Leisure in a Democracy

A very short extract from the first page of "Leisure in a Democracy" by Viscount Samuel. This was The Sixth Annual Lecture of the National Book League given on November 23, 1948.

The nineteenth century had a poor opinion of the eighteenth; and no doubt, on the whole, its strictures were justified. Yet there was a certain atmosphere about the eighteenth century which we in these days may recall with some regret, even with a little envy. The England of the Vicar of Wakefield and Jane Austen; the London of Canaletto; Georgian architecture and gardens, furniture and pictures, and silver in the candle-light; the prose of Addison and Steele and Gibbon, the poetry of Gray and Cowper; families on Sundays, tranquil and neatly dressed, walking along the footpaths decently to Church. We look around us, and we feel there is something that we are missing.
That way of life could not last. There came the French Revolution, the Terror, the Marseillaise; the armies of Napoleon sweeping over Europe; at one moment poised menacingly close there at Boulogne. La carriere ouverte aux talents; also freedom of thought - opportunity open to ideas. There came science, invention, machines, and the Industrial Revolution: vast, shapeless factory towns, hastily built; millions of working-people, early in the morning, late in the evening, crowding in and out of the gates of the mills, mines, ironworks, shipyards. Afterwards came the Second Industrial Revolution - with electricity, chemical processes, the internal combustion engine, motorcars and airplanes. And now we hear the first rumblings of the Third Industrial Revolution, destined perhaps to be even more subversive than either of the others, tapping for man's service the primal energy of the universe.
We draw breath and look around us, and we are aware of the kind of civilisation that we have. We find in this island six times as many people living as there were in the middle of the eighteenth century. We find cramped homes, congested cities, rush-hour travel, hurry and strain; nature crowded out. As Emerson said;
Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind.

Three Women Diarists

This is a short extract from the introduction from "Three Women Diarists" by Margaret Willy published by the National Book League in 1964. The diarists featured are: Celia Fiennes, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Katherine Mansfield.

The keeping of diaries, as demonstrated by men from Pepys and Evelyn onwards, is by no means a mainly feminine province. Nevertheless there is something in the activity which strongly appeals to female instinct and inclination. The figure of the young girl writing up her private journal in her room late at night is a familiar one in fiction. And in fact, although we might hesitate to go as far as the writer who suggested 'that women make more refreshing, more effective diarists than men', the art of the English diary has been enriched by a good many notable contributions on the distaff side.

"Children of the Silence"

This the preface to "Children of the Silence" by F.W. Kenswil. An account of the Aboriginal Indians of the Upper Mazaruni River, British Guiana. Published in 1946.

In this far-away piece of British Guiana, a most backward and much neglected race of people has been living; living the aimless lives of the hopeless. As we know, we reap, even if we ignorantly sow. This is the inexorable law of life; and, in my observances among these people, I have proved how sadly true this is.
I have been living for twenty-seven years among these Aboriginal Indiansl, I have shared their many sorrows and their few joys, and as the years have rolled by, I have seen many strange, weird, and unbelievable things. I have seen the deep pathos of life, untold suffering, unutterable degredation; but I have also seen those, who in spite of their plight, are looking for the light, and, oh! so wistfully longing for a better chance in life.
Few people have any true knowledge of the life and customs of these Indians, and regarding their origin, no one has been able to advance anything but the most vague hypotheses.
In putting forth this little book, I have tried to show the good that's in the race, necessarily exposing the evil, and the hard fight for existence that has been the lot of these "Children of the Silence".

New Statesman From 1939

Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti was born in London on 5 December 1830, the fourth and youngest child of Gabriele Rossetti and his wife Frances. Both as a person and as a poet Christia was to be so greatly influenced by her family that in any study of her life and works it is necessary to go into the family background in some detail.
Like his elder son and his younger daughter, Gabriele Rossetti was a poet. He held the position of Curator of Antique Bronzes and Marbles in the Museum at Naples, but his clearly expressed liberal opinions made him objectionable to the government of King Ferdinand and he was obliged to flee the country. Arriving in England in 1824 .....Taken from Christina Rossetti by Georgina Battiscombe SOLD

James Clerk Maxwell

Weird Bookmarks We Find

The Sunflowers (A Village Drama)

Ebenezer Matthews smelled of the soil. His furrowed skin, of a warm tanned colour, gave one a strong suggestion of it. His hands, broad and knotted, never seemed altogether at their ease unless they were gripping a spade, or pressing down the soft earth about tender, newly planted roots.
It was the expression of his eyes which contributed so largely to the atmosphere of something untamed and primal that clung about him. Deep-set eyes he had, bright and penetrating, with an undying sense of space and breadth in their depths. Such a look does one see often in the eyes of captive wild animals. On Saturdays he worked with never failing regularity in the small patch of garden at the back of the house. On these occasions his heart was away, roving on the sinister barren plains of Dartmoor. In the midst of that wild tract of land he had been born and bred. He knew and loved every foot of it. In him had been always a strange, quixotic strain; something of the dreamer and idealist. That was why, when he had been an inarticulate lad of twenty-four, he had married Maisie Gifford.

