Frognal

A Pindarick Ode

I

Blow the Trumpet, beat the Drum!1

The fatal hour hath come!2

The bold Accordion tune and melody provide

On the resounding Ophicleide!3

Strike, too, th’Umbilical Chord,4

And with coarse laughter greet

In ev’ry street,

The feather’d Fraud!

Proclaim aloud on Piccolo and Flute,

In Towns, Small Islands, Domus, Rus,5

Th’impostures vile and infamous

Of Grub-street C . . t!6

Never again shall Frognal’s sylvan slopes,7

(Long time the cradle of poetic hopes),

Echo the frequent efforts of his Muse,

In discords harsh8 our language to abuse.

E’en now upon black Hampstead’s swarthy Moor,

The joyful cry ascends: “No! Nevermore.”9

II

Reblow the Trumpet, and the Drum rebeat!

Potations neat

In tumblers curiously engrav’d10 prepare.

And from his secret lair

Summon great Behemoth, the Elephant!11

A cold collation spread,

And from his oozy bed,12

Where his huge bulk13 aslant

The wine-dark Ocean14 lies—Hail

To the cheerful feast

The mighty beast,

Frolick Leviathan, the Whale!15

And that sweet Frognal’s groves may henceforth be

From C . . t’s impov’rished rhymes for ever free,

Prepare, with solemn ceremony to greet,

Him, whom the puny poets of Grub-street

Know for their ancient enemy, and call

Tarantula, or Spider Vesperal!16

III

With garlands fresh, a Belvedere adorn,

And on the sacred lawn,

Where Bina’s17 fam’d Gazebo tops the skies,18

A fragrant couch devise—

Like to the bed,

With od’rous gums o’erspred,

Whereon th’Arabian Bird19

The deathly summons heard,

And with immortal longings20 fir’d,

Lay down, and aromatic’lly expir’d.

Here let them rest, as once on his Divan,

Reclin’d at ease the pamper’d Turcoman21—

And, while their limbs luxurious shapes assume,

while heads grown drowsy with the sweet perfume

Of cooling sherbet and Hesperian fruit—

Discuss th’abominable practices of C . . t

IV

With rolling eye, Leviathan shall tell

In accents transatlantic22 what befell,

When, far from Frognal’s oak-encircled hill,

The Cambrian squire23

Set forth in quaint attire,24

With reeking tube25 the feather’d tribe26 to kill.

Shy Behemoth, of youthful bards the friend,

Tho’ seldom seen t’unbend,

Whom fair dactylographs,27 for all their pain,

In silence must adore, and love in vain28—

Now suddenly made bold,

Shall a rich tale unfold;

And, while the servile Blackamoor,

With fiery Usquebaugh,29

His lithe proboscis undertakes to fill,

The beans shall spill!

V

Spider, Elephant, and Whale

One by one take up the tale—

Tarantula, the wisest of the Three

(His subtle lips unsealed),30

In more than mortal majesty

Now stands revealed!

And, while the hautboys sound,31

And far above the ground

In bursts of dazzling spray the rockets shoot—

He to the Conclave speaks,

And seeks

In honied tones t’expose the specious C . . t.

“Let it be known how C . . t spent half his days32

Soliciting th’embrace of Phœbus’ rays,33

Hoping his wanton body to set free,

Naked beneath the burning axletree!34

Let human kind now hear the horrid truth

Concerning practices e’en more uncouth—

Of Alcmen’s nights, when distant from his spouse

In Oxford’s Courts, he dwelt in deep carouse!35

Of frantic efforts to encompass Fame

In what men term th’Antique and Royal Game!36

How in th’urban Bagnio he sought to cheat

Th’increasing embonpoint with steamy heat!37

How he, with base mechanick instinct, spurn’d

The cutting edge that Occam skillf’ly turn’d.38

And how the Christian ceremony he marr’d,

By reading Homer—blind egregious bard!

