Category: Writers Page 3 of 4

We were dismayed when we heard that for our teaching practice term we were to be scattered all over the country. During our first term we had enjoyed the rarefied atmosphere of Cambridge: observing  in the Village Colleges; reading children’s literature; watching educational films; putting together themed multimedia presentations; filming each other microteaching – Chinese cookery, yoga, origami; mulling over our teaching practice  wardrobes; and discussing “discipline” in an entirely theoretical manner.  The Cambridge Village Colleges were not however, our supervisor informed us, representative of the range of abilities or the standards of behaviour which we might expect to encounter in the real world, and into that world we were now to be dispersed.

And so, I found myself at the wildly inappropriately named Heartsease Comprehensive School in Norwich. This is a little unfair, for Heartsease was  a good school, despite its unwieldy size and disadvantaged catchment area. Indeed, at the time of my arrival it was  shaking off an earlier reputation as a sink school and experiencing  steady improvements. But it takes time to leave behind a problem school label, and I was conscious of benefitting from this, looking  smugly nonchalant when fellow students reported  rumours that mine was a difficult school and wondered sympathetically how I was coping.

My passage was eased further by the exceptional teachers in the English Department who  gave generously of their time and expertise. In handing over the classes which they had carefully nurtured to my inexpert care, they were risking having to make up lost ground in the future and meanwhile putting themselves in the front line for “cover.” This frequently meant periods with the most difficult classes in the school when less scrupulous staff in other departments “went sick,” an event which happened with odd frequency on Friday afternoons.

Not only did they lend me their pupils, but it was also clear that they had briefed them to act with consideration towards The Student. For student teachers are fair game to bored teenagers, and with no malice intended they can easily derail  painstakingly wrought lesson plans and reduce their captives to jabbering, drivelling incoherence. But my charges were clearly honour- bound to respect the moral strictures of their real teachers,  so that even my least successful efforts met with little more than an exchange of indulgent smiles, raised eyebrows and the occasional, “O, Miss,” when my lesson floundered.

So, given a free hand, I embarked with confidence one morning on a comparative analysis of Wilfred Owen’s Strange Meeting and Henry Newbolt’s Vitai Lampada, ostensibly to illustrate the difference between good and bad poetry.  There was  a hidden agenda, for I was hoping that Wilfred Owen’s heart-rending condemnation of war  would turn them against the jingoism exemplified by Newbolt’s poem.

But to a person my pupils embraced Vitai Lampada: they liked the tempo; they liked the rhythm; they liked the rhymes; they liked the imagery; they liked the emotion, the immediacy, and the vivid metaphor. They liked the sentiments of honour, nobility and selflessness. Useless for me to argue that the poem was maudlin, mawkish, manipulative, banal, cloying, and cliché ridden, that it was disingenuous to compare war with a cricket match, that the cheery tempo they liked so much was inappropriate for a poem about war. Losing sight of the question of literary merit, writ large in my lesson plan, I focused on the values espoused in the poem: hierarchy, unquestioning respect for authority, blind obedience to orders, Imperialism, a public-school ethos, and (this last in a blatant attempt to win over the girls) a toxic masculine culture. My pupils, normally loud in their condemnation of all these attitudes, were unmoved; they liked the poem – a lot.

Strange Meeting on the other hand  met with a stony response: it was gloomy; miserable; did not rhyme properly. I struggled in vain to explain pararhyme, to suggest that Owen used it to promote unease, a bleak atmosphere, melancholy. My pupils were unimpressed. I tried them on realism, on poignancy, on irony, the dead soldier, who could have been a friend, killed by the protagonist. They were impervious to my arguments. Abandoning any pretence that we were debating the quality of the writing I focused on the message: war was arbitrary, futile, wasteful, organised brutality, the battlefield a dehumanising hell of hopelessness and horror. My charges nodded, “Yes, it is a really miserable poem.”  But, I continued, the poem also points to the possibilities of choice, forgiveness, shared humanity, reconciliation. “Preferred the other one.”

I met with wry smiles in the staff room when I reported ruefully on the double failure of both my overt and my covert lesson plans.

Soon after qualifying I abandoned the teaching of English Literature, turning instead to delivering Politics classes. But I remember with gratitude the support of the English staff at Heartsease in the Easter term of 1980 and with amused respect the determination with which my pupils held to their own opinions.

