In Memory of Those Who Gave Their Fictional Lives (Towards an A-Z of the Lawrentian Dead)

D. H. Lawrence's phoenix design as reimagined for the 

Cambridge University Press edition of his letters and works 

(1979- 2018)

Whilst figures such as Paul Morel, Ursula Brangwen, Lady Chatterley and her lover, Oliver Mellors, have attained a degree of literary immortality, there are other characters within the Lawrentian universe who died (or were killed) within the pages of his novels and are now mostly forgotten; remembered, if at all, only by scholars and the most devoted of readers. 

This post is for (some of) those who laid down their fictional lives ...

A is for ...

Annable; gloomy gamekeeper and devil of the woods. A man of only one idea: - "that all civilisation was the painted fungus of rottenness" - who is best known for his motto: "'Be a good animal, true to your animal instinct'". Death by misadventure (beneath a great pile of rocks at a stone quarry). Not a figure to be much mourned by the locals.

See: The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 146 and 147.

B is for ...

Banford, Jill; a "small, thin, delicate thing with spectacles" and tiny iron breasts. Intimate friends with the more robust Miss March. Physically afraid of many things (from dark nights to tramps); rightly afraid and suspicious of the young man Henry who, in his heart, determines her death by chopping down a tree that accidently on purpose hits her as it falls: "The back of the neck and head was a mass of blood, of horror." Verdict: manslaughter, as a result of malicious negligence.

See: 'The Fox', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 7 and 65. 
      

Beardsall, Frank; father to Cyril and Lettie, whom he abandoned when they were very young. Characterised by the son as a "frivolous, rather vulgar character, but plausible, having a good deal of charm". Death due to natural causes (kidney failure).

See: The White Peacock (CUP, 1983), p. 33.

C is for ...

Cooley, Benjamin; aka Kangaroo. A Jewish lawyer and head of an Australian paramilitary organisation (the Diggers); a fascist-idealist acting in the name of Love and Order. His face was "long and lean and pendulous, with eyes set close together [...] and his body was stout but firm". Death by gunshot, having taken a bullet in his marsupial pouch, fired by a political opponent. But blames Richard Somers for his death, due to the latter's refusal to pledge his love.

See: Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 107-108.      

Crich, Diana; daughter of Thomas; sister to Gerald. A good-looking girl, but not somebody for whom Rupert Birkin particularly cares: "'What does it matter if Diana Crich is alive or dead? [...] Better she were dead - she'll be much more real. She'll be positive in death. In life she was a fretting, negated thing.'" Death by drowning whilst fooling around on the water.

Crich, Gerald; son of Thomas. An accursed, Cain-like figure who, as a boy, accidently killed his brother. Gudrun's lover and Birkins' closest friend (and naked wrestling partner); a man of tremendous will but whose life seems suspended above an abyss of nihilism and nausea. Thus, in the end, he just has to let go of everything and lie down in the snow. Death due to something breaking in his soul (and hypothermia).

Crich, Thomas; father to Gerald and Diana (as well as other children). A dark and stooping figure and mine owner who cares about his employees; "in Christ he was one with his workmen"; his wife and eldest son rather despise his moral idealism. He dies slowly - terribly slowly - from old age and an incurable illness. Finally, finally, comes the "horrible choking rattle" from the old man's throat. Coroner's verdict: death by natural causes.

See: Women in Love ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 185, 215 and 333.  


H is for ...

Hepburn, Evangeline; wife of Capt. Alexander Hepburn. A middle-aged woman who likes to dress in a very distinctive manner; bright eyes and "pretty teeth when she laughed". Unlucky in love - her husband is cheating on her with a younger woman (Hannele) - and unlucky in life as well; fatally falling as she does out of her bedroom window, whilst staying on the third floor of a hotel. Verdict: accidental death, but her husband's confession to his mistress - "'I feel happy about it'" - raises one's suspicions.

See: 'The Captain's Doll', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird (CUP, 1992), p. 86 and 110.

M is for ...

Morel, Gertrude; a rather small woman of delicate mould but resolute bearing. A monster who feeds on the love of her sons and despises her husband. Cultured, but snobbish. Death by euthanasia; Paul and his sister Annie agree to administer an overdose of morphia to their mother who is dying of cancer; they may have "both laughed together like two conspiring children", but it was an act of mercy in the circumstances.

Morel, William; eldest son of Gertrude; brother of Paul. The real whizz-kid of the family and a favourite with the girls. A good student; hard-working; moves to London aged twenty to start a new life, but soon falls seriously ill and not even his mother can save him. Official cause of death: pneumonia and erysipelas (a highly infectious bacterial skin disease); unofficial cause of death: maternal vampirism.

See Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 437. 


S is for ... 

Saywell, Granny; aka The Mater. Mother to Arthur Saywell; grandmother to Yvette and Lucille. One of those "physically vulgar, clever old bodies" who exploited the weaknesses of others whilst pretending to be a warm and kindly soul. Half-blind, hard of hearing and often bed-ridden, she still loved a bit of pork and to sit "in her ancient obesity". Happily for all concerned, this toad-like old woman is killed in flood waters. Verdict: death by drowning.

See: 'The Virgin and the Gipsy', in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 6 and 14.

Siegmund; middle-aged musician; husband to Beatrice; lover to Helena. A man who feels trapped in a life of domestic misery; "like a dog that creeps round the house from which it [briefly] escaped with joy". A man for whom suicide is the only way out. Verdict: death by hanging (with his own belt).

See The Trespasser, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 174.

Judenstern (With Reference to the Case of Serge Gainsbourg)

I. 

Although now strongly associated in the popular imagination with Nazi Germany, the yellow badge that Jews were obliged to wear for purposes of public identification (i.e., to clearly mark them as religious and ethnic outsiders), has a depressingly long history, albeit not one that I wish to examine in detail here.  

It's interesting to note, however, that the idea of making the patch in the shape of the six point Star of David first arose in Portugal, even though the hexagram has never been a uniquely Jewish symbol (in fact, Jewish Kabbalists probably borrowed it from the Arabs for use in the design of talismanic amulets known as segulot). 

It's also interesting to note that this Portuguese star was red, not yellow, even though within the medieval and early modern world the latter was the colour most often associated with Judas, religious heretics, and other persons thought cowardly and not to be trusted.   

The Nazis were therefore drawing upon an extensive (anti-Semitic) history when they revived the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinctive sign upon their clothing, including, most famously, the yellow Star of David with the word Jude inscribed in letters meant to resemble Hebrew script.

Intended to further division and hatred, the Judenstern ironically increased sympathy for the Jews amongst the wider population of the Reich. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, for example, a ban had to be introduced on the polite doffing of hats towards Jews, after it became a popular form of protest against German occupation and Nazi brutality.   

