Lucy and Jenny's bedroom is completed and the teddy bears are (sniff) no more. It's now a sophisticated sage green and cream (the actual colours, according to the tin are Flagon (uh?) and Parchment. Anyone who wants to know the exact shade can have look at my fingernails; I'm like a walking colour chart! And, quite honestly, why they were that bothered about the paintwork beats me; a week from now and you won't be able to see the wall for pictures of Johnny Depp, Harry Potter and the more ornamental components of the Sale Sharks Rugby Union football team.
Here's the second part of the Arthur Hastings article. (And, by the way, I can't be the only one to find Hugh Frazier rather nice; a bit like Kevin McCloud but with less architecture.)
Captain Arthur Hastings, OBE
Life after the Styles case improved for the aimless young Captain; after the recruiting job he became private secretary to an M.P. and he went from having "no near relations or friends," (perhaps he was using the word "near" in a geographical sense) to having "many friends and acquaintances" by the time they looked in to the Foscatini murder. His association with Poirot gave him the adventures he craved and Poirot, in return, gained an old friend and a biographer. That Poirot was a close friend can be in no doubt; on seeing Hastings outside Styles Post Office he cries "Mon ami Hastings!" and, true son of Gaul as he was, clasps him in his arms and kisses him. Hastings, with more cosmopolitan panache than one would readily give him credit for, doesn't turn a hair.
Poirot grew to have a rich enjoyment of his friend's foibles. He let him indulge himself in detection, with predictably disastrous, if hilarious, results as in the affair of Miss Mary Marvell, and was happy to let him carry a gun, although he never seems to have used it. "You must join me in my all-night vigil... armed with that excellent revolver of yours." "Rather!" I cried with enthusiasm," is the conversation when they were hunting Naval Plans stolen from the Americans, and Poirot frequently teased him about his preference for girls with auburn hair. He doesn't tease Hastings for his occasional foray in to speculation. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, who kept Dr Watson's cheque book locked up in his desk so he couldn't blow his money on horse-racing, Poirot is more than happy when Hastings is put on to a good thing in the City by a friend and, having "money to burn" takes Poirot off for a weekend at the Grand Metropolitan.
The fact that Poirot, a perfectionist, allowed Hastings to publish the first accounts of his adventures in England argues that he respected Hasting's talents as a writer. And really, he is excellent. Modest and unassuming, he is content to let his brilliant friend shine and present his own efforts and ruffled feathers as comic relief. It is likely that Hastings, as an author, occasionally felt dissatisfied with having to present everything in the first person; by the time he comes to write up the ABC murders, he gives large slices of the narrative in the third person, a technique he was to return to in writing up the investigation surrounding the murder of Emily Arundell. The reason for this dissatisfaction is clear; "It's not all jam," wrote P.G. Wodehouse, of his Jeeves stories, "writing a story in the first person. The reader can know nothing except what Bertie tells him and Bertie can only know a limited amount himself." However, for immediacy and directness, the "I" form is unbeatable. It also has the advantage of pinning down the point of view, which in apprentice authors tends to float like a butterfly, and Hastings was wise to stick to it for his first books. And, after all, how many writers have the chance to share in the escapades of one of the greatest (Poirot would have said the greatest) detectives of the century?
