She Also Knew Her Horace

Herewith another quote—with a nod to a fellow blogger—from Angela Thirkell’s 1961 novel, Three Score and Ten.

    “Only an old Roman poet,” said Lord Stoke. “And now I come to think of it, it isn’t particularly applicable [the quote he just made]. Quotations mostly aren’t. My dear mother used to keep a book of quotations, one for every day in the year. A biggish book it was with violets or something sticking up on the cover.”

     Mrs. Morland said Perhaps embossed.

     “I daresay, I daresay,” said Lord Stoke. “Words are queer things. My mother had north-country blood and she used to put two pieces of thin bread and butter together with hundreds and thousands between them and called it Matrimony. I daresay there aren’t any hundreds and thousands now,” but Mrs. Morland indignantly opposed, saying that the children at the village school bought them regularly.

     “Not what they were in My young days,” said Lord Stoke, determined to be a laudator temporis acti.

So whence comes that phrase? It comes from Horace, Ars Poetica, line 173, and here it is in Latin and then in three different translations into English.

Multa senem circumueniunt incommoda, uel quod
quaerit et inuentis miser abstinet ac timet uti,         
uel quod res omnis timide gelideque ministrat,
dilator, spe longus, iners auidusque futuri,
difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti
se puero, castigator censorque minorum.

     [Horace, Ars Poetica]

Many troubles surround the aged man, because he

Seeks savings, yet sadly won’t touch them, fears their use,

And because in all he does he’s cold and timid,

Dilatory, short on hope, sluggish, greedy for life,

Surly, a moaner, given to praising the years when

He was a boy, chiding and criticising the young.

     [Translated by A.S. Kline (link)]

Many troubles assail an old man, whether because he seeks gain, and then wretchedly abstains from what he possesses and is afraid to use it, or because he attends to all his affairs feebly and timidly; a procrastinator, he is apathetic in his hopes and expectations, sluggish and fearful of the future, obstinate, always complaining; he devotes himself to praising times past, when he was a boy, and to being the castigator and moral censor of the young.

     [Translated by Leon Golden (link)]

A thousand ills the aged world surround,
Anxious in search of wealth, and when ‘tis found,
Fearful to use what they with fear possess,
While doubt and dread their faculties depress. 
          Fond of delay, they trust in hope no more,
Listless, and fearful of th’ approaching hour;
Morose, complaining, and with tedious praise
Telling the manners of their youthful days;
Severe to censure; earnest to advise,
And with old saws the present age chastise.

     [Translated by someone labeled Francis (link)]

The word “curmudgeon” does not appear above, but comes to mind—not least when we contemplate that old charmer, Thirkell’s Lord Stoke.

Overpopulation

Herewith a bit about “the birds and the bees” for booklovers who may have been wondering, innocently, why it is that every free square foot is eventually piled high:

It is well known that it is not safe to have books in the house as they marry and have children, so producing over-populated neighborhoods; but attics are just as bad.

     Angela Thirkell in Three Score and Ten

Oh, a Quotation

Never hesitant to promote my favorites, herewith another small snippet from Angela Thirkell’s 1958 novel, Close Quarters:

     “You know, Margot, you are a remarkable woman,” said Everard. “You never lost the childlike in the larger mind.”

     “Haven’t I?” said Mrs. Macfadyen. “Who said that?”

     Mr. Carter said Tennyson.

     “Oh, a quotation,” said Mrs. Macfadyen. “Donald was always saying bits of poetry and bits of prose too. His people were very poor and he taught himself to read and save up his pennies, when he got any, to buy books off the second-hand stalls on market day. But I don’t think Tennyson was one of his poets. It was mostly Scott and Burns and the metrical psalms. He would have liked that line you quoted just now—he never lost the child’s mind.”

     “I think the biggest people don’t,” said Mr. Carter. “That’s why one can meet them so easily.”