II.  

Born in 1929, to Russian-Jewish parents who had fled to France following the 1917 Revolution, Serge Gainsbourg's childhood was profoundly affected by the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

Fortunately, however, he was able to draw darkly comic inspiration from this tragic period in later years; such as in his controversial album Rock Around the Bunker (1975), which included the track 'Yellow Star'.

In this short song, Gainsbourg recalls how he'd felt as a young boy required to wear such in wartime Paris; an experience only made bearable by pretending that it was a sherrif's badge, or a prize that he'd been awarded.      

Fans of the singer-songwriter - of which I'm one - might also recall that several years prior to this, Gainsbourg celebrated the huge international success of Je t'aime ... moi non plus by commissioning Cartier to design him a platinum Star of David medallion.

As one commentator notes, he had never forgotten the humiliation of his early years and this was an attempt to overcome feelings of shame and anger with humour.

For as they say in French: Rira bien qui rira le dernier ...

Notes

Play: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Yellow Star', from the album Rock Around the Bunker (Polygram International, 1975): click here. 

Note: Rock Around the Bunker is not merely an upbeat concept album about National Socialism and Gainsbourg's own experiences as a Jewish youth growing up in German-occupied Paris; it's also a subtle dig at those who bought into the Nazi chic of the 1970s - including performers such as David Bowie who should've known better.   

Ana: the Little Match Girl of Harold Hill

Were Hans Christian Andersen writing his tale of The Little Match Girl today, rather than in 1845, then I imagine she'd probably be hawking copies of The Big Issue and wearing a headscarf, rather than selling matches bareheaded and barefoot in the street.

Either way, it's a cold and depressing way to try and earn a living and I can't help feeling sorry for the young woman, called Ana, who stands - rain or shine - outside Boots every day with her magazines and, in the circumstances, a remarkably cheerful manner.

Despite Nietzsche's warnings against the dangers of pity, I often return her greeting or give her a smile. And, although I don't want what she's peddling, I have bought her a hot chocolate and even a tub of Aptamil baby formula, as requested.   

And I've done so fully aware that this horrifies many people. Editors at the Daily Mail, for example, seem convinced that The Big Issue is now merely a front for Eastern European criminals; that Britain's homeless and those in genuine need have been replaced by immigrants already in receipt of generous state benefits

Maybe that's true: I don't know ...

However, whilst no one wants to be thought of as a soft touch, i.e., open to easy manipulation and emotional blackmail by those who beg on street corners and spin tales of woe, I would hate to become one of those hard-hearted individuals, lacking in compassion or kindness.

So, push comes to shove, I'd rather hand over a fiver just to be on the safe side; even at the risk of being taken for a bit of a mug. In the end, that money secures your own spiritual well-being, rather than their material comfort.

And, in my case at least, it also got me an Xmas card from Ana, who said she will keep me in her prayers and, more importantly, signed herself as my fryend.    


Note on the images:

The first is taken from the Disney animated short film The Little Matchgirl (dir. Roger Allers, 2006). 

The second is from the inside of my card from Ana - which, although intended to be festive, was actually a card of condolence, expressing the sender's deepest sympathy. 

Punk Xmas

'Tis the season to be Johnny 

(Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la)

I.

For all its professed anarcho-nihilism and counter-cultural posturing, punk quickly revealed itself to be all too human when the festive season rolled round, with many bands embracing the cynical-sentimental showbiz tradition of releasing Christmas songs. 

Now, whilst punk intellectuals such as Craig O'Hara and Gerfried Ambrosch* might think it terribly subversive for Stiff Little Fingers to release a raucous live rendition of White Christmas, or that by performing Silent Night at a million miles an hour the Dickies caused Franz Gruber to start spinning in his grave, I do not.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how hard you pogo around the Christmas tree, you're not reclaiming the happy holiday as a pagan tradition or deconstructing moral idealism, you are - in the words of Paul McCartney - simply having a wonderful Christmastime (ding-dong, ding-dong, ding). 

That doesn't make you a collaborator, or a sell out.

But it does mean you perhaps have rather more in common with everyone else than you might otherwise wish to acknowledge and that your romantic rebellion - against cliché, dreary convention, and commercialism - is born of the fact that you care a great deal (punk indifference being merely another pose).**

II.

So what, then, are the best punk Xmas songs?

That's hard to say, as, to be honest, they're all pretty awful, with one or two exceptions, such as Fairytale of New York (1987), by the Pogues, ft. Kirsty MacColl, and Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight) (1987), by the Ramones - though I'm not overly keen on either.

I do quite like Siouxsie and the Banshees' version of the traditional French Christmas carol Il est né, le divin Enfant (1982), but, ultimately, my tastes take me back towards the two tunes previously mentioned, by SLF and the Dickies: White Christmas (1980) and Silent Night (1978).

And finally, let's not forget the Thin Lizzy/Sex Pistols collaboration (as the Greedies); A Merry Jingle (1979): click here to watch their performance on Top of the Pops (20-12-79), or here, as they close the New Year's edition of The Kenny Everett Television Show, in another time and in a different world ... 

Notes

* Craig O'Hara, The Philosophy of Punk, (AK Press, revised 2nd edition, 2000); Gerfried Ambrosch, The Poetry of Punk, (Routledge, 2018).
 
** Obviously, when I say punks care, I don't mean about the baby Jesus, but about the authenticity of experience; they so want things to be meaningful and honest and real - including the joy of Christmas. 

To relive Christmas '77 with the Sex Pistols, see the BBC Four documentary directed by Julien Temple, (2013): click here.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins: He'll Put a Spell on You

Because you're mine ...

I.

Never a favourite with the NAACP, Screamin' Jay Hawkins played with black racial stereotypes and white racial fears just as he experimented with music and performance, producing a unique sound and look that would later influence shock rockers from Arthur Brown and Alice Cooper to Marilyn Manson.

The above - and many others - were inspired by his mock-satanism and penchant for macabre stage accessories (including smoking skulls, rubber snakes, and shrunken heads).  

II.

A former champion boxer and Korean war veteran, Hawkins decided to try his luck as a rhythm and blues singer. After an 18 month spell fronting a band, he left to develop a solo career. His big moment came in 1955, when he recorded an astounding - and drunken - version of his composition entitled I Put a Spell On You, for a black music label owned by Columbia Records. 

The grunts, groans and screams that Hawkins added to what was otherwise a fairly standard pop ballard were deemed to be so disturbing that the record was immediately banned from the radio. Nevertheless, it was a huge hit, selling more than a million copies and secured Hawkins a place in the rock 'n' roll hall of fame. 

