I prayed every night and attended Church every Sunday, even being kicked out of one company for refusing to perform on a Sabbath. Even more galling to me was the fact that I was yet to perform in the centre of all theatrical achievement, London. I joined another troupe until I was within spitting distance of the city before eloping from the company and walking straight to Drury Lane. 

The owner of Drury Lane at that time was a prating, preening, precious coxcomb who barely looked at my audition before telling me that a career on a London stage was not one that I could ever hope to have. Later, I realised that my stage character of the foppish gentleman was one that the owner had himself specialised in and so would not want anyone like me in company to steal the attention away from him. At that time, I wandered dejected to the other theatre on Lincoln’s Inn Fields to try my luck there. Unfortunately, there was no place for me in that theatre either and so I entered London, my ambitions already crushed and my savings dwindling. To make money I performed in nasty shows, low cheap pantomimes performed for gaping ninnies at places like Moorfields and Spittlefields. Had I grown up sure of my talent as a performer I may have had the resilience required to keep trying my hand at the London Stage, but as I was, I could only become more dejected and degraded until I found myself in that area of London called Alsace, where the debtors hide from those wishing to throw them in the spunging house. 

It was as I was in this labyrinth of those who do not wish to be found that I saw an advertisement. 

REQUIRED

A MAN OF A LEARNED DISPOSITION, SOME KNOWLEDGE OF RELIGION AND MELANCHOLY COUNTENANCE TO TAKE THE POSITION OF ORNAMENTAL HERMIT AT THE ESTATE OF LORD BROADFIELD.

500 POUNDS TO BE GIVEN TO THE SUCCESSFUL APPLICANT ON COMPLETION OF THE JOB’S SUCCESS CRITERIA.

APPLY TO LORD BROADFIELD AT WHITE’S CHOCOLATE HOUSE ON PALL MALL.

It struck me with enormous force and clarity that this was the best route out of my poverty and towards my dreams. With five hundred pounds I could make such a grand figure for myself in London that the theatres who had ignored me would have to take notice. I was also pleased to note that my upbringing had given me knowledge of religion, my career as an actor allowed me to counterfeit any knowledge I would be required to have and that my recent misfortunes had leant me a very melancholy appearance. What’s more, I was delighted to be given a position that would allow me to indulge in my religious proclivities and give my body a much needed break from its customs of drinking and fornication. I went immediately to White’s Chocolate House and told the doorman I had arrived to apply for the position of Lord Broadfield’s Ornamental Hermit.

As much as I had pretended to gentility and counterfeited its like upon the stage; nothing could have prepared me for the inside of White’s Chocolate House. The hushed tones of subservient lackeys contrasted with the ring of privileged laughter and combined with the clinking of chocolate equipage created a fog of sound. The smell of warm chocolate was so thick and heavy that I felt I could have forgone all meat and lived off that vapour alone.

I was led, pushing my way through clumps of chairs and around tables, to a fine, old skeleton with an inquisitive, protruding nose that thrust upwards as if it owned the sky yet brought down to earth by a brown ring around the nostril of expensive, finely-ground snuff. He wore a fine wig, curled and powdered, looking like a fat contented ewe on the promontory of his head. 

“A candidate for your new position, my Lord”.

“My new position,” said Lord Broadfield, slurring the last word. “I haven’t fired anyone recently, what new position would that be?” He jerked his head round, jutting his nose like a woodpecker.

“For your Ornamental Hermit, My Lord,” I said quietly. 

“Oh yes!” He exclaimed. “I’d forgotten about that. Come, come lad, let’s have a look at you.” 

I was ushered in front of Lord Broadfield, where my teeth were examined with a peculiar squinting look that may have owed its origin to concentration or drink. I did my best to project hermit-like qualities the Lord continued his peering. 

“Yes, yes,” he nodded. “I think you will do nicely. Tell me, do you always wear this exquisitely gloomy hang-dog expression.”

“This is my normal expression, My Lord.”

“Excellent. I think you shall do nicely. Report to Cullins and he shall take you back to my estates and get kitted out. I want you deep in contemplation by the time I return to the country.”

“Thank you, My Lord. I have but one question.”

“What is that?”

“What does an ornamental hermit do?”

“Do? Why, he does nothing. He contemplates, as far as I am led to believe. He contemplates and he doesn’t shave or cut his fingernails, nor does he speak.”

