Drawn by the unctuous snail

The Dandelion Fairy, by Cicely Mary Barker

[Image source: https://flowerfairies.com/category/collections/spring/ .]

In such employments, as rearing the drooping flower, and arranging the disordered chamber, the Fairies of South Britain gradually lost the harsher character of the dwarfs, or elves. Their choral dances were enlivened by the introduction of the merry goblin Puck, for whose freakish pranks they exchanged their original mischievous propensities. The Fairies of Shakespeare, Drayton, and Mennis, therefore, at first exquisite fancy portraits, may be considered as having finally operated a change in the original which gave them birth.

(Scott, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802))

Yes, I get it, and this was a line of winsome fairy evolution that proliferated wildly in the century after Scott wrote those words. It issued, for instance, in the Langs' Fairy Books and in Cicely Mary Barker's lovely Flower Fairies. In the century after Scott, those once-daemonic spirits completed their long journey to the nursery,  as C.S. Lewis probably remarked. 

The development in A Midsummer Night's Dream and in Drayton's Nymphidia was also a poetic escape of fancy crossed with nascent science, with huge influence on later poetry and across all the arts. 

But who's ever heard of  "Mennis"? The name meant nothing to me. 

So after an hour of café research, to which Al contributed nothing, I arrived at Vice-Admiral Sir John Mennes or Mennis (1599 - 1671), and the poem that Scott was surely thinking of, "King Oberon's Apparell", which appeared in Musarum Deliciae, or The Muses Recreation  (1656).  

KING OBERON'S APPARELL

When the monthly horned queen

Grew jealous, that the stars had seen

Her rising from Endimions armes,

In rage, she throws her misty charmes

Into the bosome of the night,

To dim their curious prying light. 

Then did the dwarfish faery elves 

(Having first attir'd themselves)

Prepare to dresse their Oberon king

In highest robes for revelling.

In a cobweb shirt, more thin

Then ever spider since could spin,

Bleach'd by the whitenesse of the snow,

As the stormy windes did blow

It in the vast and freezing aire;

No shirt halfe so fine, so faire.

    A rich wastcoat they did bring

Made of the trout-flies gilded wing,

At that his Elveship 'gan to fret,

Swearing it would make him sweat,

Even with its weight, and needs would wear

His wastcoat wove of downy haire,

New shaven from an Eunuch's chin;

That pleas'd him well, 'twas wondrous thin.

    The out-side of his doublet was

Made of the four-leav'd true-love grasse,

On which was set so fine a glosse,

By the oyle of crispy mosse;

That through a mist, and starry light,

It made a rainbow every night.

On every seam, there was a lace

Drawn by the unctuous snailes slow trace;

To it, the purest silver thread

Compar'd, did look like dull pale lead.

    Each button was a sparkling eye

Ta'ne from the speckled adders frye,

Which in a gloomy night, and dark,

Twinckled like a fiery spark: 

And, for coolnesse, next his skin,

'Twas with white poppy lin'd within.

    His breeches of that fleece were wrought,

Which from Colchos Jason brought;

Spun into so fine a yarne,

That mortals might it not discerne;

Wove by Arachne, in her loom,

Just before she had her doom;

Dy'd crimson with a maidens blush,

And lyn'd with dandelyon push.

    A rich mantle he did wear,

Made of tinsel gossamere,

Be-starred over with a few

Dyamond drops of morning dew.

    His cap was all of ladies love,

So passing light, that it did move,

If any humming gnat or fly

But buzz'd the ayre, in passing by;

About it was a wreath of pearle,

Drop'd from the eyes of some poor girle 

Pinch'd, because she had forgot

To leave faire water in the pot.

And for feather, he did weare 

Old Nisus fatall purple haire.

    The sword they girded on his thigh,

Was smallest blade of finest rye.

    A paire of buskins they did bring

Of the cow-ladyes corall wing;

Powder'd o're with spots of jet,

And lin'd with purple-violet.

    His belt was made of mirtle leaves,

Plaited in small curious threaves,

Beset with amber cowslip studds,

And fring'd about with daizy budds,

In which his bugle horne was hung,

Made of the babbling Ecchoes tongue;

Which set unto his moon-burn'd lip,

He windes, and then his faeries skip:

At that, the lazy dawn 'gan sound,

And each did trip a faery round.

[Poem source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3539530&seq=89 .]

In Victorian times, when the poem acquired some popularity with anthologists, it was somtimes assigned to Sir John Mennes and sometimes to his friend and co-author Dr James Smith, but it's somewhat untypical of their crudely witty collection of drolleries. Perhaps for good reason: it seems to date from thirty years before, c. 1626, when it was attributed to Sir Simeon Steward. But Steward isn't otherwise known as a poet, and many have supposed the real author was Robert Herrick. Anyway it was evidently a companion-piece to Herrick's three other Oberon poems (Oberon's Chapel, Oberon's Palace, Oberon's Feast). Whoever wrote it, I hope you'll agree with me that it was well worth copying out for the digital age.

For the Herrick connection, see the 1869 edition of Hesperidae by William Carew Hazlitt:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SgNBAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA481&dq=%22crispy+moss%22+hesperides&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwit-pSG1b-UAxU0UkEAHfQwEPMQuwV6BAgIEAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

four-leaved true-love grasse: Herb-paris (Paris quadrifolia).

crispy mosse: Perhaps the red seaweed commonly called Irish Moss (Chondrus crispus), source of carrageenan. Gelatinous extracts were used as food additives as far back as the 15th century, and might be the "oyle" referred to here.

dandelyon push: a typo for "plush", I'm guessing.

