“The habit is now confirmed in me of spending the greater part of the day in sleep, while by night I wander far and wide through the city under the sedative influence of a tincture which has become necessary to my life. Such an existence of shadow is not without charm; nor, I think, could many minds be steadily subjected to its conditions without elevation, deepened awe. To travel alone with the Primordial cannot but be solemn. The moon is of the hue of the glow-worm; and Night of the sepulchre. Nux bore not less Thanatos than Hupnos, and the bitter tears of Isis redundulate to a flood. At three, if a cab rolls by, the sound has the augustness of thunder. Once, at two, near a corner, I came upon a priest, seated, dead, leering, his legs bent. One arm, supported on a knee, pointed with rigid accusing forefinger obliquely upward. By exact observation, I found that he indicated Betelgeux, the star “a” which shoulders the wet sword of Orion. He was hideously swollen, having perished of dropsy. Thus in all Supremes is a grotesquerie; and one of the sons of Night is – Buffo.”

M P Shiel, Xelucha (1896)

An unforgettable headline…

Porpoises rescue Dick Van Dyke

and the standfirst is also a thing of beauty…

Mary Poppins star feared death after apparently falling asleep on his surfboard but friendly sea creatures pushed him to shore

On Sunday, you will recall, I expressed the hope that Samuel Wesley’s haunting by an apparition of a badger with no head would inspire Bob Drake to craft a song. And lo! it came to pass.

Here is a picture of Bob delicately wrenching a chunk of metal from a cymbal using a pair of bolt cutters, and here is his song.

I am having one of my occasional bursts of activity on Facecloth, the social networking site. Temperamentally, a Diogenesian recluse such as myself would be better suited to an antisocial network, but needs must when the devil drives, as they say. Yesterday I posted on Facecloth a snippet which fits neatly into the Hooting Yard “Things I Have Learned” category, and it elicited a couple of comments in reply which are worth sharing with a wider audience.

I learned, from Peter Ackroyd’s new book The English Ghost : Spectres Through Time, (and I quote from my paraphrase at Facecloth):

On Christmas Day 1716, Samuel Wesley (father of John Wesley) was haunted by an apparition of “a badger, with no head”. It was called Jeffrey.

This is something I am very, very glad to know, and I doubt that a Yuletide will pass in future without me mentioning it.

Bob Drake replied, saying “That got me thinking. Would I rather be haunted by a badger’s disembodied head, or a badger’s headless body? I can only conclude that it would depend on the temperament of the partial apparition”, while Roland Clare picked up the echo of Jubilate Agno, and suggested: “For I Will Consider My Headless Badger Jeffrey …”

It is my fond hope that Mr Drake will be inspired to write a song on the subject, and Mr Clare will essay a badgerised version of the pertinent section of Christopher Smart’s poem.

“There is a farm in Burton, a village in the parish of Weobley, which Mr William Bridges, a linen draper of London, has in mortgage from one Thomas Tomkyns, a decayed yeoman. This farm was taken in by lease of Mrs Elizabeth Bridges, about Michaelmas 1669. Soon after this tenant was entered on the farm, some familiar began to act apish pranks by knocking boldly at the door in the dark of the evening, and the like early in the morning, but nobody to be seen. The stools and forms [benches] were thrown into disorder, heaps of malt and vetches mingled, a mow of pulse and pease likewise; loaves of bread on a table carried into another room, or hid in tubs covered with cloths; cabbage plants dug up and replanted in various patterns; a half-roasted pig demolished except for the bones; some cattle died and among others a sow leaped up and danced in strange postures, and at last fell down dead.”

Account of a seventeenth century poltergeist, quoted in Peter Ackroyd, The English Ghost : Spectres Through Time (2010)

At Mustard Plaster, a splendid recipe for bubble and squeak by Christopher Smart:

“Take of Beef, Mutton, or Lamb, or Veal, or any other meat, two Pounds and an half, or any other Quantity; let it lay in Salt, till the saline Particles have lock’d up all the Juices of the Animal, and render’d the Fibres too hard to be digested; then boil it over a Turf or Peat Fire, in a Brass Kettle cover’d with a Copper Lid, till it is much done. Then take Cabbage (that which is most windy, and capable of producing the greatest Report) and boil it in a Bell-Metal Pot till it is done enough, or if you think it proper, till it is done too much. Then slice the beef, and souse that and the Cabbage both in a Frying-Pan together, and let it bubble and squeak over a Charcoal Fire, for half an Hour, three Minutes, and two Seconds. Then eat a Quantum sufficit, or two Pounds and a half, and after it drink sixteen Pints of fat Ale, smoak, sleep, snoar, belch, and forget your Book.”

Another snippet from Richard O’Connor’s 1967 biography of Ambrose Bierce:

“The book-reviewing end of his chores, predictably, loosed [Bierce’s] most savage energies… He once composed what may be the shortest, nastiest book review on the record by listing its title, author and publisher and adding the one-line comment, ‘The covers of this book are too far apart’.

“Occasionally, like an eagle swooping down on the carrion-littered plains of literature, he would quote one paragraph of a current novel as an example of hopelessly bad writing. Such as : ‘She remained inactive in his embrace for a considerable period, then modestly disengaging herself looked him full in the countenance and signified a desire for self-communion. By love’s instinct he divined her purpose – she wanted to consider his proposal apart from the influence of the glamour of his personal presence. With the innate tact of a truly genteel nature he bade her good evening in French, and with measured tread paced away into the gathering gloom’.”

Alas, we are not told the titles of the two books under review.

“It has been observed that in their treatment of the Western frontier Bret Harte made the prevalent contempt for the law picturesque and Mark Twain found it humorous, but Ambrose Bierce labeled it for what it was – murder, armed robbery, assault with intent to kill. His occasional essays into Western crime were as bluntly stated as a police blotter: no chivalrous gamblers, just cardsharks; no courtly gunfighters, just homicidal psychopaths; no golden-hearted dancehall girls, just pathetic whores; no gallant soldiers nor stouthearted pioneers, just men on the government payroll bored by routine and farmers looking for a better piece of land. The Western legend was, to use his favourite word, bosh.”

Richard O’Connor, Ambrose Bierce : A Biography (1967)

Snap by Phil Meades, taken in St. Mary’s Parish Church, Rye, East Sussex on 10th September 2010.

One has to ask : did Ambrose Bierce grow up on Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard, or an eerily exact replica of it? “The Old Oaken Bucket” – published  in The Wasp, 3rd November 1883 – begins thus:

With what anguish of mind I remember my childhood Recalled in the light of knowledge since gained, The malarious farm, the wet, fungus-grown wildwood, The chills then contracted that since have remained; The scum-covered duck pond, the pigsty close by it, The ditch where the sour-smelling house drainage fell, The damp, shaded dwelling, the foul barnyard nigh it – But worse than all else was that terrible well, And the old oaken bucket, the mould-crusted bucket, That moss-covered bucket that hung in the well.