"Death hath a thousand doors to let out life"

In Aubrey Burl's Brief History of Stonehenge, one of his chapter-epigraphs quoted this line by the Jacobean dramatist Philip Massinger.


     Death hath a thousand doors to let out life.


I can't remember now what the chapter in question was about, but probably it was about the skeleton of a man with a stone arrowhead in his ribs, found near the earth ring and carbon-dated to soon after the erection of the great sarsen circle.

Of this or another male skeleton - perhaps the Archer at Durrington - Burl tells us that his ankle bones were worn down, indicating a life that involved prolonged squatting.

Apparently this tell-tale clue from the ankle bones is well-known among human archaeologists. A Google search turned up Merry E. Weisner-Hanks' Concise History of the World (2015), where we read  (p.33):

This has led scholars to assume that in Paleolithic society men were also responsible for hunting, and women for gathering. Human remains provide some evidence for this, as skeletons and teeth indicate the type of tasks the person did while they were alive. At Chinchorro on the north coast of Chile, for example, male skeletons from the period 7000-2000 BCE often show bone growths in the ears, the result of diving in the cold coastal waters for seals and shellfish (today this condition is called "surfer's ear") , while female skeletons show changes in the ankle bones resulting from prolonged squatting, perhaps to process the marine products or gather and process terrestrial foods. Such a division of labour is not universal, however....

Simon Mays' book The Archaeology of Human Bones (1998) explains:

In the squatting position there is extreme dorsiflexion of the feet. [This] puts continous pressure on the ankle ligaments which tends to elongate them, permitting greater dorsiflexion of the joint between the tibia and the talus.... Habitual extreme dorsiflexion of the ankle joints... [leads] to the formation of anterior extensions to the joint surfaces... [known as] squatting extensions.

He notes that among a group of skeletons of medieval peasants from Wharram Percy, 71% of the women and 44% of the men had squatting extensions. (Burl, reporting that the bones were "worn down", may have misunderstood.)

The earliest, and for many thousands of years the only, piece of  human furniture, was the chest.

The first vital essential was to have somewhere to put important stuff. The chest was the beginning of property and the first private space. (Living spaces were not private.) To be able to "keep" something was much more important than such fripperies as a bed or a chair.  So there was a lot of squatting in ancient times.

When we go backpacking, we revert to those days. Our backpack is our chest. It's the only piece of furniture we really need.

*

Alm. Do, tyrant,
No more a father, feast thy cruelty
Upon thy daughter ; but hell's plagues fall on me
If I inflict not on myself whatever
He can endure for me !

Vice. Will none restrain her ?

Alm. Death hath a thousand doors to let out life,
I shall find one.  If Portia's burning coals,
The knife of Lucrece, Cleopatra's aspics,
Famine, deep waters, have the power to free me
From a loath'd life, I'll not an hour outlive him.

Pedro. Sister !

Leon. Dear cousin !

[Exit Almira, followed by Pedro and Leon.]


Vice. Let her perish.



(from A Very Woman (1634), Act V Scene 4).


The Plays of Philip Massinger:


https://archive.org/stream/playsofphilipmas00massrich#page/524/mode/2up

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A Very Woman isn't often mentioned these days, though Francis Cunningham considered it one of Massinger's best. It was registered in 1634, but is considered a revision of a play written around 1619-22, either by Massinger and Fletcher, or perhaps by Fletcher alone.

So Massinger may not have written his most famous line. Anyway, the thought had appeared in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1612-13) and seems to have become theatrical common currency.

But this is the most beautiful and resonant expression of that thought. (It's one of those quotations that gains power and interest by being detached from its original context.)

The faint suggestion of Life being a restless visitor importunate to leave, and of a house-proud Death being no less eager to sweep his guest towards the nearest of many exits .... there's a certain sombre thrill in that thought, as we turn briefly  aside from the contrary observation -- that's to say, with what amazing tenacity Life fights and endures and clings to its existence -- to consider that, after all, Life is fragile and a miracle, and how lucky we are to have it now, and Life does always depart in the end, and not in such a very long time either, from the perspective of the centuries...

blogs I read

The shrinking glacier of Hardangerjokul, from Brian John's blog

I've done one of those extremely infrequent updates to my blog-roll today.