It also ensured he would be typecast as a performer, whose talents as a singer, songwriter and musician, became increasingly irrelevant; people wanted the outrageously dressed madman with a bone through his nose, taking to the stage in a satin-lined coffin and giving his best impression of the voodoo priest Baron Samedi.*    

As much as his grotesque persona delighted and amused white audiences - not only in the US, but also in the UK and France - it deeply offended many African Americans. Hawkins, however, was unapologetic, explaining that he was simply an entertainer looking to make a few dollars; not a role model, spokesman for the black community, or a civil rights activist.    

Although he had a number of other hit songs - including Constipation Blues (1969); a track about real pain, not merely heartbreak and loneliness - his star was well and truly beginning to fade by the 1970s, although he continued to work up until his death, aged 70, in February 2000, appearing, for example, alongside Joe Strummer in the 1989 cult movie Mystery Train (dir. Jim Jarmusch).  

Since his death, I Put a Spell on You has continued to be covered by a wide variety of artists, most of whom treat the song very seriously; very few have been brave (or foolish) enough to attempt to replicate - or better - the unique performance given by Hawkins himself ...**

Notes

* Hawkins did sometimes express his unhappiness with this; in a 1973 interview, for example, he bemoaned the fact that whilst James Brown did an awful lot of screaming, he wasn't given the name of Screamin' James Brown and nobody expected him to play the fool or questioned the sincerity of his performance. I'm not overly sympathetic with Hawkins, however, who voluntarily sold his soul to the devil.  

** Artists who have covered this song include Nina Simone, Bryan Ferry, Marilyn Manson, and even Bonnie Tyler.

Play: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, I Put a Spell On You, (Okeh Records, 1956): click here. 

And for a live TV performance of the song, click here. 

A Brief Midwinter Reflection

Thank fuck it's the solstice this weekend and the promise of a returning sun; have the mornings ever been so dark as this year? I don't remember them so. But maybe it's an age thing; I appreciate now why so many pensioners like to spend winter in the south, if they can afford to do so.

Of course, despite the December solstice being a cosmic and psychological turning point, it's still a terribly long wait for spring and the warmer days when love becomes possible anew. For as Irigaray points out, whilst a god can enter the world midwinter, it's too early, too cold, and too dark to really rejoice.

Winter undoubtedly has it's own special beauty and rhythm, but it's spring - "when the heavens and the earth unite" - that is the "most wonderful and divine season"; a time of flowers and birdsong that "resonates in a deep silence [...] beyond any word".      

The solstice is a time when, briefly, the sun stands still; but in the spring everything leaps forward - even the clocks! 

See: Luce Irigaray, Through Vegetal Being, (Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 36 and 37.

 

On Stamina (as Ontological Destiny)

John Melhuish Strudwick: A Golden Thread (1885)

I.

An aged philosopher, said a young Nick Land, is either a monster of stamina or a charlatan. We can probably say the same of artists, rock stars, and maybe even monarchs.

For whilst I don't want to revive and reinforce the romantic ideal of living fast and dying young - as if a premature death confirms authenticity and proves the truth of one's message - there are perhaps certain individuals who are under a greater obligation to die at the right time than other (superfluous) men and women; i.e., not too late, but not too early either. 

However, it's not this Nietzschean idea I wish to discuss; nor do I wish to comment here on what makes monstrous, or write in defence of charlatanism. I want, rather, to say something on the concept of stamina ...

II.

It's unfortunate - and a little disappointing - that Land seems to rely upon the common understanding of the term stamina; i.e., synonymous merely with staying power, or the ability to maintain an activity or commitment regardless of circumstances (including fatigue and old age). That's the kind of error that the sort of people who think that a rock has the capacity to endure might make ...   

For stamina means more than merely having the energy and strength to keep going; it refers us rather to the essential elements of a thing; the vital structures or qualities of being. As the plural form of stamen, we might even define it as the thread (or filament) from which the individual (and their fate) is woven. 

Thus, philosophically speaking, all mortals have stamina (i.e., an ontological destiny) - even charlatans, those who burn out early, or those who regard death as a festival and voluntarily choose to squander their souls ...

See:

Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992). 

Nietzsche, 'Of Voluntary Death', Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (Penguin Books, 1969).   

Dionysos Versus the Amazons

I.

One of two final (prose) poems written by D. H. Lawrence was a work inspired by a reading of Plutarch, concerning the bloody battle fought between the god Dionysos and his followers and the tribe of warrior women known by many names amongst the ancient Greeks, but most commonly remembered today as the Amazons [Ἀμαζόνες].

According to Plutarch, after an initial skirmish at the coastal city of Ephesus, the Amazons fled to the island of Samos, where they were pursued by Dionysos and slaughtered en masse. Lawrence seems to be in little doubt as to who instigated the violence. He writes:

"Oh small-breasted, brilliant Amazons, will you never leave off attacking the Bull-foot, for whom the Charities weave ivy-garlands?"

And, a little later, he notes: "the Amazons swept out of cover with bare limbs flashing and bronze spears lifted."

What Lawrence doesn't do in his reimagining of the myth, is explain why the Amazons should be so fiercely determined to resist the triumph of Dionysos. To understand that, we need to turn to the work of the 19thC theorist of ancient matriarchy, Johann Jakob Bachofen ...


II.

Bachofen is probably best remembered today (if at all) as the author of Das Mutterrecht (1861); a seminal work in which he argues that Woman in her role of sacred (earth) mother is the origin of all human religion, culture and society.

According to Bachofen's post-Hegelian perspective, human cultural evolution consists of several stages, culminating in the Apollonian age in which all traces of the Mutterecht and the matriarchal past were eradicated, and from which modern (solar-phallic) civilisation emerged.

Whilst convinced that, ultimately, there's a progressive movement from base matter to the luminous unfolding of spirit, Bachofen doesn't argue for a smooth, developmental process. He insists, rather, that each shift from one phase to the next is marked by violence and there are often long periods during which regressive forces gain the upper hand and force humanity backwards. 

As the Dionysian phase of cultural evolution was one in which earlier female traditions were either masculinised or destroyed as the phallocratic order of patriarchy slowly began to emerge and assert itself, there was, therefore, good reason for the Amazons to be pissed (as Americans like to say).

It should be noted, however, that Bachofen doesn't approve of their feminist uprising, dismissing it as both reactionary and perverse and decrying the Amazons as a bunch of hate-filled, homocidal, war-loving maidens [männerfeindlichen, männertötenden, kreigerischen Jungfrauen].

He celebrates their defeat by Dionysos as the restoration of the natural order; finally, says Bachofen, women can find their fulfilment (and destiny) via glad submission to the male in all his glory. 
  

III.

I suppose the question is: did Lawrence know of Bachofen and was the latter an influence of any sort?

Well, whilst I don't recall him ever mentioning Bachofen, one suspects Lawrence would have known the name, being as he was well read in German literature and philosophy and married to a woman who would have almost certainly been familiar with Bachofen's ideas.   

