[lit-ideas] Re: Remedy for a yuckie evening
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:38:05 -0800
on 11/18/04 4:57 PM, Mike Geary at atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I'm sitting on my verandah because it's raining. I had forgot to read the
> script. I was planning on a walk An intimate talk. Searching for the
> quintessential, existential moment -- an exquisite epiphany that makes it
> all worth while.
Here that ephiphany is, too late (as ephiphanies often are), and not yours
of course, but a substitute one courtesy of John Betjeman. Maybe, if the
weather refuses to change, it will help this evening? The part of Beaumarie
is played by the young Catherine Zeta-Jones, as she was in the t.v. series,
"Darling Buds of May"--which, if you don't know it, is worth a trip to the
specialty video store. That video alone might improve your Friday evening
even more than the ramblings below.
A web site devoted to John Betjeman
http://www.johnbetjeman.com/biograph.htm
offers the following wonderful account of the life-saving power of poetry,
enough to cheer anyone up:
In 1941, JB went to Dublin, as the Press Officer to the British
Representative. Many years later, it was revealed that the IRA thought he
was a spy, and considered assassinating him. However, on reading his poetry,
they decided otherwise.
A note at the end of the poem explains the circumstance here described: It
was a Christmas-tide custom at Beaumaris, Anglesey, for the Queen of the
Hunt Ball to throw heated halfpence from a shovel to the crowd below.
Critics who suggest that John Betjeman's poetry is innocent or facile would
do well to look more closely at the evidence in this poem that the upper
classes (and those who move among them) are not entirely sexless and that,
at least when young and visiting Wales, they'll chase even a hot, tossed
ha'penny. The shower of ha'pennies may confirm, however, the widely-held
suspicion that their sexuality can be a tad perverse.
Beaumaris December 21, 1963
Low-shot light of a sharp December
Shifting, lifted a morning haze:
Opening fans of smooth sea-water
Touched in silence the tiny bays:
In bright Beaumaris the people walked--
This was Laurelie's day of days.
At the northern end of the street a vista
Of sulit woodland: and south, a tower;
Across the water from hansom's terrace,
The glass'd reflection of Penmaenmawr:
High on her balcony Laurelie Williams
Waved the shovel and shot the shower.
Down on us all fell heated ha'pence,
Up to her all of us looked for more:
Laurelie Williams, Laurelie Williams--
Lovlier now than ever before
With your straight black hair and your fresh complexion:
Diamond-bright was the brooch you wore.
Life be kind to you, Laurelie Williams,
With girlhood over and marriage begun:
Queuing for buses and rearing children,
Washing the dishes and missing the fun,
May you still recall how you flung the coppers
On bright Beaumaris in winter sun.
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
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