These scandalous deceptions now made plain,

No more shall C . . t the common weal profane!”

He spoke. And all with acclamation loud

Greet th’amazing words. With aspect proud

And floral tributes crown’d,

He, from the Belvedere retir’d,

While those around,

With cheerful malice fir’d,

Acclaim the Hero, and prepare to leave the ground.

VI

Frognal, Farewell! No more thy verdant glade39

Shall shudder at the croaking of his voice.

Therefore Rejoice!40

For, henceforth, in Cimmerian shade41

His twitt’ring ghost must dwell—

In that same nether hell,

Where ever-watchful lies

Ouroboros—the Worm that never dies.42

And Ye, Frognalian Champions!

Worthy scions

Of crafty Odysseus—

Ye, who first found a use

For gests mysterious and practical;

Who th’ingenuous43 C . . t ensnar’d

With springès44 magical—

Farewell! The glorious work is done,45 the Tyranny o’er-pass’d.

The goose is cook’d, the Vict’ry won, the C . . t successf’ly grass’d.

[John Hayward]

Notes
  1. 1.

    ‘Sound the trumpet, beat the drum’ was the last of the three Odes that Purcell wrote between 1685 and 1687 to celebrate the birthday of James II.

    See too John Dryden, ‘Alexander’s Feast; or, the Power of Music’, 3rd stanza:

    A song in honour of St Cecilia’s Day 1697

    The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,

    Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:

    The jolly god in triumph comes;

    Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!

    Flush’d with a purple grace

    He shows his honest face:

    Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes!

    Bacchus, ever fair and young,

    Drinking joys did first ordain;

    Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,

    Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure:

    Rich the treasure,

    Sweet the pleasure,

    Sweet is pleasure after pain.

  2. 2.

    See John 12: 23.

  3. 3.

    Ophicleide: a brass wind musical instrument, consisting of a large tapering tube bent double and provided with finger keys; now superseded by the tuba.

  4. 4.

    The pun on chord/cord is of course deliberate.

  5. 5.

    In the study of Latin, it is common to learn the mnemonic for nouns which have the locative form: ‘cities, towns, islands smaller than Rhodes, and domus and rus’.

  6. 6.

    JDH note: ‘C[oo]t.’

  7. 7.

    William Wordsworth, ‘September 1819’, ll. 1–2:

    The sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields

    Are hung, as if with golden shields

    +

    On as we move a softer prospect opes,

    Calm huts, and lawns between, and sylvan slopes.

  8. 8.

    Robert Chester, Loves martyr: or, Rosalins complaint. Allegorically shadowing the truth of loue, in the constant fate of the phœnix and turtle. A poeme enterlaced with much varietie and raritie; now first translated out of the venerable Italian Torquato Cæliano (1601):

    Away with Musicke for your strings do iarre,

    Your sound is full of Discords, harsh and ill

  9. 9.

    See ‘The Raven’ (1849), by Edgar Allan Poe, ll. 1–6 and 37–48:

    Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

    Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

    As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

    ‘’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door—

    Only this, and nothing more.’

    …

    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

    In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.

    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

    Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

    Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

    Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

    By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.

    ‘Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, ‘art sure no craven,

    Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

    Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’

    Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’

  10. 10.

    A likely reference to the silver tumblers awarded to Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford (Toby Faber, grandson of GCF, email to Haffenden, 5 Sept. 2024).

  11. 11.

    Job 40: 15–19: ‘Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.’

  12. 12.

    Shakespeare, The Tempest, V, i, ll. 175–7:

    I wish

    Myself were mudded in that oozy bed

    Where my son lies.

  13. 13.

    ‘huge bulk like a sea monster’ – Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 5, 40.

  14. 14.

