Tuesday
Morning Read
¶ In Aubrey, the remainder of the letter S: Spelman, Spenser, Stokes, Street, Suckling, and Sutton. Two instances of plus ça change:
(Spenser) The chamber there at Sir Erasmus’ is still called Mr Spenser’s Chamber. Lately, at the college taking down the wainscot of his chamber, they found an abundance of cards with stanzas of the Faerie Queene written on them…
(Suckling) ‘Twas as pleasant a journey as ever men had; in the height of a long peace and luxury, and in the venison season. The second night they lay at Marlborough, and walking on the delicate fine downs at the backside of the town, whilst supper was making ready, the maids were drying of clothes on the bushes. Jack Young had espied a very pretty young girl, and had got her to consent to an assignation, which they happened to hear on the other side of the hedge, and were resolved to frustrate his design. They were wont every night to play cards after supper a good while; but Jack Young pretended weariness, etc, and must needs go to bed, not to be persuaded by any means to the contrary. They had their landlady at supper with them; said they to her, “Observe this poor gentleman how he yawns, now is his mad fit coming upon him. We beseech you make fast his doors, and get somebody to watch and look to him, for about midnight he will fall to be most outrageous: get the ostler, or some strong fellow, to stay up, and we will content him, for he is our worthy friend, and a very honest gentleman, only, perhaps, twice in a eyar he falls into these fits.” Jack Young slept not, but was ready to out as the clock struck to the hour of appointment, and then going to open the door he was disappointed, knocks, bounces, stamps, calls, “Tapster! Chamberlain! Ostler!” swears and curses dreadfully; nobody would come to hijm. Sir John and W Davenant were expectant all this time and ready to die with laughter. I know not how, he happened to get open the door, and was coming down stairs. The ostler, a huge lusty fellow, fell upon him, and held him, and cried, “Good sir, take God in your mind, you shall not go out to destroy yourself.” J Young struggled and strived, insomuch that at last he was quite spent and dispirited, and fain to go to bed to rest himself. In the morning, the landlady of the house came to see how he did, and brought him a medicine. “Oh, sir,” said she, “you had a heavy fit last night, pray, sir, be pleased to take some of this to comfort your heart.” Jack Young thought the woman had been mad, and being exceedingly vexed, flirted the porringer of caudle in her face. The next day his comrades told him all the plot, how they cross-bit him….
¶ In Merrill, a eulogy of sorts, the missive of a man about to die of AIDS to one already dead.
“Just see,” the mirror breathed, “see who’s alive,
Who hasn’t forfeited the common touch,The longing to lead everybody’s life”
— Lifelong daydream of precisely those
Whom privilege or talent set apart:
How to atone for the achieved uniqueness?
By dying everybody’s death, dear heart —
Saint, terrorist, fishwife. Stench that appalls.
Famines, machine guns, the Great Plague (your sickness),
Rending of garments, cries, mass burials.
¶ Clive James on François Furet, noted historian of the French Revolution and recovering Communist. “Apart from his powers of realistic observation, one of the forces that shook him loose from his first allegiance was the conclusion he drew from his studies of the French Revolution that its dogmatism was not just incidentally lethal, but necessarily so.”