The quote comes from a longish poem by Tennyson and a passage quite remarkable especially after the years have cumulated and taught a body the actual truth of it. I’ll quote it here, piling it on, as it were:

For woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse: could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other even as those who love.

         [Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Princess]

SCALP IT

Herewith a quote from Angela Thirkell’s 1958 novel, Close Quarters:

     “Plastic!” said Captain Gresham with deep scorn. “And Pink.”
      “You’ll have to get used to it, darling,” said his wife. “The kitchen garbage tin is plastic now and so is the big washing-up basin and that red broom with red bristles that you admired. And Lady Graham’s housemaid’s new teeth, because she told me so.”
      “You can’t even get an anagram out of Plastic,” said Captain Gresham, happy to discover a new grievance.
     Everyone at once tried to get an anagram, the only one approximating to a possible hit being SCALP IT, which was ruled out by John Leslie as unfair because it ought to be one word.

I’d spent much of my day yesterday studying the subject of plastics for a project—in course of which I’d noted the sudden and rather awesome explosion of plastics into the world after World War II. Thus reading that passage in the evening, I experienced it as a “meaningful coincidence.” Or was it just a case of plastics’ ubiquity?

And Say Hello to Beatrice for Me

I learned of this poetic excursion by one of my favorite poets, Kipling, about one of my very favorite novelists, from yet another, Angela Thirkell (in her Jutland Cottage). Now all three are Up there. Herewith:

Jane’s Marriage

by Rudyard Kipling

Jane went to Paradise:

That was only fair.

Good Sir Walter followed her,

And armed her up the stair.

Henry and Tobias,

And Miguel of Spain,

Stood with Shakespeare at the top

To welcome Jane —

Then the Three Archangels

Offered out of hand

Anything in Heaven’s gift

That she might command.

Azrael’s eyes upon her,

Raphael’s wings above,

Michael’s sword against her heart,

Jane said: “Love.”

Instantly the under-

Standing Seraphim

Laid their fingers on their lips

And went to look for him.

Stole across the Zodiac,

Harnessed Charles’s Wain,

And whispered round the Nebulae

“Who loved Jane?”

In a private limbo

Where none had thought to look,

Sat a Hampshire gentleman

Reading of a book.

It was called Persuasion

And it told the plain

Story of the love between

Him and Jane.

He heard the question,

Circle Heaven through —

Closed the book and answered: “I did – and do!”

Quietly but speedily

(As Captain Wentworth moved)

Entered into Paradise

The man Jane loved!

Jane lies in Winchester, blessed be her shade!

Praise the Lord for making her, and her for all she made.

And while the stones of Winchester – or Milson Street – remain,

Glory, Love, and Honour unto England’s Jane!

A Tarquin Unmasked

The bathroom door was locked so he banged on it, and called, “Time’s up.”
     “Who is it?” said a voice.
     “Oh, I’m sorry,” said George, retreating a step or two from the locked door in his agitation. “I thought it was Sylvia.”
     “It’s only me,” said Edith. “I’ll be as quick as I can, but the bath’s so slippery I can’t get out. Your water is so soft and I used too much soap. I shan’t be long” and a sound of splashing told George that the guest was keeping her word and he went back to his room feeling himself a Tarquin unmasked.
     [Angela Thirkell, Enter Sir Robert, 1955]

Reading that passage last night—in what was a popular novel intended for a predominantly female audience—reminded me how very much popular culture has evidently changed in the last sixty years or so, here as well as in Britain. Angela Thirkell was a very prolific and popular novelist; more on her is on this blog here; I have a great admiration for her and am slowly reading all of her work. Clearly Thirkell not only expected that phrase, “feeling himself a Tarquin unmasked,” to illuminate and to enlarge this seemingly innocent scene—but also to signal feelings inside George, the lead male in this novel, towards Edith, the lead female, not evident on the surface.