What's interesting is that even whilst Lawrence would have detested Bachofen's idealism, he himself frequently wrote within the terms and confines of metaphysical dualism; darkness and light, passive and active, and - most crucially - male and female.

Indeed, like Bachofen, Lawrence sometimes seems to read all human history in terms of a battle of the sexes. And, like Bachofen, whilst he declares his sympathies are with the women, Lawrence often seems deeply troubled by the thought of women who have liberated themselves from men and phallocentric culture entirely, such as Amazons and lesbians.

Thus, it's noticeable that in his poem Lawrence seems more concerned about the fate of the beasts that accompanied Dionysus into battle, than the fate of the women who were put to the sword:

"The rocks are torn with the piercing death-cries of elephants, the great and piercing cry of elephants dying at the hands of the last of the Amazons, rips the island rocks."  

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Elephants of Dionysos', The Poems, Vol. III, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1615-16. This work, along with another (untitled) prose poem, was found on a short manuscript torn from a notebook. They are believed to be the last poems Lawrence wrote, composed at the beginning of December, 1929.

W. R. Halliday, The Greek Questions of Plutarch, (Oxford, 1928); see Question 56. This is the edition that Lawrence consulted when writing his poem on Dionysos and the Amazons. 

Johann Jakob Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother Right, trans. Ralph Manheim, (Princeton University Press, 1992).

Cynthia Eller; Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900, (University of California Press, 2011). See Chapter 3: On the Launching Pad: J. J. Bachofen and Das Mutterrecht, which I found particularly helpful when writing this post.  

This post is for Maria.

And Winner, of the 2019 Torpedo the Ark Award, is ...

Micromys minutus

... Wendy Fail, for her successful attempt to reintroduce harvest mice to Northumberland.

As a doctoral student back in 2004, Fail bred 240 of these lovely and elusive little creatures in captivity, before then releasing them over a two month period on to a coastal nature reserve with plenty of reedbeds for them to hide in.

Although subsequent trap surveys suggested that the mice hadn't survived and formed a viable population as hoped, it now seems - 15 years later - that descendants of the original animals are in fact breeding, as freshly woven nests have been discovered at the reserve.   

Contacted with the news, Fail was said to be ecstatic - and I'm pleased for her - as I am for this particular species of mouse, which, like many other UK species, is in sharp decline due to all the usual reasons (including habitat destruction and modern farming methods, for example). 

A priority species for conservation and protected by law, the harvest mouse is Britain's smallest rodent (weighing no more than a tuppenny bit) and the only one with a prehensile tail.

Preyed upon by pretty much everything - including owls, cats, and even other mice - the harvest mouse is also surprisingly vulnerable to prolonged periods of cold, wet weather; not ideal when you live in England (even if primarily confined to the South East of the country). 

She hasn't, by her own admission, saved the world. But Fail has succeeded in making it just a slightly more magical (and less lonely) place and for that I congratulate her.

(Let's just hope that the pine martens that have also recently returned to Northumberland don't eat them ...!)

Perfumed Pop Perfection

Dior: Joy (2018): click here

I. Joy *

Somethings are so perfect they deserve to be acknowledged as such. And the TV ad by Dior for the fragrance Joy, directed by Francis Lawrence and starring the sublimely beautiful Jennifer Lawrence, is one such thing. 

It's visually stunning, as one might expect, as the 28-year-old American actress frolics in a swimming pool with a jellyfish, playfully spits water at the camera, lounges in the sun, and floats beneath the stars, etc.

But - crucially - it also has a magical soundtrack supplied by The Rolling Stones; an irresistable slice of psychedilic pop entitled 'She's a Rainbow' ...

II. She's a Rainbow **

'She's a Rainbow' featured on the (much-maligned at the time, but now critically-acclaimed) album Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) and was also released as a single in the US (although it wasn't a big hit, peaking at number 25 in the charts). 

Simplistic, repetitive, and, at times, childlike, it's been described as the prettiest and most un-Stoneslike of all songs written by Jagger and Richards, and features a string arrangement by John Paul Jones, piano by Nicky Hopkins, and the magnificent refrain she comes in colours (the title of a single released 12 months earlier by the LA band Love, led by singer-songwriter Arthur Lee).  

I'm not, for obvious reasons, a great fan of The Rolling Stones and although perfumed pop perfection smells less of teen spirit and more of a multi-million dollar licensing deal, I love this hippie-trippy song nevertheless ...

Notes

* Created by François Demachy, Joy incorporates notes of mandarin, zested bergamot, rose, jasmine, and sensual sandalwood. It is intended to be an olfactive interpretation of light and is Dior's first major fragrance launch since J'adore back in 1999. For more details, visit the Dior website: click here.   

Readers might also note that the fragrance's name is not linked to Lawrence's Oscar-nominated role in the 2015 film Joy (dir. David O'Russell); that's simply a happy coincidence. And although Jennifer and Francis Lawrence have frequently worked together, they are not, in fact, related; the shared surname is simply another coincidence.

** 'She's a Rainbow' is something of a favourite not only with Stones fans, but advertising executives, having featured in several other commercials over the years as well as the Dior ad; these inlude one for Apple in 1999, who wanted to promote their colourful i-Mac computers, and, more recently, one for Acura's RDX in 2018. The song is thus what Arthur Daley would call a nice little earner for Mick and Keith, who, unlike some artists, happily embrace commercial licensing of their songs. 

As the Stones continue to play 'She's a Rainbow' live, one assumes it's one of the two songs on Their Satanic Majesties Request that Jagger and Richards still think fondly of, despite both having dismissed the album as basically not very good.

Play: The Rolling Stones, 'She's A Rainbow', from Their Satanic Majesties Request (Decca, 1967): click here to play the full version (with intro) on YouTube courtesy of Universal Music Group.

London Squawking: The Rise of the Ring-Necked Parakeet

 Who's a pretty boy then? 

Photo by Tim Blackburn / PA

I.

Originally from Africa, the bright green ring-necked parakeet that now thrives in London and SE England, is one invasive species that we can all welcome; for surely everyone loves parrots which make a colourful (if rather noisy) addition to British wildlife.  

Well, probably not everyone, but I don't wish to discuss those who hate parrots here; I would like, rather, to discuss the question of how the tropical birds were introduced into the UK, as this has been a subject of contention and, indeed, urban legend ...


II.

One such legend, for example, traces their origin to a pair released by Jimi Hendrix on Carnaby Street, in the heart of Swinging London, in 1968.

