Dance and Skylark

Part One

I

"Enter ODO and DODO, two Dukes of Mercia". On the margin of the script there was a note in Mr. Gurney’s spidery handwriting that the names could, if it were thought preferable, be spelt ODDA and DODDA or even UDDA and DUDDA; the authorities differed. But Lance, rolling them round his tongue, thought that all three versions were equally ridiculous, and the quaintness of the sound tickled his fancy, so that he laughed aloud. To him on this May morning it seemed that the whole world was composed of such delightful curiosities, life was a ceaseless cornucopia pouring out before his eyes a many-coloured bounty of these toys of his imagination, strange, wondrous, absurd, beautiful, but all new-minted and bright-shining as the first of May. For he was a poet and he was young.

From his couch among the sweet-smelling grasses at the top of the little haycock-shaped hill he looked down upon the sunlit scene into which Odo and Dodo, Odda and Dodda, Udda and Dudda, had possibly strolled, about the year 700. On the spot where they had installed (according to Mr. Gurney) a devoutly religious hermit, walling him up to the glory of God in a cell with a six-inch grating through which he could glimpse the sky, there rose up now a great Norman abbey, with the assorted buildings of the small compact town clustered about it: cottages, pubs, shops, large private houses, and even a factory which made balloons, all huddled together like sheep in a storm. Ringed by roofs, the twelve chestnut-trees in the churchyard, known as the Twelve Apostles, bubbled up like a pale green foam; Lance was too far off to see their candles of white and red. But beyond them in the Vicarage garden a minute black figure moved, which was certainly his father pottering with the rain-gauge or taking a reading from the hygrometer, as he did about six times every day. The old man’s addiction to the study of meteorology, which he practised with tireless devotion and remarkable muddle-headedness, was yet another of those bright and curious fragments which the cornucopia poured out before Lance’s wondering and delighted eyes.

It was market-day, and the silvery-grey backs of the sheep in the market-place made a pattern of blobs, five to a pen, while other blobs ran to and fro down the alley-ways and gradually filled up the empty pens, as if somebody were playing one of those games with silver balls in a box which has to be tilted to and fro until all the balls are distributed among the various compartments. In the streets moved crepuscular cows, chivvied by crepuscular collie-dogs, and down the steep hill towards the river-bridge poured more sheep, a whole flock reddish brown from recent dipping, so that they looked like a trickling subsidence of soil.

Two rivers tied a knot round the town, a bowline in a bight, and joined together just below it. Thence the broadening stream ran on through emerald water-meadows towards the weir. Surely, thought Lance, these meadows had never been so green before, the patches of ladies’-smocks in the damp places had never since Shakespeare looked at them shone so quicksilver-bright in the sun, the buttercups had never made such a thick-piled carpet of gold; and nearer at hand, the blackbirds had never sung so loud nor with so sweet a melody, and the dapple-winged orange-tip butterfly had never so exquisitely matched the lacy umbel of hedge-parsley on which it poised. At twenty-two Lance was quite certain that no bygone spring had been so beautiful as this one nor would the years bring one so beautiful again. Its transience tormented him, and he stared greedily at the green-and-gold meadow as if it might fly away like the transient cuckoo calling faint and far-off among the churchyard chestnut-trees.

It was upon this great field beside the river, known as the Bloody Meadow because of the ancient battle which had been fought there, that the town’s pageant would be enacted in ten weeks’ time. Mr. Gurney, the industrious local archaeologist, had routed out the history and devised the episodes:

THE COMING OF ODO, DODO AND THE HOLY HERMIT (only that queer girl in the Festival Office had typed it HOLLY HERMIT);

DAME JOANNA, POETESS AND PRIORESS, FOUNDS A NUNNERY (Who on earth was she? thought Lance);

ROBERT FITZHAMON DEDICATES THE ABBEY;

GREAT FIGHT DURING THE WARS OF THE ROSES;

SURRENDER AND DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERY;

VISIT OF THE LADY MARY, DAUGHTER OF HENRY VIII AND AFTERWARDS QUEEN OF ENGLAND;

VISIT OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE POSSIBLY APHOCRYPAL (the queer girl’s typewriter had slipped up again);

SKIRMISH DURING THE CIVIL WAR;

FLIGHT OF CHARLES II FOLLOWING THE BATTLE OF WORCESTER.