Hastings was, perhaps, mildly irritated by Poirot's insistence that all the girls he fell for had auburn hair. For once, Poirot got it wrong. Cynthia Murdoch, to whom he chivalrously proposes (to her great amusement) certainly had auburn hair, but Dulcie Duveen, who he eventually marries, has dark curls. Thora Grey, who attracts his wandering eye (and that alone - he was a Good Man) in the ABC affair was a Scandinavian blonde. Hastings in the grip of the divine fire is rather interesting. Kneeling on the floor of the sitting room of a Coventry hotel, holding the girl in his arms, he manages to mix molten passion with an accusation of murder. Fortunately Cinderella, who loves her Arthur deeply, refrains from ticking him off for being so bone-headed and kisses him "with a sweetness and fire beyond belief." Which settles the matter. When Poirot intervenes (one of his more tactless moments) Hastings bounds across the room and hold his old friend "in a grip of iron" so that the future Mrs Hastings can escape. All ends well. Poirot knows that Cinderella, as Hastings calls his wife to be, is innocent and, what's more, can prove it. It is partly due to Cinderella's acrobatic skills that all ends as happily as it does. Hastings was not the only detective to mix up love and murder, but the usual procedure was to be convinced of the beloved's innocence and clear her name (as Philip Trent and Lord Peter Wimsey do in "Trent's Last Case" and "Strong Poison") then propose. Hastings is, as far as I know, the only one to be convinced of his girl's guilt whilst offering marriage. The Renauld business ends with talk of the Hastings going out to join Cinderella's sister and her newly-acquired husband, Jack Renauld "on a ranch across the seas" and this is what happened.
Poirot missed his friend badly. At one point he thought he had found another Hastings when, after nearly beaning his next-door neighbour with a vegetable marrow, he makes the acquaintance of Dr. James Sheppard. Poirot sums up his feelings about Hastings to Sheppard very neatly: "I had a friend who for many years never left my side. Occasionally of an imbecility to make one afraid, nevertheless he was very dear to me. Figure to yourself that I miss even his stupidity. His naiveté, his honest outlook, the pleasure of delighting and surprising him by my superior gifts - all these I miss more than I can tell you."
Dr Sheppard, as we know, proved to be a wash-out in his role of substitute Best Friend. "Je ne peux pas obtenir l'assistance dont j'ai besoin," we feel Poirot may have sighed as him returned him to store, or, as we would say in English, "You can't get the staff."
After reading that crack about his imbecility, Hastings may have allowed himself a feeling of righteous pleasure as to how the Roger Ackroyd case turned out.
It was a year and a half later that he came back to England. Perhaps in the episode that followed, he could have wished he'd stayed in the Argentine. His wife could certainly be forgiven for doing so. Tracking down the Big Four (one of his fruitier adventures) took her husband nearly a year and for a large part of that he was being drugged, tricked, made to assume uncomfortable disguises (he wore cheek pads for three weeks without a murmur) and blown up by nasty Chinamen. If that wasn't enough, Cinderella Hastings had to spend most of the year in hiding in a secret locale arranged by Poirot. After this, it will raise no eyebrows for anyone to learn that it was five years before she would let him return to England. Having said that, he seems to spend the time in mere pleasure-seeking at St. Looe in Cornwall. This time his life remained unimperilled. A burst of malaria was nothing compared to be thrown to his death in the river Thames by the servant of Li Chang Yen. Reassured, perhaps, Mrs Hastings allows Arthur to come back the following year, which he spends junketing at the Savoy and going to theatres in London, with only the occasional corpse to mar the even tenor of his days. From then until the ABC business is a matter of three years. When he reaches England this time, Hastings is a sobered character. He has been awarded the O.B.E. (what for?) but it is in no happy mood he looks in on Hercule Poirot. Cinderella is, as usual, back home on the ranch and, oddly enough, it is the ranch that occupies his thoughts. "It had been a difficult time for us out there... we had suffered from the world depression." Fortunately, a series of juicy murders occurred to cheer him up, but there is also the figure of Thora Grey.
Now, Cinderella must have read his books. Although the Renauld millions must have come in handy round the ranch, and Arthur's earnings may have seemed small in comparison, she must have been proud of both his literary fame and the money they brought. Reading the account, she wouldn't have been human if she hadn't suffered a twinge of jealousy. And this is a woman, remember, whom Hastings had thought quite capable of knifing an erring lover. Women in those days, doughty creatures, could put up with a lot. Phyllis Drummond, wife of Bulldog, suffered years of being kidnapped, threatened, and of having mysterious lascars, Chinaman and Nameless Things invade her privacy. But - and it's a big but - Hugh (Bulldog) Drummond never looked at another girl. Although Cinderella must have known she could trust her husband, the ABC case must have caused her some concern. Hastings was back on his native shores the following year, and this time he had his nose to the grindstone right away, looking in to the murder of Emily Arundell. Am I the only one to think that his aversion to the elegant Theresa Arundell (despite being "like an exaggerated drawing in black and white" he also mentions her "exquisite figure") slightly overdone? In any event, when Arthur returns home this time, complete with Bob, the wire-haired terrier, he stays at home. There are no more adventures from his pen. Cinderella Hastings, the most unsung heroine in modern fiction, had finally had enough.
