Do you ever buy those old books with marbled paper inside the cover, that have translucent sheets of paper to protect the colour plates or engraving? Those little rusty freckles known as 'foxing' are strewn along its pages like the liver spots on an elderly hand. It's a book that has lain unexplored perhaps for decades in a cold dank place, so that when you open it the whiff of mildewed paper catches in your nostrils.
As I pick up such a volume I wonder what secrets besides the story printed on its pages will be revealed to me. For the most satisfying discovery, I find, is a little message revealing that the book was a gift for that one ephemeral birthday inscribed with such elegance in ink, or a book plate announcing that this book was a reward for diligence in scripture or outstanding achievement in physical education.
Once upon a time the recipients of these gifts retained their anonymity. Just who was Cyril Scarborough who attended Wimbledon College in 1922? There was no accessible means to trace them before the internet.
Such was the information included inside the front cover of a purchase that I made last year from a charity shop. It was its book-plate as much as the charming illustrations of Mortimer Menpes in 'World Pictures' that piqued my interest. That school name rang a bell. Wasn't that where Paul Merton went to school? Was it possible that Cyril Scarborough was another notable pupil? And so to the search engine I turned - with interesting results.
Thanks to the labyrinthine tentacles of Google, I found that I have in my possession a book that formerly belonged to a man who having attended the Catholic Wimbledon College and receiving said book for Syntax Class, went on to become an army chaplain during WWII.
A courageous man of the cloth simply for doing that, I thought, but caught up in Dunkirk, he turned down a boat back to Blighty, feeling it his duty to stay with the soldiers who had no option but to remain where they were. He spent the rest of the war at various prison camps offering spiritual succour to prisoners and vanquished citizens, alike. This included, most notably - and most exciting for me - a spell at Colditz. Immediately the book I had bought gained an added fascination. I imagined it forlornly waiting in a silent dusty library while its owner plied his ministrations in one of the most infamous prisons of WWII.
A few years ago I bought an 1883 copy of The Boys Own Annual. Expecting a tome of ripping yarns toeing the conservative line of thought, I was somewhat surprised to find that it propounded quite liberal politics - very much lionising William Wilberforce and his anti-slavery crusade. Within its pages I was entertained by explorer narratives, seafaring tales, and detailed instructions as to how to undertake taxidermy as a rewarding pastime. But most movingly, out dropped an old letter from the Conservative Club in Aylesbury which had been used to map out chess manoeuvres by the previous owner of the book.
In my family it was compulsory to write in the front of a book that you were giving as a present. Yet, somewhere along the line I fell out of the habit. Perhaps it's because I unconsciously acknowledge that it will be heading to Oxfam once it has been read, and to daub it with a personal message will actually undermine its retail value to a potential customer attracted to an almost-pristine volume.
The desirability of a second-hand book must depend on what we seek. Are we happy to acknowledge that we are the custodians for someone else's property? For we too will quit our existence, and our books, ex libris Jane Doe, will once again be resold or donated and thus scattered to the winds of fate.
Who will be the next person to pick up my volume of 'Image Makers' and wonder who took the trouble to write 'April 28th 1987' inside the front cover, and why.
Perhaps, as they flick through the glossy pages of Hollywood idols, they will understand that it was a way to mark exactly when that special moment took place when the book I had coveted for weeks finally became more than just an item on a shelf. As I paid over my keenly hoarded pocket money it became my treasured possession and, sitting on my bookshelf still, it offers an ever-open doorway to possibilities and dreams.
Wednesday 20 February 2013
Sunday 17 February 2013
Neither Borrower Nor Lenter Be
Long time no blog.
Lent brings with it the feeling that it is time to ‘give up’
make a sacrifice. Fasting, penitence, prayer, contemplation.
But perhaps it's a mistake to think of these things as activities simply in isolation, they are means to an ends. For re-focussing on what it is
really important; rediscovering what matters.
2013 and for the first time in my life I paid heed to Ash Wednesday
and its inherent expectations. I considered giving up refined sugar - tried for a few days, then got high on a batch of scones. Then a friend posted a most an amazing poem by
TS Eliot called Ash Wednesday. I was plunged into even more profound
contemplations on the 'vanished power of the usual reign'.
Not so long ago BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour included a brief feature on FOMO. I thought I knew what that was, the fear of missing out? Yeah? So what? That's not me, no way. But this was before I became embroiled in e-publishing; in Deviant Art; in a Facebook page for my novel; in a blog...
