Wisdom Of The Elders - Memory

 

This most excellent book bag was found hanging on a rack outside a bookshop I passed the other day. Apart from the reminder that there's no time for frivolities like twirling wreathes with a BFF when there's a book within reach, Your Correspondent thought it was time to dip into our rich medieval past and share some more nuggets of wisdom from our elders. If your memory is getting a little rusty then you are in luck today for Jacobus Publicius shares some memory enhancing tips from 1482.

For example: The tongue of a hoopoe, given to a forgetful person, will restore memory. 

Nota bene: no cooking instructions were given.

Fear not, we are not immersing ourselves bodily into the murky and uncharted waters of Latin texts, for I do profess ignorance of these matters; I merely provide this teaser page as both illustration of the lost art of beautiful typography and to show Mr. Publicius' popular and influential late-C15th treatise Ars Oratoria. Ars Epistolandi. Ars Memorativa, is no trifling matter!

His mnemonic alphabet (sampled above) could be the subject for another day, but we'll presently eschew the book's coverage of memory techniques as applied by the lofty ancients. Since he was a physician, the choice nuggets will instead come from his medical and dietary advice for improving memory, for goodness knows we could all do with some help in that department.

Pick and choose from the following regime, as you see fit, Dear Reader, of tips to keep your brain's psychical pneuma serene, lucid and clear and thus stave off a languid and dull memory*:

• Moderate sleep at night.
• Avoid midday snoozing. If you can't help it then sleep in bare feet as the thick soles of shoes will reflect harmful vapours back into the brain and eyes of one who slumbers deeply.
• Keep your head moderately covered with cloths, according to the season, as both excessive heat and cold dulls the mind with stupidity.
• Sleeping on one's back, thus warming the kidneys beyond what is reasonable, is a most harmful enemy of the mind. Men should sleep then on their side or tummy. Sleeping on one's back is fine, however, for women and for nocturnal delusions and pollutions**.
• Upon rising, purge your body's channels with expectoration and motion. Then rub your head with an ivory comb and a rough, coarse rag.
• After ablutions, swallow six raisins and as many juniper berries. This will do for breakfast.
• A bit of exercise, then on to lunch. You don't want your wine too vehement, lest it inflames the blood, so light wine only or diluted with water.
• Boiled meat then roast meat, in that order.
• To avoid your stomach emitting the vapours from the digesting meat, clouding the mind and intellect and eliciting sleep, you need to close your stomach's opening. A list of fruits and nuts qualified in this respect can be furnished upon request.
• Avoid horseradish, garlic, onion and leek as they are the enemy of memory.
• Avoid noxious odours, they are harmful to the brain.
• Keep your head and feet very clean with a decoction of water boiled with honey, bay leaves, and stems of fennel and chamomile.
• The dulling of the mind can be alleviated by the sneezing caused by mustard, pepper and castoreum, and by the chewing of oregano, stavesacre and caper root.
• Exercising some more at dusk and at night in the manner of the Pythagoreans is a great help to the memory and to the human mind and intellect. It's not specified if this is physical exercise or mathematical gaieties, so try either or both!

I do hope this unsolicited 500-year-old advice is found valuable, Dear Reader!

* I am quoting liberally here from the Henry Bayerle translation in The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, 2002 edited by Mary Carruthers and Jan P. Ziolkowski.

** There are also provided the typical Pythagorean cautions against, ahem, immoderate coitus, but we don't speak of such stuffs around here.

Image credits: 1: Flying With Hands; 2: Royal Collection Trust; 3, 4: Internet Archive

Rust(ic) Scenes

The past couple of weeks we've had a bit of to-ing and fro-ing. Some out-of-town variety has lent spice to the season, it being the time for we Pisceans to have their moment. We've enjoyed both a lovely coastal visit to stay with family (prawns and oysters, tick!), and then took the train for a rather more agricultural visit to the Southern Tablelands property of friends, the Country Mice, our part-time neighbours in the condominio. We were truly entertained in style! But for a hint of the flavour of life on the land, behold some rust(ic) scenes.

Can you guess what this bit of machinery might be?

Flaunting its rusted patented wizardry as farm scuplture ...

