Manners Makyth Man

Tags

assessment objectives, Blue Badge Guide, Camelot, Clueless, Colin Firth, Dr Johnson, Elinor Dashwood, feretory, Harriet Smith, Jane Austen, Keats, Lady Bertram, Mary Tudor, Occam's razor, Ockham's Razor, Ode to Autumn, ossuaries, Philip of Spain, St Cross, Winchester Cathedral, Wykeham Arms

The third and possibly penultimate excerpt from Jane Austen’s musings from beneath the floor of Winchester Cathedral.

Today an insolent hussy stood on my stone and shrieked to her companion:

Wow!  Get a load of this!  We are standing on that woman whose book we had to read for GCSE.  Except that our teacher just let us watch the DVD.  We had to compare it with “Clueless”, to show evidence of certain assessment objectives, but I got mixed up and was marked down.  It was the teacher’s fault.  She shouldn’t have confused me. My mum appealed, though, and I re-wrote that bit where Mr Thingy exits the lake in a wet t-shirt.  Mum said it was really cool.  Later she came here to give thanks for my success and slipped in a couple of prayer requests to The God of Camelot and a personal one that she might meet Colin Firth, with or without his wet clothing.

All of this was expressed in spite of a metal contraption which was attached to her teeth, so that I was as showered with saliva drops and my stone wetted, as if the Bishop had sprayed me with the rosemary twigs he uses at baptisms.  It isn’t always the best spot here, near the font.

But, at least we haven’t sunk to those adult total immersions yet.

Then the young woman proceeded to light a candle for me, muttering about there being no vanilla or blueberry-scented ones available.

Before I could utter the immortal phrase: It is a truth universally.. she was off, determined to see the feretory, as she loved those furry little creatures- or were they meerkats?  Simples is not the word.

Sometimes I raise my eyes to the metal hooks on the vasty pillars whose original function was to display the nuptial banners of Mary Tudor and Philip of Spain.  Since I cannot suspend myself thereby, I resort to turning over in my grave.  Someone should remind these youngsters of the motto of their local college:  Manners Makyth Man.  (And that is a generic, inclusive term.)

I try not to mind when tourists seem more interested in where Keats precisely commenced his walk to St Cross, before composing Ode to Autumn. 

I could easily interrupt the Blue Badge Guide and inform them that he first procured nuncheon and a pint of porter at The Wykeham Arms.  However, like my creation, Elinor Dashwood, I feel like commenting on his Romantic versification:

It is not everyone who shares your passion for dead leaves!

But, maybe this is somewhat scathing, even for me.

I still feel that a sermon well delivered is as rare as hens’ teeth.  The Evangelical varieties seem livelier, though hardly calculated to earn their exponents a succession to a stall in Westminster.

Some of the homilies could do with a firm shave by the venerable Occam’s razor, since they can be as mangled as the regal bones in the choir ossuaries and as dusty as the said receptacles themselves.  They might do well to remember the less intellectually endowed Harriet Smiths of this world, who do not always decipher obscure riddles and charades.  As Fielding said, however:

Clergy are men as well as other folks.

Personally, I have been able to touch and affect a heterogeneous audience and consequently often have more than half a mind to rise and preach myself, though I heed Dr Johnson’s astute aphorisms regarding the fairer sex and sermonising:

A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs.  It is not done well: but you are surprised to find it done at all.

I know that I can be eloquent on points in which my own conduct would have borne ill examination.  However, greater opportunity for inward reflection has led me to direct more of my sense of irony towards my own failings.  As the good doctor also said:

As I know more of mankind, I expect less and less of them and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

However, I who have gently mocked the aspirations of others have been glad to be sheltered in the bosom of this place, as comfortably as Lady Bertram’s pug upon her chaise, but- prenez soin!  I am sometimes yet inclined to bare my needle sharp teeth and to sink them into some unsuspecting ankles- metaphorically, of course!

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Cathedral Whispers

Tags

agapanthus, Alan Bennett, Alan Tichmarsh, Alethea, bidding prayers, Catherine Morland, designer handbags, Eastleigh, Echinacea, Glucosamine, Lady Catherine de Burgh, Sandbanks, St Cross, Talking Heads, Venus Fly Traps, Winchester Cathedral

(A continuation of our previous musings on Jane Austen’s eavesdroppings culled from her position beneath the floor of Winchester Cathedral.)

There have been seasonal floral displays in various churches in the Hampshire region, including St Cross, over the years.  The last word on flower arranging was probably given by Alan Bennett in his Talking Heads 1 monologue Bed Among the Lentils, about Mrs Shrubsole and the precise placement of a fir cone in her floral arrangement, Forest Murmurs.

Nevertheless I can imagine Jane Austen tuning into covert cathedral discussions being conducted, though masked by arrangements of Venus Fly Traps and burgeoning bocage.