“For how long?”

“How long?” He taps his teeth with his finger. “For five years. That seems a fine time to have someone contemplating in my garden. Five hundred pounds for five years, I like that, it’s tidy. I pre-ordered a hermitage ready for you, it should be complete already. Now hurry along, and no speaking now.”

I nodded my head and follow the White’s employee to a footman in scarlet livery. The White’s employee explains who I am, why I cannot speak and what Lord Broadfield wants done with me. The footman looks surprised but resigned and he gives me directions and money to hire a horse to Lord Broadfield’s estate where my needs will be taken care of afterwards. I open my mouth to thank him but he shakes his head sharply and motions me to the door. The night not being the best time to start a journey, I pace the streets I went to Covent Garden and slept under the portico of St Paul’s before hiring my horse and taking myself to Lord Broadfield’s Sussex estate.

I was not expected, and disallowed entrance as a poor, dumb beggar. I tried to explain but mindful of my Five Hundred Pounds, I dared not speak. My hired horse returned to a correct agent, my ready money dissipated and with no ideas of what to do next, I settled against the wall of the estate and tried not think nor sob, as one would have led me to the other. It was then that an angel appeared with a small loaf of bread and a little cheese. She was dressed simply, more likely a maid or some sort of lower servant. I snatched the food and started to bite big chunks from the bread, nodding my thanks because my mouth was too full to speak. Then she told me that the meal I was devastating was her own lunch and I felt guilty at my rapaciousness. I motioned to her to stop so I could swallow the bread that had become a thick wadding in my mouth and then thank her properly but as I did, Cullin’s, the footman from White’s Chocolate House thundered to the gate. 

“Mary, Has this man spoken?”

“No, we think he’s a mute beggar.”

“This is our new hermit, he is not permitted to speak for the next five years. If he had spoken, he would have lost a position and five hundred pounds. Go inside and inform the staff, I shall make the hermit comfortable,” the footman smiled, “as comfortable as he shall be in the next five years at any rate. Come, hermit.”

Cullins walked his horse and me through the gate and handed it to a stable boy. He called me to follow him out into the grounds. I was born in a village and have travelled up, down and across this fair land but I had never seen land that had been so planned and commanded. There was a lake, twisting and turning just as a real lake does but each twist revealed a new vista to look out at. It was like walking through a print shop of sublime sights rather than a real place. My sentiments were moved with each new sight. It was in a part of the garden that had been bullied into growing immaculately unkempt that I caught sight of the place that was to become my home for the next five years.

It looked like a ruin of antiquity that had been left to grow bindweed, columns rose to nowhere and statues lay around with the faces smashed. The room itself was small, only six large paces from one end to the next and open to the elements on one side. There was a small nest of blankets designed for my comfort and a bookcase with a number of tattered volumes on it. Behind the temple lay a small hole for my convenience, my modesty protected only by the bushes overgrown in that area. That was all.

Cullins explained the rules in more detail. I was to keep to my hovel at all times, where I was to read the volumes and appear in deep thought. I was not to cut my hair or nails and I was only to bathe occasionally, using the lake for that purpose. Finally, I was to wear one outfit of clothes, which I would have refreshed every six months. If I was to stray, it was not to be beyond the unkempt area of the grounds because my appearance would look inelegant with the order of the other designs. Each morning, food would be brought to me, which I was to ration throughout the day. The most important rule, to be maintained above all others that I was not to speak, write, gesture or communicate in any way whatsoever. Failure to keep to this cardinal rule was expulsion from the garden in the rags I had on and nothing else. He smiled slyly at me and informed me that he would take particular interest that this rule was kept. I crouched into my hovel and examined the bookcase at the tomes, which were to be my only comfort, and company for the next five years. There was a Bible in English and the rest of the books were in Latin, a language I knew not. I began to worry that the next five years may pass very slowly indeed.

I was distracted from my apprehensions by Mary, the maid who had previously fed me, running towards my new home carrying a bundle of hessian sacks. These sacks turned out to be my new clothing. One had holes cut in the top and sides for my arms and feet, another was slit open with holes for arms like a jacket and another was a loose bolt of material to wrap around me however I saw fit. They were thrown to me.