    Homer, Odyssey 7. 243 ff. Odysseus tells King Alkinous (Alcinous) of his travels:

    Far from here there lies an island called Ogygia. The daughter of Atlas has her home there, Kalypso (Calypso), a goddess of awesome power and many wiles. She is seldom visited, whether by mortals or by immortals; but I, alas, was brought by ill fortune to her hearth, a sole survivor when Zeus with his flashing thunderbolt shattered and shivered my rapid ship in the midst of the wine-dark ocean.

  15. 15.

    JDH to FVM, 8 May 1939: ‘Little spiders do not live on intimate terms with Leviathan. Yet I have this conviction, with so few meetings to justify it, that you are a very old & very valuable & very much cherished friend. Perhaps there is something in Whale’s personality that enables them to leap over all the common barriers of time & space & indifference & take the shortest way to the heart.’

  16. 16.

    JDH note: ‘Mr. H.’

  17. 17.

    JDH note: ‘The residence of Mr. H.’

  18. 18.

    There is a gazebo of modest size in the gated private garden at Bina Gardens.

  19. 19.

    Shakespeare, Cymbeline, I. vi, ll. 620–2:

    IACHIMO: All of her that is out of door most rich!

    If she be furnish’d with a mind so rare,

    She is alone the Arabian bird …

  20. 20.

    Shakespeare, Antony & Cleopatra, V. ii, ll. 279–80:

    CLEOPATRA: Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have

    Immortal longings in me.

  21. 21.

    Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, Part II: Act 4, 3: ‘Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia.’

  22. 22.

    JDH note: ‘Mr. M. a citizen of the U.S.A.’

  23. 23.

    JDH note: ‘Mr. F., who had a country retreat in the Principality.’

  24. 24.

    Robert Browning, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’, 5th stanza:

    Come in!—the Mayor cried, looking bigger:

    And in did come the strangest figure!

    His queer long coat from heel to head

    Was half of yellow and half of red;

    And he himself was tall and thin,

    With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,

    And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,

    No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,

    But lips where smiles went out and in—

    There was no guessing his kith and kin!

    And nobody could enough admire

    The tall man and his quaint attire …

  25. 25.

    Rudyard Kipling, ‘Recessional’ (1897), 5th stanza:

    For heathen heart that puts her trust

    In reeking tube and iron shard,

    All valiant dust that builds on dust,

    And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

    For frantic boast and foolish word—

    Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

  26. 26.

    Anna Lætitia Barbauld, ‘To Mrs Priestley, with some Drawings of Birds and Insects’ (1773), ll. 19–20:

    But humbler themes my artless hand requires,

    Nor higher than the feather’d tribe aspires.

  27. 27.

    Dactylograph: typist.

  28. 28.

    JDH note: ‘It is said a former secretary, one Donovan, a virgin, wept on Mr E’s shoulder.’

    Brigid O’Donovan was TSE’s secretary, Jan. 1935 to Dec. 1936. TSE was to write the following reference for her – addressed to the Clerk of the County Council, Hertford – on 8 Mar. 1940:

    Miss O’Donovan was my secretary here for several years – I do not recall the exact length of time, but that could be obtained – and also assisted me in editing the Criterion, a quarterly review. In this capacity she had to interview many visitors, including a good number of people whom I did not wish to see, and always, so far as I know, handled them with both firmness and tact. She made a very good impression upon those who came in contact with her, as several people mentioned to me privately. As she left me, not in order to look for a more highly paid job, but to find one which would give more scope to her energies and initiative, I should certainly suppose that her first motive in applying for any post was that the nature of the work attracted her, though I know that she had to earn her own living. She certainly did not suffer from illnesses when she was with me – … I should put her energy decidedly high.

    Miss O’Donovan is decidedly a lady, and I believe her to have a high character, an alert social conscience and even a religious temperament. My relations with her were always most satisfactory and I have pleasure in recommending her for any post that she wishes to obtain.