Poirot's cases as written up by Captain Hastings consist of nine books which are:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) The Big Four (1927)
Poirot's Early Cases (1923) Peril at End House (1932)
Murder on the Links (1923) Lord Edgware Dies (1933)
Poirot Investigates (1924) The ABC Murders (1936)
Dumb Witness (1937)
There is also, apparently, another book called "Curtain" in which Hastings kills off Poirot. As I hate books where the hero dies, I prefer to think of it as a complete fabrication. And, as Poirot was alive and kicking long after this was written in the 1940's, who’s to say I’m not right? Maybe Hastings was getting his own back for all those cracks about how cloth-headed he was!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Captain Arthur Hastings OBE
I've been stuck up a stepladder painting Lucy and Jenny's bedroom this week as they've decided that they're Too Old for teddy-bear wallpaper. Well, I suppose at 15 and 17 they are a bit. And, my constant companion in these hours of toil has been my beloved collection of Agatha Christie tapes.
They set me thinking - as you do - about the role of best friends in detective fiction. The archtype is, of course, Watson, but Agatha Christie's Hastings is an aimiable example of the Best Friend too. Here's the first part of an article I wrote about Hastings. The second part's next week. I might have finished the bedroom ceiling by then!
Captain Arthur Hastings, O.B.E.
"I've a feeling," said Tupppence, "that this particular adventure will be call 'the triumph of Hastings."
"Never," said Tommy. "It isn't done. Once the idiot friend, always the idiot friend."
"Partners in Crime" 1929
The affair at Styles takes place in the summer of 1917. Arthur Hastings had been "invalided home from the front" or, as he says in the run-up to the Renauld murder, "after the Somme they invalided me out altogether." Amiens, where there was a big base hospital, obviously stirred up some sombre memories for Hastings for it is on his train journey through it that he recalls for the only time that he was wounded on two separate occasions. He, brave man, says little about his injuries. Unlike Dr Watson, whose wound seemed to shift from his leg to his arm and back again, we don't even know where Hastings was hurt. That it was severe, we can be in no doubt. The battle (or rather campaign) of the Somme lasted from 1st July to 18th November 1916. For him to have "spent some months in a depressing Convalescent Home," and to be given a month's sick leave and still be at a loose end the following summer argues a considerable injury. We know, too, that he was never again passed as fit for Active Service. Instead, as he says in his account of the kidnapping of David MacAdam, he was given a recruiting job. For a trained soldier, especially one whose rank put him in what has been called the "flower of the British Army" - i.e. the junior officers, whose casualty figures far exceeded any other ranks - not to be returned to the Front means that he must have been seriously hurt.
He was born in 1887 (he was thirty when the Styles affair started) and we can infer that he came from Essex. He had an unspecified number of sisters, seemingly no brothers, and a female cousin who nursed during the war. His parents are, of course, an a priori assumption, but from the fact that he never mentions them we can presume that they are dead.
The young Arthur was sent to Eton, where, together with attaining an Old School Tie, (which Poirot recognizes on the Nile steamer Karnack) he attained what might be called the best of the Old School Manner. Always correct in his behaviour, he is punctilious in his knowledge of what One May and May Not do. Poirot derives considerable, if affectionate amusement from this trait on many occasions, such as when, for purposes of detection, he has to search Nick Buckley's bedroom, and Hastings, blushing hotly, protests against looking at a lady's underclothes. After leaving school he might have gone to University but never mentions any friends from that era. Perhaps he went, instead, straight in to Lloyds, where his occupancy of an office stool brought him in to contact with Hercule Poirot.