“Change,” the footman commanded. I looked towards him and Mary before creeping under the bundle of cloth and fur that was to serve as my bed and changed with as much dignity as I could muster. The sacks were rough and irritated my skin, my legs and feet were bare and I felt ridiculous. Even Robinson Crusoe had dressed with more dignity and comfort than I and he had lived in a land far from comfort and civilisation. 

“Let’s look at you,” he said. I stood up, the housemaid hid her face and smiled. “No, not right yet,” he footman said, striding up to me. He grabbed me, pulled me out of the hovel and towards a patch of mud, shoving me in it and shouting at me to roll around. I lay still, like a frightened dog so he started to kick me until I rolled around in the mud.

“A hermit needs to be filthy,” he shouted at me.  Mary begged the footman to leave me alone and he allowed me to stand up, as dignified as I possibly could. 

“Come on, we have work to do,” the maid said and the two strode off, she offering little backwards glances towards me as I stood still and tried to calm myself down.

Walking back towards my hovel, I stood barefoot on the prickle of a bramble. Leaping in the air, I had to suppress every desire to shout and scream out loud, forcing every curse to bellow silently. I hobbled back to my rags and tried to prise the prickle out of my foot with my hands. Somewhere I heard laughing. So began my life as a curiosity. 

Rambler 141

I read a Rambler before I go to bed every night and last night I read this one, which is my favourite so far. It's typical Johnson - a few words sent me to the dictionary and a few of the sentences needed a re-read but the pleasure is worth a little work. He is so funny and such an astute observer of people in this piece that I find almost every line quotable and also true.

Reading a good bit of Johnson has a satisfaction that I can compare to nothing so accurate as a satisfying bowel movement, the language being as smooth but as solid as a perfectly formed turd. Not sure what he'd make of that analogy but I think it stands. Here we go then...

No. 141. Tuesday, July 23, 1751.

Hilarisque, tamen cum pondere, virtus. 

Greatness with ease, and gay severity.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Politicians have long observed, that the greatest events may be often traced back to slender causes. Petty competition or casual friendship, the prudence of a slave, or the garrulity of a woman, have hindered or promoted the most important schemes, and hastened or retarded the revolutions of empire.

Whoever shall review his life will generally find, that the whole tenour of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment, or by a combination of inconsiderable circumstances, acting when his imagination was unoccupied, and his judgment unsettled; and that his principles and actions have taken their colour from some secret infusion, mingled without design in the current of his ideas. The desires that predominate in our hearts, are instilled by imperceptible communications at the time when we look upon the various scenes of the world, and the different employments of men, with the neutrality of inexperience; and we come forth from the nursery or the school, invariably destined to the pursuit of great acquisitions, or petty accomplishments.

Such was the impulse by which I have been kept in motion from my earliest years. I was born to an inheritance which gave my childhood a claim to distinction and caresses, and was accustomed to hear applauses, before they had much influence on my thoughts. The first praise of which I remember myself sensible was that of good-humour, which, whether I deserved it or not when it was bestowed, I have since made it my whole business to propagate and maintain.

When I was sent to school, the gaiety of my look, and the liveliness of my loquacity, soon gained me admission to hearts not yet fortified against affection by artifice or interest. I was entrusted with every stratagem, and associated in every sport; my company gave alacrity to a frolick, and gladness to a holiday. I was indeed so much employed in adjusting or executing schemes of diversion, that I had no leisure for my tasks, but was furnished with exercises, and instructed in my lessons, by some kind patron of the higher classes. My master, not suspecting my deficiency, or unwilling to detect what his kindness would not punish nor his impartiality excuse, allowed me to escape with a slight examination, laughed at the pertness of my ignorance, and the sprightliness of my absurdities, and could not forbear to show that he regarded me with such tenderness, as genius and learning can seldom excite.

From school I was dismissed to the university, where I soon drew upon me the notice of the younger students, and was the constant partner of their morning walks, and evening compotations. I was not indeed much celebrated for literature, but was looked on with indulgence as a man of parts, who wanted nothing but the dulness of a scholar, and might become eminent whenever he should condescend to labour and attention. My tutor a while reproached me with negligence, and repressed my sallies with supercilious gravity; yet, having natural good-humour lurking in his heart, he could not long hold out against the power of hilarity, but after a few months began to relax the muscles of disciplinarian moroseness, received me with smiles after an elopement, and, that he might not betray his trust to his fondness, was content to spare my diligence by increasing his own.