Nisus: King Nisos of Megara, whose purple lock of hair kept him safe from harm, until cut off by his daughter Scylla (who had fallen in love with his enemy Minos). The story is in Book 8 of Ovid's Metamorphoses: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Metamorphoses_(tr._Garth,_Dryden,_et_al.)/Book_VIII .

buskins: laced boots.

cow-lady: ladybird, ladybug.

Sir John Mennes, portrait by Anthony van Dyck.

[Image source: Wikipedia .]

The Trees of Frome

When I first moved to Frome in 1991 my partner of the time said I should write a booklet called The Trees of Frome. In those pre-internet days that meant jotting down notes in a notebook, but I didn't get very far. I suppose I was always going on about trees, but I didn't have the required expertise then, and I still don't, though I've written about a few Frome trees over the years, particularly cherry trees. 

Anyway this post lists a few trees that would certainly need to feature in any hypothetical Trees of Frome. I've been looking at them for many years  but as you'll see I still can't necessarily name them! 

Huntingdon Elm, maybe. Frome, 7 May 2026.

Halfway along Spring Road, easy to overlook but locally well-known, this splendid mature elm in a private garden. 

Why it acts as if Dutch Elm disease never happened, I have no idea. 

The only elms I really know are English Elm and Wych Elm. This one is neither (the leaves are pretty smooth). A recent consultation with the Facebook tree group emphasized the formidable complexity of Ulmus but it's not unlikely to be a Huntingdon Elm (Ulmus x hollandica 'Vegeta'), much planted in parks and gardens in the 1930s.

London Plane. Frome, 7 May 2026.

There's something inappropriate about London Planes being anywhere other than a city. Still, Frome has this one, behind Ellenbray close to the footbridge, and the massive bole, split into three or four, gets noticed by everyone. Like most London Planes it gives the impression of intending to live forever. 

Lime tree. Frome, 9 May 2026.

This lime tree, at Hillclose Farm, Spring Gardens, was already huge in 1991 and it's even bigger now. Like a mountain, you need to be at some distance to see where the true summit is. . 

It's either Common or Broad-leaved, but either way it's untypical; I suspect the former but I'll have to go back and check when the leaves are more developed. 

Below, a view inside the canopy. 

Lime tree. Frome, 9 May 2026.

Poplar tree. Frome, 7 May 2026.

Another mighty tree. This is the most impressive of several impressive poplars along the river. They are American hybrid poplars, but that's as far as my knowledge goes. This one's at Welshmill, just below the weir. It's across the river from the play-park, so parents and grandparents get plenty of time to admire it. 

Ash (Fraxinus excelsior). Frome, 10 May 2026.

The magnificent ash tree in the car-park at Frome College. 

Most of the isolated trees in town seem unaffected by ash die-back, in contrast to the devastated ash-woods on the Mendips. 

Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus). Frome, 7 May 2026.

Every tree has its moment. This is a common-or-garden sycamore by the river, by no means an outstanding tree, but as I was taking photos for this post I was suddenly struck by the fabulous sight of all those hanging flowers at this time of year. So it snuck in. 

A puzzle. Driving from Beckington towards Frome, as you come down the hill on the by-pass, you see what appears to be a line of seven or eight Lombardy poplars on the horizon. I notice them every day, and after thirty years I still don't know where they are! 

The view towards Longleat and Stourhead. Frome, 10 May 2026.

Enjoy this view from the SE edge of Frome, looking over the valley to the greensand ridge of Longleat and Stourhead. Soon there are going to be 1,700 houses going up on these fields. There was strong local opposition to the plan ("Selwood Garden Community", it was called), the town council rejected it and Somerset Council were wavering when the decision was called in by central government, and now the planning inspector has done his job.  

*

'Taoyame' and a list of Frome's cherry trees:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2019/04/that-cherry-tree-in-frome.html

'Kursar':

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/02/february-cherry.html

'Ichiyo':

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2019/04/prunus-ichiyo.html

'Umineko':

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2021/04/prunus-umineko.html

Norway Maple (Acer platanoides):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2021/10/norway-maple.html

Downy Birch (Betula pubescens):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-down-on-birch.html

Cornelian Cherry (Cornus mas):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2020/08/cornelian-cherry-cornus-mas.html

Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2021/01/western-red-cedar-thuja-plicata.html

Lime trees (Tilia species):

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/06/midsummer-limes.html
https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-first-moves.html

Prelude #21

 

The 21st of my preludes for guitar. This one's in E minor.

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 21 in E minor

All the Preludes so far: 

michaelpeverett · Preludes

Sinkiang Executive

Blind in one eye because of the sweat but when I dragged at the stick the big metal sphere floated down past the bottom of the windscreen and out of sight and the smaller one followed, but more slowly. The stick was shuddering in my hands and the whole machine was coming alive as the airstream was forced against the ailerons. The high thin scream of the ancillaries overlaid the bellowing of the jets and the voices in the headset sounded unreal, their meaning lost in the tumult that was shaking the aircraft.

