A sociable week, just gone, with friends who have remained friends since the 60s. Sometimes I have a feeling that time, the passage of time, is an illusion, and that in some sense I struggle to define, or articulate, everything is here and now. Perhaps this is what T. S. Eliot was banging on about in Burnt Norton, the first of the Four Quartets, time being “eternally present”. We dined together in Glasgow, we who have been making music together for more than half a century. One of the party was off the next day to Ireland to visit family. I raised a glass and said, “Calm seas and a prosperous voyage. How long does it take?” He shrugged. “Couple of hours.” Our host quipped, “I thought it was about 10 minutes.” Musical joke.
En passant, I popped into the Scottish Antiques Centre near where I live, and inevitably emerged with three books under my arm, vowing to move on three other books by leaving them in the village phone box which has become a book depository. What did I get?
For Whom the Bell Tolls. Not the original John Donne No man is an island. Not Hemmingway’s Spanish Civil War novel. But, as the subtitle says, “Light and Dark Verse by Martin Bell” (Icon Books, 2011). That explains the somewhat unoriginal title. It took me a while to figure out it was a play of words on the name Bell, the man in the white suit. He was a BBC war correspondent, then an independent MP, and also, as the book reveals, something of a poet. I think the poems are terribly good. I suppose some people would describe the verse as doggerel, and perhaps the poet as poetaster, but I think there is a power here, characterised by a journalist’s plain speaking and lack of obscurity. He uses all sorts of forms: “quatrains, couplets, a sonnet, a ballade, limericks and even a clerihew.”
Clerihew?
Chambers – a humorous poem that sums up the life and character of some notable person in two short couplets (started by E. Clerihew Bentley in his Biography for Beginners, 1905).
Bell’s clerihew has Tony Blair as its subject, and is not terribly complimentary. Neither is the more substantial Principal Witness, on the same subject. I think through his experience as an independent MP Martin Bell became thoroughly disillusioned with the mother of parliaments. He was there during the expenses scandal. Bell wrote his first poem when he was 19, and then not another one for more than 50 years. This is what happens when you get absorbed in a profession. Where does the time go?
Talking of 50 years, on Saturday I went to a Golden Wedding luncheon in St Andrews, of some dear friends of mine. Their wedding in Perth seems like yesterday. I played my viola there while they signed the register. Unaccompanied Bach. I wonder now I had the nerve. The golden anniversary was a sweet occasion.
I was playing my viola again yesterday in Polmont, with the Antonine Players, a string ensemble. We are rehearsing for two concerts in September, in St. Michael’s Parish Church, Linlithgow, and again the following week in the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling. Mozart, Vivaldi, Rutter, Walton, and Skalkottas. Like the golden wedding, here is another link with the past. The Vivaldi Concerto in B minor for 4 violins was, as far as I remember, the first piece of music I ever took part in, as a public performance. That’s well over 50 years ago. The music is fantastic.
Second book under the arm: Nevil Shute, The Rainbow and the Rose (Heinemann, 1958). You know you have a problem when you start buying books you already own, and have read. Stop me if I’ve told you this before. I think I’ve already blogged about the occasion I picked up a paperback copy, from Toppings in Edinburgh, of this, the one book that was missing from my handsomely bound Edito-Service S. A., Geneva edition of the complete works. But this one is a first edition, in good condition. I’ve already moved the paperback on.
I’m fond of Shute. Like Martin Bell, he had another profession, that of aeronautical engineer. You can read all about it in his autobiography, Slide Rule. The title says much. He belonged to the pre-computer age, a different time captured so wistfully in his books. I’m always interested to read fiction written by people with a hinterland. John Buchan. Ian Fleming. They have life experience.
Third book under the arm: Jane Wilhelmina Stirling (1804 – 1859), the first study of the life of Chopin’s pupil and friend, by Audrey Evelyn Bone (printed by Starrock Services, Chipstead, Surrey, 1960). A signed, limited edition. So interesting to read about Chopin’s time in Scotland, with descriptions of Chopin’s recitals in Glasgow and Edinburgh, respectively in Merchants’ Hall in Hutcheson Street, and in the Hopetoun Rooms, venues that still exist today. The reviews from the Glasgow Herald, and The Scotsman, were, are, remarkably perceptive.
Chopin enjoyed the hospitality of the Scottish aristocracy especially in and around Dunblane. There is mention in the book of the Leighton Library, which houses some very old and very rare first editions. I’ve never visited, but in Dunblane Cathedral yesterday I chatted with a Leighton curator, and have promised to drop by.
Also in the cathedral yesterday, Kevin the organist played as a prelude Modest Mussorgsky’s “Promenade” and “The Old Castle” from Pictures at an Exhibition; and then, as a postlude, of course, “The Great Gate of Kiev”. It was no accident that that should have been played on the anniversary of the liberation of Ukraine from Soviet Russia in 1991. Where has the time gone? And what the devil has happened in the interim? Mark Carney, the leader of the Western World, was present.
But it does one good to avert one’s gaze from the constant Doomscroll. I’ve had a very pleasant week, a week of fellowship. As ever, I eschewed social media, totally. You may say, a chronicle of small beer. But better that than a kettle of stinking fish.
jamescalumcampbell 