March beginnings: "Midway on our path through life, I found myself in a dark wood, Where the way ahead was obscured"*

The Cathedral and Gundulf's Tower,  from "The Gentleman's Magazine"

"An ancient English Cathedral town?  How can the ancient English Cathedral town be here! The well-known massive grey square tower of its old Cathedral?  How can that be here!  There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect.  What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up?  Maybe it is set up by the Sultan's orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one.  It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers.  Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and infinite in number and attendants.  Still, the Cathedral tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike.  Stay! Is the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on top of the post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry?  Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the consideration of this possibility.
Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. "
Charles Dickens, 1870

Illustration by Charles Keeping, Folio Society edition 1982

 So begins The Mystery of Edwin Drood, with the Cathedral choir-master, John Jasper, awakening in a Limehouse opium den.  This was Dickens' last, unfinished novel, being written for publishing in monthly parts.  He died suddenly on June 9th, 1870, leaving the conclusion of this last work itself an unsolved mystery.

The May monthly part, with scenes from the novel, 1870.

A young Luke Fildes made his name when he was chosen to illustrate The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

*The opening lines of Dante's Inferno (various translations):

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, Che la diretta via era smarrita."    

An "entente cordiale" ? The Headless Spook

Whenever I travel on the London Tube

I stare at people, though I know it's rude,

To guess their thoughts, their kind of lives,

So it took me somewhat by surprise

When opposite me sat a pin-striped suit

Apparently worn by a headless spook.

"How careless," I thought, "to lose one's head."

"Try Lost Property," I almost said.

But it's unnerving to address an empty space

With collar and tie, but no actual face.

Was he in banking, insurance or law?

Was this a first visit? Had he been before?

The Pilgrim   Rene Magritte 1966  (Wikimedia Commons)

"Can I offer you dinner?" said a voice on my right.

The seat was empty! -- I turned in fright

And there like Alice and the Cheshire Cat,

Was this handsome face with a bowler hat.

"That would be nice,"  I dubiously said,

"But how can you manage with only a head?

Don't you think it might be better

If you and your body could get together?"

My heart gave lurch as he gave me a smile,

"That's been a problem for quite a while!

The waiters, they really haven't a clue,

For dining alone, I need a table for two!!"

"How did it happen?" I ventured to ask.

"I lost my head while passing through France.

My looks belie my age, my dear,

And time is timeless in my special sphere.

For years I've longed to return to my home

But over water I'm unable to roam,

I'm the very first spirit," he said with pride

"To use the Tunnel from the other side!"

"Your name?" I asked, and turned to him,

"Sidney Carton,"  he said with a disarming grin.

A Tale of Two Cities! I began to drool,

" I fell for you whilst still at school."

The Poet Recompensed   Rene Magritte 1956  (Wikimedia Commons)

Suddenly his features began to fade.

"Don't go yet!" I cried, dismayed.

He murmured gently, "Till another time.

You'd better wake up, it's the end of the line!!"

© Marion Kemp 1996 : from "In Praise of Hugs and other Poems.

September Labours: "Pass the rosy wine"* (Charles Dickens)

Charles Dickens' phrase captures the essence of this month's scenes. Traditionally, September shows the last medieval major harvest of the year, the vintage. Wine was not just used for merriment,  (it was drunk new and so less alcoholic, and could be partly watered), but was also important for medicinal uses and religious rituals, particularly for celebrating Mass in Catholic Europe.  This fine sculpture from Ferrarra shows the bunches of grapes being collected in a woven basket by a careful worker wearing a cap to cover his head from falling fruit.

Master of the Months,  September, c. 1230   from Ferrara Cathedral Museum   

 He is clearly ready to climb into a larger wine barrel once full, as he is barefoot with his tunic turned up for the pressing of the grapes.  Here are the preceding Months from this unknown sculptor's Labours cycle, which originally decorated the Cathedral's Porta dei Pellegrini (pilgrims).  As well as their unusually detailed realism, the subjects would have a keen religious significance for christian pilgrims.  August is unusual as it shows the harvesting of figs, a Mediterranean crop, and the Bible is full of references to fig trees, as well as corn and wine.

July, August and September,  Master of the Months  c.1230,  from Ferrara Cathedral Museum

There was a separate frieze of the 12 monthly zodiac signs, but only a few survive.

The September vintage was celebrated across western Europe,  as in these wood carvings of monthly labours.  Both are from misericords or mercy seats, designed originally for monks who had to stand for very long services.  This one shows the process from basket of grapes, to pressing (and testing) the harvest, and a cooper with one of his wooden barrels.

Misericord from Abbey de la Trinite, c. 1522-29, Vendome, France    (Wikimedia, R. Kelley)

The medieval misericord carvers indulged in popular, often vulgar humour, from dragons to drunkards, mermaids to musical pigs, like the strange animals and humans tucked amid the foliage in illuminated manuscripts. And here is a Worcester man enjoying the fruits of harvest, with grapes as large as his coat buttons.

September Misericord,  Malvern Priory Church of St Michael and St Mary, English, fifteenth century.  The same anonymous carver probably also worked at Worcester Cathedral.      

*from "The Old Curiosity Shop", Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens describes a school outing

This is the time of year when you see troops of school children on their end of term summer outings, to  parks and zoos  and museums.  Charles Dickens gives an account of a Infant school visit to the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, to see the 1851 Great Exhibition,  much of which still rings true today.