My own recall of Tarquins was thin enough to amount to almost nothing. Something to do with Rome—yes, despite that odd spelling. Etruscan kings? And then, with effort, rose a small flag suggesting that a famous rape had led the Romans to abolish monarchy in favor of republican rule. Thus far my vague response to Angela. Naked Edith in a tub? Thoughts in George of sexual congress. That seemed to fit. But as for masks and such, not even the glimmer of a glimmer.

Here in a nutshell the story. Yes. The first Tarquin (Lucius) was a rich Etruscan immigrant to Rome; later he became a popular king. The second, known as Lucius Superbus, was his son, better remembered as Tarquin the Proud; he gained the throne by the assassination of his father’s popular successor, a Roman. Superbus’ son, one Sextus Tarquinius, raped the wife of a Roman nobleman by name of Lucretia. Here is the story of The Rape of Lucretia as told by Livy—the cause, ultimately, of the end of Roman monarchy.

Now in that story Sextus visits Lucretia while her husband is still away at the war. Lucretia receives the king’s son with due hospitality. But late at night Sextus enters her chambers and gives her a choice: She can make love to him or she can die. If she refuses, he proposes to kill her, kill a male slave, and place them in bed together suggesting that she was entertaining the slave while her husband was at war. She chooses to live and suffers his violation. But later, in public, she reveals his deeds before the king himself and then commits suicide with a dagger. Thus, in a way, she “unmasks” the Tarquin. (The painting shown is Titian’s version.)

But this sort of symbolic unmasking, it seemed to me, is a bit too obscure for the general reader. I went to search out a more vivid representation. A painting, perhaps? In no time at all I discovered what must have been Angela Thirkell’s reference—a play called Le Viol de Lucrèce by André Obey. In this play masked narrators, one for the Tarquin, one for Lucrece, voice the inner thoughts of the actual Tarquin and the actual Lucrece during that crucial scene. And at the most dramatic moment in the play, the narrator-Lucrece takes off her mask and addresses the audience to plead for the character. In a book titled Masks in Modern Drama, the author, Susan Valeria Harris Smith comments as follows (p. 75):

The brief unmasking humanizes and personalizes the action, catching the complacent and removed audience off guard. The departure from the stylistic ritual mode allows Obey to use the mask diversely without violating the mythological context he carefully creates in the first three acts.

The play, written in 1931, was very meaningful in France in that, as Smith points out, the Tarquins’ violation of Rome represented to the French the later German violation of France. The play was turned into an opera in 1946—and the play was undoubtedly produced again in connection with that event; indeed, I found a recent performance of it in 2006 in France. Obey himself became head of the Comédie-Française (1945-1947). In Thirkell’s time, therefore (most likely) that mask-scene had some standing in popular recall, and Thirkell’s use of the phrase consequently produced the intended poetic echoes in this humble scene in her novel. In my case it lead straight to the Internet so that I could unmask the Tarquin for myself.

Angela Thirkell

While I am in the mode of talking about authors—and for a change in subject—I want to recommend the novels of Angela Thirkell.

She was a twentieth century author of extraordinary prolific output. She wrote a novel in almost every year from 1931 through 1961. These are family sagas; most are also love stories. They are funny and yet deadly serious as well. Each novel’s “time” is the year in which they were written; many of the same characters appear in book after book, first as children, later as adults. Thirkell had the brilliant idea to set her novels in Barsetshire, a fictional county invented by Anthony Trollope.

I’ve found that the novels written during and after World War II are by far the best. The earlier works don’t appeal to me quite so much. Something happened to the English during the war, and this change also deepened Thirkell’s own take on the world.

These are truly weird novels. You fall into them. You start to live the lives of the characters. I’ve read about ten of them now. If my library is a good random sample, there will be two or three of them present on the shelves. I started with Love Among the Ruins (1948) and got caught.

Brigitte got me started. She picked up a stray comment on Thirkell in a column by Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times. Klinkenborg said something to the effect that one tends to hide the book lest visitors see what you’re reading (not high literature). Since we think that Klinkenborg himself is right up there with the best of writers, this was enough for a trip to the library. To see Klinkenborg on the subject of Thirkell, read here.