And if I still have no doubt that Vitai Lampada is a deeply flawed poem, I have nonetheless visited Henry Newbolt’s grave in atonement for my attempt to use his poem for my own political agenda. The grave lies at the heart of the Orchardleigh Estate which was owned by the Duckworth family of publishers into which Newbolt married. When I first moved to Somerset it was a romantic lost domain, the grounds gloriously overgrown and the empty Victorian house bewitchingly mysterious. Today developers have cleared the parkland to accommodate a golf course, and revamped the house as a “Fairy-tale Wedding Venue” – three-day packages from £8,699. But the tiny thirteenth century church of St. Mary the Virgin remains untouched. It sits on a lake, protected by trees, and reached via a decorative iron foot bridge across a moat.  Newbolt lies in the  churchyard,  near the edge of the lake under a small, worn, flat stone which describes him tersely as Henry Newbolt, Poet. His view of the lake has been somewhat obscured in recent times by the arrival of more Duckworths with grander stones, but it’s a charming, peaceful spot, with ducklings scuttling across the lake in springtime… and not a jammed Gatling in sight.

A memorial in the church bears a quotation from his own elegy, Mors Janua:

Death is a gate, and holds no room within:

Pass- to the road beyond.

“ Jane Austen,” whispered the volunteer guide raising a weary eyebrow, “slipped in quietly at nine o’clock in the morning without disturbing anyone.” In the Cathedral a brass band was loudly, and repeatedly, rehearsing the national anthem. The harsh, strident tones ripped and tore through the early morning quiet, the band’s amplified performance penetrating every corner of the building. Already, when we entered, our bags had been painstakingly searched by two assiduously polite but resolute police officers. Their dogs patrolled the longest nave in Europe, sniffed warily at the chantries  of Bishops Beaufort and Waynefleet, eyed the twelfth century Winchester Bible  with suspicion,  and pawed gingerly at the Tournai font.

“Military funeral tomorrow,” our guide continued sotto voce. “The cathedral will close soon for a full rehearsal.” Waving his arm at the array of memorials which line the great stone walls,  he sighed, “ All high-ranking military, clergy and politicians, and all reputedly endowed with moral excellence and  effecting heroic deeds.” He looked sceptical. “ No ordinary people.” He paused. “ And they didn’t even mention on Jane’s stone that she was a novelist,” he added indignantly.

We fled the noisy, disturbed cathedral, and passing rapidly through the Cathedral Close, awash that morning with police and military personnel, vehicles, and equipment, arrived in College Street. There we paused before the house where Jane Austen rented rooms during the last few weeks of her life in 1817, having come to Winchester to be close to her surgeon.

Then, abandoning the town, we followed Keats Walk to St. Cross Hospital. When Keats stayed in Winchester in 1819 he took his daily walk across the water meadows, and it was here that he composed his ode To Autumn. Our morning too was misty,  with soft muted autumn sunshine just beginning to burn through, swans moving stately on the chalk stream and herons still as statues.

At St. Cross we explored the quiet complex of medieval buildings founded in 1136 by Henry of Blois. Church, Alms-houses, and Hall are all still in use. In the Master’s garden we found glowing herbaceous borders, cyclamen pushing through the grass beneath the sycamore trees, a dappled lake with a gentle fountain.

They still offer the Wayfarer’s Dole at St. Cross, but not feeling ourselves entitled,  we joined instead a group of Friends and Brothers of St. Cross for tea in The Hundred Men’s Hall. There was a woolly tea-cosy on the pot, a choice of homemade cakes, and we were introduced to the Warden. Truly I felt myself in Anthony Trollope’s Barchester.

We returned another day to the Cathedral, when only its quotidian bustle rippled the surface, to pay our respects to Jane Austen. She lies beneath a dark stone slab on the floor of the north aisle. Here Keats, with only two years to live himself, walked up and down reading his letters from Fanny Brawne. And if the site occasions sadness for the  early deaths of both writers, this is mitigated by  profound gratitude for the  treasures they left behind.

Jane’s mere presence here in a place generally reserved for the triumvirate of senior military, clergy, and politicians, is surprising. Speculation suggests that someone in the Austen family Knew Someone who Knew Someone With Influence. Her epitaph, composed by her brother Henry, certainly  makes no reference to her literary achievements focusing rather on a conventional recitation of her qualities:

In Memory of

JANE AUSTEN

youngest daughter of the late

Rev. GEORGE AUSTEN

formerly Rector of Steventon in this Count.

She departed this life in the 18th of July 1817

aged 41, after a long illness supported with

the patience and the hopes of a Christian.

The benevolence of her heart,

the sweetness of her temper,and

the extraordinary endowments of her mind

obtained the regard of all who knew her and

the warmest love of her intimate connections.