Blood pooling into the lower half of the body and the suit reacting, squeezing. The organism was in terror because somewhere below and behind it the two missiles were trying to turn or were already turning and moving in to the target and there was no action, simply no action at all to be taken except to maintain the muscular strength necessary to hold the controls in their present attitude so that the Finback would eventually pull out of the dive before the ground came up and blotted it into a smudge.

One thousand.

The right eye had moved to look at something and snatch at an item of data for me and I examined it: we were flying in a diminishing curve at one thousand feet above the ground and my head was tilting upward to look through the windscreen because it wasn’t going to be the first missile or the second missile it was going to be the surface of the earth that would provide the other component of the impact, so be it, go out cursing Parkis I hope you rot in hell. 

We must have cleared the missiles but it was academic because the needle was down to four hundred feet and colours were filling the windscreen and sliding downward, trees, buildings, gold on a dome, downward, as the nose began coming up and the buffeting began and broke off and began again until the thing was shaking like a dog and we flying level through ground pockets and shifts of air with the perspective of a townscape streaming across the windscreen — towers, rooftops, domes — and suddenly the trees again, spreading past and behind in a tangle of winter lacework against the frosted land.

You are too low.

Understood. Adjust altitude.

The blackout had fluttered at the brain and for a moment the windscreen had darkened but the light was back and cerebration started up again, avid for data and desperate to analyse.

Remember the mountains. And your briefing. I was now at the point of that wedge-shaped pattern and the risks had narrowed to the certainty that at any next second they would throw more missiles into the air unless I could keep low enough: to use what terrain masking was available and get off their screens. Get off their screens and go for the Khrebet Tarbagatay and do what I had been briefed to do: disappear.

I assumed at this time that there were further missiles in launch or already airborne but we had two minutes left before we hit bingo fuel and it was long enough, would be long enough if I could stay this close to the ground without hitting a hill or a tower or a radio mast, and that was a matter of chance. The rest was a matter of following instructions.

The snow cloud was drawing across the range with its base on the ground and its darkness began closing in as I held the Finback on its course while the buffeting started again and shook the ground and the sky and the blood inside my skull and then eased off gradually, leaving vision partially clear.

The terrain below was now rocky and desolate, with crags rising towards the mountain range in the first haze of the snow. There was nothing —

Mirrors.

The shape was in all three of the mirrors and steadily increasing in diameter as it floated in the wake of the Finback, the explosive warhead catching the light and the fins revolving slowly as it homed in on its target. The thing was coming at me faster than I could run and if I tried making turns it would follow wherever I went because I didn’t have the speed to break away and send it ballistic so the only thing I could do was get out and the only way to get out was to slow down because at this speed my limbs would be torn off but if I slowed down that thing in the mirrors would close in for the kill.

My left hand dragged the throttles back. I didn’t know it was going to do that but the organism was taking over and the brain went on recording, interpreting, as the senses fed in the data: eight hundred knots on the airspeed indicator, seven hundred, six.

Don’t forget anything.

Signal barely understood.

Don’t forget.

Five hundred.

Floating in the mirrors, the fins turning slowly and lazily against the cold grey sky, the warhead enormous, a great sphere.

Remember camera remember camera remember camera remem —

All right got it now but that bloody thing’s going to blow us up and I can’t —

Camera.

Pulled at the lever and snapped the release and put my hand through the strap and looked up and saw the needle at four hundred knots and looked higher and saw the three mirrors filled with the spinning shape.

At three hundred and fifty I blew the canopy off and triggered the seat and felt the cartridge fire and thought Christ we’re hit and then the windblast sent me whirling in the sky and in the middle of a visual sequence I saw the Finback and the long thin missile closing on it in the final seconds before the detonation boomed and the shockwave kicked me away and fragments came fluting through the smoke of the sunburst that had been the aircraft, picking at my body and whining past and picking again until I felt the jerk of the harness as the main chute deployed, a sense of life after death and the reek of chemicals, a glimpse of a torn panel turning like a falling leaf, a numbness creeping and then cold, intense cold, embalming the consciousness.

(The Sinkiang Executive,  end of Ch 11)

 *

You can read the whole novel online here (though I can't guarantee it's either legal or safe for your phone):

https://libcat.ru/knigi/detektivy-i-trillery/shpionskij-detektiv/288618-adam-hall-the-sinkiang-executive.html#text

I think you can read all the other Quiller novels on this site, too. The text of The Sinkiang Executive seems complete and mostly very accurate, though it's hazy on quotation marks and sheds the diacritics in the snatches of Spanish, German and Hungarian. (Russian is given as English, Quiller being fluent in it.) 

*

Operation Slingshot involves flying a stolen MiG across the USSR and then bailing out near the Chinese border. No point in filling you in; you need the previous 120 pages to fully grasp the context. 

But even when you've passed through all nineteen chapters of furious action, it's difficult to say what the point of it was. Quiller is still alive; that's one thing. Certain objectives have been ticked off; what they were really about, and whether ticking them off made the world better or worse, aren't questions that greatly preoccupy us (or Quiller, or his author); it's like an office job. Reading the novel is more about experiencing the process than drawing conclusions. It's even hard to say if Quiller's a nice guy or not. We're streaming his experience the whole time, we don't see him from outside. 

