been there, Donne that

Well. I have to apol­o­gise, just could­n’t resist the cheesey post title. But last night I went to an amaz­ing discussion/performance of the poet­ry of John Donne, host­ed by an intrigu­ing organ­i­sa­tion called “Eng­lish Pen.” They are a group of intel­lec­tu­als ded­i­cat­ed to the free­dom of writ­ten expres­sion (some of the monies they gath­er by sell­ing pens marked “Might­i­er Than the Sword” go to efforts to free writ­ers cur­rent­ly in prison). I had heard about the Donne event through my devo­tion to Google Alerts. Have you heard of these things? You ask Google to tell you who’s talk­ing about the things you love, and then you get emails telling you what news source, or even blog, is talk­ing about, say, the divine actress Har­ri­et Wal­ter. You may have slogged through my paeans of praise to Har­ri­et and to Edward Pether­bridge who recent­ly per­formed at the Park Lane Hotel’s 80th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion. Now, that event I heard about because I belong to the Dorothy L. Say­ers Soci­ety, she being the author of the Wim­sey mys­ter­ies so won­der­ful­ly per­formed on film and audio­book by my dar­ling Edward. But I decid­ed after that evening that Har­ri­et Wal­ter was near­ly equal­ly won­der­ful, and thus I was led to an excel­lent blog about books and writ­ing (and oth­er things that inter­est Sarah, the blog­ger), who belongs to “Eng­lish PEN” and there­fore knew that Har­ri­et would be per­form­ing last night! Got that?

Long sto­ry short (have you noticed that, in con­ver­sa­tion, by the time some­one utters this phrase it’s already been a long sto­ry?), last evening found me, after a pro­tract­ed acci­den­tal tour of the area sur­round­ing the Far­ring­don tube sta­tion (yes, I admit it, I got lost — again), at 60 Far­ring­don Road in the pres­ence of many peo­ple much, much smarter than I am. And fun­ni­ly enough, instead of being dis­con­cert­ing, nay even depress­ing, it was real­ly very ener­gis­ing. I don’t know about you, but I tend to live on a very quo­ti­di­en plane, address­ing pret­ty much what needs to be done that par­tic­u­lar day, and not real­ly stretch­ing my mind any fur­ther than direc­tions to my des­ti­na­tion (which grant­ed, being me, can be every bit as absorb­ing as repro­duc­ing the Mona Lisa in marzi­pan). I think I am moti­vat­ed enough now to be a lit­tle more intel­lec­tu­al­ly adven­tur­ous, dust off my PhD and real­ly think about some­thing. Not every day, mind you, but…

Hav­ing final­ly found the drat­ted place, I was just in time to find a seat in the packed audi­to­ri­um and be greet­ed by the young and gen­tly effer­ves­cent Direc­tor of PEN, Jonathan Hea­wood, as he intro­duced the speak­ers. The cen­ter of atten­tion was one John Stubbs, author of the new­ly-pub­lished biog­ra­phy of Dunne, “John Dunne: The Reformed Soul.” I had to restrain myself from bop­ping him on the top of his tou­sled head, because the lad is but 29 years old. Now, with very few excep­tions I have for­sworn to have any­thing to do with peo­ple under 30, espe­cial­ly if they have accom­plished any­thing that makes me feel inad­e­quate (which is painful­ly easy to do). This man was just adorable, I have to say: a sort of com­bi­na­tion of Har­ry Pot­ter and Pete Doher­ty, if either of them had gone to Oxford. Actu­al­ly, this boy looked as if he had been born and raised at Oxford and had nev­er left. The com­pleat aca­d­e­m­ic, disheveled in a love­ly jumper and Viyel­la-ish shirt, con­stant­ly flop­ping his hair off and back onto his fore­head, with an endear­ing sort of brainy stam­mer. And the sort of com­men­tary that I thought resided only in my fever­ish­ly bril­liant PhD tutor, Steven Z. Levine, a man for whom semi-colons were usable parts of speech. His hes­i­tant man­ner of answer­ing ques­tions was a bit uncom­fort­able at first, to lis­ten to, until it became appar­ent that he was hes­i­tat­ing not for lack of cer­tain­ty as to what to say, but because it took that long for him to sift through the enor­mous num­ber of pos­si­ble words to find just the right one. And, dear read­ers, he spoke some words I did­n’t even know. I was ashamed of myself, and nat­u­ral­ly I could not write them down because I had nev­er heard them before. Plus some words that I recog­nised as being nom­i­nal­ly part of my own moth­er tongue, but had nev­er found occa­sion to utter, like “ter­tiary verisimil­i­tude” and “ama­ne­unses”:

amanu­en­sis \un-man-yoo-EN-sis\, noun; plur­al amanu­enses, \-seez\:
A per­son employed to take dic­ta­tion or to copy manuscripts.

and “internecine”. Might he have said “pro­lep­tic”? Is that a word? And what’s more, he was inter­est­ing. Much of the dis­cus­sion, which was led by poet Ruth Padel, cen­tered on Don­ne’s atti­tude toward his Catholi­cism, in a time when the faith was pun­ish­able by impris­on­ment, or even being drawn and quar­tered. But almost best of all dur­ing the evening was the part that led me there in the first place, Har­ri­et Wal­ter’s read­ings of the var­i­ous poems that were rel­e­vant to the discussion.

The intel­lect and sense of humor of the Eng­lish aca­d­e­m­ic are such a joy to me, and I had for­got­ten what it was like to lis­ten to them. The Direc­tor had intro­duced all the speak­ers by say­ing, “Ruth Padel is of course the great grand­daugh­ter of Charles Dar­win, and Har­ri­et Wal­ter is the niece of Christo­pher Lee. John Stubbs is not the rel­a­tive of any­one famous, although he does say he dreams of hors­es.” Of course this got a laugh, but only if I had been real­ly pay­ing atten­tion to liv­ing in Lon­don (which I must say I have been) would I know that he was refer­ring to the equine painter George Stubbs.

Har­ri­et Wal­ter her­self was just sub­lime, like a Kristin Scott Thomas who can laugh at her­self, and very beau­ti­ful, these 20 years after her turn as Lord Peter Wim­sey’s amour Har­ri­et Vane. And after­ward I screwed up my courage and asked her for her auto­graph, in my old copy of my favorite of all the Wim­sey-Vane nov­els, “Bus­man­’s Hon­ey­moon,” since Say­ers her­self described it as “a love sto­ry with detec­tive inter­rup­tions.” She was gra­cious and said, about the nov­el, “Oh, it’s the one that got away,” since for some untold rea­son the Say­ers estate sold the film rights to some­one who won’t let any­one make a film of it.

Oh, and on the way to the event, would you believe: I was on one of the many streets I was­n’t meant to be on, get­ting loster and loster, when I looked up to see… Avery’s PS 234 friend Phoebe, and her fam­i­ly, wan­der­ing hand in hand along the pave­ment! Her moth­er Liz had emailed me to see if we were around this week and would we like to get togeth­er, and then smack! there they were right in front of me. Per­haps din­ner tomor­row night.

Well, Avery has just made her first cake, from her first real-live cook­book recipe, and is now repos­ing in her bath and I’ve promised to read aloud. I’ll let you know how the cake turns out, and it could be Avery’s first recipe on my blog, prop­er­ly cit­ed in its orig­i­nal con­text, of course. I must say, I get very sen­ti­men­tal when she likes some­thing I like, or liked as a child, and to pass along all my Gin­nie and Gene­va books and have her enjoy them is very sat­is­fy­ing indeed. And with the won­ders of inter­net search­es, you can get copies for your daugh­ters, too.