Thus I continued to dissipate the gloom of collegiate austerity, to waste my own life in idleness, and lure others from their studies, till the happy hour arrived, when I was sent to London. I soon discovered the town to be the proper element of youth and gaiety, and was quickly distinguished as a wit by the ladies, a species of beings only heard of at the university, whom I had no sooner the happiness of approaching than I devoted all my faculties to the ambition of pleasing them.

A wit, Mr. Rambler, in the dialect of ladies, is not always a man who, by the action of a vigorous fancy upon comprehensive knowledge, brings distant ideas unexpectedly together, who, by some peculiar acuteness, discovers resemblance in objects dissimilar to common eyes, or, by mixing heterogeneous notions, dazzles the attention with sudden scintillations of conceit. A lady's wit is a man who can make ladies laugh, to which, however easy it may seem, many gifts of nature, and attainments of art, must commonly concur. He that hopes to be received as a wit in female assemblies, should have a form neither so amiable as to strike with admiration, nor so coarse as to raise disgust, with an understanding too feeble to be dreaded, and too forcible to be despised. The other parts of the character are more subject to variation; it was formerly essential to a wit, that half his back should be covered with a snowy fleece, and, at a time yet more remote, no man was a wit without his boots. In the days of the _Spectator_ a snuff-box seems to have been indispensable; but in my time an embroidered coat was sufficient, without any precise regulation of the rest of his dress.

But wigs and boots and snuff-boxes are vain, without a perpetual resolution to be merry, and who can always find supplies of mirth? Juvenal indeed, in his comparison of the two opposite philosophers, wonders only whence an unexhausted fountain of tears could be discharged: but had Juvenal, with all his spirit, undertaken my province, he would have found constant gaiety equally difficult to be supported. Consider, Mr. Rambler, and compassionate the condition of a man, who has taught every company to expect from him a continual feast of laughter, an unintermitted stream of jocularity. The task of every other slave has an end. The rower in time reaches the port; the lexicographer at last finds the conclusion of his alphabet; only the hapless wit has his labour always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.

I know that among men of learning and asperity the retainers to the female world are not much regarded: yet I cannot but hope that if you knew at how dear a rate our honours are purchased, you would look with some gratulation on our success, and with some pity on our miscarriages. Think on the misery of him who is condemned to cultivate barrenness and ransack vacuity; who is obliged to continue his talk when his meaning is spent, to raise merriment without images, to harass his imagination in quest of thoughts which he cannot start, and his memory in pursuit of narratives which he cannot overtake; observe the effort with which he strains to conceal despondency by a smile, and the distress in which he sits while the eyes of the company are fixed upon him as the last refuge from silence and dejection.

It were endless to recount the shifts to which I have been reduced, or to enumerate the different species of artificial wit. I regularly frequented coffee-houses, and have often lived a week upon an expression, of which he who dropped it did not know the value. When fortune did not favour my erratick industry, I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces. To collect wit was indeed safe, for I consorted with none that looked much into books, but to disperse it was the difficulty. A seeming negligence was often useful, and I have very successfully made a reply not to what the lady had said, but to what it was convenient for me to hear; for very few were so perverse as to rectify a mistake which had given occasion to a burst of merriment. Sometimes I drew the conversation up by degrees to a proper point, and produced a conceit which I had treasured up, like sportsmen who boast of killing the foxes which they lodge in the covert. Eminence is, however, in some happy moments, gained at less expense; I have delighted a whole circle at one time with a series of quibbles, and made myself good company at another, by scalding my fingers, or mistaking a lady's lap for my own chair.

These are artful deceits and useful expedients; but expedients are at length exhausted, and deceits detected. Time itself, among other injuries, diminishes the power of pleasing, and I now find, in my forty-fifth year, many pranks and pleasantries very coldly received, which had formerly filled a whole room with jollity and acclamation. I am under the melancholy necessity of supporting that character by study, which I gained by levity, having learned too late that gaiety must be recommended by higher qualities, and that mirth can never please long but as the efflorescence of a mind loved for its luxuriance, but esteemed for its usefulness.

I am, &c.

PAPILIUS.

The Problem of Quotes

“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes” - Mahatma Gandhi.

“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you” - Thomas Jefferson.


Two seemingly persuasive quotations from two people with a reputation for telling the truth, each one on its own could be easily quoted, agreed with and used to steer thinking in a certain direction. A person could even fully endorse each quote and different times with equal conviction but they directly contradict each other.