Their grief is in proportion to their affection

they know their loss to be irreparable,

but in their deepest affliction they are now consoled

by a firm though humble hope that her charity,

devotion, faith and purity, have rendered

her acceptable in the sight of her

REDEEMER

In 1872 Jane’s nephew  placed a memorial brass on the wall, on the left of the grave, which acknowledged, with some understatement, that she was “known to many by her writings.”

A memorial window, financed by public subscription, joined it in 1900, but the window too is underwhelming,  and Jane’s grave is overshadowed by the bombastic memorials trumpeting the achievements of the Pillars of the Establishment. But I prefer her plain black stone to these monumental, cold, white sepulchres, just as I valued the tranquillity of St. Cross above the undoubted splendour of what is undeniably one of England’s most magnificent cathedrals.

Welcome

The Mousetrap and I are of an age. Its first performance took place in Nottingham in October 1952, and after a short provincial tour it transferred to the West End stage the following month. It played at the Ambassador’s Theatre until March 1974 when it moved seamlessly to the larger St. Martin’s  next door. WGR Sprague designed the two theatres as a pair, with The Ambassador’s opening night taking place in 1913, but that of St. Martin’s delayed by the First World War. These old fashioned, West End theatres with their plush seating, velvet curtains and polished wood fittings have always provided the perfect backdrop for Agatha Christie’s murder mystery.

Unlike the Windmill theatre, where the legendary Windmill Girls continued to perform their tableaux vivants throughout the Second World War, even at the height of the Blitz, St. Martin’s is not able to claim  that “We never closed.” Covid regulations barred its opening from March 2020, but fittingly it was the first major West End theatre to reopen its doors in May 2021. For, as long ago as 1957, The Mousetrap had already become the longest running straight play in the West End. Since then, it has garnered further laurels: in 1958 it became the longest running theatrical production of any kind in the West End, outstripping the previous five-year record held by Chu Chin Chow, and celebrating with a party at the Savoy. Now the world’s longest running show, it easily eclipses even the protracted runs of the popular musicals of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. On Broadway, Phantom of the Opera ran for thirty-five years, Chicago for twenty-six, and Cats for a mere eighteen, while in London Les Misérables managed thirty-seven years, and Phantom thirty-six. But The Mousetrap is now a septuagenarian, boasting  over 29,000 performances, a wooden sign board at the entrance to the theatre updating the tally after every production.

Contemporaneous with the time it was written, Christie’s play is now in part a nostalgic period piece. Set at a time when rationing, poor food, coal fires, draughts, the wireless, and ugly furniture were still commonplace, the action takes place in the Monkswell Manor Guest House, a former country house, cut off from the outside world by snow.

Along the way the play has acquired its own traditions and treasured artefacts. The clock in the hall is the one remaining original prop from 1952 and has ticked above the fireplace for seventy years. The radio news bulletin is an original recording by the late Deryck Guyler, who holds the unique position of being the only person to have “acted” in every performance. Now the rest of the cast changes annually around  the November date of the play’s inception on the London stage. At the end of each performance  a member of the cast issues an appeal to the audience  not to spoil the experience for others: “Now you have seen The Mousetrap you are our partners in crime, and we ask you to preserve the tradition by keeping the secret of whodunit locked in your hearts.” (Shame on you Wikipedia for revealing the identity of the killer.)

Over the years The Mousetrap has become part of London’s heritage. On the night of Agatha Christie’s death in January 1976 the lights were dimmed while the cast and audience stood to honour the author. No less august an organ than the Financial Times trumpets the play’s success: “The Mousetrap is to the West End Theatre what ravens are to the Tower of London. Its disappearance could impoverish us.”

I became a fan of Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries upon my graduation from the Children’s Library to Adult Fiction (an innocent term in the Chester library of the early 60s). I achieved this move only after much pestering of the librarian when I had exhausted the contents of the juvenile shelves. But my early acquaintance with the adult library was daunting, its volumes heavy, solid, and unwelcoming, long books with small print. I was steeled for an ignominious  return to  the adventures of Sue Barton, District Nurse, and the exploits of the Girls at the Chalet School, when I discovered  Agatha Christie’s novels, and I was hooked. Hercules Poirot and Jane Marple opened a new genre of writing to me, with the added advantage that I never remembered whodunit, so could happily revisit, losing myself in the faux refined world of St. Mary Mead or travelling with Poirot to exotic destinations on the Orient Express.

Despite my early immersion in the novels, as the scope of my reading expanded elsewhere, I remained unfamiliar with Christie’s plays. Then The Mousetrap and I turned twenty-one, which seemed an appropriate time to connect, and I saw the play during its last year at The Ambassador’s. Already it was looking quaint as England had changed much during those twenty-one years. When we both reached another milestone at forty, I saw it again and the passage of time seemed shorter, for the world had changed less and the distance between the action on the stage and real life seemed no more marked than it had been twenty years earlier.