One of Hasting's more unsung talents is his fluent command of French. When the maid, Célestine, is accused of pinching Mrs Opalsen's pearls at the Grand Metropolitan, he has no trouble in following her stream of "rapid and virulent French". At the Cavendish's dinner table he confesses to a "secret hankering to be a detective," because he "came across a little man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me." It was while he was standing by the Pyramids with Poirot, trying vainly to reconcile him to the "cursed sand" that he remembered a holiday in Knocke-sur-mer with its "dunes impeccables". It doesn't seem too much to suppose that the young, linguistically gifted Hastings should have been sent to Belgium to investigate an insurance fraud. As it involved the then head of the Belgium Police, it must have been a fairly major affair. It's a great shame Hastings never saw fit to write the case up. Poirot triumphed ("his flair had been extraordinary") and Hastings obviously fell in to the role of amiable helper that was to be his lot in his relationship with Poirot.
They set me thinking - as you do - about the role of best friends in detective fiction. The archtype is, of course, Watson, but Agatha Christie's Hastings is an aimiable example of the Best Friend too. Here's the first part of an article I wrote about Hastings. The second part's next week. I might have finished the bedroom ceiling by then!
Captain Arthur Hastings, O.B.E.
"I've a feeling," said Tupppence, "that this particular adventure will be call 'the triumph of Hastings."
"Never," said Tommy. "It isn't done. Once the idiot friend, always the idiot friend."
"Partners in Crime" 1929
The affair at Styles takes place in the summer of 1917. Arthur Hastings had been "invalided home from the front" or, as he says in the run-up to the Renauld murder, "after the Somme they invalided me out altogether." Amiens, where there was a big base hospital, obviously stirred up some sombre memories for Hastings for it is on his train journey through it that he recalls for the only time that he was wounded on two separate occasions. He, brave man, says little about his injuries. Unlike Dr Watson, whose wound seemed to shift from his leg to his arm and back again, we don't even know where Hastings was hurt. That it was severe, we can be in no doubt. The battle (or rather campaign) of the Somme lasted from 1st July to 18th November 1916. For him to have "spent some months in a depressing Convalescent Home," and to be given a month's sick leave and still be at a loose end the following summer argues a considerable injury. We know, too, that he was never again passed as fit for Active Service. Instead, as he says in his account of the kidnapping of David MacAdam, he was given a recruiting job. For a trained soldier, especially one whose rank put him in what has been called the "flower of the British Army" - i.e. the junior officers, whose casualty figures far exceeded any other ranks - not to be returned to the Front means that he must have been seriously hurt.
He was born in 1887 (he was thirty when the Styles affair started) and we can infer that he came from Essex. He had an unspecified number of sisters, seemingly no brothers, and a female cousin who nursed during the war. His parents are, of course, an a priori assumption, but from the fact that he never mentions them we can presume that they are dead.
The young Arthur was sent to Eton, where, together with attaining an Old School Tie, (which Poirot recognizes on the Nile steamer Karnack) he attained what might be called the best of the Old School Manner. Always correct in his behaviour, he is punctilious in his knowledge of what One May and May Not do. Poirot derives considerable, if affectionate amusement from this trait on many occasions, such as when, for purposes of detection, he has to search Nick Buckley's bedroom, and Hastings, blushing hotly, protests against looking at a lady's underclothes. After leaving school he might have gone to University but never mentions any friends from that era. Perhaps he went, instead, straight in to Lloyds, where his occupancy of an office stool brought him in to contact with Hercule Poirot.
