A Note for Biographers
Those early chapters are the ones to watch: It is too cosily assumed that all That happens to the eminent will clutch The reader's glazed lapel: where infants crawl Is much the same for every baby born, And, later, when the subject walks erect In private park or backstreet of a town The difference is much less than you'd expect.
The little master in expensive tweed And scabby little mister in huge cap Eat the same air, are laughed at, bored, afraid: Their joys and terrors more than overlap, They are identical. When Christopher Crouched by father's side to sight that deer The nightmare that he'd long been tensing for Banged loud, awake; and father saw his fear.
The boy felt terrible, but no more so Than little Eddie when Mum said she knew About the Sunday penny meant to go Dark in the soft religious bag, not to The shop which sold sweet paper bags of guilt. When Christopher was given his Hornby Train His joy was bright as rails. But Eddie felt As much delight to wear Dad's watch and chain Although the watch's pulse had given up And neither fly-blue arm would move again.
All children's lives are very much alike, So my advice is keep that early stuff Down to a page or two. Don't try to make Nostalgia pay: we've all had quite enough. What interests us, and sells, and always will Is what we are: vain, snarled up, and sleazy. No one is really interesting until To love them has become no longer easy.
VERNON SCANNELL
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