A rotating tea blending drum!

A typical ruined farmhouse as seen on properties all over this wide, brown land

Cocksfoot grass and hawthorns in berry

Hello girls!

Cobwebs galore

Busy busy Saturday morning in the main street

Image credits: Flying With Hands

Table Talk

Miguel Mackinlay, Still Life With Eggs, 1923
(Acknowledgement to the MJ McKinlay Trust)

Do please pass me another egg, Mr P.

Edouard Manet, Oysters, 1864

[Later ... ] Yes, the oysters are delicious! 

Sarah Lamb, Bistecca ala Fiorentin, 2019

[Even later ... ] How would you like your chop, my dear?

... And there you basically have it, Dear Reader; nothing juicy yet to report on the new carnivorous régime about these parts. We're still alive and trundling along. Which all rather makes dull fodder for this blog's Something-to-Eat creed. Where are the thrilling anecdotes from the growing store of culinary adventures?, you may cry. Regretfully lacking at this juncture.

So, rather than continue with the monotonous litany of "oysters, eggs, chops, ... &c &c", which may only titillate the oh so curious, I shall instead, from time to time, steal some table talk from the literary world for these pages, such as may be found in Patrick White's marvellous 1981 memoir, Flaws in the Glass:

The kitchen stove, antique electric, had Queen Anne legs like so much of the furniture in the house. We had many cooking accidents before learning how: there was the day Rosemary Dobson Bolton brought her first baby to lunch and the oven in which I was grilling the baby's chop caught fire: the Christmas dinner during the heatwave when the pair of drakes (or swans) we had bought from Mrs Poulter bounced on the lino before I dished them up; there was the whole coq au vin I spilled on the floor, but mopped up, schnauzer hair and all, and served John Gielgud. Although I say it, that coq au vin was about the best I have tasted.*

Anyway, in other news, we went to the most excellent touring exhibition of Melbourne-born Art Deco printmakers, Ethel Spowers & Eveline Syme. As ever, the show has already moved on from Sydney, where it was held at the S. H. Ervin Gallery, but there is still opportunity to see it in Brisbane before the delicate prints get packed away again for some unknown more number of years in June. Spowers and Syme were friends and daring trailblazers of contemporary art and after studies in London's Grosvenor School with Claude Flight, embraced linoprinting to great effect. 

Ethel Spowers woodcut, Melbourne from the River, c. 1924

Ethel Spowers linocut, The Bamboo Blind, 1926

Spowers had a particular affinity for imagery of childhood, writing and illustrating children's stories.

Eveline Syme linocut, Skating, 1929

Both born into families of newspaper magnates, they were educated, independent and well-travelled. They both championed modern art and their work is instantly identifiable as of its time.

Ethel Spowers linocut, Wet Afternoon, 1930

Eveline Syme linocut, Sydney Tram Line, 1936

Ethel Spowers linocut, School is Out, 1936

The exhibition was a delight, not only to see their familiar images** but earlier works and the associated ephemera of the era, and linocuts by contemporaries who'd also fallen under the spell of the charismatic Flight. Fellow student Dorrit Black wrote of him: 'He is a very small man with very bright eyes, little bits of side-curls, and one feels instantly at one's ease with him. During the summer he lives in a cave in France, a very attractive cave, apparently, but still a cave; and in the winter he comes out of his cave to teach lino-cutting to students at the Grosvenor School.'

Nota bene: Not Claude Flight but a
Lenci porcelain, Squirrel and Acorns, 1929

Ethel Spowers linocut, Still Life, 1932

Sybil Andrews linocut, Speedway, 1934

In other news, the Musical Year has started for the Pipistrellos. Our beloved Utzon Series, the intimate recitals by visiting international stars, was a Casualty of Covid and looks not to be revived, but we got to sit in the gorgeous room again last week to hear the home-grown Australian Haydn Ensemble. A very pleasant change to the old routine is the ability to reserve seating when you book, and Mr P. nabbed front and centre seats, normally the domain of a gang of silver-haired Utzon Series stalwarts who'd stake this territory as an assumed right (and invariably fall promptly asleep after the complimentary tipple once the music started.)