"A spy thriller of the first rank", the front cover quotes -- and I think "spy thriller" is quite a helpful term, placing the emphasis on the action rather than the mystery. There are no moles here, no twists, and surprisingly little suspense. The thrill is all about what Quiller is doing in the moment; flying a fighter jet, stopping a train, searching an apartment, eluding a tail, killing someone, having sex with someone. 

But back to my sample extract. In extremity Quiller's identity splits and pluralizes: the organism, the right eye, cerebration, even the aircraft itself, the drills, the briefings, the London control. I think that's what must account for the striking use of "we" in the fifth paragraph. The normal grammar of pronouns and persons is being centrifuged like Quiller's blood. 

A fan on GoodReads reports having read The Sinkiang Executive about a dozen times. I suppose such mad dedication is partly about encountering Quiller at a formative age, the way I encountered Sudden. Waiting till you're  67 is naturally a bit different. All the same I sort of get it. There's an inexhaustible feel to the torqued prose, an awareness of only partially capturing all the sensory overload, a surrender to momentum active enough to suck you back in after the book's over, as I found out when I was trying to pick a sample.

*

Adam Hall was the author of around 18 cold-war spy novels featuring Quiller, a British agent; The Sinkiang Executive (1978) was the eighth. 

Behind "Adam Hall" was the Bromley man originally named Trevor Dudley-Smith (1920 - 1995). He wrote more than 100 books in many genres and under various pseudonyms; a rather Daniel Defoe-like figure, it seems to me, comparably well-informed about everything and with a comparably dependable prose style. He later changed his name to Elleston Trevor, originally the pseudonym under which he published his best-known book The Flight of the Phoenix (1964).

Picturing The Great Gatsby

 

The jacket: Gatsby's "gorgeous car".

Gatsby's Rolls-Royce 40/50 ("Silver Ghost") is simplified to essentials without losing any of its power. (Nick Carraway's description, the owner's naïve pride and Tom Buchanan's contemptuous epithet "circus wagon" all emphasize that Gatsby's car was vast, luxurious and ornate.)

These are illustrations by Charles Raymond for a 1968 Folio Society edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. By 1968 the novel was an acknowledged classic. It wasn't a success on first publication, and when Fitzgerald died in 1940 he had little reason to think his work would be remembered. 

From what I can see Charles Raymond's work as an illustrator hasn't been particularly acclaimed. His best-known commission was Dr Alex Comfort's bestseller The Joy of Sex (1972), for which he supplied the watercolour illustrations, and was also the model (with his wife Edeltraud) for Chris Foss's pen and ink drawings.

Anyway, I think he did a fantastic job with The Great Gatsby. Of course I didn't read it in this fancy Folio edition (which I found at Mum and Dad's) but in a handy bung-it-in-the-backpack paperback, and later I re-read it online. 

But when I looked at these illustrations they gave me new thoughts about what I'd been reading. I stopped seeing the novel as mainly about the American Dream and projection and imagination and delusion and class and wealth. It is certainly about all those things, but only because it's also about very physical things, bodies and bodywork, the punch packed by Tom Buchanan, the thrill of Daisy's voice, Gatsby's smile, Myrtle Wilson's sensual vitality, the liberating and deadly horsepower of automobiles.

Frontispiece: Jay Gatsby. There was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding (Ch 5).

Illustration for p. 24: Daisy Buchanan. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it (Ch 1).

Illustration for p. 46: Jordan Baker. Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps (Ch 3).

Illustration for p. 51: the man in Gatsby's library. A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table (Ch 3).

Illustration for p. 89: Daisy and Gatsby. And as she said something low in his ear he turned towards her with a rush of emotion (Ch 5).

Illustration for p. 109: Daisy in motoring gear. She walked close to Gatsby (Ch 7).

Illustration for p. 143: George B. Wilson. The gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass (Ch 8).

Illustration for p. 146: Henry C. Gatz (Gatsby's father). A solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long cheap ulster (Ch 9).

Lines written in early spring

 

Bumblebee sleeping in flowers of Three-cornered Leek. Frome, 6 March 2026.

I'll imagine all of these bumblebees are the very common Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), whose queens emerge quite early -- not that I really know anything about bumblebees, but anyway they don't look like Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum).

The Comma butterfly is Polygonia c-album. One of the first butterflies to emerge from hibernation, in March. (I saw a Peacock butterfly too, but it wouldn't stay still for a photo.)

Three-cornered Leek or Three-cornered Garlic (Allium triquetrum) is native to SW Europe. Introduced in the British Isles and began to spread in the wild from around 1850, initially in Cornwall and now in much of the SW. In Sweden it's called Sloklök ("drooping onion") but it isn't established in the wild there, at any rate not yet.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). But that doesn't really tell the story. In the south of its range it reproduces sexually in the same way as most other plant species. But the further north you go, the more this is replaced by non-sexual apomixis, leading to large numbers of minutely different microspecies, often with their own ecological niches. About 70 microspecies have been recognized in Germany, about 250 in the British Isles, and nearly 1,000 in Sweden. The Swedish name is Maskros ("maggot-rose").

Bumblebee sleeping in flowers of Three-cornered Leek. Frome, 9 March 2026.

*

Lines Written in Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And ’tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,

Their thoughts I cannot measure:—

But the least motion which they made

It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature’s holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

(By William Wordsworth. From the first edition of Lyrical Ballads (1798).)

Comma on Dandelion. Frome, 14 March 2026.

*

"What man has made of man".