After that, it seemed, history had ceased, or Mr. Gurney’s interest in it had petered out; for there the script ended, save for the non-committal words GRAND FINALE. It was Lance’s task to link the episodes together by means of Choruses in verse, and when eight choruses, one prologue, and one epilogue had been duly delivered and approved, he would receive the modest reward of ten pounds, which worked out at approximately one shilling a line.

Lance did not—as many a high-minded young poet might have done—look askance at this meagre fee; for he reflected sensibly that it was as much as Dr. Johnson had been paid for his first poem, and more pro rata than Shelley got for Adonais or Keats for Endymion. Nor indeed could he afford to despise it, for he had just been sent down from Oxford in considerable disgrace and was reduced to living on the charity of his father, who was fortunately well acquainted with the parable of the Prodigal Son.

He therefore applied himself earnestly to the unpromising task of writing a Chorus on the subject of Odo and Dodo, and for a few minutes his pencil scratched some tentative fragments of blank verse on the back of Mr. Gurney’s Draft Synopsis. Soon, however, the essential absurdity of the names got the better of him and he found himself laughing at his own lines, which is a very healthy and excellent thing for a young poet to do. But it is not the way to write deathless poetry, and Odo and Dodo began to take on in his mind some attributes of musical comedy:

Odiododiododiododiodo

Humming this air to himself, he stuffed the sheet of paper into his pocket and ran down the hill, taking huge strides over the springy turf for the sheer joy of being alive. He became caught up again in wonder at the whole world’s absurdity; and in particular at the beautiful absurdity of the microcosm which lay below him, his beloved, his native town—its Mayor portentously announcing our not unworthy contribution to the Dollar Drive and to the entertainment of the foreign visitors, Mr. Gurney the antique-furniture-dealer taking lucky dips out of history, Stephen Tasker, the indigent little bookseller, accepting the job of producer on the strength of having once organised a Boy Scouts’ entertainment, that pale wisp of a girl who couldn’t spell apocryphal wrestling with an old typewriter in the back room of the bookshop now converted into the Festival Office, Councillor Noakes pompously booming, "I don’t know much about Modern Poetry, young man, but make it clean and make it wholesome."

At the bottom of the hill he turned left along the tow-path which ran beside the river towards the town. Some moorhens delighted him with their antics as they swam downstream like clockwork toys, heads wagging stiffly, little white scuts rhythmically rising and falling in perfect time with their heads, as if the same unwinding spring controlled the whole anatomy; and he found himself repeating a poem in which Gerard Manley Hopkins praised God for

All things counter, original, spare, strange.

That included Mayors and moorhens, old kindly Vicars pottering with rain-gauges, small-town pageants, pompous Councillors, Odo and Dodo, everything; it surely included the tubby, the almost globular figure of Mr. Handiman who now approached him along the towpath, Mr. Handiman the ironmonger who was also Treasurer of the Festival, and who was apt to shut up his shop on any bright day in order that he might indulge his passion for angling. Lance was particularly fond of Mr. Handiman because he had bought fishing-tackle from him ever since he was so-high, hooks for a penny, bright-painted tiger-striped floats for twopence, twenty yards of stout watercord line for sevenpence-ha’penny, even a varnished bamboo rod beautifully dappled with brown and yellow blotches for four-and-sixpence. Moreover, Mr. Handiman had given long credit to generations of small boys, who forgot to pay as often as he forgot to remind them; which was one of the reasons why he was so poor.

Any luck? Lance asked him; and Mr. Handiman shook his head.

It’s close season, Mr. Lance, for everything except eels; and they’re not biting this bright morning. But somehow, just to be beside the river on a day like this, it takes you out of yourself, don’t it?

‘Too lovely to be looked on, save only on holy-days,’ said Lance half to himself, thinking of the green-and-gold field with the quicksilver patches of ladies’-smocks.