Now in its seventieth year, and with no sign of its popularity abating, The Mousetrap is engaged in a 70^th Anniversary Tour  around seventy provincial theatres, beginning in Nottingham. Later this year it will open on Broadway; the famous clock, it is rumoured, will go with it. Will I go to New York to celebrate this most recent anniversary? Probably not, but I may catch it in one of the provincial theatres.

Meanwhile I dropped in on The Queen of Crime herself. She is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, Cholsey, near Wallingford in Oxfordshire, where she and her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, lived for 40 years. A large ornate stone features a pair of puti, in danger of being throttled by their frilly ruffs, Agatha’s overlaid initials, and, in ornate script, a quotation from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen:

“Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas

Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.”

Edmund Spenser

The church at Norton Saint Philip boasts a clock by Vulliamy and Frodsham dating from 1848. It is not the oldest church clock in Somerset, but it is one of the few still wound by hand. Twice a week clock winders  winch up three weights in a pulley system and as they descend the clock strikes the hour, the half, and the quarters. Every sixth week we take our turn on the clock winding rota, climbing the narrow spiral staircase up the tower to a point where we look down on the bell ringers but up to those charged with care of the flagpole.

The base of the tower at the west end of the church is not its most attractive feature: here behind closed doors spare chairs are stacked, vases and watering cans jumble together, notice boards superfluous to current requirements lean drunkenly against the walls, plastic boxes spill electrical odds and ends, and what looks suspiciously like a hostess-trolley lurks in one corner. It has in truth a desolate air, the  few memorials lining the walls  have known better times and  they look down disconsolately on the dusty impedimenta. But these memorials  are the survivors: they were moved from the floors of the nave, chancel, and aisles to the tower walls during Gilbert Scott’s reconstruction of the church in the 1840s,  when others disappeared entirely. And high on the north wall are the  sisters whom I always greet: two small female heads, crudely sculpted with  flicked up hairdos reminiscent of Millicent Martin on TW3 in the mid-sixties, they are roughly attached to the wall.

They have no words of their own but beneath, in a shabby frame, a faded notice recalls a quotation from the diary of Samuel Pepys:

At Philip’s Norton I walked to the

Church, and there saw the Tombstone

whereon there were two heads cut,

which the story goes and creditably,

 were two sisters, called the Fair Maids

of Foscott, that had two bodies upward

and one stomach and there lie buried.

Pepys and his wife visited Philip’s Norton in June 1668. Foscott, now Foxcote, is a hamlet a few miles from Norton and when Pepys saw the tomb the effigy of the conjoined twins was cut in stone in the floor of the nave. Later the Somerset Historian John Collinson recorded in the third volume of his History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset  published in 1791 that “In the floor of the nave…are the mutilated portraitures, in stone, of two females, close to each other, and called, by the inhabitants, the Fair Maids of Foscott, or Fosstoke, a neighbouring hamlet, now depopulated. There is a tradition that the persons they represented were twins, whose bodies were at their birth conjoined together” and, he adds gruesomely, “that they arrived at a state of maturity; and that one of them dying the survivor was compelled to drag about her lifeless companion, till death released her of the horrid burden.” Today nothing  remains of the tombstone  save for the heads, the rest probably destroyed during Gilbert Scott’s restoration.

Pepys also noted that while in the church  he “there saw a very ancient tomb of some Knight Templar, I think.” The latter still lies in the south aisle but is now identified as a lawyer of the fifteenth century wearing a barrister’s gown. More loved than the Maids he is often in receipt of tribute, near disappearing beneath greenery at Christmas and well supplied with apples at harvest.

Just a year after this visit Pepys himself had cause to erect a memorial: his wife, Elisabeth, died and he had a marble bust of her installed at Saint Olave’s in the City of London where he was a regular worshipper calling it “our own church,” and which was later described by Betjeman as “a country church in the world of Seething Lane.” Elisabeth’s bust was positioned on the north wall of the sanctuary so that Pepys could see her from his pew in the gallery, and in 1703 he was buried next to her in the nave. His own memorial  on the wall of the south aisle faces hers, and from their elevated positions they receive their many admirers.

Not so the Fair Maids, a little lonely these days in their tower with only the clock winders, flower arrangers, bell ringers, and flag hoisters passing busily beneath them as they go about their business. So, if you are in Somerset, follow Pepys’ example: come to this country church in Norton Saint Philip and visit my friends the Maids, say hello to the lawyer too, and listen to the hand wound clock striking the quarters.