We are preparing for our annual - and possibly last - trip to Salzburg for the Pfingstenfestspeil. Yes I know we've said that before but there are so many other places on the bucket list that we feel we must turn our attention to in the next few years.
But that is a subject for another time as we confirm our hotel reservations and get our train tickets in order. In the meantime friend Michael thought he would send this along as a helpful aide-memoir as we head off to Austria and Germany.
And who says they don't have a sense of "ha ha"?
April 28 - 1503: The Battle of Cerignola is fought. It is noted as the first battle in history won by small arms fire using gunpowder.
A recent post on FaceBook by my friend Simonetta and a BBC iPlayer programme on medieval manuscripts reminded me of a small book that has been in my library for over 40 years now. I seem to recall coming across it in Britnell's which was a wonderful old style bookstore on Yonge and Bloor before it became a trendoid neighbourhood of highrise condos, food porn bistros and bling shops.
I will quote from the forward to this slim volume by eminent scholar, writer and thespian Luis D'Antin Van Rooten:
To detail the exact manner by which "The d'Antin Mss. Mots d'Heures:1 Gousses, Rames"2 came to my hand would be too tedious and of but little moment here. Suffice it to say these curious verses were part of the meagre possessions of one François Charles Fernand d'Antin, retired school teacher, who died at the age of ninety-three in January of the Year of our Lord 1950, while marking papers.3 Some three years later, as the only surviving relative of the deceased, I received his personal effects through the kind offices of Maître Théophile Gustave Pol Plôn, Notaire of Aix-en-Province, Bouches-du-Rhônes, France.
1"Words of the Hours." A more poetic title than the more familiar "Book of Hours." A religious or philosophic background is tacityly indicated by this title. 2"Gousses, Rames." A "gousse" is a clove or section, as in the bulb of the garlic plant. We cant therefore assume that this implies "Root and Branch," or a complete unity. Alas, would only that the poems had come down to us so. 3The vestigial remnant of an occupation, become the escape mechanism of an academician's senility.
Forward
Mots d'Heures:
Gousses, Rames
Luis d'Antin Van Rooten
Grossman Publishers
New York 1967
M. d'Antin Van Rooten goes on to explain the difficulty he had in piecing together the fragments of verse and the arduous task of correctly annotating them for the modern reader. He also suggests that they are best read aloud in "the sonorous, measured classic style made famous by the Comédie Française at the turn of the century.... " And indeed once they are treated to that delivery they make perfect sense to all and sundry.
Rather than try and copy the rich and melodic verse and M. d'Antin Van Rooten's scholarly notations I have scanned two pages of this small but fascinating book for your delectation.
Many of the verses in the manuscript are of an uplifting and highly moral tone such as this small fragment:
And the book ends with a rather sad little piece that could also serve as a cautionary tale:
I thank Simonetta for reminding me of this truly remarkable tome and Laurent for not forcing me to discard it from my library in one of our many moves. (We will not even go into that touchy subject unless a few glasses of wine have been consumed!)
Sadly both this lovely book and M d'Antin Van Rooten's Book of Improbable Saints as well as several others of his learned works have long been out of print - though copies have been seen at interesting prices on Amazon and eBay.
And why the various little snippets from the illuminated manuscripts? I thought they fit perfectly with M d'Antin Van Rooten's sense of scholarship! And frankly this last one of Renard the Fox being hung is just plain lunacy - Medieval lunacy but lunacy none the less.
Back when I was a mere stripling, as it where, there was nothing quite as funny as the old Carry On movies. Sid James, Hattie Jacuqes, Barbie Windsor (pre-East Enders), Charles Hawtrey but especially Kenneth Williams. He was pencil thin, beautifully groomed and spoke in that nasal posh accent that made the double-entendre sound more double and even more entendre! Those roles in these wonderfully silly movies and his camp Sandy and Julian sketches on Round the Horne often obscured the real talent that was Williams.
Right down to the crooning vibrato of the diseur - that Brelish-Aznavourish Gaelic nasality - he captures the essence of every popular French singer of the period. And the lyrics - well I'm dedicating them to my darling Lara - she can use them on French Friday and impress the hell out of Monique, Benoit, Jean-Louis and the gang!
Maggie Smith once admitted that Ken Williams was the greatest influences in her life as a comic actress; from him she learned the technique that has kept her in the forefront of performers to this day - as witness her brilliant performances in Downton Abbey and recently in the The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. They had a special relationship and it showed not only on stage but when they appeared on shows like Parkinson - trading banter, barbs and sometimes arguing like an old married couple. One night they got into a spate about politics but minutes later were reading an early poem by Sir John Betjeman, then Poet Laureate and another of Parky's guests that night. Sir John is obviously moved by the simple, sincere reading they give of Death in Leamington.
Williams was never really a happy man - for all his wit, talent and intelligence he could never reconcile himself to being gay. Given the characters he was famous for playing it was a sad irony. In a particularly revealing entry in his diary he wrote, "All problems have to be solved eventually by ONESELF, and that's where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, A MAN IS AN ISLAND." On April 15, 1988 Williams was found dead, apparently from a lethal drug overdose. No suicide note was found but it is now widely believed that he had decided to solve his problem himself.
29 October - 1889: Stanley Park dedicated in Vancouver, BC
To detail the exact manner by which "The d'Antin Mss. Mots d'Heures:1 Gousses, Rames"2 came to my hand would be too tedious and of but little moment here. Suffice it to say these curious verses were part of the meagre possessions of one François Charles Fernand d'Antin, retired school teacher, who died at the age of ninety-three in January of the Year of our Lord 1950, while marking papers.3 Some three years later, as the only surviving relative of the deceased, I received his personal effects through the kind offices of Maître Théophile Gustave Pol Plôn, Notaire of Aix-en-Province, Bouches-du-Rhônes, France.