    O’Donovan’s memoir, ‘The Love Song of T. S. Eliot’, Confrontation (Long Island University, NY), Fall/Winter 1975, 3–8, was reported in the TLS, 23 Jan. 1976:

    The secretary, who has never appeared in print before, is daughter of Gerald O’Donovan who was Rose Macaulay’s beloved friend; Rose introduced Brigid – her god-daughter – to Eliot at Faber and Faber in October 1934, and he gave her the job (he told Rose) on the strength of her big black hat.

    Brigid O’Donovan worked for him … for twenty months. He was always soberly dressed with neat back and sides, and ‘never cross’. Apart from general publishing matters, his chief work was editing Criterion, which lost money: ‘I don’t know why Faber and Faber kept it on, but I think it was to please TSE and give him more work to do.’ Most of what went into Criterion ‘came from TSE’s friends’. He was an unmethodical and sporadic editor; most of the proofreading and production seems to have devolved on to Miss O’Donovan. She made an effort to get things on to a more orderly footing, but then realized that ‘TSE wouldn’t love it any more if it had to be done as regular work.’

    The secretaries were responsible for letters rejecting manuscripts from unknown writers; the only rule was that they had to be three paragraphs long. Eliot – at this time working on Murder in the Cathedral – was also writing constantly to his friends, and dictated to Miss O’Donovan ‘quite personal letters’ (though of course, as she says, she does not know what letters she did not type). Another duty was to cope with Mrs (Vivienne) Eliot, from whom he was separated, and who would turn up at the office to see him without warning: ‘I would go down and explain that it was not possible for Mrs Eliot to see her husband, and that he was well. Mrs Eliot, I now understand, suffered from schizophrenia, but at the time I had no idea what was the matter. She was a slight, pathetic, worried figure, badly dressed and very unhappy, her hands screwing up her handkerchief as she wept. Meanwhile Eliot slipped out of the building, and on return would be on edge for the rest of the day.’

    Miss O’Donovan’s own relationship with him was always strained: ‘From the start I fell in love with him.’ He kept his distance. But she was made of sterner stuff than Prufrock, and after nearly two years of agonized love she took the opportunity of his absence in America to hand in her notice.

    O’Donovan added in her memoir (p. 6): ‘[TSE] usually had some amusing and sarcastic comment to make about every incident or individual who came our way, not excluding members of the firm. Nevertheless, he was a warmhearted and affectionate man, and everyone was very fond of him … When it came to teasing [Geoffrey] Faber it was hard to say whether Morley or TSE led the field, but they both gave it considerable thought and preparation.’ (Apropos TSE’s remark about her ‘religious temperament – p. 8: ‘As a let-out from being in love, I took to religion. In a highly embarrassing interview TSE advised me to see Evelyn Underwood, and gave me an introduction to her. For three years I went to her office in Campden Hill Square.’)

    Anne Ridler, ‘Confidential Clerk’ (letter), TLS, 6 Feb. 1976:

    I have not seen Confrontation but to judge from the account given in your Commentary (January 23), the picture drawn by Brigid O’Donovan of T. S. Eliot’s work at Faber and Faber is a distorted one. To correct it, I refer your readers to the article on Eliot as a publisher, contributed by his colleague F. V. Morley to the symposium edited by Richard March and Tambimuttu (London, 1948), where he says: ‘Conscientious, scrupulous, careful, attentive: one or other of those uncommon epithets is needed to describe Eliot as publisher.’ As to the Criterion, I took over the job of secretary from Brigid O’Donovan, and it is true that in those later years of its existence the impetus of its early period had slackened, and the times were not propitious; but it is quite untrue to suggest that it was kept on ‘to please TSE and give him more work to do’. As to proof-reading, it was always understood that this was the secretary’s job: why on earth should the editor have been expected to do it?

    Ridler to Valerie Eliot, 27 Jan. 1976: ‘I must say that Brigid gave absolutely no sign to the naked eye of languishing for love, but of course that’s nothing to go by!’

  29. 29.

