Whisky and dessert chocolate
P. J. Kavanagh
GOOD COMPANIONS by John Bayley Abacus, £7.99, pp. 246, ISBN 034911496X No one would want it for a constant diet, but it is more than pleasant to listen to a widely read, thoughtful man, relaxing towards the end of his career, chatting about books, remembering scraps, forgiving himself his misrememberings and, by genial implication, forgiving us ours. 'Shakespeare wouldn't frown possessively, and be irritated if misquoted ... he was not only a magician with words but also a tolerant and good-humoured one.' These are qualities John Bayley values, and they give scope for a varied and surprising commonplace book of prose and verse. I did not know, for example, that C. S. Lewis wrote a villanelle about the unknown husbands of famous women — 'Mais oit sont messieurs les mans?'
Where is that bubbly land, below What rosy horizon dwells today That worthy man Monsieur Cliquot Whose widow has made the world so gay?
It would not have seemed likely. John Bayley tells us that Lewis was 'a friendly
and genial soul, but of blunt, not to say coarse, manners.' When J. R. R. Tolkien read him an early draft of the Lord of the Rings Lewis groaned, 'I say, Tolkien, not another fucking elf!' Bayley adds, with mock primness (there is an element of self relishing the Hardyesque coinage `unglad'. He successfully resurrects Victorian T. E. Brown, Alice Meynell, Coventry Patmore and also, alas, includes an impenetrable poem, 'Marriage', by Marianne Moore. Impossible to believe that piece of tangled knitting lay comfortably in the bottom of his memory bank. Whereas this (dessert chocolate) certainly would have: 'Housman was on excellent terms with his stepmother Lucy, and they often corresponded. This was his response to her offer to send him an anthology of devotional poetry.' He had a shot at it himself; this is not Harry Graham, it is A. E. Housman:
Hallelujah! was the only observation That escaped Lieutenant-Colonel Mary Jane When she tumbled off the platform in the station And was cut in little pieces by the train.
Mary Jane the train is through yer. Hallelujah!, Hallelujah!
We will gather up the fragments that remain.
'It seems to come quite easy,' added Housman to his stepmother.
This collection also seems to come quite easy, with its cheerfully discursive introduction. Perhaps Professor Bayley should be invited to write a whole book about himself, his thoughts, his military service, his experience of teaching; he is himself a good companion.
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