What spurred it was, in the course of trying to find the actual location of Bowl's Barrow Heytesbury (something I failed to achieve, by the way), I happened across Brian John's sensationally good site on bluestones, Stonehenge, glaciation and Pembrokeshire geology; if you are interested in this stuff, you'll understand how it all hangs together.


https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/


Blogs like Brian's are rare and precious. It had to go on the blog-roll straight away.


Sample post, very excited about a possible match for the Altar Stone at Stonehenge, in what seems like a perfect source for glacial erratics. With a bonus in the shape of Dylan Thomas.


https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/dylan-thomas-and-altar-stone.html












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While updating my list I also added a couple of other sites that I read regularly by email subscription.


Richard Warren's blog about (usually) twentieth-century art, sculpture and literature. Richard lives in Wolverhampton, writes beautifully, and constantly discovers new and wonderful things about eras of British art of which I'm shamefully ignorant.


One of the signs of a great blog is that it makes you interested in topics you never knew you were interested in...


https://richardawarren.wordpress.com/author/richardawarren/

Engraving by Paul Sandby, from Richard Warren's blog

(Richard commented: "Eighteenth century painters are a bit off piste for this blog, but indulge me."...)


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A reflection that could be instanced too by Non Morris' amazing "Dahlia Papers".


https://thedahliapapers.com/


I don't know anything about garden design. I don't even know if I like garden design or approve of garden design, if you know what I mean. I know almost nothing of roses or espaliers or Versailles planters. --- but


"The ultimate source of the Versailles Planter today is the Parisian company  ‘Jardins du Roi Soleil’ who make the original design under licence in different sizes and twelve classic colours using a muscly cast iron frame, solid oak from the Auvergne and heavy duty steel bolts."


When Non Morris visits Sissinghurst or Vaux-le-Vicomte, you just have to go along.

Distylium racemosum at Sissinghurst, from Non Morris' blog

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What GoodReads is to Quora, Guy Savage's blog is to Wikipedia. Kind of.  What I'm trying to say is that Guy's blog consists unashamedly of I-have-just-read-it book reviews, a complete mixture of highbrow and lowbrow, but unlike GoodReads it's actually worth reading. He always quotes a decent-length extract and he always discusses story and characters in some detail. Discusses, not churns out.   He's reading his way through all of Anita Brookner's novels at the moment, and that's fascinating.  And we can expect a good deal more of Pushkin in the near future.


We live in a world where it's impossible to read more than an infinitesimal crumb of what we would really like to read, no,  of what we hunger to read. I wonder if I'll ever read any more Brookner than the one novel of hers that I've read. I wonder if I'll ever pick up Pushkin again. Most likely not. But thanks to Guy's blog, at least I can pay them a visit.


https://swiftlytiltingplanet.wordpress.com/author/sludgespa/

Dryden on Stonehenge

John Dryden in 1693, portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller

[In the National Portrait Gallery. Image source: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw01952/John-Dryden?LinkID=mp01369&role=sit&rNo=1 . I've slightly lightened the image.]


Dryden's interesting poem prefixing Walter Charleton's Chorea Gigantum (1663), ends thus:


Nor is This Work the least: You well may give
To Men new vigour, who make Stones to live.
Through You the DANES (their short Dominion lost)
A longer Conquest than the Saxons boast.
STONE-HENG, once thought a Temple, You have found
A Throne where Kings, our Earthly Gods, were Crown’d.
Here by their wondring Subjects They were seen,
Joy’d with their Stature and their Princely meen.
Our Soveraign here above the rest might stand;
And here be chose again to rule the Land.
These Ruines sheltered once His Sacred Head,
Then when from Wor’ster’s fatal Field He fled;
Watch’d by the Genius of this Royal place,
And mighty Visions of the Danish Race,
His Refuge then was for a Temple shown:
But, He Restor’d, ’tis now become a Throne.