Flower Arranger 1:

I daresay floral occupations are always desirable in girls of your girth, as a means of affording you fresh air and more exercise than you would normally take.  A passion for agapanthus may be deemed somewhat amateurish, but Alan Tichmarsh may yet attend and then, who can tell where your newfound skills may lead?

Arranger 2:

Ah Pansy, you enquired as to when my grand passion first surfaced, so to speak.  It developed gradually, but particularly after my first visit to my paramour’s enormous estate in Eastleigh. 

Pansy :

Unfortunate that the more vulgar might rhyme, or connote that once verdant lea with “beastly.”

Arranger 2:

Ita vero.  Sadly, he is a fit and extremely healthy older man, notwithstanding his vast cache of stocks and shares and general lack of penetration.  I could endeavour to live with him, however minimal his funds, providing that I should have access to them all.  I would aspire to Winchester, but  a villa in Sandbanks would, of course, be preferable and might prove an initial rung on the property ladder.

Arranger 1: Indeed, it would be wrong to marry for money, but foolhardy to marry without it.

Jane Austen:

How I would love to expose those furtive rummagers in designer handbags who rapidly switch off their mobiles before the bidding prayers, lest their lovers interrupt their devotions, or who use their fumbling as an avoidance technique when the offertory bags circulate.

At some of the local school services, one often hears some young prodigy, called Alethea or otherwise, make a smug, sententious remark to her doting mater. Through over-attention, the chit’s natural self-confidence has been honed into haughty assurance.  Catherine Morland’s conviction still stands -ie/ that there is a violent and uncertain life which lurks beneath the veneer  of society.

I am constantly privy to rehearsals of the accomplishments and marvels of female students, who all play musical instruments, achieve A*s and who compete in equine sports at the highest level.  Yet, I have never heard a young lady spoken of, for the first time, without her being lauded to the Empyrean.  Yet, deficiency of nature is often little assisted by education or society.  A greater influence seems to be perpetrated by the expectation of property, usually acquired through trade, or, dare I suggest, a lottery ticket.

Nowadays, such nouveaux positively display themselves in society magazines, besporting themselves at various charitable functions of questionable taste.  Their double-barrelled nomenclatures can scarcely be fitted into the copy without a prodigious profligacy of paper and ink.

Self-appointed, knowledgeable women offer their medical knowledge to others, whether invited to declaim, or not.  They remind me of Lady Catherine de Burgh, when she held forth:

Ah, yes, my experience of the lifelong care of my valetudinarian husband has led me to recommend Echinacea during the winter months and Glucosamine throughout the year.

Their nerves command a high respect, as they have evidently been old friends with whom they have been intimately acquainted for a number of years.  Truly these are women whom one cannot regard with too much deference.

And so we must leave Jane at the moment as she is a little fatigued by this peroration , but she promises to continue to amuse us on the morrow.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Season of Mists

Tags

Germany, Gleneagles Hotel, Golden Spurtle Award, Keats, Peebles, Porridge, Sassenach, Scotland, St Cross, To Autumn, Water Meadows, Winchester Cathedral

World Porridge Day.

You’d better get out there and sow some oats.

Was horrified to learn that The Golden Spurtle Award  for the best porridge in the world has been won by Benedict Horsburgh, an Englishman who now lives in Germany.  This was the 19^th Championship and it is only the second time that it has been won by a foreigner, or Sassenach. Gleneagles’ Head Pastry Chef, Neil Mugg, was one of the judges and he should know a thing or two about that important first meal of the day, as his hotel won Breakfast of the Year Award (Large Hotel), 2012.

Benedict has graciously acknowledged that he is descended from Scottish roots- so that’s all right then!

I can trace my family back to the 1390s to the Peebles area,

he assured journalists.

And you certainly needed something warming for breakfast these last few misty mornings.  The cathedral near Suttonford felt distinctly chilly on Sunday morning and the walk through the Close reminded me of Keats and his poem: Ode to Autumn, which was inspired by his constitutional through the Close and all the way down the water meadows to St Cross.

Some years ago there was a competition to write a poem inspired by Keats and his walk and I felt the Muse nudge me into this mellow entry:

IF FOR A SEASON

Autumnal infernos blaze through the Close;

crimson creepers lick lintels like tongued flames.

Mellow masonry supports one last rose.

Choristers discover old conker games.

You can’t enjoy such salamandrine shows:

except from your grim ward, through heavy panes.

So many youths ago, Keats waxed verbose

about St. Cross, these misty college lanes.

You yearn for those, but Life has reached the sere,

the burnished leaf, and I suspect you know,

so squeeze your hand and try to transmit cheer:

your shrivelled face flushes a phoenix glow.