I'm a big fan of quotations, I have keeping a commonplace book this last year, full of juicy chunks I've read in various books but I do sometimes feel a little queasy about them. A quote is pulled out of a larger text or speech because it is self-contained, it takes a view and boils it down in a concise and coherent way, its very tightness is convincing. The ease with which a quotation can be plucked out of a text can prevent any real thought about the meaning of the quote, the implications of the idea being espoused and the context where the quote comes from.

Around my clock I have written and laminated the following quotes.

(At 12) 'I may sit down and laugh at the world, and at myself - the most ridiculous object in it.' Oliver Goldsmith

(At 3) 'The only end of writing is to enable readers to better enjoy life or better to endure it.' Samuel Johnson

(At 6) 'I take a simple view of life, it is, keep your eyes open and get on with it.' Laurence Sterne

(At 9) 'The world is but a school of inquiry.' Michel de Montaigne

I use them to remind me of the attitudes I find important much as a Christian Orthodox believer would use an icon to remind them of the right-thinking and doing actions of the saints. The quotes can be taken together or singly to create a basic picture of how I would like to deal with the world; playfully, kindly, straight-fowardly and curiously. I must look at those quotes several times a day, if only in the action of looking at the time and so must in some way be reminded of these quotes every day - but I don't even know where they all come from.

The Goldsmith quote is from one of his letters and comes from a very funny self-pitying epistle where he also says that, 'An ugly and a poor man is society only for himself and such society the world let’s me enjoy in great abundance'. It reminds me to laugh but also to remember that you are as risible as everyone else. 

The Johnson quote is from his review of Soame Jenyns, where he tears into the author for his theory of evil, especially the notion that evil and unpleasantness may be part of some grand tapestry for God to enjoy. I use it to focus my writing but also as a way of assessing my reading.

The Montaigne quote comes from an essay but I can't remember which one, I can't even remember the context. What's worse is that Montaigne never wrote those words, he wrote something like them in French. 

The Sterne one is the most mysterious, I read it on a quotations website but have no idea where it is from. I've read his two novels and can't remember it in there, maybe it is from a letter - maybe it is in one of the novels and I have forgotten it.

Which brings me back to the problem with quotations. Those words on my wall could be from anyone, they could come from any text, so could all the quotations bandied about all over the place. Once wrenched from their own body of text, the words have next to no meaning in themselves, they exist now only to have meaning foisted upon them out of context by the person using the quote. If a text is a dialogue between writer and reader, a quote becomes the reader talking themselves through a hand-puppet dressed up as a writer. It ceases to be the authentic voice of writer communicating.

Will this stop me collecting quotes or cause me to take them from my wall, not at all, because sometimes talking to a hand-puppet is the best way of clearing up your own thinking, because in the end it is neither our thoughts or our actions that define us but the authentic reflection of one on the other. 

   

An Appreciation of Jubilate Agno

I’ve been putting off writing about ‘Jubilate Agno’ for months, not because I have nothing to say but because the poem excites so many half ideas in my head that I find it heart to distill them into something short and understandable. I realised early on that I would not be able to review the poem in any way, but I could appreciate it.

First, a quick bit of context. Jubilate Agno was written by Christopher Smart during a prolonged period of confinement in an unknown private madhouse which he had been confined to after being pronounced ‘uncurable’ at St Luke’s madhouse. The exact reason for his confinement are unknown but the clues point to a religious mania, a desire to pray loudly with people without thought of the time or place of praying and (given the definition of madness given by Dr Battie of St Luke’s) possible hallucinations. 

After he emerged from the madhouse, Smart published a number of works including a translation/representation of the Psalms and ‘A Song to David’, considered his masterpiece by critics from Betjeman on. It is probable that he wrote these three works almost simultaneously as similar phrases crop up in all three and his Psalms translation is mentioned in Jubilate Agno.

At fast glance the poem seems mad. It was originally published anonymously as ‘a song from Bedlam’. Long, it comes in sections, some of which all start with the word ‘for’ and some that start with the word ‘let’. The Let phrases are the simpler to understand, often picking a Biblical personage and an animal/plant or mineral and exhorting them to praise God. The ‘for’ phrases are harder to understand, sometimes saying something about the personage or the animal, expounding a personal theory or even a reminiscence. This means the poem has long parts that look a little like this...