"To my Honour’d Friend Dr. Charleton, on his learned and useful Works: and more particularly this of Stone-heng, by him Restored to the true Founders."
 Complete poem:  http://www.bartleby.com/204/19.html]




The story of the future Charles II being at Stonehenge was perfectly true.


"On 6 October (1651) the King, Julia Coningsby and Henry Peters, Colonel Wyndham's servant, left Trent for the home of Mrs Amphillis Hyde at Heale House between Salisbury and Amesbury. Though sleeping at Heale, Charles spent his days at Stonehenge, returning to the house each evening after dark." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_of_Charles_II]


Charles was 21. He was incognito, fleeing across England following final defeat at the Battle of Worcester. His black hair was close-cropped and he wore countryman's clothes. His unusual height  (to which Dryden's poem alludes) was apt to draw unwanted attention: Charles was 6' 2".


Charles left Heele House on 12th October; he boarded the Surprise at Shoreham on 15th October.


Whether he really spent five full days at Stonehenge I am not sure.  Aubrey Burl says only that he was there on 7th October with Colonel Philips, "reckoning and re-reckoning the stones".




Walter Charleton's book disputed Inigo Jones' claim that Stonehenge was a Roman temple (Jones' claim had been made back in 1620, following his survey, but was not published until 1655, three years after his death) .


In fact, Charleton claimed, Stonehenge was clearly Danish. And it was not a temple but a place of royal ceremonial,  where kings sat publically in state. (Charleton was the first of many to claim that the Altar Stone was originally upright: it was a throne, he thought.)


Charleton's claims were rebutted by John Webb, Jones' nephew. Stuart Piggott calls it "a forgotten controversy conducted on forgotten lines of argument . . . It is is a microcosm of the battle of the Ancients and Moderns, with Jones, Webb and Charleton on the far side of the intellectual gulf, Aubrey and Stukeley on the near side..."  (quoted in Aubrey Burl, A Brief History of Stonehenge, p. 37).

Charleton made no independent survey of Stonehenge and the main value of his book, maybe, was that it made him aware of John Aubrey's discovery of Avebury, which he mentioned to the king. Charles, as we've seen, had become interested in the mysteries of Stonehenge. Charles summoned Aubrey for an audience, and shortly afterwards met him at Avebury to explore the site.


The clear-minded Aubrey made short work of the Jones/Charleton theories. He knew about stone circles in parts of the UK that neither the Romans nor the Danes ever occupied. He realized that they were the work of pre-Roman people. (For him that simply meant "Druids". No earlier phases of British prehistory were known at the time.)

Charleton was a royal physician and a Fellow of the Royal Society. But in 1663 it was easier to talk the talk of science than to walk the walk. (Something that's not unknown even today..!)

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Still, Dryden's poem shares the excitement of science, the feeling of liberation. Here's how it begins:




THE LONGEST Tyranny that ever sway’d
Was that wherein our Ancestors betray’d
Their free-born Reason to the Stagirite,
And made his Torch their universal Light.
So Truth, while onely one suppli’d the State,
Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate;
Until ’twas bought, like Emp’rique Wares, or Charms,
Hard words seal’d up with Aristotle’s Armes.
Columbus was the first that shook his Throne;
And found a Temp’rate in a Torrid Zone,
The fevrish aire fann’d by a cooling breez,
The fruitful Vales set round with shady Trees;
And guiltless Men, who danc’d away their time,
Fresh as their Groves and Happy as their Clime. Had we still paid that homage to a Name,
Which only God and Nature justly claim,
The Western Seas had been our utmost bound,
Where Poets still might dream the Sun was drown’d:
And all the Starrs, that shine in Southern Skies,
Had been admir’d by none but Salvage Eyes.



When science, empire and capitalism got together, there wasn't much future for the "guiltless Men" and the "Salvage Eyes". To discover, explore, and exploit... That was what science meant at the sharp edge, just as it does today (its prime victims now being industrial animals, natural ecologies, the earth, the seas and the climate -- though human material is not neglected either.)