Ah, that’s Izaak Walton, that is. My Bible, smiled Mr. Handiman. Every time I comes along here in the spring-time I calls it to mind.

In a week or two, I suppose, they’ll be putting up the stands, said Lance, and then we shan’t see the buttercups. How are the bookings going?

Bad; but it’s early yet. And there’s a lot of apathy in the town. They seem more interested in the Beauty Queens than in the Pageant. I sometimes wonder, added Mr. Handiman, "whether we was altogether wise to mix up Beauty Queens with our History. It don’t seem proper somehow. What does your father think about it, Mr. Lance?"

"Oh, he says we must cater for all tastes. But he’s more concerned about the weather than about Beauty Queens."

A very clever gentleman, your father. Last year, a whole month before the event, he said it would be fine for the Bellringers’ Outing; and fine it was. But about this Beauty Competition: what I says is that it makes for bad feeling in the town. There was booing in the cinema when they chose the finalists—booing and catcalls. The young men take sides, you see. I shouldn’t like to be the man who has to judge the final, and that’s a fact!

Nor should I, said Lance, as Mr. Handiman climbed down the steep bank and began to bait his hook with a gross and flaccid worm. Nor should I; because I think they’re both so beautiful that there’s not a pin to choose between them!

And indeed that was true; for as Lance continued on his way along the towpath he racked his memory to discover one minute particular in which the charms of Virginia exceeded those of Edna and vice versa; and he could find none. Virginia was a shade the taller, certainly, and she walked with such an airy grace that a man would have to be a Herrick or a Lovelace to do it justice; and she had calm grey eyes and the slender delicacy of a flower, you could compare her with a sprig of the lilac ladies’-smock misty with the dew ! Yes; but Edna with the yellow hair and the high frank breasts and the glowing skin, so that there was a sort of incandescence about her—you had to liken her to those buxom marshmallows which offered themselves so artlessly to the sun. Between ladies’-smocks and kingcups, who could make a judgment? Between Pallas and Aphrodite, who could choose?

It was true that the name Virginia was greatly to be preferred to Edna, and this might seem to give her a trifling advantage in the eyes of a poet, until one recollected that her surname was Smith, whereas Edna bore the more romantic one of Shirley. Once more the balance was even; by not a minim nor a single hair did the loveliness of the one outweigh the beauty of the other; and when he asked himself which of them he would have beside him now, if Edna could be miraculously translated from the balloon factory where she worked or Virginia from the office of the Weekly Intelligencer, he had no doubt whatever about the answer. He would have them both.

So Lance, as he walked along the towpath with his hands in his pockets and his head in the air, made the discovery that he was in love; not with one girl or even with two, but with the whole blessed lot. For when his thoughts dwelt for a moment upon the tawny-haired barmaid who had been the immediate cause of his removal from Oxford University (for the proctors had been waiting for him beneath when he lowered himself from her bedroom window like Romeo upon a rope) he could scarcely deny that he was in love with her too. And when he allowed his fancy to play about the girl in the Festival Office, he had to admit that although she couldn’t spell and appeared to be witless there was nevertheless something fey and secret about her which could easily win a man’s heart. Astonished by this revelation, and as if to test further the huge catholicity of his taste, he even permitted himself to consider the claims of Miss Foulkes, a waspish redhead who was said to be a member of the Communist Party and whose lively opposition to the Festival was causing considerable embarrassment to the Mayor. Lance had once danced with Miss Foulkes at the annual beanfeast of the Tennis Club; upon that occasion their conversation had been confined to the subject of Dialectical Materialism. And yet he could not be absolutely sure, upon this bright May morning, that the multitudinous freckles upon her nose had actually displeased him nor that there had not passed through his mind a momentary speculation whether her rather pretty mouth could be put to better purpose than repeating the dogmas of Karl Marx.

