The Bankhead Gleaner: My Gain of Function Commonplace Book, December 15, 2023
"During this unusual warm spell I have been annoyed by quantities of tiny gnats..."
1.
Hello, friends. Back in Vancouver from the Manitoba Municipality of Louise after a couple of pleasant weeks in the crooked little house on the prairies — the summer dacha, the winter palace: it’s purpose built for all seasons. I like it there, and I like it here. I’m luckier than I deserve to be to have these choices about where I hang my hat. Neither situation is luxurious, or anywhere close, but they suit me fine, each in its own way. The temperature in Winnipeg was 6 degrees celsius when I left, late yesterday afternoon: another month of upward trending temperatures, records being broken, more signs and symptoms, no less disturbing for being balmy, of what one is tempted to read as The End.
I don’t say often or explicitly enough how grateful I am to anyone who reads even a few words of what I find and copy and put in The Bankhead Gleaner. Lives are full, the draws on our attention are many — especially at this time of year — and there’s no reason in the world why anyone should care about what I set down here. About this I have no delusions. I write to satisfy myself, but yes, of course, in the hope that a few others might take pleasure from what I find and copy.
These missives have about as much chance of being seen as any note in any bottle — so, if you do take the time and trouble to pull them from the drink and break the wax and pry the cork and shake loose the pages and take in what’s written there — thank you, truly.
2.
About notes in bottles:
The first time I made the journey from Manitoba to this west coast was in 1966 on a family vacation, a driving / camping holiday. (I forget what the family car was then, a used Dodge sedan, I believe.) Our destination was Victoria where my paternal grandparents had moved, from Winnipeg, two years prior.
It’s weirdly dislocating to think that my parents then were almost 30 years younger than I am now, and that my grandparents were not quite 10 years older. I was 10 when we made that trip, would turn 11 in August, not mature, but certainly of an age to pay attention and take it in, this long car trip that was sold to us as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My memory was porous then, too; retention has never been my gift, and that vacation I have now in fragments, shards.
I recall we were nearly killed on the highway near Regina when my mother pulled out to pass on a two-lane stretch and found herself face to face with an oncoming truck. That the car didn’t roll when she took it into the ditch was providential. My brothers and I were thrilled at this near brush with death, like the children in the classic Flannery O’Connor story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” though with a happier outcome.
I remember that we heard a lot of Frank and Nancy Sinatra. It was the summer of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin,” and “Stranger in the Night,” Frank’s song about a lucky one-night stand: weirdly creepy, though not so unsavoury as “Something Stupid,” (1967) which duet no father should ever have sung with his daughter. Anyway, both were in heavy rotation on the radio and I had a special fondness for “Strangers in the Night,” — dooby dooby doo — , and whenever we stopped for lunch in a place with a jukebox I’d have a Denver sandwich and coax Frank into action.
I remember that we camped in a canvas tent, and we were constantly warned that if it rained and we touched the sides it would leak, which was a design or engineering flaw I found it hard to accommodate.
I remember us getting lost in Vancouver, trying to find the ferry, and I remember, once on the ferry, eating for the first time salmon that wasn’t from a tin, but served as a steak. And I remember, once we had arrived and settled into our grandparents’ house and been told about what we should see and also what we mustn’t do, walking out with my father to check out a local landmark, a World War 2 submarine lookout station; we ambled on Gonzales beach near the house my grandparents had taken on Denison Road (long gone) and finding, of all things, washed up by the tide among the rocks, a bottle and, in it, what looked to be a note. I felt like Crusoe, discovering the footprints of Friday.
After we hit the ditch near Regina, the first thing my mother — who was so alarmed by what had happened that she didn’t drive again for years — said to us was, “For God’s sake, don’t tell your grandfather about this.” He was a forbidding presence, I guess: his favour was to be curried, his poor opinion feared. Similarly, there on the beach, picking up the bottle and brushing off the sand and seaweed, my father, inviting me into an even deeper conspiracy of silence, said “Don’t tell your grandfather about this,” and smashed the bottle on the rocks: the most shocking, transgressive thing I ever saw him do.
I think it was a whisky bottle, but what did it contain? Was there, in fact, a note? I think so. But what did it say? Of all the stupid things to forget! I vaguely recall that it pertained to the bottle’s destination, half recollect there was some foreign currency, a few banknotes that had been folded in, perhaps as proof, authenticating its elsewhere origins. Were they Lebanese? Or Libyan? One of the two. But that’s all I hold in my head, but I could so easily be making it up, and there’s no one left who can confirm or deny or authenticate any of it.
