November Lambs to Covent Garden

We are in London, 21 November 1817, two years after Waterloo, and Charles and Mary Lamb have just moved from the relative quiet of the inns of court to ‘a place all alive with noise and bustle’, and she is loving it, as she tells Dorothy Wordsworth. The linkboys, who carried burning torches to guide the theatre-goers home, would soon be put out of business by gas lighting. Some gas lamps still illuminate parts of Covent Garden. A gas lamp, a linkboy and a candle in this illustration from the Pickwick Papers, and still people are in the dark!

At last we mustered up resolution enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us—and here we are, living at a Brazier’s shop, No. 20, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle, Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least—strange that it does not, for it is quite tremendous.

I quite enjoy looking out of the window and listening to the calling up of the carriages and the squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon, I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a chearful place.

From The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1796-1820 , edited by E. V. Lucas.

Now, of course, it’s black cabs and Uber! Enjoy the Gas lights of an evening visit to Covent Garden.

Overheard: all my mates

Two young mothers pushing their babies on Margate promenade.

It was two young mothers, chatting in the street. ‘All the girls I know, what have gone clubbing, they’ve all had covid.’

Evening came …

This morning after weeding Mrs A’s garden I carried home a bag of moss and potential cuttings forked out of one of the flower beds. I was enjoying an after lunch coffee, alone in the house, when within ten minutes firstly our younger grandson brought his mother round to see how the painting of his toy locomotive was going; Mrs T came in from one of her little, but vital, jobs; then a woman friend with learning disabilities arrived. Grandson was soon playing with her; 90 minutes of enjoyment on all sides but exhausting.

Mrs T made another cup of tea at this point. 30 minutes of restful enjoyment.

The evening was drawing in by now, so out I went to do the minimum for the cuttings. Robins and blackbirds were singing – the fourth year our cock blackbird with white spots has been with us. The rooks and gulls flew overhead to their respective roosts, by no means quietly. Time for me to stop before the light failed.

A last peer into the pond – no frog spawn yet – and indoors to the warmth of home.

A PASTORAL

Let’s have a little poem to celebrate the great outdoors. Sadly, the number of thrushes seem to be declining fast in Kent, though I came across a thrush’s anvil yesterday; there was one in our garden, many years ago. If you never saw it, you won’t know you’ve lost it. A thrush’s anvil is the stone s/he uses to bash snails against until the flesh can be extracted. This one was on gravel, so the shells hardly showed against the pebbles, of a similar shape, size and colour to the shells, so I brought two smashed shells home. I hope the thrushes’ chicks prosper and restore their fortunes in Kent.

The poem was probably written in Florence, where Walter Savage Landor had gone after quarrelling with most of his friends and enemies in England. Robert Browning took him under his wing.

Damon was sitting in the grove
With Phyllis, and protesting love;
And she was listening; but no word
Of all he loudly swore she heard.
How! was she deaf then? no, not she,
Phyllis was quite the contrary.
Tapping his elbow, she said, ‘Hush!
O what a darling of a thrush!
I think he never sang so well
As now, below us, in the dell.’

Imaginary Conversations and Poems, A Selection, by Walter Savage Landor via Kindle

I’m reminded of George’s primary school teacher, who complained that at the end of a difficult lesson when she had been introducing a new maths topic, she saw him looking out of the window. ‘There’s a female blackbird on the grass, Miss.’

When he got home, he said that he had stopped paying attention once he understood the maths, and got on with birdwatching.

Rejoicing mutually and mutually complaining

An Englishman’s notice of the weather is the natural consequence of changeable skies and uncertain seasons… In our island every man goes to sleep unable to guess whether he shall behold in the morning a bright or cloudy atmosphere, whether his rest shall be lulled by a shower, or broken by a tempest. We therefore rejoice mutually at good weather, as at an escape from something that we feared; and mutually complain of bad, as of the loss of something that we hoped.

Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. II, in Life of Johnson, Volume 4 1780-1784″ by James Boswell

Finding your feet

It’s a few years since Abel found his feet, but the little boy in the park this morning was just getting used to his holding him up and getting him places. He took a step forward, away from his mother who was queuing for drinks from the little kiosk cafe. He was not expecting his step to ring out, but his foot landed on the metal cover for the fountain stop tap. A step back. Another step forward. Back and forth with a look of intelligent concentration, oblivious to his mother or anybody else or anything at all, except the sounds he was making with his feet. A special moment that he will not remember, but I will.

Driving a wedge between science and religion has got to stop.

If you are interested in the area where science and religion overlap, here is a debate forwarded from the Sacred Space website. Despite the eminence of the academics writing here, and the name dropping of scientists I’d not heard of alongside some I was familiar with, this is a readable and interesting discussion.

Will.

https://www.vofoundation.org/faith-and-science/physics-today-thinking-differently-about-science-and-religion/

Dusk chorus

The car park is now closed, which puts the bushes at the back further away from any human interference. The sparrows have caught on; when we were walking Abel home from school on the dankest, darkest afternoon of the year, they had gone to roost early, but they hadn’t gone quietly! I’m sure I’m not alone in enjoying their chatter.

Going Viral XXIV: From the horse’s mouth.

Sign outside the betting shop: STAY SAFE! KEEP YOUR DISTANCE! Sounds like excellent advise to me!

These last few weeks we may seem to have forgotten and foregone our response to the corona corvid viral pest, but we are still here and safe and healthy. This sighting was worth sharing. We hope you’ve had an excellent summer with plenty of free vitamin D from the sunshine. Happy Autumn; keep safe and keep praying!

God bless,

WILL.

Photo from CD.

Common Contemplations

A mind able to see common incidents in their real state, is disposed by very common incidents to very serious contemplations. Let us trust that a time will come, when the present moment shall be no longer irksome; when we shall not borrow all our happiness from hope, which at last is to end in disappointment.

Life of Johnson, Volume 1 1709-1765″ by James Boswell.

As a partly Staffordshire man, I thought it was about time I read Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Samuel Johnson was inclined to melancholy, but disposed to serious contemplation – as we all should be, whatever our character traits. He is the one who said, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. Have a good week!