Another slightly less groovy story suggests that the parrots arrived seventeen years earlier, when Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn were in Town to film scenes for The African Queen (1951) and various exotic animals were required on set by director John Huston, some of which - including the parrots - are believed to have escaped.*  

Alas, it seems that neither of the above legends relating to the origins of the UK's parakeets are true; at least not according to a team of academic researchers at Queen Mary University (London) who have looked into the question.

Their work has led them to conclude (rather mundanely) that the booming parakeet population has grown from multiple small-scale releases, some of which were accidental and others due to the intentional actions of nervous pet owners worried by sensational media reports of parrot fever (psittacosis) dating back to the 1930s. 

However they got here, we should be grateful and happy to have the birds (along with the 33 other countries that this avian migrant has made a home in). Those who call for a cull of the parrots due to expanding numbers - and who often express false concerns about their impact on native species - should, in my view, be tarred and feathered. And then shot.  

I would fully endorse what the author Nick Hunt writes here:

"In an age of climate emergency, with mass extinction ripping apart the fabric of the living world, when the dominant narrative of our times is one of loss and disappearance, collapse and diminishment, parakeets tell a different story. These plucky newcomers beat the odds, not only surviving but thriving. In a nature-depleted culture, when city dwellers are supposedly alienated from the environment and anything that is feral or wild, parakeets are the subject of outlandish speculation, the source of mystery, imagination and everyday wonder."**

     

Notes

* Although much of the movie was shot on location in Uganda and the Congo, many scenes were, in fact, filmed at Isleworth Studios, in Middlesex.

** Nick Hunt, 'The great green expansion: how ring-necked parakeets took over London', The Guardian (6 June 2019): click here to read online.

See also: Nick Hunt and Tim Mitchell, The Parakeeting of London, (Paradise Road, 2019). 

The Carolina Parakeet - He's Not Extinct, He's Resting ...

Cornuropsis carolinensis


"This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 
'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, 
run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"*

I.

Bird lovers the world over were delighted to hear that scientists have managed to sequence the genome of a dead (and, in fact, stuffed) Carolina parakeet; although saddened to have their suspicions confirmed that North America's only native parrot** was driven into the void primarily due to human activity. 

For the genetic evidence suggests that populations were buoyant until the arrival and spread of European settlers. The bird's DNA showed no signs, for example, of the inbreeding that is characteristic of species that have been in decline for many generations, across thousands of years. 

Only when the White Man arrived in the Americas, did this brightly-coloured bird - with its green plumage and distinctive yellow head that was once found inhabiting forests from New England to Colorado - face extinction. Having abruptly disappeared from the wild, the last known specimen in captivity died in the Cincinnati Zoo, in February 1918.     

Quite what happened to the bird, no one knows for sure - though we can be fairly certain that deforestation and hunting played significant roles in its demise. Like other parrots, they liked to congregate in large, noisy flocks which made their slaughter by men with guns easy to accomplish (like shooting fish in a barrel).    

II.

You might think that this, then, would be the end of the story ... That having become extinct, the Carolina parakeet, is no more: that he has ceased to be; gone to meet his maker and joined the bleedin' choir invisible, etc. But you'd be mistaken ...

For like the passenger pigeon, the heather hen, and the dodo, the Carolina parakeet is a candidate for de-extinction or bio-resurrection; i.e., the process of bringing an extinct organism back from the dead, via cloning, genome editing, or selective breeding.

Of course, this has never been done before and presents enormous technical challenges. But just because something is incredibly difficult to do, doesn't make it impossible ...

As well as birds, scienists working in this area are also hoping to bring back a species of giant tortoise, a ground-dwelling frog native to Australia, and a whole list of mammals including the European cave lion, a prehistoric wolf, and - of course - the woolly mammoth.

I have to say, I find all this very exciting to consider in a way that conservation projects, sadly, never are. It's always disconcerting, however, to discover that here - as elsewhere - the Nazis led the way, producing a breed of aggressive supercows in the 1930s, based on a species of extinct wild bull that once roamed the forests of Europe.***

Still, never mind the aurochs - bring back the dead parrots!   

Notes

* The lines quoted (pretty much from ingrained cultural memory) are from the 'Dead Parrot Sketch', written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman, and performed by Cleese and Michael Palin in S1/E8 of Monty Python's Flying Circus (7 December 1969). Click here for the version of the sketch featured in the Python film And Now for Something Completely Different (1971).

** It's true that the thick-billed parrot once lived in the American Southwest, but I think of this more as a Mexican bird that had extended its range northwards, rather than as a true native of the United States.   

***The cows, bred from wild genes extracted from domestic descendants of the aurochs, were produced by German zoologists Heinz and Lutz Heck, whom the Nazis commissioned to produce a type of Aryan cattle with muscular physiques, deadly horns, and a fighting temperament. How far they succeeded in this is debatable (criticism can certainly be made of their methodology and, physically, the Heck cattle bear little resemblance to aurochs, being shorter and fatter, for example).    

Double Dutch

Malcolm on set whilst filming the video for 'Double Dutch' and me 
receiving a silver disc to mark sales in the UK of more than 250,000 copies

One of the (many) joys of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is an extensive soundtrack that affords one the opportunity to hear Malcolm McLaren's still remarkably fresh sounding single 'Double Dutch', taken from his debut album, Duck Rock, and released in the summer of '83 when, all over the world, high school girls were taking to the ropes ...
 
I don't know why Scorsese (in collaboration with music supervisor Randall Poster and executive music producer Robbie Robertson) selected this song, but it presumably has some significance to him as it's one of only 16 - out of 60 used in the movie - to feature on The Wolf of Wall Street: Music from the Motion Picture (Virgin Records, 2014).    

For me, it's a track that has a very special resonance and brings back happy memories of a time when I was working at Charisma Records as an assistant in the press office, alongside the very lovely Lee Ellen Newman, and as a sort of intermediary between the label and McLaren's office on Tin Pan Alley, managed by the indomitable Carrolle Payne.

I recall, for example, meeting those dark and lovely skippers from New York who featured in the video for McLaren's single and who are name-checked in the lyrics to the song (Hey Ebo! Ebonettes); I remember also riding around Town in a limo with the Rock Steady Crew who had come to teach Londoners how to breakdance and elevate graffiti into an urban art form (but that - as they say - is another story ...). 

Although there were other songs on Duck Rock I liked more than 'Double Dutch', the latter - co-written and produced by Trevor Horn - was undoubtedly the catchiest and, in reaching the UK chart position of number 3, also McLaren's biggest hit (though - surprisingly - not so in the US).

Whilst primarily about the sport of competitive rope jumping, 'Double Dutch' is also an excellent example - arguably - of McLaren's willingness to cheerfully engage in cultural appropriation and the racial fetishisation of young black girls in order to further his own commercial and artistic ends ... 

Play: Malcolm McLaren, 'Double Dutch', the third single release from Duck Rock (Charisma Records, 1983): click here. Note: this is the 12" version of the song.

