This is a commonplace book, an annotated collection of quotations gathered from whatever I happen to be reading.
More than a week has gone by since last I hoisted my head to whinny, here in the very posh offices of The Bankhead Gleaner. I note, more with relief than rue, that my silence hasn’t caused widespread panic amongst my congregants: a select bunch, as reserved as they are discerning. No anxious emails or texts have flooded my inbox. No officer — flagged down on the beat by concerned readers — has come knocking at my door, performing a “wellness check.” No convoys have been sighted, slowly driving by of an evening, piloted by drivers anxious to see if the lights are on. This is as it should be. I’m grateful for any pin stuck in the garish balloon of the self-absorption to which I’m prone: when you’ve been away from work for a long stretch and then you return and the people with whom you toil five days a week, eight hours a day ask nothing of your time off because, in fact, they haven’t noticed your absence; when the beard you’ve worn for twenty years is finally removed and the alteration — to you, tectonic — goes unremarked, as do the glasses you took three weeks to choose, and that came with a price tag in the low four figures — they are made of bison bone inlaid with lapis lazuli — and that you think lend you a kind of young Richard Gere je ne sais quoi; but no. Not even Artist, my disembodied colleague, queried my attenuated silence when I requested, in the style of Arthur Rackham, a representation of an old man arriving at his house in the country.
For most of my adult life I resisted the idea that fulfillment could be found more than 10 miles distant from a major ballet company, so it was a great surprise to me to discover how happy I am “in the country,” which is where I am now. As weather and circumstance and pestilence allow, I spend time in a village, population 400, in southwestern Manitoba, in the rural municipality of Louise. It’s not really what you’d call quaint; it’s like a small and ordinary subdivision of any Canadian city dropped down in the middle of canola fields. A canola field — it might be wheat, depending on the year and the whim of whoever plants it — is where I end up if I walk one block west. There were two grain elevators when I first came here, but they’re gone, now. On the one business street there’s a small Co-op grocery, a couple of insurance offices, a restaurant (closed), and a really well-curated clothing emporium. There’s a storefront where a local hobbyist keeps his model trains, and also the old cinema, latterly restored and used, not often, for community concerts. There’s a hardware store on the edge of town. We have one United Church and three that cater to Mennonites of varying degrees of religiosity. There’s a very pretty cemetery. I have outstanding neighbours.
This crooked little house — it buckles and leans — is about 120 years old. I bought it online, sight unseen, entirely because of the street number, which is 131: my lucky number. It’s a folly, of course: a 2-1/2 - hour flight and a three hour drive from Vancouver in a 1994 Volvo, a more significant carbon footprint than is conscionable. I have moral qualms about having laid claim to a dwelling that could well serve a family with closer ties to the town — many of the citizens have spent their whole lives here, or have returned after working elsewhere, and there’s not much here by way of housing stock — and that I use as a storage unit, as The Museum of Bill. It’s a cabinet of curiosities, full of objects of not much value, souvenirs and family pieces that mean nothing to anyone else, but that I tirelessly examine and move from place to place, shelf to shelf, room to room. It’s a set that I decorate, a monument to selfish sentimentality and to my own inability to divest. Well. It can’t go on much longer. The usual forces of attrition - age and finance - will soon enough assert themselves and I’ll have to let it go. Maybe I’ll return to haunt it. In the meantime, as noted above, despite the taint of guilt and advantage, I arrive here and feel an unaccountable sense of contentment, of peace. I think of this Margaret Atwood poem which doesn’t fit the season but which has meant something to me since I first read it almost 50 years ago.