One of Hasting's more unsung talents is his fluent command of French. When the maid, Célestine, is accused of pinching Mrs Opalsen's pearls at the Grand Metropolitan, he has no trouble in following her stream of "rapid and virulent French". At the Cavendish's dinner table he confesses to a "secret hankering to be a detective," because he "came across a little man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me." It was while he was standing by the Pyramids with Poirot, trying vainly to reconcile him to the "cursed sand" that he remembered a holiday in Knocke-sur-mer with its "dunes impeccables". It doesn't seem too much to suppose that the young, linguistically gifted Hastings should have been sent to Belgium to investigate an insurance fraud. As it involved the then head of the Belgium Police, it must have been a fairly major affair. It's a great shame Hastings never saw fit to write the case up. Poirot triumphed ("his flair had been extraordinary") and Hastings obviously fell in to the role of amiable helper that was to be his lot in his relationship with Poirot.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Reasons To Be Cheerful
It was prize-giving night at school this week. It’s a lovely occasion, a chance for everyone to celebrate the hard work that goes into GCSE’s and A levels, a chance to cheer for all the kids who’ve done really well. If you’ve read the wonderful description of Gussie Fink-Nottle presenting the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School in PG Wodehouse’s Right-Ho, Jeeves! you’ll know the sort of thing I mean. No, no-one got plastered and yes, everything went fine, but the incidental details that PG puts in are spot on; details such as the well-scrubbed air everyone has and the gentle sound of a lot of people being quietly, benevolently, indulgently bored. Bored, that is, until the Main Event, which is Your Child getting their certificate. That’s not boring. That’s the best bit ever.
Actually, the whole thing was pretty good. If you only read the papers or watched TV, it’d never occur to you that any teenager is hardworking, conscientious and a nice person who’s fun to be with. Like a normal human being, in fact. Oh yes, and not some sort of mobile list of Problems. So it was good to sit in the school hall (an ordinary comprehensive school, at that) and listen to achievements being celebrated.
Celebration is something we could probably all do more of. I’ve not talking about acting like some sort of Kellog’s Cereal family, all bright smiles all the time (Please; shush; it’s breakfast, OK? Just let me go and chill out somewhere) or whooping with joy as the contestants do on America’s Next Top Model almost constantly. This would be trying. However, celebration doesn't usually just happen, it needs to be made to happen.
My friend, Angela Churm, had a TV play broadcast this week. It was an episode of Doctors, the BBC’s mid-day soap and she wrote it. Yo! Naturally enough, we celebrated; watched the episode, broke out the champagne, sang Happy Television Episode To You! and had a nice meal. Because, you see, if we hadn’t done, it would have all felt a bit flat. The BBC (a bit remiss, this) don’t send flowers and congratulations cards to their writers. But it was a real red-letter day. (Red letter days are called that because of the old custom of marking Saints’ or Holy Days (aka Holidays) in red on the Church calendar.)
So well done to all the kids with their certificates. And Angela. And thanks for the champagne!
Actually, the whole thing was pretty good. If you only read the papers or watched TV, it’d never occur to you that any teenager is hardworking, conscientious and a nice person who’s fun to be with. Like a normal human being, in fact. Oh yes, and not some sort of mobile list of Problems. So it was good to sit in the school hall (an ordinary comprehensive school, at that) and listen to achievements being celebrated.
Celebration is something we could probably all do more of. I’ve not talking about acting like some sort of Kellog’s Cereal family, all bright smiles all the time (Please; shush; it’s breakfast, OK? Just let me go and chill out somewhere) or whooping with joy as the contestants do on America’s Next Top Model almost constantly. This would be trying. However, celebration doesn't usually just happen, it needs to be made to happen.
My friend, Angela Churm, had a TV play broadcast this week. It was an episode of Doctors, the BBC’s mid-day soap and she wrote it. Yo! Naturally enough, we celebrated; watched the episode, broke out the champagne, sang Happy Television Episode To You! and had a nice meal. Because, you see, if we hadn’t done, it would have all felt a bit flat. The BBC (a bit remiss, this) don’t send flowers and congratulations cards to their writers. But it was a real red-letter day. (Red letter days are called that because of the old custom of marking Saints’ or Holy Days (aka Holidays) in red on the Church calendar.)
So well done to all the kids with their certificates. And Angela. And thanks for the champagne!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
When I got married, oh, quite a few years ago now, we went to Belgium for our honeymoon.