Our repast consisted of a selection from Bach's The Art of Fugue; Haydn's String Quartet in A major (Sun Quartets); and Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 2 in A minor Op. 13. Super delicious!

Lorna Singleton Oak Spelk Basket

Finally, do you love a basket with which to collect your comestibles from the shoppes? There are baskets to be found herein about the casa, and their usefulness is fully appreciated, however I was surprised to learn that there is a type of basket make from oak! Well, oak splinters not logs, obv. 

There is a mere slip of a girl living in the woodland in South Cumbria in England making a living from weaving these traditional baskets. Once a thriving craft, the resulting baskets were used for everything from charcoal scuttles on steam ships and trains to tatty and turnip baskets in the field to swilling cockles in the sea, whence comes the name oak swill baskets. There seems to be only a handful of weavers left, including the lissome Lorna Singleton. 

Here's a tantalising 15-minute documentary film on her and her work: Oak Swill Basketry.

* The take-away here, of course, is not that Nobel Prize-winning writers nor those who rub shoulders with the glitterati at the tea table have the best lines, rather it's schnauzer-lovers who seem to have all the fun!

** Stalwarts of ye olde Pinterest.

Image credits: 1: Miguel Mackinlay; 2: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; 3: 1st Dibs; 4-12: Flying With Hands;, 13: Lorna Singleton; 14: Graphics Fairy

Carbs Are So Last Season

 

There have been some changes about the casa and I don't just mean the Christmas Tree has finally come down. Yes, we held out until Candlemas again this year, and the place is now looking somewhat lacklustre ... but I merely digress. The Pipistrellos have gone mad and have given up carbs.

It wasn't intentional, but in the way of such madcap adventures, it started with Your Correspondent falling over in the street. Cessation of Normal Activities until the gruesome wound to the leg (and the pride) healed meant time for catching up on some of the more obscure blogs that my catholic taste imbibes. I know, Bertrand Russell and the whole History of Western Philosophy should have been the natural solace for such catastrophes but I did instead get rather distracted on the youtubes. Which is where one such blogger had me tripping, hem hem, and, like Alice, I found myself in a Wonderland where everything was totally on its head: There are people out there, sensible adults, for whom fruits and vegetables, let alone the conventional notion of carbohydrates like bread and whatnot, never appear on the menu ... and are still alive!! Indeed, thriving. And since what such a diet looks like is basically meat-and-water, they're known as Carnivores. Who knew?? 

There are varying shades of low-carbs/high-fat and keto-this and zero-carb-that to this spectrum of dietary outliers and a whole new vocabulary to get stuck into. Think ketones, oxalates, lectins, Lipid Hypothesis &c. &c. What even are they? And as we've our own mini laundry list of Health Issues and a sense of scientific curiosity (viz. susceptibility to fads, as Dear Brother might say), we've hopped on board as an experiment. This may fall into Controversy Corner for you, Dear Reader, but perhaps just consider me as your guinea-pig and I shall report back from time to time on How It's Going. 

So far, after the first ten days, we've neither felt the urge to murder anyone nor commit carbicide.

Image credit: Flying With Hands

Nuggets Of Moonstone

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, 1868

Ah, the Victorian novel. It can really divide the masses. Mr P is reading Middlemarch for the first time and attends it with lots of oh dear, oh dear!-s and hearty guffawing & cannot help delightedly reading me passages, for it is a cracking good read. Ol' George Eliot really had her finger on the pulse with what made people tick. And the language! Right up Your Correspondent's alley*. And which has reminded me to finally crack on with some choice nuggets from last year's reading of Wilkie Collins's contribution to the early detective novel genre, The Moonstone. 

Nota bene: Ever the professional, WC wrote much of the book as a serial whilst delirious with opium for his gout pain and dealing with the death of his mother. What ho, Dear Reader, it's a recipe for fun!

This Victorian stalwart is told through first-hand reminiscences, epistolary-wise, of those on the scene of the Mystery of the Stolen Moonstone, a famous cursed diamond of Indian origin bequeathed to an heiress. A proselytising spinster and a household steward who confers soothsaying abilities upon Robinson Crusoe are the inadvertent comics among the narrators whose recollections form the book. A police detective, a louche gentleman, a dying opium-addict, a lawyer and a couple of others add their two-bob's worth, littering clues, red herrings and further suspects liberally about the pages while revealing more about themselves than their brief required. 