Maisie was a stupid girl, but the rich red blood of her forefathers flowed vigorously through her veins, giving to her skin a vivid, almost rioutously brilliant colouring. She had "got into trouble" a few months back, and though she refused stubbornly to reveal her lover's name, local suspicion centred largely round a certain "furrin" artist whom her mother had lodged during the previous summer.

Slowly Ebenezer realised, although but dimly, that a living human creature was being deliberately tortured. Much in the same manner as he would have stayed up a whole night in the stable poulticing a horse which had an abscess (and this he had not infrequently done), he asked Maisie to marry him, and she, not fully comprehending his motives, but passionately grateful to anyone who treated her like a human being, married him.

To be continued

Love and Mushrooms

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. With mushrooms it is so simple, you salt them well, put them aside and have patience. But with love, you have no sooner alighted on anything that bears even the remotest resemblance to it than you are perfectly certain it is only a genuine specimen, but perhaps the only genuine mushroom ungathered. It takes a dreadful number of toadstools to make you realize life is not one long mushroom.

Katherine Mansfield

The Ideal Inn

A big brewery firm has started a new kind of tavern where comfort will be the first consideration. Nothing could be better. The average public-house offers you drink unlimited, but good food never. In this new tavern there will be no bar lounging. There is a flower-decked veranda, dancing if you please, and games of skill. The usual habit of those who know of a perfect inn is not to give the address. This of course, is mere selfishness; the inn I speak of has been started at Bellingham, near Catford. The attributes of a good inn are a good joint of cold roast beef, home-cured bacon, good cheese, and well-flavoured butter. In how many inns in England to-day can these simple things be obtained? I intend to sample the "Fellowship Inn" at Catford.

This was taken from the John O'London's Weekly of July 26, 1924.

Witchcraft

I have been gathering wolves' hairs,
The mad dog's foam and the adder's ears;
The spurging of a dead man's eyes.
And all since the evening star did rise.

Ben Jonson

We are lucky enough to have the original publication of this work published in the 17th Century. It is not for sale.

The Cruellest Book In The World?

In 1487 a book was published which gave rise to such human misery and dissension that it might well be termed the cruellest book in the world. Unknown now, save to scholars, the "Malleus Maleficarum," written by a German, was the great authority on witchcraft and contained every possible reference to witches that a vindictive mind could find. Thousands of old women throughout Europe were put to death because of this learned proof that in all probability they were in league with the Devil.
It is amazing nowadays to read of this enormous controversy which raged over a continent and only subsided towards the end of the seventeenth century. We must remember that Shakespeare and Milton, in common with the rest of mankind at the time, believed in witchcraft.

The Credibility Stakes

Belief in the Devil has gone up from 37% to 48% since 1964 in America, with another 20% half persuaded that he exists. Since the proportion of those claiming to believe in God has gone down from 77% to 69% over the same time period, it is now possible that the Devil might one day draw ahead of God in the credibility stakes.

Illustrating Alice

The illustrations to Alice were for Lewis Carroll himself an integral part of the story, and his own weirdly intense drawings in the original manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground throw fascinating light on the subconscious psychological meanings. Tenniel later based his famous drawings closely on these prototypes, with Carroll interesting himself in their progress at every stage until the poor artist was reduced to calling him 'impossible'. It's said that out of the ninety-odd drawings Tenniel did for both Alice books, Carroll only accepted Humpty Dumpty happily - the rest he criticised in practically every detail before requesting the artist to redraw them. The illustrators of Carroll's other books all found him an extremely difficult man to work with as he tried to get them to reproduce exactly his own mental picture of the scene, 'almost as though the artist might photograph Carroll's own imagery', as Phyllis Greenacre aptly puts it in one of the essays in Robert Phillips' enthralling collection Aspects of Alice. In fact her account of his anxious perfectionism includes an absolutely hair-raising story of what the young caricaturist Harry Furniss had to put up with when Carroll, because of his compulsive secrecy, would only send him the manuscript of Sylvie and Bruno after he had cut it into horizontal strips of four or five inches each, then placed the whole lot in a sack and shaken it up. Even though this particular story may be apocryphal, the stammering reclusive Carroll was an obsessional neurotic, who hated unhealthy draughts as much as he loathed little boys, and wrote letters in purple ink all of which had to exactly fill the page, and were then carefully indexed to make up a registry of letters sent and received which at his death numbered more than ninety-eight thousand items.
A complicated man, but without his neurosis it's possible that the wonderful illustrations that brought his stories to life would never have been produced.

Should Poetry Rhyme?

Should your poetry Rhyme?
Should dancers keep in time?
Should should be used again,
Or should I show restrain...t.