View of the Crystal Palace, 1851  © V&A Museum

…"the school was composed of a hundred 'infants', who got among the horses' legs in crossing the main entrance to Kensington Gate, and came reeling out from between the wheels of coaches undisturbed in mind.  They were clinging to horses, I am told, all over the park.  When they were collected and added up by frantic monitors, they were all right.  They were then regaled with cake, etc., and went tottering and staring all over the place; the greater part wetting their forefingers and drawing a wavy pattern on every accessible object.  One infant strayed.  He was not missed. Ninety and nine were taken home, supposed to be the whole collection, but this particular infant went to Hammersmith.  He was found by the police at night, going round and round the turnpike, which he still supposed to be a part of the Exhibition.  He had the same opinion of the police, also of Hammersmith workhouse, where he passed the night.  When his mother came for him in the morning, he asked when it would be over?  It was a great Exhibition, he said, but he thought it long."

Charles Dickens,  Letters, July 1851

May chimney-sweepers

Dr Johnson in his Dictionary cited Shakespeare for his provenance for Chimney-sweeper: "One whose trade it is to clean foul chimneys of soot".

"Chimney sweep, chimney sweep, hear Maid!

To sweep sooty chimneys is Tom's trade."

Chimneys appeared from the 13th century onwards when the wealthy began building private heated rooms,  separate from the open-hearthed great hall.  The building of the Elizabethan prodigy houses with their displays of fancy chimneys developed the need for a chimney-sweeping trade, with more than a bunch of holly to brush away the soot.  The first printed mention of the chimney-sweepers' trade occurs in Cocke Lorell's Bote, c. 1510.

Tudor chimneys at Hampton Court Palace

©  Photo Christine Matthews

 This was made even more necessary as sea coal with its tarry deposits replaced smoky wood fires, and after the Great Fire of London in 1666, new regulations made chimneys narrower, so sweeps needed their small climbing boys.

"Boys is wery obstinate, and wery lazy, gen'lmen, and there's nothing like a good hot blaze to make 'em come down vith a run.  It's humane too, gen'lmen, acause, even if they've stuck in the chimbley, roasting their feet makes 'em struggle to extricate theirselves."   Charles Dickens, in Oliver Twist 1837, saves Oliver from this fate, but the climbing boys' dreadful conditions were only halted at last by Lord Shaftesbury's Act in 1875.  (my thanks to Benita Cullingford's British Chimney Sweeps).

On a happier note, May Day was traditionally the time when sweeps, like the milkmaids,  dressed up and paraded the  London streets as the old Jack-in-the-Green, with their blackened faces, and covered in leafy branches.

Fowler's Troop in Deptford, 1900s

see deptford-jack.org.uk

This urban greenery image brings me circuitously to Shakespeare's Cymbeline, (in my April 12th blog), for oral history suggests that in the Warwickshire countryside, "golden lads" were dandelions, and "chimney-sweepers" was the name given to the dandelion's puffball seed heads, blown away "to dust".    

And, "My passion blows away like the chimney-sweepers", writes Margaret  Kennedy in her novel Troy Chimneys*  
[*of which more anon].

In Bevis Marks

"There was not much to look at.  A rickety table, with spare bundles of papers, yellow and ragged from long carriage in the pocket, ostentatiously displayed upon its top; a couple of stools, set face to face on opposite sides of this crazy piece of furniture; a treacherous old chair by the fireplace, whose withered arms had hugged full many a client and helped to squeeze him dry; a second-hand wig-box, used as a depository for blank writs and declarations and other small forms of law, once the sole contents of the head which belonged to the wig which belonged to the box, as they were now of the box itself; two or three common books of practice; a jar of ink, a pounce box, a stunted hearth-broom, a carpet trodden to shreds but still clinging with the tightness of desperation to its tacks -- these, with the yellow wainscot of the walls, the smoke-discoloured ceiling, the dust and cobwebs, were among the most prominent decorations of the office of Mr. Sampson Brass."

The Old Curiosity Shop  Charles Dickens

"The Chimes"

"We have heard THE CHIMES at midnight, Master Swallow!"

Charles Dickens writing to John Forster, 1844, (quoting Henry IV Pt. 2) having found the title for his latest Christmas book.

At Satis House

"She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the blighted room for means of writing.  There were none there, and she took from her pocket a yellow set of ivory writing tablets, mounted in tarnished gold, and wrote upon them with a pencil in a case of tarnished gold that  hung from her neck.

'You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers?'
'Quite.  I dined with him yesterday.'
'This is an authority to him to pay  you that money, to lay out at your irresponsible discretion for your friend.  I keep no money here; but, if you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the matter, I will send it to you.'
'Thank you, Miss Havisham; I have not the least objection to receiving it from him.'

She read me what she had written, and it was direct and clear, and evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profiting by the receipt of the money.  I took the tablets from her hand,  and it trembled again, and it trembled more as she took off the chain to which the pencil was attached, and put it in mine.  All this she did without looking at me.

'My name is on the first leaf.  If you can ever write under my name 'I forgive her,' though ever so long after my broken heart is dust -- pray do it!'  "

Great Expectations   Charles Dickens

Quilp's pen

"It was a dirty little box, this counting house, with nothing in it but an old ricketty desk and two stools, a hat-peg, an ancient almanack, an inkstand with no ink and the stump of one pen, and an eight-day clock which hadn't gone for eighteen years at least, and of which the minute-hand had been twisted off for a toothpick.  Daniel Quilp pulled his hat over his brows, climbed on to the desk (which had a flat top), and stretching his short length upon it went to sleep with the ease of an old practitioner; intending, no doubt, to compensate himself for the deprivation of last night's rest, by a long and sound nap."

The Old Curiosity Shop  Charles Dickens