Body-text fonts, pt. 45: New Caledonia

In this month’s font’s sample, Robert Graves discusses memoir-writing:

It’s the line about people reading about food and drink that gets me. I’ve noticed, perusing Madame’s excellent blog, that my pulse quickens at the gastronomic bits.

C. S. Lewis:

There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.

As a teenager, I used to find this passage in Mere Christianity very funny; twenty-five years later, looking at pictures of food is precisely what half the world does.

(Madame, understand, I’m not criticizing your food photos. There’s obscenity, and there’s art. Your photos are on the respectable half of the divide.)

Madame has a second blog – a Substack where she posts excerpts of her memoirs. A word of advice, Madame. Put in all you can about food and drink, and murders, and ghosts or spirits, and the Prince of Wales (not unmanageable for a Canadian) … and tidbits about your children, whom I knew in high school. (I liked the detail about giving birth one room over from the woman who kept screaming, Que me haga cesaria.) My parents dredged up an old chestnut about me just last night. My mom led a Bible study at a church in Esmeraldas. She entrusted me to some youths who lost track of me. Neighbors found me outside the church. Most of my body had been buried in a mudslide. (This was during the Niño of 1982.) I’d heard this story before, except for the detail about my having been submerged in mud. (I thought I’d just gotten dirty.) Bear in mind, this was a Downtown Esmeraldas mudslide, so it would have contained garbage, sewage, etc. And I could have drowned. We’re always just on the other side of death; that fact is more obvious in some places than in others. Robert Graves’s tone may sound frivolous, but it’s a sweetener; his subject is the First World War.

February’s poems

Happy St. Valentine’s Day. Samuel and Daniel are with grandparents. Karin & I – accompanied by sleeping Abel – romantically gorged at the local diner (I ordered Mexican food and pancakes). We knew it’d be a quiet venue; there were just a handful of couples. But all races and persuasions were represented, including people with MAGA hats.

Afterward, I remarked to Karin how nicely everyone got along. “They all ignored each other,” she said.

Then I realized, not everyone shares my idea of “getting along.”

Back at home, we read love poems to each other.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Forget-Me-Not,” by William McGonagall:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

A gallant knight and his betroth’d bride,

Were walking one day by a river side,

They talk’d of love, and they talk’d of war,

And how very foolish lovers are.

At length the bride to the knight did say,

“There have been many young ladies led astray

By believing in all their lovers said,

And you are false to me I am afraid.”

“No, Ellen, I was never false to thee,

I never gave thee cause to doubt me;

I have always lov’d thee and do still,

And no other woman your place shall fill.”

“Dear Edwin, it may be true, but I am in doubt,

But there’s some beautiful flowers here about,

Growing on the other side of the river,

But how to get one, I cannot discover.”

“Dear Ellen, they seem beautiful indeed,

But of them, dear, take no heed;

Because they are on the other side,

Besides, the river is deep and wide.”

“Dear Edwin, as I doubt your love to be untrue,

I ask one favour now from you:

Go! fetch me a flower from across the river,

Which will prove you love me more than ever.”

“Dear Ellen! I will try and fetch you a flower

If it lies within my power

To prove that I am true to you,

And what more can your Edwin do?”

So he leap’d into the river wide,

And swam across to the other side,

To fetch a flower for his young bride,

Who watched him eagerly on the other side.

So he pluck’d a flower right merrily

Which seemed to fill his heart with glee,

That it would please his lovely bride;

But, alas! he never got to the other side.

For when he tried to swim across,

All power of his body he did loss,

But before he sank in the river wide,

He flung the flowers to his lovely bride.

And he cried, “Oh, heaven! hard is my lot,

My dearest Ellen! Forget me not:

For I was ever true to you,

My dearest Ellen! I bid thee adieu!”

Then she wrung her hands in wild despair,

Until her cries did rend the air;

And she cried, “Edwin, dear, hard is out lot,

But I’ll name this flower Forget-me-not.

“And I’ll remember thee while I live,

And to no other man my hand I’ll give,

And I will place my affection on this little flower,

And it will solace me in a lonely hour.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“May Colvin,” from The Oxford Book of Ballads (ed. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch):

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

False Sir John a-wooing came

To a maid of beauty fair;

May Colvin was this lady’s name,

Her father’s only heir.