A reader of 1798 could think of:

the Reign of Terror in France (1793-1794);

the latest war in Europe, ongoing since 1792 (and harking back to the brutalities of e.g. the Seven Years' War (1756-1763));

the slave trade (not banned until 1807), or slavery itself (keeping the existing slaves was legal under British law until 1833);

the oppressive conditions of the industrial revolution.

the age-old oppression of the poor and powerless by the rich and powerful, as much evinced in the other poems of Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's line is powerfully generalized. But at any rate we're talking about shaping the lives of other people: exploitation, manipulation, control, oppression, dehumanization, predation; tampering with someone else's freedom to live a natural life in a natural community and enjoy the pleasure of spring. 

*

You know how we spend loads of time thinking and talking about what we want to do but aren't yet doing and may likely never do; but things we actually are doing, we don't need to talk about them so much, we're just getting on with them. Conversation is often about compensation (to be cynical); yet it's also about reminding, stirring the depths. 

It can be like that with poetry too. Wordsworth's simple yet inexhaustible poem continues to feel central just because we didn't act on what he's saying, though an eight-year-old child can see that it's spot-on. In fact in the two centuries since he wrote the poem, we've doubled down: more killing, more technology, more technological killing, more dehumanization. Wordsworth's poem is there in the centre of our culture to compensate and to stir, the poem's existence a frail hope in itself, like the existence of early spring. 

*

I suppose we should take "early spring" as meaning some time around the equinox. Spring started a bit later in those days. But anyway, primroses and periwinkles are very early flowers.

I'm thinking about how differently Wordsworth would have seen early spring, compared to my photos. Evidently he wouldn't have seen Three-cornered Leek in 1798. He probably wouldn't have known there were different bumblebee species. He wrote poems titled "To a Butterfly", but he never mentions any specific butterfly species. The idea that dandelions might be many species rather than one wouldn't have interested him at all. In fact Wordsworth was rather against the growing enthusiasm for focussing on species and types; for botanists and geologists grubbing about collecting specimens and ticking their lists, as he says in The Excursion. For him nature was something grander and more interlinked; it was almost God, it was a manifestation of God's plan anyway, it wasn't something you could pin down with your IDs. Oh, and in 1798 there were no cameras, let alone macro lenses. 

I heard a thousand blended notes...

It's a beautiful rendering of the chorus of birds in early spring, without picking out individuals. What did he hear in Alfoxden that morning? I imagine robins and wrens in prominent mid-range, blue tits and goldfinches at the higher pitches, sparrows chirping, at mellower pitch a song-thrush or blackbird, and maybe the distant cooing of wood-pigeon or chattering magpies or the cawing of rooks. And that's probably all wrong, a 21st-century urban sound imposed on an 18th century valley in the Quantocks. But no matter about the details: Wordsworth's early spring can still be our early spring in 2026, more or less. 

 

Wordsworth knew plenty of species, of course; his name is forever associated with some of them: the daffodil, the green linnet (greenfinch), the yew and the hazel, the small celandine ... though he tells us he only became aware of the latter as an adult. Or in this poem the primrose and the periwinkle. The expression "trailed its wreaths" is enough, in my opinion, to identify this as the lesser periwinkle, Vinca minor (Vinca major is more arching than trailing). Like Three-cornered Leek it was an introduction from southern Europe, but a more ancient one and well-established in Wordsworth's day.

Bumblebee on Dandelion. Frome, 17 March 2026. 

Charity Drops

Another move imminent, and time to send some more things to the charity shop. I've at least dipped into most of them.

Beaumont and Fletcher are author-names that will always be paired, like Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. (And that's a rather inelegant way of contriving to mention The Man Who Went Up In Smoke, another recent and speedy read that was moved on too swiftly to even get in the photo; books like that circulate fast. It's the second in their 10-novel sequence, maybe not as searching as Rosanna but more satisfying overall; a month later I'm still turning over the immaculate design in my mind, the floundering Martin Beck finding his way through tiny details, dissonances, possibilities... In one respect the novel describes a definitively lost era, when passport photos were hardly checked because they never looked like their subjects anyway. But is our world better now?)

Anyway, Francis Beaumont's career as a dramatist was brief and he mostly wrote with his friend John Fletcher but The Knight of the Burning Pestle seems to be by him alone. It's a play I'd never really tuned into until I found this book (in a charity shop), and I was quite surprised to learn of its enduring popularity and how many times it's been staged, especially in the last 100 years. Without repeating the details you can look up in Wikipedia, it's basically a fantastical fourth-wall-breaking burlesque city comedy, and is probably a lot of fun to act in. Beaumont's style, witty without malice and prone to sheer enjoyment of different registers and melodies, is very appealing. An interesting thing is the clear influence of Don Quixote, not long after the publication of the First Part and some years before the first English translation. It's a less reverential and predictable influence than what came later. The pairing of the distracted Knight with the shrewd Sancho Panza became a template for English authors to build their own master-servant teams; to interrogate, moderate, and in the final analysis usually celebrate the class distinctions of their time. Once a book becomes an established classic our readings tend to align with each other, like the helpless tweeters we are. The well-born Francis Beaumont was certainly no enemy to class distinctions, but his untutored reading of Cervantes found other potential, and his own fantastical knight is a romantic grocer's apprentice.