Luce Irigaray and Constance Chatterley: Woodland Refugees

Penguin Books (2011)

Illustration by Lucy McLauchlan

I. 

Connie, we are told in one of the early chapters of Lady Chatterley's Lover, was aware of a growing restlessness taking possession of her like a madness: "It twitched her limbs [... and] made her heart beat violently, for no reason."

In order to counter this restlessness, Connie would rush away from the house and from everybody and lie prone in the bracken: "The wood was her one refuge, her sanctuary."

II.

I thought of this when reading Luce Irigaray's claim that nature had saved her life and restored her health on many occasions, and that from early childhood the world of plants (and animals) has been her favourite (and most vital) dwelling place. 

Indeed, I can't think of a more Lawrentian (or, at the very least, Lawrentian-sounding) French feminist than Irigaray, who, like Lawrence, affirms the generative potential of the elements and the importance of living in emotional rhythm with the seasons: "the wheeling of the year, the movement of the sun through solstice and equinox, the coming of the seasons, the going of the seasons". 

That's Lawrence writing, but it could so easily have come from Irigaray's pen. And like the latter, Lawrence is an advocate of sexuate being: "men experience the great rhythm of emotion man-wise, women experience it woman-wise" and often expounds his thinking in terms that seem to blur the distinction between human life and vegetal being:

"We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep blooming in our civilised vase on the table." 

III.

Like Connie, Irigaray also seeks out human companionship in the woods in order to experience what she terms a more complete sharing. I don't know if, for her, that involves a phallic hunting out, but one assumes that it is about meeting another being beyond all shame and the reaching of one's ultimate nakedness.

Irigaray is disappointed that when she confesses her desire to meet a companion in the woods to her friends and colleagues most laugh and wrongly assume she's longing for some kind of caveman, or expressing a naive form of romantic primitivism. Such people, she says, not only exhaust her vitality, but show an underlying ignorance of and contempt for the subtlety of her thinking 

Again, whilst I'm not entirely sure about this, I imagine what she wants is to encounter someone who does for her what Mellors does for Connie, i.e., provide a transformative experience of otherness and an awakening into touch. She writes: "Sexuate desire is [...] an appeal for entering into relations with the other as a source and an embodiment of life different from ours, which calls for a sort of becoming [...]"

IV.

Lawrence famously opens Lady C. with a passage that suggests we are all living among the ruins and that our primary task, therefore, is to go round or "scramble over the obstacles", building "new little habitats". Irigaray also seems to arrive at a similar (essentially tragic though still hopeful) conclusion: 

"Our earth and all the living beings who inhabit on it are henceforth in danger and [...] we, as humans, must find a way to [...] return to our natural belonging and its suitable cultivation for the establishment of another manner of existing and coexisting [...]"  

The key, according to her, is to "open and reopen continuously the possibility of a new growth and horizon for life, for desire, for love, and for culture". She continues:

"Sometimes the vegetal world is our most crucial mediator; sometimes it is a loving and loved human different from us; sometimes past thinkers lead us on the way. However, we must clear up our own path alone, with the help of a star, of a grace, or the fecundity of a meeting with another human who longs to cultivate life, love, and thought through their sharing, and with building a new world in mind."

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 5, 20, 322-23, 

Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being, (Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 86, 97, 99

I'm not the first, of course, to note the similarity (at times) between Lawrence and Irigaray. Sue Reid, for example, has written some interesting work in this area. See her essay 'Enumerating Difference: Lawrence, Freud, Irigaray and the Ethics of Democracy', Études Lawrenciennes, 45 (2014), pp.125-140. Click here to read online.  

For a critique of Luce Irigaray's vegetal idealism, click here.

On Luce Irigaray's Vegetal Idealism

Columbia University Press, 2016

Cover image: Jessica Hines

I.

 

When Luce Irigaray first approached Michael Marder with the idea of co-authoring a book on plant life - or vegetal being, as philosophers like to say - one wonders what he was hoping for ...?

Actually, I know what he was hoping for, as Marder conveniently tells us in the epilogue to his half of the work: he was hoping that he and Irigaray might produce a work that would "open alternative horizons for relating to the vegetal world". 

What he doesn't tell us is whether he feels they succeeded in this - or whether he was as disappointed as I was with her feeble and all too human contribution; one that tells us a lot about her, but very little about the plants of which she speaks (and, arguably, exploits). 

II.

Irigaray writes of her disillusion with the intellectual world and academic establishment which, she says, has treated her unfairly in the past; she speaks also of her desire to see a new order in which plants and people can bloom and her book sales receive the kind of numbers they deserve.     

Following professional and personal difficulties - including a car accident - Irigaray discovered yoga and turned to the healing power of plants which, like her, were often overlooked, objectified, or seriously maltreated: trees, for example, are today nothing but a material resource at the disposal of human beings (what Heidegger calls a standing reserve).

To be fair, following publication of Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), Irigaray was expelled from the Lacanian school of psychoanalysis, sacked from her university teaching post, and even snubbed by Simone de Beauvoir, but I'm not sure that these things attract the sympathy of plants - or indeed that they share her sense of being rejected and undervalued.

She likes sitting quietly with them - meeting them in silence - and that's fine. But when she suggests they like sitting quietly with her or exerting eco-therapeutic powers, then I'm more sceptical.

Similarly, a lot of her metaphorical rhetoric seems deeply suspect to me; particularly when framed within the untenable (because naive and idealistic) language of vitalism and nature, with the latter embarrassingly portrayed as something not merely hospitable but positively benign. In Irigaray's imaginary forest, plants peacefully coexist and thus provide a model for mankind of natural belonging in a world without strife or competition.

As Irving Goh notes:

"In this regard, Irigaray ignores or forgets how trees and plants compete with one another for sunlight and water; how parasitic plants feed on and off others for their own benefit; how weeds threaten the well-being or even survival of other plants [...] and how certain plants have features like thorns or bladelike leaves that can pose serious dangers to humans and animals, or how some of them are toxic to humans and animals [...]"
       

In short, all of the violence, cruelty and obscenity of the natural world - that which gives it much of its beauty (and which always shines through our attempts to idealise it) - is simply overlooked by Irigaray. Has she never heard of la vengeance des fleurs?

I don't want to come over all dark ecological, but Irigaray needs to address the question of evil in relation to vegetal being, otherwise she's offering us nothing but a romantic fantasy that is humanistic at the very least, if not just another depressing example of anthropocentric conceit. Her reductive insistence on the innocence of plants not only robs them of complexity - the vegetal world knows nothing of sexuated difference - it ultimately makes them boring.