Most of my books are here, including the 22 volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography, the 1921 edition. The DNB, which chronicles the lives of English worthies from the days of Roman occupation onward is good reading. Predictably — 1921 etc., and the project began in 1882 — most of the short biographies are of men and, of course, the spirit of imperialist arrogance suffuses the whole. Nonetheless, there’s a lot in those thousands of tightly packed, onion skin pages that surprises and delights. I pick a volume at random, let it fall open where it will, and while the life there decanted will engage me to a greater or lesser extent, I’m never disappointed at what I read. Inclusion did not guarantee a panegyric; there’s much in the DNB that’s irreverent. In Volume XVI, Pocock - Robins, I find Henry James Pye, who was poet laureate from 1790 - 1813, and was much mocked by the literati. Sidney Lee — who, with Leslie Stephens, father of Virginia Woolf, became the editor of the DNB — writes of Pye:
From an early age Pye cultivated literary tastes, and his main object in life was to obtain recognition as a poet. He read the classics and wrote English verse assiduously, but he was destitute alike of poetic feeling or power of expression. … Every year on the king’s birthday he produced an ode breathing the most irreproachable patriotic sentiment, expressing language of ludicrous tameness… crowded with allusions to vocal groves and feathered choirs…
Sir Sidney — his contributions to the DNB numbered more than 800 — is also represented in Volume XVI with the entry on the literary imposter George Psalmanzar (1679? - 1763) of whom I knew nothing and about whom I now want to know everything.
At length he found his father, who proved unable to support him, and extended his tour, as a mendicant student, through Germany and the Low Countries. Hungering for public notice, he now hit on the eccentric device of forging a fresh passport, in which he designated himself a native of Japan who had been converted to Christianity. His jesuit tutors had instructed him in the history and geography of Japan and China, and he had heard vaguely of recent jesuit missions to the former country. To render the device more effective, he soon modified it by passing himself off as a Japanese who still adhered to his pagan faith. This role he filled for many years. The trick was worked with much ingenuity. He lived on raw flesh, roots, and herbs, in accordance with what he represented to be the customs of his native land. Then, with bolder assurance, he set to work to construct a language which he pretended was his native tongue. He completed an elaborate alphabet and grammar, making the symbols run from right to left, as in Hebrew.
Psalmanzar kept tinkering with his Asian identity and eventually settled on Formosa as a place sufficiently obscure that he could carry off the ruse with impunity, and he did, in several countries, and at several universities, for quite a few years.
Among the (relatively speaking) few women deemed worth of DNB inclusion, and also residing in the pages of Volume XVI, is Hannah Pritchard (1711 - 1768): Mrs. Pritchard, as she was known during her long and storied stage career. She was a longtime member of David Garrick’s company and her Lady Macbeth is said to have been without peer. Joseph Knight, who wrote more most of the DNB’s entries, more than 500, of theatrical interest, wrote about Mrs. Pritchard (if you want to read it, her Wikipedia entry is cribbed entirely from his account) and while it’s admirable in its thoroughness, it’s also frustrating in its gaps.
“Mrs. Pritchard, whose fortune appears to have been imperilled, if not impaired, by the action of her brother, Henry Vaughan, who was an actor, led a wholly blameless and reputable life…”
Would it have been too much to have lifted the veil, if only a little, on Henry Vaughan and his imperilling actions? In the Leicester and Nottingham Journal, October 6, 1764, just under the notice — of great Canadian interest — that “yesterday morning died, at her house on Black-Heath, Mrs. Wolfe, mother of the late General Wolfe,” we read of how “the King has been pleased to grant a free pardon to William Paine, James Miller, John Malyn, and Henry Vaughan, who were capitally convicted at the last assize for county of Kent, on condition of their being transported to America for the term of fourteen years.” Is that the same Henry Vaughan? What was the crime? A better and more patient researcher than I could surely find out.
I get lost in these old papers. Looking for obituaries for Hannah Pritchard, in August, 1768, I was quickly caught up in the record of daily life as reported in the not very economically named The Western Flying Post; or Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury and General Advertiser. I’ll leave you, with my usual thanks for reading, with a few of the choicer bits, some illustrated by Artist.
September 5, 1768
Newcastle, Aug. 27. A few days ago, as two men were passing through Long-Benton churchyard, they observed some bees rising out of the ground, and having a spade with them, one of them, merely out of curiosity, struck the spade into the ground, and finding the bees to come out thicker the deeper he dug, he continued digging until he unexpectedly came to a coffin (there being no similtude on the spot of any grave) which one of them struck with the spade, and it immediately mouldered into dust: then they observed a lump of honey-comb, which one of them snatched up, and in breaking the same, found a human skull, in the cavity of which the bees made honey.