Something else I can't help wondering. The Wife tells us this story about Ralph:

When he had lost our child, (you know it was strayed almost alone to Puddle-Wharf, and the criers were abroad for it, and there it had drowned itself but for a sculler,) Ralph was the most comfortablest to me: "Peace, mistress," says he, "let it go; I'll get you another as good." (Act II Scene 6)

Calling to mind an anecdote about Alfred Jarry: 

Jarry also took to carrying a loaded revolver. In response to a neighbour's complaint that his target shooting endangered her children, he replied, "If that should ever happen, ma-da-me, we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you." (Wikipedia .)

Could the inventor of absurdist theatre have been an admirer of The Knight of the Burning Pestle? Surely not? And yet it wouldn't be wholly inappropriate... 

Online text:

 https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/beaumontfletcher-knightpestle/beaumontfletcher-knightpestle-00-h-dir/beaumontfletcher-knightpestle-00-h.html

*

From the incomplete Happy Families pack. The game was invented in 1851. On older packs the pictures are often grotesques like these ones, which were not credited but are reminiscent of Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for Alice in Wonderland (1865).

*

I'm still waiting for the day when I truly connect with Tennyson's poetry. I need an angle, even just a single poem that I more than enjoy and more than admire, a poem I really care about. But it still eludes me. Take Morte d'Arthur, much of which I know by heart. 

So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea...

Tennyson discovered life at its most intense -- or perhaps most picturable -- within the chamber of death, when the life that was a life has come to feel like a vain dream. But I'm thinking: How comes it that Arthur and Bedivere are alone by the mere? What happened to everyone else? Tennyson himself felt the question pressing, and when he later came to write the Idylls of the King he fully described this strangest of battles, yet even added to its mysterious power. 

The three queens come, and the tallest and fairest rests Arthur's head in her lap, but I'm aware that their own powerful presence arises from being voiceless, and that Tennyson's poem is consciously at the end of an era, centuries of exclusive conversation within the male mind. 

*

The suffragettes were willing to die to change that, and some did. Reading them now, I still find a spirit of radicalism beyond what would be expressed in any modern newspaper. Not the first wave, who tried to make their case within the established structures of society. That seemed to go nowhere, because MPs didn't need to care what women thought, but probably without the first wave there couldn't have been a second wave who committed to going further. The case was made, but only revolution could implement it. Once implemented, society tried to forget all about the revolutionaries and their disagreeable behaviour; even more so, the disagreeable counter-measures of outraged authority. But in the west, whatever your politics, it's hard to imagine a democracy in which women have no share. (And doubtless in some parts of the world that's a very cogent reason for not having democracy at all.)

*

From the Apocrypha (passed on to me by my Dad, who found it useful when studying ancient coins), I decided to sample the Book of Judith, vaguely recalling a host of sensational paintings and frequent references to the story in medieval literature.  

But taak kepe of the deeth of Oloferne;
Amydde his hoost he dronke lay a-nyght,
Withinne his tente, large as is a berne;
And yet, for al his pompe and al his myght
Judith, a womman, as he lay upright
Slepynge, his heed of smoot, and from his tente
Ful prively she stal from every wight,
And with his heed unto hir toun she wente.

(Chaucer's Monk's Tale)

The Book of Judith is very good reading. It starts off like chronicle history: 

In the twelfth year of the reign of Nabuchodonosor, who reigned in Nineve, the great city; in the days of Arphaxad, which reigned over the Medes in Ecbatane ... (Judith 1:1)

But this Nabuchodonosor is king of the Assyrians (1:7), and that can't be right: the name isn't Assyrian but Babylonian (e.g. Nebuchadnezzar II, whose reign began a few years after the final collapse of the Assyrian empire). 

The name Arphaxad isn't Median either; it's been repurposed from a son of Shem in Genesis. 

No wonder some people have suggested that the Book of Judith is best seen as a pseudohistorical adventure story. It's a well-shaped treatment in 16 chapters of a single storyline, building up our expectation by a circuitous approach (totally unlike real chronicle histories that record diffuse events). The first couple of chapters describe how the Assyrian king comes to be offended by all the peoples along his western frontier and orders a fearsome retribution, to be carried out by his top general Holofernes at the head of a massive army. Only in the third chapter do we home in on the Israelites and the dire implications for them. A mildly interested Holofernes asks "So who are these Israelites anyway?", and the heathen Achior says, basically, "Pretty tough cookies, don't take them for granted" and nearly gets himself killed for his negative attitude. Holofernes first has to deal with the border hill-town of Bethulia*; he cuts off the water supply and waits. After a while the suffering townsfolk start barracking the town authorities to capitulate. And only now, at the eleventh hour and half-way through the book, do we hear of a pious and beautiful widow named Judith... 

You can see the sort of cheaply effective artistry on display here. There's a certain fittingness to one of the earliest American feature films being Judith of Bethulia (1914); though I must say compared to Thomas Bailey Aldrich and D. W. Griffith the original Book of Judith seems quite subtle. It survives in Greek, but was perhaps originally composed in Aramaic c. 150-100 BCE. It isn't in the Hebrew canon. Catholic and Orthodox Christians accept it as scriptural, but not Protestants. 

* Fictional place-name; commonly identified with Shechem. 

An excellent account of Judith of Bethulia by Nitrate Glow: https://nitrateglow.wordpress.com/2024/03/28/beauty-vs-beast-thoughts-on-judith-of-bethulia-1914/ .

