Serendipity

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 428: Report by Papoose

My copy of Chambers's Dictionary has a habit of opening at the page whose first entry is the word 'serendipity.' This always makes me imagine a poem beginning: 'Is it an innate serendipity. . . .' Competitors were asked to complete it.

Is it an innate serendipity

That has brought him enormous success, Or is it his mental agility His subtle approach and finesse?

(T. E. GRAHAM) THE lattbr, I think, in the case of Areas, who, as so often, walks off with the first prize, this time of three guineas. The certain winners that one has earmarked have a way of looking like Clydesdales when his Pegasus steps into the ring. This week it is a poem in its own right, subtle and delicate, though perhaps a shade Browning- esque.

Most of the entries did not explore this lyric vein, though few provided the reaction I was expecting, namely fun with the rhyme '-ipity.' In his Summa Saint Thomas Aquinas has the com- forting theory that the greater the enjoyment, the greater is the merit of a good action. I feel that J. A. Lindon must have acquired quite a lot of merit, as well as a third of the remaining prize money. Indeed, judged by this standard, the whole competition was exceptionally good : few com- petitors took up a querulous tone; most were exuberant.

Of the former, K. C: Bowen submitted a frag- ment of a 'Ballade of an Unsuccessful Punter,' and W. K. Holmes lamented accumulated bric-h-brac.

The exuberant variety exploited all manner of verse patterns : there were successful couplets from Douglas Hawson and Nancy Gunter (the latter a near-winner), a roundel from Jeremy Kingston, a limerick from N. Lloyd-Edmonds and blank verse from A. W. Dicker. A. J. Wyborn, with innate serendipity, lighted on the chorus from The Pirates of Penzance: 'Here's a first-rate opportunity.'

My own ineffectual struggles make me perhaps unduly, awed by the facility with which other people seem to be able to turn a sonnet; for example, David Drtimmond, who carries his learning so lightly, R. A. McKenzie, Alberick and Barbara Roe, who has two sonnets, both equally facile, but the first of a higher order.

Special commendations for originality of sub- ject matter to Jacith, on the up-to-date costumier : But modern sack-like's columnarity

Unserendipitists call daft, apart From its annulling the disparity

Between your foreground and your afterpart

and to H. B. McCaskie and Stephen Prickett.

Commendations to all the above-mentioned, as well as to D. L. L. Clarke, Willy Tadpole, James S. Fidgen, P. W. R. Foot, Rhoda Tuck Pool( and W. Bernard Wake. The last two guineas to be divided between P. M. and Russell Edwards. PRIZES (AacAs)

To A BLACKBIRD IS it an innate serendipity,

Carefree singer, that bids you capture Store upon shimmering store of treasure, Pouring forth to the summer sky Music's nectar? For while I sip it, I Feel once more the forgotten rapture, Youth's ebullience, a lover's pleasure, All the gladness that once was I.

Is it the Summer's self, possessing, Sable singer, your sober raiment; Using a heedless voice to utter Heavenly joys to a world in pain? Nay, whatever the cause, my blessing (All I can give you) take for payment, As from the pear-tree top you flutter, Vanish, and earth is earth again.

(J. A. LINDON)

'Is it an innate serendipity,' I ask her outraged Ladyshipity, 'When, having made a special tripity By aeroplane—a costly flipity- To partake of your boiled parsnipity (I know, I know! Inflation's nipity : I hoped at best for fish-and-chipity), I find therein—wait, while I gripity The subject of my bleat (Don't yipity Before you're hurt, old girl !) Hip-hipity Hurray! See here it comes—a dripity (Voltairean white sauce) drowned Tintipm?

What? Singularly wrong? A slipity May be condoned, an oral quipity;

But, madam, not—just take my tipity-

Between the larder and the lipityl' (Singularly wrong' has the double meaning of 'very wrong' and 'Thrip : a commonly used but not really correct singular for Thrips.') (P. m.) Is it an innate serendipity That roots me down in little shops To gloat on china, fragile, chippity, And chandeliers with crystal drops, Old silver, gilt, and all the frippity Of pinch-beck, while 'I lick my chops At plush-backed rockers, smoothly tippity?—

No ! I just think all old things tops :

I don't buy 'Antiques' with a tripper tea, But where I feels at home, I stops, Happy—with other mid-Victorian props.

(RUSSELL EDWARDS) ODE TO A DICTIONARY

Is it an innate serendipity, Or simply lexical benignity, That makes my book, in nearly ever case, Open at the same fascinating place?

that sericite

is a silky soapy potash mica, presumably coloured Whi and serpulte te/ ; red are polychmte worms with tw.s- • calcareous tubes, se4 and seriema

ad

I now realise, I'm awfully 8.lhe to say, is Tupi for crested t lsyc r eeir;

Oh yes—and I've learnt another perfectly

word which means the gift of making hapPY di

coveries `by accidents and sagacity'—

r

What serendipity!