By way of compensating for my own failure of recall, I’ve made a bit of a sideline of collecting notes in bottles; collecting stories about them, I mean, archival newspaper accounts, of which are many. They fall into four categories.
The first is what we might call “nothing to look at here, just a friendly wave from the deck.” Here’s an example, reported in The West Briton, on June 13, 1845, and plainly the work of a young passenger.
On board ship ‘Unicorn,’ May 28, 1845. Bound for Swan River, and the Cape of Good Hope. We are all quite well and going nicely along with a fair wind. mamma and brothers are quite well. Good bye. Robert John Spencer.
The second category we might call “dispatched in the spirit of experimentation and / or inquiry.” To wit, from August 19, 1836.
Troop ship Kent, with detachments of the Royal Artillery Royal, and 66th regiment on board, bound for Quebec; all well. This bottle is thrown overboard for the purpose of ascertaining the direction of the current, for the benefit of all sea-going men, the ship having been for several days past forced considerably to the southward of the reckoning; and it is particularly requested that the finder of this, in whatever quarter of the world, will cause the same to be inserted in the newspapers. Ship Kent, lat. 50 20 N, long. 19 W.
Thirdly, most classically and most dramatically, are those desperate, hastily written and jettisoned “we are sinking” notes, eg.
Ship Madras, Jan. 13, 1839. Ship Madras, approaching the Shannon — full of water, and in great distress; beseech God to send us in safety. T. A. WATSON.
(An addendum to this report from The Northern Liberator (16 Feb 1839) read: “As the hapless vessel has not been yet heard of it is to be feared that she went down, and that of her whole crew not one remains the tell the melancholy tale.”)
Finally, and most frequently, is category four, the hoaxes. This appears to have been the case with the note written on brown wrapping paper and pulled from the Inlet channel, Atlantic City, in August of 1922. It was signed by Mabel Gillmore of Ocean City and lord knows how much detective time was wasted determining that no one named Mabel Gillmore was missing from Ocean City, or, come to that, lived in Ocean City.
Help. If any one finds this note please heed my plea. I am being held captive on board a tugboat by five men, who kidnapped me. They are all drunk. I am somewhere off the Atlantic Coast. Please help me for God’s sake.
4.
In 2021, a message-bearing bottle was pulled from the Bay of Fundy. It contained a note that purported to be the work of a French girl who was travelling in a third class compartment with her family on the Titanic. Her name was Mathilde Lefebvre and the note she wrote might fit into either Category One or Two.
(In the name of full disclosure, I’ve copied the text of her note, the French and the translation, wholesale from Wikipedia, where there’s quite a good description of the circumstances. Mathilde’s note was imprecisely dated April, 1912.)
Je jette cette bouteille à la mer au milieu de l'Atlantique. nous devons arriver à New York dans quelques jours. Si quelqu'un la trouve, prévenez la famille Lefebvre à Liévin.”
I am throwing this bottle into the sea in the middle of the Atlantic. We are due to arrive in New York in a few days. If anyone finds it, tell the Lefebvre family in Lievin.
An exciting find, but was it le vrai McCoy?
A panel of experts was convened. Much about the note checked out. Mathilde, her mother, and siblings were indeed named on the Titanic passenger manifest and they weren’t rescued by the Carpathia, never made it onto a lifeboat. The note paper on which Mathilde had penned her bland message was authentic to that time. But the handwriting didn’t match that of a French school girl in the early 20th century, and the wax stopper was too much intact, and the smell of fraud overall was more pungent than that of brine. It didn’t take long to determine that someone was playing a little joke, and not for the first time.
Four bottles containing messages that purport to be from Titanic passengers have been found and reported; only one is authentic, that from Jeremiah Burke, a young Irish immigrant who was traveling with his cousin. For luck, they carried on board with them a bottle of water from the holy site of Lourdes, and that was the very flask the Atlantic currents carried back to Ireland, where it was found 15 months after the fateful, icy bang.
Jeremiah wrote: “From the Titanic. Goodbye all Burkes of Glanmire, Cork.” It was dated April 13, 1912.
The ship hit the iceberg on the 14th and sank shortly afterwards, on April 15, so Jeremiah either got the date wrong, or had decided the Lourdes water was weighing down his bag so he might as well get rid of it and tossed the good luck charm overboard as a lark That might have been a mistake.
5.
With Christmas time in mind, and feeling the need to spread a bit of light in these dark days, I’ve been laying out some of the particulars of the life and work of two women from Tennessee, Nellie Brooks and Lucy Templeton.
