“Early though the laurel grows . . . ”

Facebook is a puzzlement.  I hardly ever understand what is going on.  My friend Sue recently sent me an important private message—and Facebook didn’t notify me.  Isn’t it supposed to do that?  If she hadn’t mentioned it in a “regular” post, I wouldn’t have known.  And I never understand who sees what or where anything shows up.  But, Facebook has done one really good thing:  it has kept me in touch with many former students, which is a delight.  And recently there was a post from Alyssa, one of my favorites.  She put up a picture of two books, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman, that I must have discussed in class or perhaps even given out copies; I did that sometimes.  That simple post sent me on a trip down memory lane.

A Shropshire Lad was the first book of poetry I ever bought.  I still have it and there’s a photo of that book above.  That edition is copyrighted 1950, but I know I didn’t buy it then; in the 50s I was still a hick down on the farm and certainly wasn’t out buying poetry, although I was already reading it in school books.  I’m guessing I got it in the early 60s; I have a very faint recollection that I got it at an English language book store in Hong Kong or Kowloon (still a British colony in those days).  But I’m not sure.  I could have got it in Oklahoma City or Washington, D.C.  My memory, like the color in the cover of the book, has faded seriously with time.

Oh but I loved that book and those poems!  Instinctively, I think I understood that I had more in common with Housman than just poetry, but that revelation was to come much later.  Somehow, those simple poems would waft me away to someplace—undefined—where life was different, and oh so melancholy.  These are lovely poems, beautiful of language, but they have a great sadness to them.  Just what a young 20-something wants as he—I, that is—mooned about steeped in self-pity.  Who misses those years?

The most famous poem from the book is probably “XIX: To An Athlete Dying Young”: 

     Smart lad, to slip betimes away

     From fields where glory does not stay

     And early though the laurel grows

     It withers quicker than the rose.

And one of my favorites and, perhaps, a poem written in reference to Housman’s great unrequited love for Moses Jackson, is “XIII”:

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard a wise man say,

“Give crowns and pounds and guineas

       But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies

       But keep your fancy free.”

But I was one-and-twenty,

       No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard him say again,

“The heart out of the bosom

       Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty

       And sold for endless rue.”

And I am two-and-twenty,

       And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

Rereading these poems led me to Tom Stoppard’s brilliant modern play, The Invention of Love, which deals with Housman’s love for Jackson.  Interestingly, the two actors in the play portraying the young Housman and the older Housman, Robert Sean Leonard and Richard Easton, both won Tonys for portraying the same person in the same play at different ages.  If you like A Shropshire Lad, this play is well worth seeking out.

One final poem from A Shropshire Lad, the last poem, “LVIII”:

I hoed and trenched and weeded,

  And took the flowers to fair:

I brought them home unheeded;

  The hue was not the wear.

So up and down I sow them

  For lads like me to find,

When I shall lie below them,

  A dead man out of mind.

Some seed the birds devour,

  And some the season mars,

But here and there will flower

  The solitary stars.

And fields will yearly bear them

  As light-leaved spring comes on,

And luckless lads will wear them

  When I am dead and gone.

Newly Discovered Gems

Lists are a guilty pleasure of mine—one of many.  I keep all sorts of lists, from groceries to what to take on an upcoming trip, from all the lottery scratchers I’ve bought (and lost money on) to my CD collection (by genre and then alphabetically by composer).  If a magazine, newspaper, or internet article that has “10 Best” in front of it, you can bet I’m going to read it.  The end of the year is a lister’s paradise; every type media has its lists.  Okay, most of them are just plain silly (does one really need to know the ten worse Canadian cities to visit?).  I read them anyway.  But some have to be taken a bit more seriously; when The New York Times lists the ten best books of the year (they also do the 100 best books of the year) one had best pay attention, even if, depressingly, I haven’t read any of them.

And right now one of The Guardian’s (theguardian.com/us) book bloggers, Robert McCrum, is running a list of 100 of the best novels in English.  Frustratingly, he’s only releasing one a week, moving historically from the past to the present.  So every Monday my little coffee klatch gathers around the latest release to see if we have read it, or, more importantly, see if we approve of his selection.  And sometimes, to marvel that he lists a book that we (usually I) have never heard of.

McCrum’s surprising first selection (remember, this is historical, not in order of preference) was The Pilgrim’s Progress, by Paul Bunyan.  After a little reflection, I agreed with this.  I read this novel as a teenager and thinking back as I read McCrum’s short essay (which accompanies each release), I was flooded with memories of the novel, even after all these years.  I won’t read it again, but it’s nice that 50 years later it has stuck with me.  Some of the selections are obvious choices and couldn’t be left off:  Gulliver’s Travels; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; Frankenstein; Moby Dick; others are expected authors, but perhaps not the work I would have chosen: Jane Austen’s Emma rather than Mansfield Park; David Copperfield rather than Great Expectations.

Some are just plain head-scratchers (for me, anyway): Edgar Allen Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Gordon Arthur Pym, is included; Little Women by Louise May Alcott; and the Sign of the Four by Author Conan Doyle (a terrific novel, to be sure, but one of the best 100 ever?).  Wind in the Willows comes in at number 38, and what a terrific novel it is, but to make the final cut?  Other great books are going to have to be eliminated for these, and I’m not entirely comfortable with that.

And then there are books I’ve never even heard of.  I expected a good many on the list to be books I’ve never read, but surely I would have heard of them all.  Nope.  Number 20 was Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.  Who?  What?  Number 37:  Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe; never heard of it.  Nor number 40, Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.  At least I’ve heard of Beerbohm, even if I haven’t read a thing by him.

Some books on the list I’ve heard of the author but don’t know that particular work.

Released this Monday was his selection number 41:  The Good Soldier, by Ford Maddox Ford.  This is one I haven’t read, but at least I’ve heard of it.  Everyone has heard of Benjamin Disraeli but how many people have read Sybil, McCrum’s number 11.

Which leads me to the book pictured above: The History of Mr. Polly.  Eveyone knows H. G. Wells.  How many know he wrote 50 novels!  And not all science fiction.  From McCrum’s discussion of  The History of Mr. Polly I decided to read it.  And what a delight it was.  Mr. Polly is sort of an Everyman at failure, in his life, his work, and his marriage; early on he declares he “hated Fishbourne, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours. But most of all Mr Polly "hated himself.”  But Mr. Polly is a master neologist.  Some examples (I kept a list): sesquippledan verboojuice, eloquent rapsodooce, intrudacious, jawbacious, and retrospectatiousness.  Spellcheck might not like these words, but I love them! 

The History of Mr. Polly, a newly discovered gem indeed.  And surely that’s the main function of my beloved lists.