Let Manly, house of Manly rejoice with the Booby a tropical bird.

Let Fage, house of Fage rejoice with the Fiddlefish -- Blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus in the fish's mouth.

Let Benning, house of Benning rejoice with the Sea-Egg. Lord have mercy on the soul of Benning's wife.

Let Singleton, house of Singleton rejoice with the Hog-Plumb. Lord have mercy on the soul of Lord Vane.

Let Thickness, house of Thickness rejoice with The Papah a fruit found at Chequetan.

and this...

For the Venetian will know that the Englishman is his brother.

For the Liturgy will obtain in all languages.

For England is the head and not the tail.

For England is the head of Europe in the spirit.

For Spain, Portugal and France are the heart.

For Holland and Germany are the middle.

For Italy is one of the legs.

Though, as you can see, even though it looks mad, it is not without reference. In the ‘for’ part quoted above makes jokey reference to the positions of countries of Europe on the map (with England as the head and I presume Scotland as the hat) and to the shape of the countries (with Italy being a leg). As I child I often thought that Great Britain looked a bit like like a laughing face, in Smart’s conception Europe is someone with a laughing face, a great belly and hopping on one foot. On closer reading, it would seem the poem is not so much mad as playful (if not always jolly).

Furthermore, there seems to be a link between ‘let’ passages and ‘for’ passages. In an edition from 1980 some of these parts were matched up.

LET PETER rejoice with the MOON FISH who keeps up the life in the waters by night

FOR I pray the Lord JESUS that cured the LUNATICK to be merciful to all my brethren and sisters in these houses.

Let Andrew rejoice with the Whale, who is array'd in beauteous blue and is a combination of bulk and activity.

For they work me with their harping-irons, which is a barbarous instrument, because I am more unguarded than others.

Let James rejoice with the Skuttle-Fish, who foils his foe by the effusion of his ink.

For the blessing of God hath been on my epistles, which I have written for the benefit of others.

The links here between a ‘moon fish’ and the ‘lunatick’; the ‘whale’ and the ‘harping-irons’ and the ‘effusion of his ink’ with ‘my epistles’ seeming pretty clear. The link between the apostles and aquatic animals is less clear until the reader is reminded that the apostles were commanded by Jesus to become ‘fishers of men’. (Yes I know the whale is not a fish, but in encyclopaedias of the day, even Goldsmith’s, the whale and dolphin are counted as such.

Why would a person write such an extraordinary poem? The two Smart biographies I read had different focuses on his life and different interpretations of the purpose of it. Christopher Devlin in ‘Poor Kit Smart’ focusses throughout on Smart’s spiritual life and supposes that his purpose in writing is part of a larger project to rewrite parts of the Church of England Liturgy. He talks about Smart’s acquaintance with Dr Lowth who wrote a book about Hebrew poetry and a particular kind of that poetry which is chanted or song by two people reading from different sheets one after the other. He then focusses on the first set of ‘lets’ which put key figures of the Bible with animals that clearly represent a part of their story. There are no ‘fors’ corresponding with them, but that is because not all of the manuscript exists. Devlin suggests that Smart laid this project aside as a going concern and focussed on the Psalms, carrying on Jubilate as a way to pass the time.

Arthur Sherbo in his book, ‘Christopher Smart: Scholar of the University’ focusses on Smart’s intellect and concentrates on the latter half of the poem where the ‘lets’ have degenerated into naming various people and families but the ‘fors’ have become a kind of diary and place of reflection. He also cites how the ‘fors’ have become places to talk about science, epistemology, linguistics and other scholarly subjects. He concludes that the routine of writing two or three lines a day and the intricacy of the puns and wordplay mean that ‘Jubilate’ is not a record of madness but an intelligent, lonely and bored mind trying to stay sane.

All that out the way, here’s time for my tuppence.

Where Sherbo approached the poem as a scholar, and Devlin like a religious man (he was a CoE vicar) I decided to approach it like a writer and for three weeks wrote a couple of lines of my own ‘Jubilate’. 

Quickly I realised to write in this form, with a ‘let’ and a ‘for’ that related across to each other but also up and down to the other ‘lets’ and ‘fors’ was a task that could not be undertaken by a disordered mind but did require a focus that fell well out of my sphere. A focus that could have roots in obsession but not an ordinary one. I also found that as the format did encourage personal revelation and unvarnished thought, it did read quite mad, although I am perfectly sane.