Nellie lived in the utopian community of Rugby, founded by Thomas Hughes in 1880, and Lucy lived in a rural area on the outskirts of Knoxville. She commuted into town for her job as the Telegraph Editor (Foreign News Desk we’d say today) of the Knoxville Sentinel. She also wrote a daily column of nature observations, “Country Calendar,” and Nellie Brooks was one of her regular correspondents. The warmth between these two women, both well read, both keen observers and recorders of the flora and fauna around them, I have found reassuring and comforting. Four of Nellie’s letters follow, but first, with the Titanic in mind, consider this.
That’s the headline on the front page of the Knoxville Sentinel on April 15, 1912. The paper might have been a little late getting to press that day, because Lucy, whose job it was to lay out the copy, had created something entirely different. She had no idea about the catastrophe in the North Atlantic. Then the wires began to hum. She must have been aghast, one of the first in the world to receive the news. She was a professional. She kept calm. There was no question about what to do. The century was still young but anyone could see that this would be one of its defining stories. Lucy tore up the front page. She gathered up the incoming news. She wrote.
This is Lucy, telling the story — as much of it as was known — of the Titanic’s foundering, with a helpful sidebar included: my list for today!
A few days later, the coverage far from done, the Sentinel included the by now oft-told story about the dance band playing “Nearer My God To Thee” as the ship listed and the water poured in. That would have touched Lucy, deeply. With that hymn she had a recent and tragic connection, and that’s a story I’ll tell you soon. For now — bear it in mind.
But enough of dreams dashed and drowning in the drink! You’ve come here for the light, and light you shall have. Here are four letters from Nellie Brooks in Rugby Tennessee, written in 1936 and 1937. I hope you find them as charming as I do. Note that Nellie sometimes writes, as one might to a friend, in a kind of shorthand. Now and again there are lapses that are the mark of a letter quickly written, in the heat of a moment. I’ll have more to say about Nellie, and about Lucy, when next we meet. Look for my bottle and whatever note it contains. Cheers, and again, thanks for reading. BR
Country Calendar. March 4, 1936
(Here Mrs. Brooks — remember, she and her husband, Charles C., have a farm — sends Lucy a letter about lambing season. The ellipses are Lucy’s, she’s printed an excerpt.)
Sheep are always interesting though many casual observers think them dull and that they all look alike. Far from it. …
Old Mrs. Pop Eyes, as we call the leader with the bell, will take her flock everywhere. When she cannot get into one field she will lead them four miles to another where they enjoyed a pasture the fall before. She is such a good mother. Though in her ninth year, she has twins every year. Twins and triplets seem the rule this year. … The flock has almost doubled though once and a half multiplication is a good record.
Lambing time is no easy time for the farmer and the month of February has been a severe one as we all know. Every few hours a trip must be made to the sheepfold on cold nights. The new-born lambs are brought to the house and rubbed dry and warm. Then when hey have found nourishment they can stand any amount of cold for they come into the world with a coat of wool and big woolly legs which they double under their bodies in lying down. Now the poor little pigs arriving in cold weather often freeze to death . . .
Even in the snow, lambs a week old are a delight to behold, for they run in droves and jump for joy in being alive. When the sheep are turned out there is no end of a hubbub for the lambs scatter and the ewes call and blat (sic) for their children to come back to them like anxious mothers. Of course the lambs cry also and get lost occasionally.
But never a ewe but knows her offspring and is not a bit gentle toward a strange lamb which may come near hunting its mother. Then after a drink and a frolic and the ewes lie down it is no unusual sight to see one or sometimes two lambs perched comfortably on the broad back of their mother, the picture of content …
When the master shepherd calls the sheep, they will arise and come to him but will not respond to the call of a voice they do not know.
Country Calendar, Sept. 16, 1936
Another letter from Nellie which Lucy reproduces in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, with a fond and admiring acknowledgement of Mrs. Brooks’ “graceful pen,”
Again, the pileated woodpeckers (Ceophloeus pileatus), 17 inches long, male with scarlet crown and crest and red mustache (sic) — female has crown but no mustache — are making their daily pilgrimage to our swamp magnolia trees, feasting on the newly reddened berries. This group of tress is not native in this part of the state, were planted here but thrive, keeping heir beautiful foliage until severe freezing.
What instinct tells these birds that the berries are ripe? We never see them all year round until we hear their calling and whirring of wings, which make such a noice that it excites our collie, Bobbie Burns, to barking.
They come regularly in a flock of as many as fifteen, with a joyous clattering call not unlike an old fashioned dinner bell, rejoicing in the feast nature provides for them, perhaps; one might even imagine them giving thanks to their Maker for the feast.