*

Liverpool's Hidden History is about Catholicism in SW Lancashire, especially under the Persecution of Elizabeth I and later. Liverpool was still a very small town. The whole area was a centre of staunch recusancy. Church services took place in secret. The government considered a practising priest as equivalent to a traitor and hence liable to execution by being hanged, drawn and quartered. 

That happened to Ambrose Barlow in 1641. He was perfectly prepared for martyrdom. Here's some extracts from a friend's memoir:

A notable thing he told me at Easter was two years. That he had been about 20 years in England and no one day thereof omitted to celebrate. ...

His house was the only sure refuge that I knew for poor folk and penitents. His solemn days of invitation were three; Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday, and then he entertained all that would dine with him. Their cheer was boiled beef and pottage, mince pies, goose and groats, and to every man a grey coat at parting. ...

When he travelled abroad he went the ordinary way, and even through the town of Leigh when his business was that way, and I think he was as well known there as their parson. Some talk much of discretion, but his fortitude hath sure brought out good fruit. Upon a time speaking of some of the gentry, that would not be seen by any at Mass, he said: I like not those that will be peeping at God. ...

Although it be a common thing amongst many good men that would be loath to fight to wear swords, yet our martyr would wear none; and thus merrily he answered me when I took notice thereof, saying: Indeed I dare not wear a sword, because I am of a choleric nature . . . he loved to observe how time passed, but he had no pocket watch; and once I asked him why he had not a watch to take abroad with, as it was usual; and he answered me that it was pride, pride . . .

At that time, being Easter was two years, when I had his last blessing, he told me upon occasion, as oft he had done before, that they would not leave till they had him at Lancaster; whereat I did wonder that he should have such a conceipt,  things going so well with Catholics that there was great hopes of better and better . . . But he told me that Mr [Edmund] Arrowsmith, the last martyr at Lancaster, had appeared to him and did bid him to have a care of his words when he came before the judges; to which I answering in these words: I am sure, Sir, that you will talk to them . . . at my blunt reply he did laugh heartily...

*

Maria Goretti was another martyr, one of the youngest recent saints. She came from a poor but devout family who were sharecroppers near the Lazio coast, south of Rome. At 11 she was running the household so her mother could work in the fields with her brothers, when another farm-labourer, 20-year-old Alessandro, tried to coerce sex with her. She said "No, God doesn't want this. If you do this you'll go to hell." It was July 5th, 1902; the threshing was in progress and hid all sound. He stabbed her 14 times. On her death-bed she forgave him; so did her family. Years later Alessandro fully repented and after release from prison spent the rest of his long life as a lay brother. 

*

I suppose the era of field guides is coming to an end, replaced by smartphones. Anyway, I felt I didn't really need John Gooders' bird guide any more, though its clarity and vast information have been much admired. It's forty years old now, and some things have changed dramatically; kites, rare then, are now an everyday sight. You are far more likely to see an egret than a hawfinch. The Yellow-Legged Gull is now a thing. 

Like every field guide it has its eccentric moments, electing to call the dunnock the Hedge Accentor and describing the wren's explosive song as a warble. 

There was an art to describing bird-song in books, and we still need it; without it we can hear recordings on our smartphones but we can't talk about the songs or share our impressions or how we recognize them. You can use onomatopoeic coinages like tuk-tuk-tuk (often surprisingly unhelpful) or you can attempt descriptive words; John Gooders writes of the Grasshopper Warbler's "ventroloquial reeling". Perhaps "ventriloquial" means that it sounds like mimicry even though it isn't. He's talking about the song's uncanny resemblance to the sound of a fly-fisher's reel.  

*

That copy of A Doll's House witnesses to my vague feeling of wanting to read Ibsen again, but I didn't manage it this time. However, a timely cold meant that I did finally read The Great Gatsby, something I promised myself a few years ago. Of course I read it hungrily and with delight -- Well, who doesn't? The world probably doesn't need any more thoughts on such an exhaustively discussed book, but if I think of anything I'll put it in another post.

To add to the enjoyment, my copy (rescued from the paper-recycling skip at the dump, as were the suffragettes) was prismatically annotated by an enthusiastic student. 

[I did write that other post:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2026/04/picturing-great-gatsby.html .]

Inter-Rail

In, let's say, July 1977 (when I was coming up 19), I was on vacation from university, and I set off across Europe with an Inter-Rail card. The plan was to go on a Christian working holiday in Italy for a couple of weeks (I had joined the Christian Union in Fresher's week), then to take the train up to northern Sweden and meet my parents there for a holiday at the summer cottage. 

The plan went wrong as soon as I boarded the train at Staplehurst station. I then discovered that I'd left behind the address of the place in Italy I was meant to be going to. I could have done various things to rectify this if I'd had sufficient initiative and hadn't been so intensely shy and ashamed. I did none of those things. I could remember the name of the nearby town (Castiglione della Pescaia, I think it was) and I supposed  that when I got there I'd be sure to see signs for the Christian camp-site.

But when I did get there, I saw how unrealistic I'd been. The town was far bigger than I'd imagined, and was not set up solely to cater for people searching for what (I now began to realize) was possibly not the only Christian camp in the region. Even so, it could probably have been sorted out quite easily -- just not by me. 

