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
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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).
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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.
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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.)
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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/ .
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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 .]
Labels: Alfred Jarry, Alfred Tennyson, Francis Beaumont, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Miguel de Cervantes, The Bible