Viz. Drusilla Clack, our Proselytising Spinster:

 Here was a golden opportunity! I seized it on the spot. In other words, I instantly opened my bag, and took out the top publication ... entitled The Serpent at Home. The design of the book - with which the worldly reader may not be acquainted - is to show how the Evil One lies in wait for us all in the most apparently innocent actions of our daily lives. The chapters best adapted to female perusal are "Satan in the Hair Brush"; "Satan behind the Looking Glass"; "Satan under the Tea Table"; "Satan out of the Window" - and many others.

  'Give your attention, dear aunt, to this precious book - and you will give me all I ask.' With those words, I handed it to her open, at a marked passage - one continuous burst of burning eloquence! Subject: Satan among the Sofa Cushions.

 Poor Lady Verinder (reclining thoughtlessly on her own sofa cushions) glanced at the book, and handed it back to me looking more confused than ever.

The book ranges widely (& wildly) from the scientific experiment of administering laudanum to novel police work (whereupon a famous detective dreaming of retirement and growing roses is paid to consult in the mystery); from the exotique of avenging Hindoos (sic) to do-goodery and charity work amongst the spinster class and religious evangelism. There's even deadly quicksand to contend with!

But a Romance, as it was once sub-titled? Well, Rachel Verinder the Dreary Heroine who is robbed of the Moonstone does have a couple of vying Suitors amongst the cast and a fair amount of tears, door-slamming and attendant petulant silence might indicate passions running high. There's also a housemaid Rosanna Spearman employed from the reform house who becomes an obsessive stalker of Franklin Blake, Rachel's louche suitor. Rosanna is generally meant to be a tragic, pathetic creature to be pitied for her misdirected unrequited love but I'm calling this out for what it is.

Love object Franklin Blake is himself also a prime suspect and enlists all the narrators to pen their observations to clear his name. He strikes me as an English take on the Russian Superfluous Man, his own narratives showing his Cosmopolitan Sensibilities at odds with the petty confines of his world:

 Trumpery little scandals and quarrels in the town, some of them as much as a month old, appeared to recur to his memory readily. He chattered on, with something of the smooth fluency of former times ... I submitted patiently to my martyrdom (it is surely nothing less than martyrdom to a man of cosmopolitan sympathies, to absorb in silent resignation the news of a country town?) until the clock on the chimney-piece told me that my visit had been prolonged beyond half an hour. Having now some right to consider the sacrifice as complete, I rose to take leave.

Much priceless Victorian wisdom, however, is dispensed from the loyal retainer, 70-something butler (house steward) Gabriel Betteredge, and far and away my favourite character. Blessedly, he gets around half the book. Feast your eyes upon some of our man Betteredge's nuggets of Moonstone:

On Traditional Enmities:

  'Let us finish the story of the Colonel first,' says Mr Franklin. ' There is a curious want of system, Betteredge, in the English mind; and your question, my old friend, is an instance of it. When we are not occupied in making machinery, we are (mentally speaking) the most slovenly people in the universe.'

  'So much,' I thought to myself, ' for a foreign education! He has learned that way of girding at us in France, I suppose.'

On Downstairs Duty:

'Speaking as a servant, I am indebted to you. Speaking as a man, I consider you to be a person whose head is full of maggots, and I take up my testimony against your experiment as a delusion and a snare. Don't be afraid, on that account, on my feelings as a man getting in the way of the duties as a servant! You shall be obeyed. The maggots notwithstanding, sir, you shall be obeyed. If it ends in your setting the house on fire, Damne if I send for the engines, unless you ring the bell and order them first!'

On the Iniquity of White-Collar Crime:

The upshot of it was, that Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory followed the lead of the law.

On Easy Governance:

 We, in the servants' hall, began this happy anniversary, as usual, by offering our little presents to Miss Rachel, with the regular speech delivered annually by me as the chief. I follow the plan adopted by the Queen in opening Parliament - namely, the plan of saying much the same thing regularly every year. Before it is delivered, my speech (like the Queen's) is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen - that's the moral of it.