What’s more, the more I read and reread ‘Jubilate’ the more I saw wordplay and other play not only within the line, between corresponding ‘lets’ and ‘fors’ but also with the lines above and below, sometimes far up and below. It was almost as if each point of the poem relates to each other point, at times the poem seemed almost 3D. I reckon it would be of great understanding to the poem if a person could create a 3D diagram of the poem with all the points, jagged and uneven. I reckon it would look great. I also reckon it would look a lot like a net.

And that is what I think the poem is, a net. It starts with an invocation; gathers every Bible character and animal that Smart can think of, then gathers plants, rocks, scientific theories and language. It even gathers Smart’s daydreams, his wishes and his history. It gathers families and towns, everything it can and then sets them in relationships with each other. Up the text, down it, out of it, in it, until that text becomes a net to catch something of the essence of all creation and thought and so an essence of God.

A mad idea, perhaps, but one that makes sense to me.

Mistress Masham's Repose

I read TH White’s ‘The Once and Future King’ in the summer and enjoyed it immensely, so much so that I have been buying up copies of his books and gobbling them down voraciously (that being one of the reasons I am writing less then I did). The package containing ‘Mistress Masham’s Repose’ was posted through my door just as I was about to leave to visit my parents. In my back was Sarah Fielding’s ‘David Simple’ but reading the first line of this book, I shoved it in my bag and head off to the tube station.

By the time I arrived at my parent’s house, I was a quarter of the way through. I reckon this book has the finest first chapter I have ever read, it is perfect. Maria’s description is perfect, from her eyes like shining marmite to her loving heart and the promise that she is tough, though with a mistrust of cows, is so clear to me. The description of her despicable guardians, the Reverend Hater and Miss Brown calculate the necessary dislike of them but we are encouraged to believe that ‘this precious pair may have been trying to do the best they could, considering the people they were’. I love the humanity in that, even pantomime children’s baddies need consideration.

This brilliant set up over, we move onto the plot. Maria is an orphaned heiress living in the crumbled ruins of Malplaquet Palace in Northamptonshire who spends her free time wandering the overgrown eighteenth century garden, filled with follies and prospects in decay. It is on one of these trips that she goes into the little island in the middle of a man-made lake to the pagoda known as ‘Mistress Masham’s Repose’. There she finds a colony of exiled Lilliputians who were snatched by Gulliver’s rescuer and escaped his traveling circus. The rest of the plot then consists of her trying to keep them away from her guardians and with the help of The Professor, to understand them.

The Professor is presumably based on White himself and like Merlyn before him is probably calculated to appeal to my own sensibilities. He is the main moral voice of the book, helping Maria to see that her physical dominance of the Lilliputians did not imply any other kind of dominance. He is a bookish hermit living in poverty, who would rather read a book then go on adventures and longs for nothing more than a penny fish-hook so he can cook fish from out of the pond. He notices that ‘whenever something unusual turns up, you are immediately confronted by a moral problem’, declares that ‘It is better to think about cucumbers even, then not at all’; and when he feels barbarism creeping upon him, touches a book to ward it off. I liked him a lot - though I didn’t like the few chapters he had to himself as he was trying to rescue Maria, as I couldn’t believe that his mind would get distracted by discussions on Latin words, or by looking up the origin of the word ‘bloater’ when his young friend was in danger. I did like like his way of dealing with locks, which was to destroy the bolts on the other side of the door that held it on.

Like ‘The Once and Future King,’ the importance of thinking and the humanity it could bring (rather like in the book on Johnson, ‘Passionate Intelligence’). One of the disparaging things said about the guardians is that, ‘they had a few instincts about money, and about appearing respectable, but for many and many years, they had not any thoughts on real ideas at all.’ Another big theme in both books is the importance of right over might, it is easy to domineer the Lilliputians, but better to leave them be.

The book is chockfull of interesting hat tips to the eighteenth century and as well as Swift and Gulliver; Pope, Arbuthnott, Johnson, Boswell, Horace Walpole and Lord Hervey all get mentions. It’s hard to tell what I would have made of this book as a child, but as I am now, I greatly enjoyed it and would encourage any right-minded people to dig a copy out and enjoy the adventure.