My neighbor, Miss Beatrice Berry, a former Knoxvillian and now Sister Mary Agnes of the Sisters of the Transfiguration, Glendale, Ohio, has regularly seen here each season, a flock of what her English, observing, old father called linnets. They are tiny birds, two and a half to three inches long, gray with white breast, and small black marking on throat. I cannot place this bird as none of the text books available to me give linnets as American birds. These birds nest on ground. I have never investigated the size and color of eggs.
Can anyone tell me if linnets have come to America like sparrows and starlings? They would be much more welcome. . .”
Country Calendar. January 15, 1937.
Mrs. Brooks writes:
Gather your rosebuds, while ye may.
We didn’t exactly have roses to gather these past ten days but we had lovely spring blooms and budding promise of more which, when carried into the warm house, will bloom by Candlemas Day.
The January jasmine’s gay yellow loveliness before my window is a joy most winters; sometimes blossoming in December and then again in February. It hasn’t the Florida jasmine’s sweetness but is even more profuse with bloom and against a spray of dark holly leaves and bright berries is a real joy. Then the winter bush honeysuckle with its exquisite odor, a sweet lemon scent and its pearly white petals, keeping its leaves for a background, is even more exotic.
On January 8, hearing the cold snap predicted by radio, I gathered sprays of lilac buds, japonica, forsythia, plum buds and pussy willows, while in my borders an occasional primrose peeped out, cerise with yellow center, they say these have changed colour since being transplanted from England. I have even seen a few brave dandelions and our lovely sweet-scented English violets.
Our bees have buzzed about every day when the sun shone, coming to the dog’s water pan under the pump for drink and at night moths flew against the lighted windows.
During this unusual warm spell I have been annoyed by quantities of tiny gnats and an occasional fly. Someone stepped on my pet cricket to my regret, as I carry an old superstition that cricket brings luck when it chirps in a house.
The robins with extra bright red breasts have been calling lustily and, best of all, our pet lone mockingbird has been singing. If only he did not try so hard to get through my window panes, which pleases and sadden me at the same time. So let old winter come as come he surely will and enjoy the balmy days while ye may.
Country Calendar. November 23, 1937
Lucy Templeton introduces the latest letter from her frequent correspondent on the Cumblerland Plateau.
It is delightful to hear again from Mrs. C. C. Brooks of Rugby. Mrs. Brooks writes that, owing to her health, she cannot get “so must see from my window.” But the beauties which she describes must also be stamped upon “that inner eye which is the bliss of solitude.” This is the fruit of keen observation and a long and loving intimacy with nature.
… the air is full of migrant birds, twittering and fluttering about in treetops and shrubbery … Whole flocks of starlings have been here the past week. They must spend the nights in river evergreen thickets as they are only seen or heard mornings and evenings, flying towards our streams.
Some years ago, flocks of robins, hundreds and hundreds, spent the winter near here in these same thickets. … We are constantly fighting honeysuckle in our hedges, but I love it and beg to leave it grow in certain places. This also gives it a foothold but it is so graceful and sweet even blooming in the fall. … A pest I abhor is the cinnamon vine with its hundreds of little tubers. The first frost kills it and it hangs blackened and ugly. …
I have a calllicarpa bush, French mulberry (verbenadeae family) near my gate which everyone admires. Now the foliage is gone from it the lovely clusters of beautiful purplish carpa, or berries, which give the shrub its name, hang along the stems almost all winter. I have been told there is a wild variety growing in South Tennessee, commonly called Indian currant which has seeds growing singly. …
The melancholy days of which Bryant sang surely do not often fall to the lot of Tennessee for we have that heavenly blue gentian which the same poet addresses, though ours is not the fringed variety but the closed.
The deep blue of this flower dots the damp woodlands in Tennessee where it is not alone but surrounded by that dainty white orchid, spiranthes, or lady’s tresses, and many ferns and mosses which are dotted with the falling clusters of dogwood berries.
Bill! This entry is my favourite so far, except for all the MG ones! We missed each other in Victoria by three years. My brother and I "climbed" (so it seemed to our pre-teen bodies) Gonzales Hill to what we called the gun implacement (sic) many times before we moved to Vancouver in 1963. I am falling in love with Mrs Templeton. Thank you for your gleaning.
This must be one of the saddest observations in the English language: “and there’s no one left who can confirm or deny or authenticate any of it.”
I find myself pondering this often lately, as I think of events from my childhood. The parental team is gone. No one is left who can confirm or elaborate - and I miss and mourn what I can’t know.