The fact of the matter was that Lance was in love with Life. Being a poet, he was naturally a kind of Pantheist; and being young he was a Pan-amorist as well. As he strode through the buttercups which gilded his shoes, and sang to himself some improvised and exceedingly improper verses about Odo and Dodo, his heart felt as if it would burst with an overflowing and comprehensive love of Virginia and ladies’-smocks and Edna and marshmallows and barmaids and buttercups and of the kingfisher which suddenly shot like an azure arrow out of a hollow tree and with its beautiful darting swiftness took his breath away.

Tirra-lirra by the river sang Sir Lancelot.

II

Poised On top of the step-ladder, Stephen looked down upon his box-shaped front shop, the black cat rippling and purring in the window, the Rowlandson prints above the fireplace, the table littered with the unsorted and probably unsaleable books which he’d bought yesterday at an auction, the glass-fronted bookcase which contained his few first editions. Because he had never considered the shop from this angle before he felt curiously aloof; the ladder was a point of vantage from which he surveyed not merely his private world but the past five years he had spent in it. It didn’t seem so long since he’d put up that rather foolish motto above the shelves, a tag out of his little Latin which steadily became less: QUOD PETIS HIC EST. It was foolish because hardly any of his customers understood it and in any case it wasn’t true. What they sought was only occasionally and by fortunate chance to be found in those short inadequate shelves. Have you got an up-to-date book on metallurgy, please? I want something on spiders, suitable for a boy. Anything about embroidery. "Do you happen to have the Poetical Works of Ossian? Or Councillor Noakes whispering furtively: I want you to get me a little book on Flagellation." If Stephen had learned anything during his five years as a bookseller, it was that the frontiers of the human mind were immeasurable, and that people were like ants questing hopelessly within that vast wilderness. But what diverse and diverting ants they were! It was an odd paradox, thought Stephen, that the experience of keeping a bookshop had taught him less about Letters than it had taught him about Life.

The glass-fronted door of the shop was suddenly darkened and from his high perch he looked down upon a bald and shining pate. The old gentleman who owned it clutched to the bosom of his black cassock a bundle of books in shabby green bindings, and Stephen laid a bet with himself that the books were by Dickens, that they were believed to be first editions, that half the plates were missing and that the other half were foxed.

The old gentleman looked up.

Ah, there you are! I’ve brought you a few old books. They’re not Theology this time, you’ll be glad to hear.

Stephen came down the ladder. I was cleaning out some cupboards, the Vicar went on, and really, nowadays, one simply hasn’t got room—

Stephen had known, too, that the explanation would run like that: there was always so little room, there was never so little money. As he glanced at the damp-stained title-pages, the Vicar said:

They’re first editions, at least I’ve always understood so.

Yes, they’re the first bound editions, Stephen explained patiently; but I’m afraid they’re not very rare. You see, most of these books first came out in parts, and collectors like to have them in the original state, with the paper-wrappers and the advertisements all complete. I’m afraid—

You can’t make an offer for them? The Vicar was rubbing his old rheumaticky fingers where the thin string had cut them.

Well … Stephen began to tie up the bundle, and as he did so he felt his absurd weakness getting the better of him, his uncontrollable impulse of compassion. "Well, of course, they might sell. Angry with himself, he added almost roughly: Perhaps I could give you a pound for the lot."

You and I never argue, said the Vicar brightly. A willing buyer and a willing seller can always do a deal. I should hardly have troubled you, but expenses have been rather heavy lately. That boy of mine—you heard he was —er—sent down? Some foolish escapade; I didn’t inquire into it. Boys will be boys. Have you managed to sell many copies of his book?

Poetry is a bit difficult. And indeed, out of the fifty copies of that slim volume which Stephen had bought in another of his moments of compassionate folly, there were still forty-seven left. It was called La Vie est Vaine, and needless to say the Vicar had paid for its private publication. His printer had certainly cheated him, for the arty pink wrappers were fading to dirty orange and the bindings were springing, so that each of the little books had begun to open like a flower in the sun.

You wait till the Festival visitors begin to arrive, beamed the Vicar. Then they’ll sell like hot cakes. Ah, thank you—as Stephen took a pound out of the tobacco-tin which served as a till— "I can’t deny that it will come in handy, just at the moment. Boys like mine are very expensive. Besides, I’m saving up for