Essays and Diversions: November 2016

Somewhere, over The Rainbow.....

Will Brangwen’s beloved cathedral…..

When he saw the cathedral in the distance, dark blue lifted watchful in the sky, his heart leapt. It was the sign in heaven, it was the Spirit hovering like a dove, like an eagle over the earth. He turned his glowing, ecstatic face to her, his mouth opened with a strange, ecstatic grin.

‘There she is,’ he said

The ‘she’ irritated her. Why ‘she’? It was ‘it’. What was the cathedral, a big building, a thing of the past, obsolete, to excite him to such a pitch? She began to stir herself to readiness.

They passed up the steep hill, he eager as a pilgrim arriving at the shrine. As they came near the precinct, with castle on one side and cathedral on the other his veins seemed to break into fiery blossom, he was transported.

They had passed through the gate, and the great west front was before them, with all its breadth and ornament.

‘It is a false front,’ he said, looking at the golden stone and the twin towers and loving them just the same. In a little ecstasy he found himself in the porch, on the brink of the unrevealed. He looked up to the lovely unfolding of the stone. He was to pass within to the perfect womb.

Then he pushed open the door, and the great pillared gloom was before him….. His soul leapt, soared up into the great church…..

Anna Brangwen’s feelings…..

The cathedral roused her too. But she would never consent to the knitting of all the leaping stone in a great roof that closed her in, and beyond which was nothing, nothing, it was the ultimate confine…..

Her soul too was carried forward to the altar, to the threshold of Eternity, in reverence and fear and joy. But ever she hung back in the transit, mistrusting the culmination of the altar…..

So that she caught at little things, which saved her from being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps on into the Infinite in a great mass…..

And it was as if she must grasp at something, as if her wings were too weak to lift her straight off the heaving motion. So she caught sight of the wicked, of little faces carved in stone, and she stood before them arrested…..

These sly little faces peeped out of the grand tide of the cathedral like something that knew better. They knew quite well, these little imps that retorted on man’s own illusion, that the cathedral was not absolute…..

[As an aside, this all springs to mind with Glenda Jackson's momentous portrayal of King Lear at the Old Vic.... Ms Jackson gained an Academy Award for her portrayal of Gudrun Brangwen in Ken Russell's 1969 film of Women in Love, D H Lawrence's sequel to The Rainbow. Gudrun Brangwen was the younger of Anna and Will Brangwen's two daughters. Got it? Ed.]

Perhaps it is not surprising that there is no memorial to D H Lawrence in the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln? After all The Rainbow was banned for eleven years following an obscenity trial in 1915. And besides, Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire and died in France, so not a local lad.

Another famous Nottinghamshire chap also associated with Lincoln, was Robyn of Locksley, aka Robert Fitzooth, aka Robin Hood, though his connection was not through the Cathedral, but through the wool trade, which made Lincoln rich in the Middle Ages. Lincoln Green, which Robin and his men chose as a uniform (with the probable exceptions of Friar Tuck – who would have worn grey – and Will Scarlett…..) Wikipedia explains: The dyers of Lincoln, a cloth town in the high Middle Ages, produced the cloth by dyeing it with woad (Isatis tinctoria) to give it a strong blue, then overdyeing it yellow with weld (Reseda luteola) or dyers' broom, Genista tinctoria.

So now we know.

The most prominent literary figure commemorated in Lincoln is Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who was a Lincolnshire Poacher. A fine statue of him and his dog stands outside the Chapter House on the Cathedral’s East Green, with the poem Flower in the Crannied Wall attached:

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you there, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower – but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

Which just goes to show why we need Poets Laureate…..

John Ruskin (1819-1900), had this to say about the Cathedral: I have always held and am prepared against all evidence to maintain that the Cathedral of Lincoln is out and out the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles and roughly speaking worth any two other cathedrals we have.

Not sure that the Chapters of Canterbury, Durham (thanks Michael, Ed), Ely, Liverpool (thanks Janet, Ed), Salisbury or Winchester, (to name but six of thirty-eight Grade 1 listed cathedrals) would necessarily agree with this, though it is an opinion…..

It is the third largest cathedral in Britain (in floor area) after St Paul's and York Minster, being 484 by 271 feet (148 by 83 metres) and it was the tallest building in the world (at 525 feet - 160 metres) for 238 years until the central spire collapsed in 1548.

It was built mainly in three periods: Norman (1075-1092), Early English (1191-1250 and 1256-1300). It was badly damaged by fire in 1125, and partially destroyed by an earthquake in 1185 (though hardly touched by those in 1990 and 2008).