He woo’d her but, he woo’d her ben [Editor’s note: both in the outer and inner rooms],

He woo’d her in the ha’;

Until he got the lady’s consent

To mount and ride awa’.

“Go fetch me some of your father’s gold,

And some of your mother’s fee,

And I’ll carry you into the north land,

And there I’ll marry thee.”

She’s gane to her father’s coffers

Where all his money lay,

And she’s taken the red, and she’s left the white,

And so lightly she’s tripp’d away.

She’s gane to her father’s stable

Where all the steeds did stand,

And she’s taken the best, and she’s left the warst

That was in her father’s land.

She’s mounted on a milk-white steed,

And he on a dapple-grey,

And on they rade to a lonesome part,

A rock beside the sea.

“Loup [leap] off the steed,” says false Sir John,

“Your bridal bed you see;

Seven ladies I have drownèd here,

And the eight’ one you shall be.

“Cast off, cast off your silks so fine

And lay them on a stone,

For they are too fine and costly

To rot in the salt sea foam.

“Cast off, cast off your silken stays,

For and your broider’d shoon,

For they are too fine and costly

To rot in the salt sea foam.

“Cast off, cast off your Holland smock

That’s border’d with the lawn,

For it is too fine and costly

To rot in the salt sea foam,” –

“O turn about, thou false Sir John,

And look to the leaf o’ the tree;

For it never became a gentleman

A naked woman to see.”

He turn’d himself straight round about

To look to the leaf o’ the tree;

She’s twined her arms about his waist

And thrown him into the sea.

“O hold a grip o’ me, May Colvin,

For fear that I should drown;

I’ll take you home to your father’s bower

And safe I’ll set you down.”

“No help, no help, thou false Sir John,

No help, no pity thee!

For you lie not in a caulder bed

Than you thought to lay me.”

She mounted on her milk-white steed,

And led the dapple-grey,

And she rode till she reach’d her father’s gate,

At the breakin’ o’ the day.

Up then spake the pretty parrot,

“May Colvin, where have you been?

What has become o’ false Sir John

That went with you yestreen?” –

“O hold your tongue, my pretty parrot!

Nor tell no tales o’ me;

Your cage shall be made o’ the beaten gold

And the spokes o’ ivorie.”

Up then spake her father dear,

In the bed-chamber where he lay:

“What ails the pretty parrot,

That prattles so long ere day?” –

“There came a cat to my cage, master,

I thought ’t would have worried me;

And I was calling to May Colvin

To take the cat from me.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Painful anticipation

Not nice for expectant dads, really not nice for expectant moms: prodromal labor.

When Karin’s contractions started, I cleaned the house and packed supplies; I thought we’d soon leave for the hospital. Well, days have elapsed. We’re still at home. The house is a mess, again, and I’m running out of clothes.

We went to church and received diapers, gift cards, and well-wishes. The pastor & his wife put out a tray of delicious Walmart cupcakes in our honor. Few adult congregants partook. Those who did, were shy to. The pastor, bless him, has slimmed down this year, conspicuously enough that he must work the theme into his sermons. Gluttony is as sinful as lying, he said last week.

Well, I suppose it is. And so this morning our church stood around the cupcake table, not eating, remarking that sugar fuels cancer.

A few of us ate with gusto. The frosting turned our lips and teeth blue.

Some more, final, last hurrahs

As I type, Daniel is on the kitchen floor, perching on all fours and rocking forward and backward; he’s very near to doing his first crawl. In church this morning, I took him to look at a newborn child (well, a two-or-three-week-old) and he beamed down like a benevolent little giant upon that new churchgoer. Samuel, meanwhile, went to his first Sunday School class with the children who’ve graduated from the nursery. Karin & I peeked in: he was tampering with the laptop that was broadcasting the singalong music.

His first day of school, and already he’s misbehaving with electronic devices.

Yesterday we went to Bremen, one county to the south, and attended a surprise party for another churchgoer. She might be the spryest ninety-year-old I’ve known. The cheese-&-chicken dip was a work of art (in the “grease” category of art); the corn chips belonged to one of the cheapest store brands. That’s Midwestern church food for you. We also ate those little barbecued meatballs and some other meatballs that were mixtures of sausage and cheese. It was an excellent late-afternoon snack; a little later, once Karin & I had dropped the children off at her dad’s house and begun our romantic evening together, which was supposed to be our last hurrah, foodwise, I was compelled to order a salad.