Yeah, right, I know Belgium isn’t perhaps the most romantic spot in the world – Greek islands or the south of France do perhaps win out there – but in those far-off days, with a limited budget, Greek islands seemed about as get-at-able as the dark side of the moon and Belgium was Abroad. There was different money, different-but-the-same food (Belgium chips are served with tartare sauce which was an absolute revelation; we even had garlic!!! Wow, this was really going it!) people talked in Foreign and, perhaps nicest of all, were the cafes.
The main square in Bruges has a choice of cafes which are an agreeable cross between an English pub and a French café terrace. You can eat and drink outside but, because the Belgium climate is as interesting as Britain’s, all the cafes have a big, quietish room in which blue-overalled whiskery-chinned blokes sip their beer or coffee, small children act like members of the human race and families relax. The décor runs to dark wood, brass and comfortable chairs and all in all, exudes an atmosphere of contented well-being.
And on the bar was a tray of poppies and a collecting tin. Now, in those fledgling days, I was surprised to see them. Remembrance Day poppies were British, surely? It was mid-October and these were the first poppies we’d seen that year. The lady behind the bar beamed as we picked up a poppy from the tray and beamed even more as she heard our accents.
Ingerlish?
Well, yes.
More beams and then, without any self-consciousness at all, she declaimed, word perfect and in a carrying voice, In Flander’s fields the poppies grow, between the crosses, row on row…
The whiskery blue-overalled stopped drinking and rustling their newspapers and nodded in grave approval. Children gazed in polite admiration and their parents listened attentively. I can’t imagine what would happen if the bar-maid in an English pub got overtaken by poetry but it wouldn’t be this reverent silence.
Belgium? Bruges? In Flanders’ fields…? Damnit, that’s where we were. If not in the fields, exactly, certainly in Flanders. Flanders. That’s why (uh, duh!) the Foreign being spoken wasn’t French but Flemish. This was where my granddad (and yours too, most probably) had fought the Great War. And the Belgiums hadn’t forgotten. It was one of those moments when history catches up with you in a rush.
Since then I’ve been back to Flanders’ Fields and realised just how much the poppy means to the Belgiums. I’ve been to the dressing station (a first port of call for the wounded) beside the Canal de l'Yser where Major John McCrea, a Canadian doctor, anguished by the death of his friend, wrote In Flander’s fields. The dressing-station looks for all the world like a set of old garages with the doors off. It’s not been spruced up and is more real, somehow, because of it.
A few hundred yards away, at the Menin gate in Ypres, the Last Post is played every night at eight o’clock. Every night, and the traffic stops and wreaths are laid and it all seems as if it could only happen once a year but no, it’s every night. The Ypres Fire Service have played the Last Post each evening from about 1920 or so. When the Nazis marched into Ypres in the Second World War, the ceremony was stopped. On the day the Nazis left, the Fire Service returned.
With all that in my head, I was disappointed this Sunday, when, at the local Remembrance Day ceremony at the War Memorial, we prayed that, We should commit ourselves to responsible living and faithful service, and to Work for a just future for all humanity and other laudable sentiments but we didn’t say the Poppy poem. I mean, you can’t disagree with the ideas, but I can’t see anyone, not even a Belgium barmaid, quoting them.
So here is Major McCrea’s poem. Perhaps you could drop a coin into a Poppy tin. It’s a very small way of keeping the faith McCrea talks about – and of helping the living, too.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Yeah, right, I know Belgium isn’t perhaps the most romantic spot in the world – Greek islands or the south of France do perhaps win out there – but in those far-off days, with a limited budget, Greek islands seemed about as get-at-able as the dark side of the moon and Belgium was Abroad. There was different money, different-but-the-same food (Belgium chips are served with tartare sauce which was an absolute revelation; we even had garlic!!! Wow, this was really going it!) people talked in Foreign and, perhaps nicest of all, were the cafes.