Again, I can't help wondering what Marder makes of all this; he must have grimaced on more than one occasion as he read through her text - must have asked himself if, in fact, she'd even read his work on plant-thinking. Irigaray is (outrageously) forgetful of the otherness of vegetal being on at least two occasions:

"The first is when she says that 'looking at a tree brings me energy, whereas looking at a manufactured object takes energy away from me' (46-47), forgetting that the very book Through Vegetal Being to which Irigaray contributes is no less a printed, that is, manufactured, object, not to mention that its manufacturing process undoubtedly involved trees at some point. The second instance is when she declares herself a vegetarian (23) without any critical consideration of her consumption of plant life as such, not recognizing, in other words, her violence toward plant life as the latter becomes her primary dietary source. In both cases, I think it difficult for Irigaray to defend 'a sharing without infringing on the life of the other,' especially if 'life of the other' concerns plant life (44-45)."
  
At this point, I can't help but let out a small sigh ... I so wanted to like this work by Irigaray and was prepared to overlook many aspects of her writing that I have, in the past, found irritating. But how can one in good faith turn a blind eye to issues such as these raised by Irving Goh, or to sentences like this:

"It was the vegetal world that ensured mothering care with the environment it arranged around me." 

Notes

Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being, (Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 215 and 21.

Irving Goh, 'Le rejet of Luce Irigaray in Through Vegetal Being', research article in Differences, Vol. 29, Issue 3 (Duke University Press, 2018), pp. 137-154. Lines quoted are on pp. 145 and 146-47. This essay can be read online via academia.edu: click here. 

For a reading of Irigaray's vegetal idealism in relation to D. H. Lawrence's work in Lady Chatterley's Lover, click here.

On Blaming the Victim

Cain and Abel as depicted in the  

Speculum Humanae Salvationis (c. 1360)

Whilst I'm aware of the dangers of victim blaming and of how it can be used to justify, mitigate, or excuse certain forms of discriminatory or criminal behaviour often perpetrated by those who are in a position of power or privilege, I'm afraid I do subscribe to ideas of contributory negligence and unconscious provocation and do think that the victim of a crime is always, in some sense and to some degree, complicit or partially responsible for what happens to them - even when it's a loved one who has just had her i-Phone and purse stolen from her handbag by some charming urban youth from the idyllic borough of Haringey ...

Indeed, I even find the following passage from Women in Love persuasive, if troubling in what it logically entails: 

"'No man,' said Birkin, 'cuts another man's throat unless he wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants it cutting. This is a complete truth. It takes two people to make a murder: a murderer and a murderee. And a murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man who is murderable is a man who in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.'" [33]

Gerald dismisses this as pure nonsense - as, I suspect, would the majority of readers keen to secure a clear distinction between guilt and innocence and who regard all victims from Abel onwards - with the exception perhaps of many rape victims and those who lead unconventional or high risk lifestyles - as beyond reproach (whilst, on the other hand, considering the ideal perpetrator of a crime as an entirely unsympathetic character, lacking in virtue, perhaps even a little monstrous or inhuman, carrying as they do the mark of Cain).

There are also - as indicated - political and philosophical reasons for rejecting what Birkin says here. Adorno, for example, identified the phenomenon of victim blaming as one of the most sinister features of the fascist mindset; i.e., the so-called authoritarian personality that holds any sign of weakness as contemptible. Ask any Nazi even now who's to blame for Auschwitz and they'll answer without hesitation: the Jews (The Jews made us racist! The Jews were asking for it!)

See: D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen ad Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 33. 

See also: T. W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality, (Harper and Bros., 1950). 

99% is Shit

I remember once being told by a friend that he understood the phrase 99% is shit to mean that the only kind of commitment that counts is total commitment. Anything less than 100% was a sure sign of someone who couldn't be trusted and whose authenticity was in doubt.

It's a perfectly valid interpretation and reveals much about the fanatic mindset of those who took the seriously extreme call to arms issued by the Sex Pistols extremely seriously.

(This was during a time when we were both scornful of so-called plastic or part-time punks; the kind of people who play their records very loud and pogo in front of the bedroom mirror - but only when their mum's gone out.)*

As a matter of fact, however, when Sid Vicious spoke about 99% being shit, he wasn't quite thinking in such terms. Rather, he meant - more brutally - that the vast majority of people, including fans, are worthless. Thus, in the same interview, he would say: 'I’ve no interest in pleasing the general public, I don’t want to, because I think largely they're scum, they make me physically sick.'

Such violent contempt for the masses was, of course, a key feature of much modern art; the avant-garde were, by definition, a revolutionary elite who prided themselves on their own difference and superiority.** 

And the Sex Pistols - at least as conceived by McLaren - belong to this tradition (contra the Clash who even at the time were sneered at for being social workers and who would doubtless echo the cry We are the 99% which became a unifying slogan of the Occupy Movement in the summer of 2011).

As do the Cash Pussies, who released their only single, 99% is Shit, in April 1979, featuring snippets of an audio interview conducted a couple of years prior with the (recently deceased) Sex Pistols bassist.***

Notes

* The lines are from the single 'Part Time Punks', by Television Personalities, (Rough Trade 1980): click here.

** According to John Carey, Modernist art was primarily concerned not only with the exclusion of the masses, but with a denial of their humanity. See The Intellectuals and the Masses (Faber and Faber, 1992). Of course, it should be remembered that Carey's book is itself 99% shit.   

*** Perhaps not surprisingly, the band were conceived by an old art school friend of Malcolm's, Fred Vermorel, and his wife, Judy, and the track was produced by Dave Goodman, famous for his work with the Sex Pistols. 

Play: Cash Pussies, 99% is Shit, (The Label, 1979): click here. 

Kinderpost

Frank Meisler: Kindertransport - The Arrival (2006)

Photo by Stephen Alexander (2019)

I. Opening Remarks

Kindertransport - The Arrival is an outdoor bronze memorial by the Israeli architect and sculptor Frank Meisler, who was himself evacuated from the Free City of Danzig as part of the Kindertransport programme, travelling with a small group of other children to safety in England (his parents, arrested three days after his departure, were eventually murdered at Auschwitz).   

Commisioned by World Jewish Relief and the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), the work was installed on the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station in 2006 and commemorates the 10,000 Jewish children who escaped Nazi persecution and arrived in London during 1938-39.

II. Nazi Pigeons

Pigeons, of course, don't care about any of this; they'll shit on anyone's history. 

It would be mistaken, however, to assume the bird in the above picture is displaying an avian form of anti-Semitism - indeed, the pigeon (or dove) has an important role within Jewish religious mythology and is usually regarded as a symbol of hope (think of Noah and his Ark). The pigeon was also an acceptable sacrifice to God for those who couldn't afford a more expensive offering. 

The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria may have found the birds a little overly bold and impudent, but, other than that, there's no enmity between them and the children of Israel.    