I slept in a vineyard and then I began to walk towards town but was certainly not going to try and speak to anyone. After an hour, before I even entered the town, I changed my plan, went back to the railway station, and got on a train. I whizzed randomly up and down the length of Italy, sleeping on the night trains. I rang my parents and asked them to inform the Christian organization that I wasn't going to be turning up. (I assumed they could find out the number, though I'd made no attempt to find it out myself.)

After an hour between trains in a place called Firenze (I went into a big domed church that had a portrait of Dante) I decided I'd had enough of Italy. I headed north. 

At some point I left my sleeping bag in the rack when changing trains: whatever. I didn't look out of the window much. I just carried on reading Spenser's Faerie Queene, the only book I'd brought with me. (I actually read all of it, and I wonder if that would ever have happened otherwise.) 

Through the alpine tunnels, across Austria, Germany, Denmark, then Sweden. I arrived in Sundsvall very early in the morning and walked across town to my grandmother's flat, but the door to Elevgränd 4B was locked. I threw gravel at her third-floor window but couldn't raise her, went to sit in the play-park, felt chilly, walked back to the station, took a train to Stockholm, and came back at tea-time.

Of course Mormor wasn't expecting me so soon, but she was brilliant. We couldn't communicate very well -- my Swedish was stuck in early childhood, and she never got far with English -- but how glad I was for that welcoming home! 

I stayed with Mormor a few days, and I suppose we played cards (a game called Fem Hundra, but I can't remember the rules) and I suppose we ate kåldolmar but this is guesswork. The only thing I definitely remember about that stay with Mormor was finding a copy of Blow Your Face Out, a double live album by the J. Geils Band, in a local shop. I bought it on the strength of a positive review in the NME, and God I loved that album to bits. 

Then I set off again, this time all the way up to Narvik and then once more whizzing up and down Sweden and sleeping on the train. (I never tried to stay anywhere because that would have meant talking to someone.) I came back to Sundsvall just about when Mum and Dad were arriving in the Volvo estate. 

*

Anyway, that's all background to these extracts about Mormor from a poem-fragment that I wrote several years after her death in 1997. (The rest of the poem is nonsense, but I thought these bits were just about worth copying out before I binned it.)

Few were the times we met

when I was a child and you were old.

Few were the words we spoke

and fewer what we heard, in a different language.

Night followed day then, too.

I was running away, and soon we were going away.

You fed me, then I looked at the wall

as I washed up, stacking the dishes.

Later, there were peppercakes and perhaps cards.

But I was so full with you!

---

I know you don't exist. I think your ashes

are in Sundsvall's cemetery, or else

it's only a memorial slab. But if you're

impossibly out there, you know all languages now,

even mine; in all that knowledge does it still

mean anything? You had grey, curly hair, 

as soft as a fleece, I thought,

and a round kindly face, until near the end

when they had to cut some of it out.

Those were the days we found ourselves

in new parts of Sundsvall, a grand hospital

and peaceful homes with smiling staff;

at the funeral we were smiling, too.

It was April. I had never been there in April before;

so crisp and cold, the rivers still icy,

snow on the hills and the land

not quite monochrome, the birches were actually purple.

---

There are many things in this flat

I do not want to tell you about; for example,

the ugly bug in the tequila-flavoured lolly.

I am protective of you; I don't think you would understand.

it's seven years since you died, and that came after

a long old age. 

---

Me, Mormor and Annika

Mum, Mormor, Annika and me

Prelude #20

 

My twentieth prelude, in A flat. Four more to go!

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 20 in Ab

Listen to all the preludes so far:

michaelpeverett · Preludes

Murals of Swindon

 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 18 December, 2025.

A post to celebrate our new mural (December 2025) in the Shaw Ridge subway leading to the Link sports centre. It's by Jaksta Art.

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Shaw Ridge subway, West Swindon. 

Here's a few other murals around Swindon:

Commercial Road, Central Swindon.

Newhall Street, Central Swindon (Jaksta Art)

Regent Street,  Central Swindon. 

Regent Street, Central Swindon (Jaksta Art)

Westmead subway, West Swindon. 

Westmead subway, West Swindon. 

Westmead subway, West Swindon

... Possibly referring to the Bird Cherry Ermine Moth, which regularly attacks nearby trees:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2014/06/bird-cherry-prunus-padus.html

Beaumaris subway, Freshbrook (Jaksta Art)

Beaumaris subway, Freshbrook (Jaksta Art)

Bodiam Drive subway, Toothill (Jenna Fox)

Subway under Great Western Way near Tewkesbury Way, West Swindon. 

Beside Westmead cycle path, West Swindon (Jaksta Art)

Beside Westmead cycle path, West Swindon (Jaksta Art)

Beside Westmead cycle path, West Swindon (Jaksta Art)

Beside Westmead cycle path, West Swindon (Jaksta Art)

Shire Close (Southern Flyer cyclepath), Central Swindon (Jaksta Art)

Cambria Bridge (Southern Flyer cyclepath), Central Swindon 

Cambria Bridge (Southern Flyer cyclepath), Central Swindon

Near Canal Walk (Southern Flyer cyclepath), Central Swindon.  

N. Wilts Canal Rail Subway (Western Flyer cyclepath), Central Swindon. By Luke Gray, 2024.

Subway under Great Western Way (Western Flyer cyclepath), Central Swindon 

Subway under Great Western Way (Western Flyer cyclepath), Central Swindon