The name Lincoln is believed to derive from the Iron Age Celtic Lindon, meaning pool by the hill; a reference to the Brayford pool and the hill upon which the modern city stands. These features provided good fishing, farming, transport links (via the river Witham) and defences against other tribes. The Romans built a legionary fortress on the hill, which was known as Lindum Colonia. They also constructed the Fosse Dyke canal, which runs from the Brayford pool to the river Trent, which led to prosperity under the Vikings. The Normans then built a castle and began the cathedral, though much of the current Gothic appearance was due to Bishop Hugh of Avalon,

later St Hugh of Lincoln, who developed it after the great earthquake (and who, incidentally, had a pet swan, which hissed at people who approached the reverend Frenchman).

Following a £22 million upgrade (a mere 5% of the estimated refurbishment budget for Buckingham Palace, though still 628,570% of the cost of improving my family bathroom) Lincoln Castle is certainly worth exploring, though you may not wish to visit the Crown Court.

Apart from the wonderful views from the medieval walls, there is a finely illegible copy of the Magna Carta in a dark crypt, and the Victorian prison, which, though sanitised and scrupulously clean,

gives you some idea of what it might be like in prison…..

[Great place to leave the kids!]

But this is all a bit prosaic! So, I’ll end with a poem, by the very poetic Alfred Tennyson, the 1^st Baron Tennyson, late of this parish….. It’s a curious ditty, but it seems somehow fitting in this city of beautiful people, though you don't want to believe everything you may think.....

Beautiful City

Beautiful city, the centre and crater of European confusion,

O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal humanity,

How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution

Roll’d back again on itself in the tides of a civic insanity!

Oh, and by the way, for the purposes of disambiguation this piece refers to Lincoln (/ˈlɪŋkən/), a cathedral city and the county town of Lincolnshire, within the East Midlands of England. It has nothing to do with President Lincoln, Lincoln Creams (one of the joys of my childhood, but sadly impossible to find these days), Lincoln Nebraska, Lincoln California, nor the Lincoln Continental, a motor car produced by Ford, which was one of the first personal luxury cars to enter into mass production…..

Cheers!

(In the Cardinal's Hat.....)

When I paint my masterpiece.....

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble

Ancient footprints are everywhere

Wandering around the remains of ancient Rome is a luxurious, stimulating, activity, which takes a lot of beating: Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, however, got it right - the streets are filled with rubble..... In some places the actual street level has risen by ten metres in the last two thousand years, which is why you tend to look down on the excavations of the various fori and rediscovered temples.....

Though there is looking down..... and there is looking down.....

You can almost think that you're seein' double....

Rome does not need introduction – it is one of the most visited places on the planet. But everyone sees it differently, depending on many variables. Some visitors are studious. Some come for the dolce vita. Accounts of what it was like to live in the city in ancient times are relatively uncommon (Satyricon, by Petronius, being a rare exception), but one extraordinary character left us several impressions of what it was like in the sixteenth century….

As we rode into Rome, the darkness was extreme; and when we came near the Banchi and our own house, my little horse was going in an amble at a furious speed. Now that day they had thrown a heap of plaster and broken tiles in the middle of the road, which neither my horse nor myself perceived. In his fiery pace the beast ran up it; but on coming down upon the other side he turned a complete somersault. He had his head between his legs , and it was only through the power of God himself that I escaped unhurt.... (Life of Benvenuto Cellini, 1558).

Then, after it became part of The Grand Tour, literature has been littered with descriptions of the ruins, though they are not all alike. James Boswell was impressed:

Tuesday, 26 March, 1765:

We viewed the celebrated Forum. I experienced sublime and melancholy emotions as I thought of all the great affairs which had taken place there, and saw the place now all in ruins, with the wretched huts of carpenters and other artisans occupying the site of that rostrum from which Cicero had flung forth his stunning eloquence….. We entered the famous Colosseum, which certainly presents a vast and sublime idea of the grandeur of the ancient Romans. It is hard to tell whether the astonishing massiveness or the exquisite taste of this superb building should be more admired.

Thursday, 28 March, 1765:

We climbed to the Palace again, where the cypresses seem to mourn for the ruin of the grandeur of the Roman emperors. The view from here is magnificent…..

James Boswell on the Grand Tour

Principal Domes L-R, Chiesa Nuova, S Andrea della Valle, S Carlo ai Catinari,
then the Pantheon and the Synagogue
(you can also see S Ivo, in scaffolding,
and, 35 miles to the north west, the Monti Cimini around Lago di Vico.)