Having said that, it's true that the Nazis were also fond of pigeons - Heinrich Himmler was not only Reichsführer of the SS but also President of the German National Pigeon Society - and many trained birds were drafted into the Nazi war effort.

Indeed, so concerned were British secret services about the airborne threat posed by Nazi pigeons, that they became the subject of covert operations, with scores of pigeon lofts targeted for destruction in occupied Europe. MI5 even had its own trained force of falcons ready to intercept any Nazi pigeons that strayed into British airspace; they would patrol over the Scilly Isles and the Cornish coast for two hours at a time.

It's possible, therefore, that the pigeon pictured befouling the Jewish memorial is descended from a Nazitaube - though I would have thought this extremely unlikely and not something to be overly worried about; indeed, for me, of more concern, is the ominously glowing presence of the McDonald's logo in the background ...


III. Golden Arches

Instantly recognisable wherever you travel in the world, McDonald's Golden Arches probably shouldn't fill one with a similar sense of horror as that of a Nazi swastika - the stylised letter 'M' doesn't signify mass murder and malevolence - but, for some reason, it does.

Partly, that's due to the fact that even as I gobble down my Sausage and Egg McMuffin, I'm conscious of the true cost and devastating consequences of such deliciousness; for the natural environment and animal welfare, for example. Corporate capitalism isn't simply fascism with a smiley face, but neither is it the unequivocal force for good that its proponents like to claim and California über alles is just as troubling (in some respects) as the prospect of Deutschland über alles.

And partly, it's due to the influence of Jake and Dino Chapman upon my imagination. For everytime I see the Golden Arches, I can't help recalling their post-apocalyptic Nazi-McDonald's hellscapes (which is distracting, to say the least, when trying to reflect upon Meisler's work - even more so than the presence of a pigeon). 

In Memory of Gentleman Jack Sheppard

Jack Sheppard (1702 -1724)

Engraving by George White (1728) 

based on a portrait by James Thornhill (1724)

I.

I have to admit, I have reservations about memoralising the career of a petty criminal; such low-lives, always ducking and diving from the law, are rarely as charming in real life as we like to imagine them. Just ask the woman working at my local supermarket who was spat at and punched in the face last week after challenging a would-be shoplifter ...

Having said that, it would be churlish to deny the popular appeal of Jack Sheppard; a flash young tea leaf and audacious jailbreaker who captured the sympathy and affection of many a Londoner, both before and after his execution at Tyburn, aged 22, in November 1724.


II. 

Sheppard was an East End boy who decided he didn't want to be a carpenter, preferring instead to make his money from skullduggery. It was a fateful choice: Sheppard was arrested and imprisoned five times in 1724 - suggesting he was either very unlucky or pretty fuckin' feckless as a criminal - and although he managed to escape four times, by the end of the year he was swinging from the gallows.

However, his death at such a tender age only helped establish his legend. An autobiographical sketch - thought to have been ghostwritten by Daniel Defoe - sold like hot cakes at his execution and there followed several plays based upon it, much to the annoyance of the authorities who were concerned that impressionable young rascals keen to play Jack the Lad would attempt to copy his behaviour.* 

In some ways, Sheppard makes an unlikely role model. For not only was he useless at evading capture by the law, but he was also physically unimposing; small in size and lightly built, Sheppard had a pale complexion and suffered with a slight stutter.

However, these things were compensated for by a winning smile and a quick wit that made him popular with both sexes in the taverns of Drury Lane, such as the Black Lion, where he met his future partner in crime Joseph 'Blueskin' Blake and the buxom young brass Elizabeth Lyon (aka Edgeworth Bess), who became his regular mistress.   

From being a good, hardworking young man with career aspirations, Sheppard now threw himself enthusiastically into an illicit lifestyle of booze, whores, and criminal activity. Whilst he soon progressed to burglary and highway robbery, his first recorded theft was that of two silver spoons pinched from a tavern in Charing Cross, so hardly the crime of the century.

As indicated, however, it was his talent for breaking out of jail that really captured the popular imagination, including an escape from Newgate Prison where he was awaiting execution having been convicted of theft at the Old Bailey. Sheppard managed to remove an iron bar from his cell window, climb through the small gap, then calmly walk past the guards dressed in the women's clothing that accomplices had previously smuggled in.     

Although he was soon recaptured and returned to the his cell at Newgate, he was now visited by the great and the good who were all keen to see for themselves Gentleman Jack Sheppard. When guards found files and other tools hidden in his cell, he was transferred to what we would now describe as a high security unit, clapped in leg irons, and chained to the floor.

Cheekily informing his gaolers that these measures were not going to hold him, Sheppard even demonstrated how he might use a small nail to get free. He was rewarded for this by being bound with still heavier chains and handcuffed. Sheppard, however, continued to make light of his predicament and, astonishingly, he got away once more - still wearing his leg irons!

This miraculous escape so amazed everyone that the belief grew that Sheppard must have had the assistance of the Devil himself. Whether that's true or not, Sheppard's final stint of freedom was shortlived, if admittedly spent in some style; having broken into a pawnbrokers on Drury Lane, Sheppard helped himself to a black silk suit, several rings, and a wig in order to enjoy a night on the Town, posing as a dandy highwayman with a girl on each arm.

He was arrested, for the final time, on the morning of November 1st, still dressed in his stolen clobber and still very drunk.

III.

This time, the authorities took no chance. Sheppard was kept under constant guard and loaded down with 300lbs of iron weights. A petition, signed by several prominent people, asking that his death sentence be commuted was ignored. Offered the chance to have it reduced by informing on his associates, Sheppard, to his credit, refused to grass.

On November 16th, he was taken to the gallows at Tyburn to be hanged. A joyous procession accompanied him through the streets of London; crowds were said to have numbered 200,000 (one third of the population at that time). Hopes of a daring last minute escape were thwarted when prison guards found and confiscated a pen knife hidden about his person.

After Sheppard's body was cut down, the crowd pressed forward to stop its removal by the authorities. When his badly mauled corpse was finally retrieved, it was buried in the churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

And thus ends the (really rather sorry) tale of Jack Sheppard ...

Though, as I say above, his posthumous legend has continued to grow. Sheppard now serves, for example, as a figure of inspiration for the punk fashion entrepreneur Joe Corré and his team at Child of the Jago: click here.

I mention this not because I particularly share Corré's sartorial sense or aesthetic vision - and I certainly don't subscribe to his (and his mother's) eco-political agenda - but for sentimental reasons (i.e., much the same sort of stupidity as those who champion Sheppard as a working-class hero or a potentially revolutionary figure of some kind).   

Notes

* Perhaps the best-known play that was at least partly based on Sheppard's life is John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728); Sheppard was the inspiration for the figure of Macheath.