August 22, 1768
Last week as a dog was coursing about Kingswood, near Bristol, he fell into one of the coal-pits; by which means a man was struck out of the basket, as he was coming up, and killed on the spot.
August 29, 1768
On Wednesday last the daughter of a Tradesman in Holbourn, dressed in men’s clothes, inlisted (sic) as a private Soldier in the East-India Company’s service, and remained at the rendezvous till Saturday, when she was discovered, and taken home by her father. — A disappointment in love occasioned this rash action.
September 5, 1768
A few days ago a lady playing with a squirrel at Oakley-hill in Hampshire, received a bite from the animal, which occasioned such dreadful symptoms that a mortification was apprehended, and she was obliged to have her arm cut off.
August 29, 1768
On Saturday last a young Gentleman in Berkshire, who was this day married, hanged himself in his garters, and the next day his Amorous Widow had so much False Delicacy as to marry one of his Brothers, and to leave The Funeral to the care of — the coroner’s jury.
September 5, 1768
Within these few days a young Lady, entitled when at age to a fortune of 20,000 £ has absconded with a Musician, whom she fell in love with at a concert; and they are supposed to be gone off together for Scotland.
September 5, 1768
Whereas sometime in July last, Meriam, the Wife of Thomas Tozer, of Crediton, in the County of Devon, eloped from her Husband, and carried off with her a Pair of Buff Breeches, one white Holland Waistcoat, on Cloth Coat, one Holland Shirt, some Yards of black Silk, a blue Camblet Gown, and other Things of Value, not her Property — if any one purchases any of the said Things of the said Mariam (sic) Tozer, her said Husband will prosecute such Person or Persons to the utmost Rigour of the Law. And he will not pay any Debt she shall contract after this public Notice. Witness my Hand, the 16th Day of August, 1768. Thomas Tozer.
August 22, 1768
Yesterday a woman, big with child, sent a letter to his Danish Majesty, begging to have the honour to kiss his hand, or she could not live: His Majesty gave immediate orders that she should be admitted.
August 22, 1768
The King of Denmark observing a very great concourse of people assembled in Cleveland-row on Sunday, with intent to see him as he occasionally came to the window, and observing the women particularly anxious to gratify their curiosity, his Majesty gave orders that all the women might be admitted into his apartment whilst he was at dinner, they they might see him the better, and avoid the inconvenience of the crown. They had the same privilege yesterday, walking round the table in succession.
August 22, 1768
On Monday last died at St. Ives Huntingdonshire, miss Anne Oaty, a wealthy maiden lady of distinguished character, who for many years past had lived in the most miserable manner, denying herself even the common necessaries of life, and suffered a wretched body to expire of want, in the midst of a profusion of riches. Her toe nails were upwards of four inches long. Dying without a will, her fortune, which is considerable, descends to a very distant relation.
September 5, 1768
On Wednesday last there was observed in Honiton, in the county of Devon, an appearance in the air of a large ball of fire, which gradually passed with a train, and its explosion was like that of a sky rocket.
August 29, 1768
A child fell out of window three stories high near Holborn on Tuesday morning, and dashed out its brains, but it remains unburied to this hour, as two parishes are disputing which shall go to the expence (sic) of calling in the Coroner.
August 22, 1768.
Norwich. Thursday in the afternoon a severe storm of thunder, &c. happened here; the lightning fell on one of the city towers, between Brazen-doors and Bear-Street-gates, inhabited by John Ward, Wool-comber; it entered the house at a low room on the East, wherein was a bed; the bedposts were shivered, & the curtains, &c. torn into many pieces; then passed into the next room, were (sic) his daughter with four of her children were at dinner, who were all smote to the ground, and a boy about seven years of age killed on the spot, the others remained speechless for some time; it passed from thence up stairs, and after tearing a beam into many shivers, and shattering the windows, forced its way out at the roof, and threw down part of the battlements of the tower. The whole house was filled with smoke and sulphur, and the furniture therein was destroyed; amongst them a looking glass, the glass of which was melted, and the frame remained unhurt.
"Most of my books are here" that is all I need to know to understand why you bought #131
I envy you your Little House on the Prairie! I only have one in my (literally) dreams, although I do co-own one here in the parkland of Saskatchewan. It's not the same as having one all to yourself.