Finally, Betteredge on Women:

 On hearing those dreadful words, my daughter Penelope said she didn't know what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her. I thought privately that it might have been her stays. All I said, however, was, 'You make my flesh creep.' (Nota bene: Women like these little compliments.)

* And why I've read it twice just in the past several years.

Image credits: 1: Biblio; 2: Antique Maps and Prints; 3: Wilkie Collins Information Pages

Medea & The Treacherous Ingrate

 

Motherly murder most foul

    "We must all bend our minds," she said brightly, "to think of different ways of boring our royal visitors to death. ... Alma Peacock, who is already straining at the leash and hasn't been off the telephone since yesterday afternoon, can easily be persuaded to give a gala production of some weighty classic, her little amateur theatre group doesn't know the meaning of the word fear, they've already done Hamlet, Mourning Becomes Electra, Young Woodley, Blithe Spirit and Antony and Cleopatra with Alma herself as Cleopatra. I see no reason why on this special occasion they shouldn't attack something really impressive like The Trojan Women or Medea ..."

    "I should dearly love to see Alma as Medea," said H.E. equably.

Noël Coward, Pomp and Circumstance, 1960

When I recently reread Noël Coward's (only) novel about the comedic and chaotic preparations of a small island in the Pacific in the run-up to The Royal Tour, the playful joke about Blithe Spirits included in the roll-call of weighty classics vigorously undertaken by the resident Amateur Dramatic Society was but one of the many giggles. 

But hold onto your hat, Dear Reader, when I tell you that it was only a mere handful of weeks later that we Pipistrellos had a Noble Visit of our own, and lo! last month we went to see Marc-Antoine Charpentier's opera Médée as one of our entertainments! 

Hence I can now fully appreciate His Excellency the Governor of fictional Samolo's jolly wish: Oh, the delicious incongruity of a ruthless murderess waging vengeance on her tiresome treacherous ingrate of a husband to be played by a motley crew of enthusiastic colonial thespians*. For the young ERII and Duke of E on their Royal Tour, it could have been a cultural offering par excellence!

Just as well we were fortunate that our V.I.P. visitor from the Kingdom of Newfoundland in Canada had an appreciative ear for such French baroque fancies. Apart from, ahem, enjoying the company of the Pipistrellos, the wish-list for Madame C principally featured seeking out marsupials for embracing to the patrician bosom**, so an evening of tragédie lyrique was hardly to be anticipated. 

My magical prowess got you your Golden Fleece
and now you're dumping me?? Beware, ingrate!!
Sang Catherine Carby to Michael Petruccelli
a.k.a Medea & Jason

Yet the impulsive purchase of tickets to see the dear princess-sorceress Medea go stark raving mad after scoundrel Jason (of Argonautic fame) tries to dump her for a younger model proved to be a delightful leavening to tramping about zoological gardens and whatnot. To see the treacherous ingrate Jason brought to his knees, general bloodthirsty mayhem ensued which was all rather satisfying, albeit seemingly a tad extreme as a revenge in these more equable times. The only real disappointment to the evening was needing to imagine rather than witness the 1693 stage directions specifying Medea to exit-stage left in a dragon-drawn chariot, a fanciful climactic flourish sadly dispensed with for this spare and stylish contemporary staging.

The libretto by Charpentier's collaborator Thomas Corneille provided for some cracking lines, even in translation, and when the opening scene has Medea singing,

Jason is an ungrateful liar.

My love for him tells me that

in no uncertain terms,

and Love does not deceive.

you know she's already smells a rat about the so-called shelter and hospitality of Creon, King of Corinth.

Foolish Jason for his part, now plotting with Creon and his nubile daughter Creusa for her hand, merely sings, tra la! 

How happy I would be if I were less loved! [Ed: Idiot]

Medea sets to thwart the sneaky lovers and it generally descends pretty quickly to her getting rather het up about the treachery and calling upon the Black Daughters of the Styx to aid her sorcery:

Let us punish the utter perfidy of this

ingrate. Let him suffer, if it is possible,

a hundred torments at once as he

watches the suffering of the one he loves.