The following year, Tobias Smollett was less so:

From the Capitol to the Coliseo, including the Forum Romanum and Boarium, there is nothing intire but one or two churches, built with fragments of ancient edifices. You descend from the Capitol between the remaining pillars of two temples, the pedestals and parts of the shafts sunk in the rubbish.....

(Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, 1766).

Then a couple of years later, Goethe, in self-imposed exile among German Romantics, found much to interest him:

I study the layout of Ancient Rome and Modern Rome, look at ruins and buildings and visit this villa or that. The most important monuments I take very slowly; I do nothing except look, go away, and come back and look again. Only in Rome can one educate oneself for Rome.

(Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Italian Journey, 1768).

In about 1810 Byron waxed lyrical:

Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown

Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped

On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown

In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescos steeped

In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,

Deeming it midnight: - temples, baths, or halls?

Pronounce who can; for all that learning reaped

From her research hath been, that these are walls –

Behold the Imperial Mount! ‘tis thus the mighty falls.

Lord Byron, Childe Harold, Canto IV, stanza 107

A little later Stendhal (Henri Beyle) was less complimentary:

21^st September 1817:

I have now spent fifty days in mingled awe and indignation. Why, what a thing of splendour were this site of Ancient Rome, had not her fatal star decreed, as crowning outrage, that the priests should build their new metropolis upon the very ruins of the old! What glory might our eyes not still behold, were all those ancient stones – the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Antonine Basilica, together with that fabulous wealth of monuments, now rased to the ground that churches might be built instead – still proudly standing within their ring of deserted hills, the Aventine, the Quirinal, the Mons Palatinus. O fortunate city of Palmyra!

Rome, Naples and Florence, Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 1817

But then, just two years later, Byron’s friend, Shelley, was star struck:

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Letters:

Come to Rome. It is a scene by which expression is overpowered; which words cannot convey….. The ruins of the ancient Forum are so far fortunate that they have not been walled up in the modern city…. I walk forth in the purple and golden light of an Italian evening, and return by star of moonlight, through this scene…..

What shall I say of the modern city? Rome is yet the capital of the world. It is a city of palaces and temples, more glorious than those which any other city contains, and of ruins more glorious than they. Seen from any of the eminences that surround it, it exhibits domes beyond domes, and palaces, and colonnades interminably, even to the horizon…..

(March 23^rd, 1819, to Thomas Love Peacock)

This is holy-week, and Rome is quite full…. Great festas and magnificent funzioni here – we cannot get tickets to all. There are five thousand strangers in Rome, and only room for five hundred…..

In the Square of St Peter’s there are about three hundred fettered criminals at work, hoeing out the weeds that grow between the stones of the pavement. Their legs are heavily ironed, and some are chained two by two. They sit in long rows, hoeing out the weeds, dressed in parti-coloured clothes. Near them sit or saunter groups of soldiers, armed with loaded muskets. The iron discord of those innumerable chains clanks up into the sonorous air, and produces, contrasted with the musical dashing of the fountains, and the deep azure beauty of the sky, and the magnificence of the architecture around, a conflict of sensations allied to madness. It is the emblem of Italy – moral degradation contrasted with the glory of nature and the arts.

(April 6^th, 1819, to Thomas Love Peacock)

Twenty-seven years later Charles Dickens was imaginatively sceptical:

It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say: so suggestive and distinct is it (The Colosseum) at this hour: that, for a moment - actually in passing in – they who will, may have the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust, going on there, as no language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike upon the stranger, the next moment, like a softened sorrow; and never in his life, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately connected with his own affections and afflictions.

To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and arches overgrown with green; its corridors open to the day; the long grass growing in its porches; young trees of yesterday, springing up on its ragged parapets, and bearing fruit…. To climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it; the triumphal arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus; the Roman Forum; the Palace of the Caesars; the temples of the old religion, fallen down and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked and wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight, conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin. God be thanked: a ruin!

Charles Dickens, Pictures From Italy, 1846

In fiction, after another thirty-two years, Henry James, retouched the romantic fantasy:

A few days after his brief interview with her mother, he encountered her in that beautiful abode of flowering desolation known as the Palace of the Caesars. The early Roman spring had filled the air with bloom and perfume, and the rugged surface of the Palatine was muffled with tender verdure. Daisy was strolling along the top of one of those great mounds of ruin that are embanked with mossy marble and paved with monumental inscriptions. It seemed to him that Rome had never been so lovely as just then…..

