Waltzing the Magpies: A Year in Australia

Emptiness

Emptiness ~ "An empty chapel," Alexander Smith wrote, "is impressive; a crowded one, comparatively a commonplace affair." A fortnight ago I found Smith's collection ofessays Dreamthorp in the university library. In idle moments I explore libraries, plucking old books from shelves. I'd never heard of Smith, and I borrowed Dreamthorp because no one had checked the book out since 1911. Oddments lurk in neglected books. Between pages fifty-eight and fifty-nine of Dreamthorp lay a bookmark, a newspaper clipping six inches long and two and a quarter wide. Acid leached from the clipping staining the inner halves ofpages fifty-eight and fifty-nine brown. Printed on one side of the clipping was a letter to an editor , discussing the poetry of Ernest Dowson. Dowson was an English aesthete who wrote at the beginning ofthe twentieth century. The writer of the letter condemned Dowson as "weak, and mentally and spiritually anaemic." Nevertheless the correspondent admired Dowson's poem "Vesperal," a copy ofwhich followed the letter. All four of the poem's stanzas ended with the line, "Sufficient for the day are the day's evil things." More interesting to a family man was the list of amusements appearing on the reverse of the letter. On Sunday, February l2, 1911, Ernest Marklew lectured twice at the Bradford Labour Church on Peckover Street, initially at three in the afternoon, then at 6:30 in the evening. Also on Sunday at 6:30, this time the date's being given as February 11, Hilaire Belloc was scheduled to give a 75 "Limelight Lecture" at the Metropole Theatre. One ofthe Glasgow Clarion Scouts Winter Lectures, Belloc's talk was entitled "The Nation's Wealth." Reserved seats cost six cents. "Admission to other parts by silver collection." While on Friday at 8:15 in "Rooms" at the Farnworth LL.P. and Labour Church, Mr. Parry Gunn was going to discuss "The Art of Oscar Wilde," at 6:30 on Saturday, M. J. Toole of Salford would be lecturing on "Presentday Atrocities." "Eliza," I said that evening, "the last time this book was read was 1911 and in Scotland, not Australia." "Inspector Morse dies tonight," Eliza said referring to a television program. "Now that you are a detective, you could replace him." I liked Smith's essays. "We do not love a man," he wrote in "On Vagabonds," "for his respectability, his prudence and foresight in business, his capacity for living within his income or his balance at his banker's." "The things that really move liking in human beings are the gnarled nodosities ofcharacter, vagrant humours, freaks of generosity, some little unextinguishable spark of the aboriginal savage, some sweet savour of the old Adam." "Yes," I thought, "barky characters attract us." The next day I returned to the library and read about Smith's life. Born in Scotland in 1830, Smith was the son of a lace pattern designer. Despite being apprenticed to his father's trade, he became a poet. In 1853 his first book of verse appeared. On the basis of the one hundred pounds the book earned, Smith set off for London. His next two poetry collections were not so successful. Dreamthorp was published in 1863. In 1866 two novels appeared. The next year Smith died from typhoid. Biographical commonplace served the man poorly who wrote, "Ifyou wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him." I returned to the essays. In pencil on the title page, an owner of Dreamthorp listed writings by Smith, five essays and a poem in the Argosy and three poems in Good Words. On a whim I busied myself with the handwriting. The writer began capital E to the left ofthe letter, eventually loping right and forming an oval at the top of the letter. Unlike small e, which he always linked to the letter that followed, capital Estood alone. Likewise the second 5 in a pair of s's never joined the next letter. Thus the owner of the book SAM PICKERING wrote, "An ess ay on an Old Subject" and "An E ss ayon Sidney Dobell." Alexander Strahan published Dreamthorp, and sixteen pages advertising Strahan's list followed the essays. "Now ready" was "The Fourteenth Thousand" of the "Popular Edition" of The Recreations of a Country Parson. While the third chapter of the Recreations was entitled "Concerning Two Blisters of Humanity: Being Thoughts of Petty Malignity...