And not to mention enlisting some general madness:

It is too much to suffer

the insult of vile contempt.

Come, madness,

you are the one to finish my work.

And then it is time to avert your gaze as the bloodbath is unleashed.

But I must say, the prize for inadvertent prescience goes to King Creon when he tried to deceive Medea into simply scooting off from Corinth for the duration of the impending war, claiming the unhappy Corinthians thought harbouring her was just asking for trouble:

I must silence the malcontents.

When you hear the storm rumbling

it is wisdom

not to resist the weather.

Yup. It was his head first on Medea's chopping block.

The End.

* I'm speaking of the book's earnest theatrical society and not the polished & professional Pinchgut Opera, obv.

**Alas and alack, it appears these are enlightened times and it is now verboten to undertake such mischiefs outside the Kingdom of Queensland and one must settle for a Michael Parkinson-style interview with the marsupials instead. No touching!

Image credits: 1: Wikimedia Commons; 2: Cassandra Hannagan via Pinchgut Opera

Not-Reviews: Week 1

Something new for you, Dear Reader, the Not-Reviews. Viz., some pics of the books Your Correspondent has in play at the close of the new year's first week:

Doing double-duty as book for the bus and book beside the bed, the complete collection of Katherine Mansfield's short stories. This 2009 Vintage edition (the cover of which got smudged in the rain - boo), purchased in Wellington in New Zealand more than a decade ago, was finally pulled down from the bookshelves on impulse as a nostalgic post-NZ-holiday wave washed over me. How prescient, however, for Katherine Mansfield has been In The News this past couple of days owing to a new biography just released. It's also the centenary of her death.

The book for the sofa and the park when it's not raining is Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. Shamefully, this has been on the go for absolutely ages, despite its eminent readability and general allure, however I'm still on the Ancients! I know blogger Rachel knocked this off in double-quick time last year. This has Priority written all over it.

Leslie Charteris's 1939 Omnibus is masquerading as a sort of 21st century audiobook. Mr P is, ahem, reading this one to me, so we're both enjoying it. AbeBooks provided this 1950 fourth impression with the creamy page and print size so soothing for my Reader.

Now up to book 11 of the Aubrey-Maturin nautical novels, audiobooks (albeit abridged, read by actor Robert Hardy) that swap in and out with historical podcasts as a bit of entertainment whilst ironing.

The Lazy Person's Library a.k.a. Internet Archive is supplying this borrowed omnibus of E. F. Benson's Dodo books. It sits open on the laptop but I keep forgetting it's there so it's slow going and I keep needing to backtrack to figure out what's going on. I'm not loving reading books on a laptop but there are thousands of fabulous hard-to-find books to choose from and it's free!

Hopefully, declaring my reading hand up front might prompt some brisk action toward finishing the occasional book review and break the cycle of cluttering up the Draft Department with endless quotable quotes which, ahem, languish without jollying up with some proper bookish treatment. 

[Ed: A new leaf? Ha! Let us see ...]

Image credits: 1-3: Flying With Hands; 4: via Kobo Rakuten; 5: via Internet Archive

Basket Of Cherries

Basket of Cherries
Félix Valloton, 1921

What's been happening lately? Well you might ask, Dear Reader, for there's been scant enough peeking behind the scenes of these pages ... for no good reason. Let us start the New Year with better intentions and pick through this basket of cherries while they're still in season.

'Tis still the season

For lychees, too

R.I.P. Vivienne Westwood

2.5m of rain this past year

Positively tropical

Art Gallery of New South Wales new wing for
 Indigenous & Modern Art

So plenty o' space for critters like these!

But not so much traditional hanging space.
A touch international airport, perhaps?

Fab revamped Members Lounge with the same vibe

New forecourt for old wing

Happily packed in traditional style

Jacaranda still hanging on

Trotted off to the Museum

To see some of their Natural History Rare Books

Treasures by the likes of Gould & Audubon

Androvandi

& Merian

Something old

Something new

& nap time at the Zoo

Image credits: 1: Wikimedia Commons; all else: Flying With Hands