The main square in Bruges has a choice of cafes which are an agreeable cross between an English pub and a French café terrace. You can eat and drink outside but, because the Belgium climate is as interesting as Britain’s, all the cafes have a big, quietish room in which blue-overalled whiskery-chinned blokes sip their beer or coffee, small children act like members of the human race and families relax. The décor runs to dark wood, brass and comfortable chairs and all in all, exudes an atmosphere of contented well-being.
And on the bar was a tray of poppies and a collecting tin. Now, in those fledgling days, I was surprised to see them. Remembrance Day poppies were British, surely? It was mid-October and these were the first poppies we’d seen that year. The lady behind the bar beamed as we picked up a poppy from the tray and beamed even more as she heard our accents.
Ingerlish?
Well, yes.
More beams and then, without any self-consciousness at all, she declaimed, word perfect and in a carrying voice, In Flander’s fields the poppies grow, between the crosses, row on row…
The whiskery blue-overalled stopped drinking and rustling their newspapers and nodded in grave approval. Children gazed in polite admiration and their parents listened attentively. I can’t imagine what would happen if the bar-maid in an English pub got overtaken by poetry but it wouldn’t be this reverent silence.
Belgium? Bruges? In Flanders’ fields…? Damnit, that’s where we were. If not in the fields, exactly, certainly in Flanders. Flanders. That’s why (uh, duh!) the Foreign being spoken wasn’t French but Flemish. This was where my granddad (and yours too, most probably) had fought the Great War. And the Belgiums hadn’t forgotten. It was one of those moments when history catches up with you in a rush.
Since then I’ve been back to Flanders’ Fields and realised just how much the poppy means to the Belgiums. I’ve been to the dressing station (a first port of call for the wounded) beside the Canal de l'Yser where Major John McCrea, a Canadian doctor, anguished by the death of his friend, wrote In Flander’s fields. The dressing-station looks for all the world like a set of old garages with the doors off. It’s not been spruced up and is more real, somehow, because of it.
A few hundred yards away, at the Menin gate in Ypres, the Last Post is played every night at eight o’clock. Every night, and the traffic stops and wreaths are laid and it all seems as if it could only happen once a year but no, it’s every night. The Ypres Fire Service have played the Last Post each evening from about 1920 or so. When the Nazis marched into Ypres in the Second World War, the ceremony was stopped. On the day the Nazis left, the Fire Service returned.
With all that in my head, I was disappointed this Sunday, when, at the local Remembrance Day ceremony at the War Memorial, we prayed that, We should commit ourselves to responsible living and faithful service, and to Work for a just future for all humanity and other laudable sentiments but we didn’t say the Poppy poem. I mean, you can’t disagree with the ideas, but I can’t see anyone, not even a Belgium barmaid, quoting them.
So here is Major McCrea’s poem. Perhaps you could drop a coin into a Poppy tin. It’s a very small way of keeping the faith McCrea talks about – and of helping the living, too.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Monday, November 2, 2009
TheHeir's loom and Agatha Christie
Do you know where the word “Heirloom” comes from? I didn’t until last week. It was half-term and, like many another parent, I was faced with a family who wanted Something To Do. Now, by and large, the aforesaid family are fairly self-sufficient in the Something To Do department. One of the better aspects of everyone getting that much older, is that – by and large – all they really need is transport and money. Sometimes they even provide that for themselves. However, the ditact went out: we had to do something together.
That’s why we ended up at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire. It’s a cotton mill, one of the oldest in the country and is in a very picturesque part of the countryside because it was originally powered by water. When steam power came in, it made more sense for the factories to be huddled together in towns, but for a long period of time, a cotton mill had to be situated next to a river. The water wheel itself is massive and it’s a terrific sight to see it turning on its ponderous way.
The mill not only houses all the old machinery, it also acts as an exhibition centre for the story of cotton. A lady dressed in vaguely Eighteenth century peasant gear took us through the process on cotton manufacture as it used to be conducted at home from fluffy bits from plants to yards of cloth. The loom is a whacking great thing – about eight feet across by six foot high - housed in a wooden frame. A loom represented a serious investment on the part of a family and were passed down from generation to generation becoming, in fact, the Heir’s Loom. As cotton manufacture moved into factories, machines got bigger and much more powerful, but the essential process remained the same.