...and these things bit by bit demand a little piece of my life, a little piece of attention, a little piece of time. And that should be fine while I'm sitting at my computer - I need to check this, then that, ooh that's interesting....I'll just read this - you know - you're reading this blog. But then I found that even while my laptop wasn't open I felt my mind buzzing irritatingly, wondering if there was a new post, a new sale, a new view maybe even a comment or a review!
It was time for a break. Not 40 days. Just enough time to shake off the usual reign of my cyberspace monarch.
Now I'm ready to prepare my tithes again. And if no one downloads or comments or tags or views I will just have to find a juniper tree to sit beneath and re-enact the death of Chatterton (thanks dear S.J.W for that latter image!).
Thursday 7 February 2013
Making a Splash
If I google images I dredge up a
mixture of intriguing gothic beauty, Disneyfied cuteness and hideous desiccated chimeras that have supposedly washed up on beaches.
But Russian folktales tell of
drowned virgins rising from their watery graves as rusalka. Like the mythic sirens,
they would beguile their victims with haunting songs so that, doped up on the
poisonous melodies, the victims would succumb to death without resistance. Anyone
listening to Dvorjak’s moon aria from his opera Rusalka, might have some idea
of how bewitching he imagined this music was.
The theme of seduction is strong
in Scandinavian mermaid legend. Norse goddess, Ran, was the owner of a huge and
pernicious net which she would use to catch men who dared broach her briny
territory. She even loaned her net to Loki for his own misdeeds – but back to
the sex – for once captured in this net Ran’s victims were subjected to
fabulous banquets, entertainment and ultimately a place in the capacious beds
of the goddess and her nine voracious daughters. Just one downside – once
they’d been seduced, the men were drowned. Not a bad way to go, perhaps,
compared to chronic scurvy.
But should stories such as these
lull us with images of alabaster-skinned Pre-Raphaelite sylphs, the rusalki hailing
from more the northern climes are of a more terrifying aspect: ragged, bloated
peeling flesh, knotted hair, glowing green eyes – far closer to the legend of
Jenny Greenteeth who was wont to drown those who wandered too near the water’s
edge.
But the enduring imagery we have is
of mermaids with tumbling locks so personified by Darryl Hannah in Splash, and
so endowed they were of course the bearers of combs and mirrors in order to
preen themselves in preparation to indulge their profligate sexual appetites.
The comb, according to David Cordingly in his book Heroines and Harlots, is an ancient
symbol of female genitals, and thus entwined with the idea of mermaids’ primary
symbolism: that of unfettered female sexual desire, and its threat to men.
I suspect this is not a universal
perception. If I flick through my notes I find Yemaja, the Yoruba ocean goddess
who, having preserved the lives of slaves who endured their
gruelling journey to the Spanish Main, survives herself in African faiths
throughout the Caribbean and Brazil. Indeed New Year in Copacabana Beach
witnesses celebrations and offerings to Yemanja, the great all-giving mother
whose signature blue attire resulted in her being associated her with Virgin
Mary as the Catholic gods and saints were assimilated into the existing
pantheon of the slaves.
But whether nymphomaniacs or
eternal mothers, mermaids, like vampires elicit rational attempts to explain
their prominence in our cultural imagination.
David Cordingly disputes the
enduring myth that weary, sexually frustrated mariners mistook manatees for
mermaids, as most recorded sightings were not anywhere near where these animals
actually live.
Recorded sightings? Of mermaids?
Well, yep.
Colombus claimed he spotted one
off Haiti, and over the following few hundred years hardened seamen such as Henry
Hudson, Richard Whitbourne and John Smith all dutifully recorded their mermaid
observations in their captain’s log.
A possible inspiration for Hans
Christian Anderson’s tragic heroine crops up in 1403 when a mermaid was reportedly
washed ashore in Holland and rescued. She found employment as a spinner and
lived for 15 years without a word ever passing her lips.
A less fortunate mermaid was caught
off the coast of Borneo during the 18th century. Like the fruit of a
child’s afternoon of pond dipping, she was consigned to a container of water where
she emitted sorrowful squeaks and refused to eat. The poor creature, who had
curly brown hair, webbed fingers, breasts and a long eel-like tail, survived a
mere 4 days and 7 hours away from her natural habitat.
What are we to make of these
tales? Is this actually history, folk memory or the phantasmagoric imaginings of
people under the influence of mind-altering substances? Mermaids are impossible, aren’t they? Is it
perhaps it’s an atavistic yearning for our ocean dwelling past?
Maybe. But don’t we want it to be
true?
Why else did viewers get so
excited about a spoof TV documentary that a US scientific agency released an
official denial of the existence of mermaids?
An official denial from a US
government agency…now that sounds fishy…
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