    JDH note: ‘Mr E was a ready drinker of whisky.’

  30. 30.

    JDH note: ‘A teasing reference to the cautious policy of the then Prime Minister of England, Mr. Stanley Baldwin.’

  31. 31.

    See the ominous stage direction in Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, V. iii, after l. 25:

    Hautboys sound. The Company sit down at table.

    Enter TITUS dressed like a Cook, LAVINIA veiled, Young LUCIUS, and others. TITUS places the dishes on the table.

  32. 32.

    John Milton, Sonnet 19, ll. 1–2:

    When I consider how my light is spent,

    Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide

  33. 33.

    JDH note: ‘Mr F’s sunbathing pranks.’

  34. 34.

    Milton, ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ (1629), ll. 83–4:

    He saw a greater sun appear

    Than his bright throne, or burning axle-tree could bear.

    Cf. TSE, ‘Burnt Norton’ II:

    Garlic and sapphires in the mud

    Clot the bedded axle-tree.

  35. 35.

    Robert Burns, ‘Scotch Drink’:

    Gie him strong drink until he wink,

    That’s sinking in despair;

    An’ liquor guid to fire his bluid,

    That’s prest wi’ grief and care:

    There let him bowse, an’ deep carouse,

    Wi’ bumpers flowing o’er,

    Till he forgets his loves or debts,

    An’ minds his griefs no more.

  36. 36.

    JDH note: ‘Mr F. a poor golfer.’

  37. 37.

    GCF frequented Turkish baths, most especially an establishment on Northumberland Avenue, London. See ‘Ode to a Roman Coot’, n.5, above.

  38. 38.

    JDH note: ‘Mr F. at one time shaved with an electrical machine – since discarded.’

    ‘[C]utting edge’ and ‘Occam’ advert to the principle of ‘Occam’s Razor’, which is attributed to the English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher William of Ockham, or Occam (1287–1347), author of Summa logicae (c. 1323). The lex parsimoniae refers to the problem-solving principle that when faced with competing hypotheses of seemingly equal merit, the best solution is most probably the simplest.

  39. 39.

    Sir Walter Scott, ‘Bothwell Castle: A Fragment’ (published by J. G. Lockhart in the Memoirs), 4th stanza:

    Full where the copsewood opens wild

    Thy pilgrim step hath staid,

    Where Bothwell’s towers in ruin piled,

    O’erlook the verdant glade

  40. 40.

    Revelation 12: 12: ‘Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

  41. 41.

    The Greek plural noun Kimmérioi refers to a mythical people mentioned in book 11 of the Odyssey as living at the edge of Oceanus, the stream that surrounds the earth, in a city wrapped in mist and fog, where the sun never shines, and near the entrance to Hades.

  42. 42.

    Ouroboros: ancient circular symbol, often used in bracelets or other jewellery, depicting a snake or dragon devouring its own tail; it embodies the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth: the never-ending round.

  43. 43.

    ingenuous ≠ ingenious?

  44. 44.

    A springe is ‘a snare for catching small game, esp. birds’ (OED). In Shakespeare, the word appears twice in Hamlet and once in The Winter’s Tale. Hearing of Hamlet’s love letters to his daughter Ophelia, Polonius calls them ‘springes to catch woodcocks’ (I. iii, l. 124). After being poisoned by his own envenomed rapier, Laertes says, ‘Why as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric./I am justly killed with mine own treachery’ (V. ii. ll. 336–7). And the inimical Autolycus, preparing to fleece the Shepherd’s Son for his purse, says, ‘If the springe hold, the cock’s mine’, falling to the ground and pretending to have just been assaulted by the footman ‘Autolycus’ (Winter’s Tale, IV. iii, l. 35).

  45. 45.

    ‘The happy morn is come, Triumphant over the grave’: hymn by Thomas Haweis (1734–1820), stanza 3:

    Christ hath the ransom paid;

    The glorious work is done …