Then he passed in among the cavernous shadows of the great structure, and emerged upon the clear and silent arena. The place had never seemed to him more impressive. One half of the gigantic circus was in deep shade; the other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron’s famous lines, out of Manfred; but before he had finished his quotation he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors….

Henry James, Daisy Miller, 1878

Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum

Dodging lions and wastin' time

Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em

Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb

1902 and Hilaire Belloc arrived, to publish The Path to Rome, which ends with a discussion between the author and the reader:

So, passing an Egyptian obelisk which the great Augustus had nobly dedicated to the Sun, I entered…..

LECTOR. But do you intend to tell us nothing of Rome?

AUCTOR: Nothing, dear Lector.

LECTOR. Tell me at least one thing; did you see the Coliseum?

AUCTOR…. I entered a café at the right hand of a very long, straight street, called for bread, coffee, and brandy, and contemplating my boots and worshipping my staff that had been friends of mine so long, and friends like all true friends inanimate, I spent the few minutes remaining to my happy, common, unshriven, exterior, and natural life, in writing down this

DITHYRAMBIC

EPITHALAMIUM or THRENODY

In these boots, and with this staff

Two hundred leaguers and a half –

…..

Nor ever turned my face to home

Till I had slaked my heart at Rome.

LECTOR. Bu this is dogg - -

AUCTOR. Not a word!

So, then, James Joyce, resident in Rome from 1906 to 1907, thought the ancient city was like a cemetery…The exquisite panorama he said, was made up of flowers of death, ruins, piles of bones, and skeletons. On August 7^th, 1906, he wrote to his brother, Stanislaus, that the area around the Colosseum was like an old cemetery with broken columns of temples and slabs. And on September 25^th he declared that Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother’s corpse.

Indeed, in jaundiced characteristic, Joyce reached back to Byron to express his distrust of the magnificence of the Imperial City, when he described a visit to the Colosseum with his family in 1907:

Looking at it all round gravely from a sense of duty, I heard a voice from London on one of the lowest galleries say:

The Colisseum –

Almost at once two young men in serge suits and straw hats appeared in an embrasure. They leaned on the parapet and then a second voice from the same city clove the calm evening, saying:

Whowail stands the Colisseum Rawhm shall stand

When falls the Colisseum Rawhm s’ll fall

And when Rawhm falls the world sh’ll fall –

But adding cheerfully:

-Kemlong, ‘ere’s the way aht-

James Joyce: letter to his brother Stanislaus Joyce, August 7^th, 1906

Seventy years later, and I was in Rome. A much changed Rome. But, despite all changes, there were still touches that reached back across the centuries. Every day I crossed the Ponte Sisto from Trastevere toward the Campo Marzio, to catch the bus to work. I used to pass a mournful fountain at the beginning of the Via Giulia, with its wide mouth (the ugliest fountain in Rome according to Augustus Hare) dribbling slow streams of water (though on one occasion at least it was made to spout wine).

In the Campo de’ Fiori, a few paces further on, the Norcineria Viola

- an outlet for the many products from the pig-heaven town of Norcia, now sadly, reduced to rubble (again) by the October earthquake) – still survives, though prettified, and without the model for that fountain, who graced the first floor window when I took this photo in the late seventies.

In those days the market was strong with Roman dialect under the shadow of the statue of Giordano Bruno who was burned at the stake here on February 17^th, 1600.

Giordano still stands here, unperturbed by his immolation, but the majority of stall holders now herald from the outlying fields of the Roman Empire, such as the Indian subcontinent, or North Africa…..

It’s always been a rough area: Benvenuto Cellini stabbed a man to death near here; I drew a little dagger with a sharpened edge, and breaking the line of his defenders, laid my hands upon his breast so quickly and coolly, that none of them were able to prevent me. Then I aimed to strike him in the face; but fright made him turn his head round; and I stabbed him just beneath the ear. I only gave two blows, for he fell stone dead at the second. I had not meant to kill him; but as the saying goes, knocks are not dealt by measure….

On July 26^th, 1977, another death occurred here, when the brother of film actor Gian Maria Volontè, known as Claudio Camaso, stabbed a man who tried to intervene between Claudio and his wife. Claudio made his escape, but gave himself up after ten days on the run, but then committed suicide in prison a few days later…..

I wander down the Via dei Banchi Vecchi, little changed since the days of Cellini or Camaso, and stop for refreshment in one of the few remaining Vino Olio shops in Rome, the Enoteca Il Goccetto.

Such locali used to be where you could fill your bottles with wine from the Colli Albani and oil from anywhere. In this case, I settle for a plate of mixed cheeses and salami and a glass of Pecorino DOC…..