There’s an interesting Agatha Christie connection with this part of Cheshire. Agatha’s sister married a Manchester manufacturer, James Watts. (The enormous Watts' Warehouse in the centre of Manchester is now a hotel). Agatha spent a lot of time at the Watts' house, Abney Hall. Abney Hall is about five miles from Quarry Bank. She used the solidly Victorian Abney Hall as the blueprint for the aristocratic Chimneys in The Secret of Chimneys and a whole raft of other country houses and paid a delightful homage to the hall in the introduction to The Adventure of The Christmas Pudding. However, perhaps the most striking “borrowing” is the name of Styal village for the house at the heart of her first book, The Mysterious Affair At Styles. (I’m not sure if the change of spelling is deliberate, by the way; like many another outstanding writer, Agatha Christie’s spelling was lousy.)
One lovely feature of Quarry Bank Mill is the millowner’s garden. It's bounded by a large cliff of Old Red or Devonian Sandstone. The rock, which was laid down when the land which is now Britain was at the centre of a desert continent. As the name “Devonian” implies, it's common in Devon – the cliffs of Torquay, Agatha Christie’s home town are made of Devonian sandstone – and must have struck a chord with the young Agatha. The garden has only recently been opened to the public and still has a secret air about it. I'm willing to bet this was the garden she had in mind when she wrote about the very sinister Quarry Garden in the late novel, Halloween Party.
S’interesting what you can learn on a day out, isn’t it?
That’s why we ended up at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire. It’s a cotton mill, one of the oldest in the country and is in a very picturesque part of the countryside because it was originally powered by water. When steam power came in, it made more sense for the factories to be huddled together in towns, but for a long period of time, a cotton mill had to be situated next to a river. The water wheel itself is massive and it’s a terrific sight to see it turning on its ponderous way.
The mill not only houses all the old machinery, it also acts as an exhibition centre for the story of cotton. A lady dressed in vaguely Eighteenth century peasant gear took us through the process on cotton manufacture as it used to be conducted at home from fluffy bits from plants to yards of cloth. The loom is a whacking great thing – about eight feet across by six foot high - housed in a wooden frame. A loom represented a serious investment on the part of a family and were passed down from generation to generation becoming, in fact, the Heir’s Loom. As cotton manufacture moved into factories, machines got bigger and much more powerful, but the essential process remained the same.
There’s an interesting Agatha Christie connection with this part of Cheshire. Agatha’s sister married a Manchester manufacturer, James Watts. (The enormous Watts' Warehouse in the centre of Manchester is now a hotel). Agatha spent a lot of time at the Watts' house, Abney Hall. Abney Hall is about five miles from Quarry Bank. She used the solidly Victorian Abney Hall as the blueprint for the aristocratic Chimneys in The Secret of Chimneys and a whole raft of other country houses and paid a delightful homage to the hall in the introduction to The Adventure of The Christmas Pudding. However, perhaps the most striking “borrowing” is the name of Styal village for the house at the heart of her first book, The Mysterious Affair At Styles. (I’m not sure if the change of spelling is deliberate, by the way; like many another outstanding writer, Agatha Christie’s spelling was lousy.)
One lovely feature of Quarry Bank Mill is the millowner’s garden. It's bounded by a large cliff of Old Red or Devonian Sandstone. The rock, which was laid down when the land which is now Britain was at the centre of a desert continent. As the name “Devonian” implies, it's common in Devon – the cliffs of Torquay, Agatha Christie’s home town are made of Devonian sandstone – and must have struck a chord with the young Agatha. The garden has only recently been opened to the public and still has a secret air about it. I'm willing to bet this was the garden she had in mind when she wrote about the very sinister Quarry Garden in the late novel, Halloween Party.
S’interesting what you can learn on a day out, isn’t it?
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