gryll grange | John Watson

GRYLL GRANGE

A Synopsis

From A William Maidment Garland

“ ‘Palestine soup!’ said the Reverend Doctor Opimian, dining with his friend Squire Gryll; ‘a curiously complicated misnomer.’ ” This opening sentence introduces a pleasing disintrication by Doctor Opimian involving an explanation of the confusion of two artichoke species, and slippages in translation. Such unfolding serves as an emblem of the randomness and charm to which every work should aspire. This excellent opening also invites comment about beginnings in general. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the opening sentence should stand like a folly overlooking the surrounding woods and still be visible to the traveller no matter how far he roams. A friend has pointed to the pleasing opening of The Towers of Trebizon by Rose Macaulay as a worthy instance: “ ‘Take my camel, dear,’ said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from high mass.”

This could be accompanied by the beginning of Calidore, an unfinished fragment by the author of Gryll Grange: NOTWITHSTANDING the great improvements of machinery in this rapidly improving age, which is so much wiser, better, and happier than all that went before it, every gentleman is not yet accommodated with the convenience of a pocket boat. We may therefore readily imagine that Miss Ap-Nanny and her sister Ellen, the daughters of the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd, were not a little astonished in a Sunday evening walk on the sea shore, when a little skiff, which, by the rapidity of its motion had attracted their attention while but a speck upon the waves, ran upon the beach, from which emerged a very handsome young gentleman, dressed not exactly in the newest fashion, who, after taking down the sail and hauling up the boat upon the beach, carefully folded it up in the size of a prayer-book and transferred it to his pocket.

Doctor Opimian, not easily discouraged, instances further misnomers by way of disparaging other inequities and abuses in society. The conversation then drifts downstream to the topic of fish, acceptable species of a single syllable and of two and three, with a pleasant disagreement as to the virtues of bream. This leads to mention of the expected arrival of Lord Curryfin, who is touring with his lecture on fish. Miss Gryll, the unmarried niece of Mr Gryll, finds the concept of a lecturing lord comical. Doctor Opimian agrees, insofar as he considers the lecture an inferior form to the debate or, better, the tenson, a twelfth-century discussion of love and chivalry. Mr Gryll proposes a further improvement towards an Aristophanic comedy where debate and exposition are amplified by a Chorus. Such an enterprise is suggested for Christmas festivities at the Grange, possibly on the topic of spirit-rapping, a current craze.

The present pot-pourri or mélange or commentary or compote or carillon of synopses or transcription for hand-bells or riff or walking-tour of Gryll Grange must encounter the rapids of irrelevance; anachronism may sometimes threaten its fabric, indulgence elaborate its hems.

The maker of synopses must always hope that a previous reader (of Gryll Grange) or one who has never taken that volume from its shelves will eventually, even if in another life, read or re-read it.

He (the elaborist) is in the habit of singing while playing at the keyboard – Glenn Gould playing Bach comes to mind.

And he hopes that his Commentary will be botryose – that is, “bearing flowers in clusters which develop successively from the base upwards”; and may even be read in a boreen – that is, “a glade furnished with a seat for the purpose of viewing a vista of shimmering water”.

Gregory Gryll Esq. of Gryll Grange, landholder, proud uncle, descendant of “the ancient and illustrious Gryllus, who maintained against Ulysses the superior happiness of the life of other animals to that of the life of man”, lived a life of contentment, visited regularly by friends for quiet dinners. His sole company at the Grange is his orphan niece and godchild, Morgana, raised by him since infancy. Her recent rejection of a numerous cavalcade of suitors has made her uncle nervous that the ancient name of Gryll, surviving since the time of Circe, might disappear in the nineteenth century.

A trivial and scarcely plausible jest attaches itself – anachronistically – to the name Gryll: a shuttlecock has sailed through an open window and alighted on a wall. On the wall is the graffito, “I love grils”. Under this has been written “It’s girls, stupid” and under this again the plaintive “What about us grils?”.

On his frequent visits the Reverend Doctor Opimian is likely to discuss with Mr Gryll the notion of transcription and particularly (and anachronistically) the Liszt transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies. They tend to agree that the transcription for keyboard stresses structure over colour, the form being clearly more sublime. “And how much more difficult and splendid,” muses the doctor, “might be a reduction for fortepiano of the Missa Solemnis, which I say again renders most of our speculation, inventions and contrivances mere leaves in a gale?”

One summer morning Doctor Opimian, “an athlete in pedestrianism”, sets out to walk through the woods to the Folly, a tower several hours distant, which he has heard described but never seen.

On arriving he meets its owner, Mr Algernon Falconer, a stranger who rapidly becomes friend and host. Their meeting is no doubt facilitated by Homer; for a curl of smoke rising from the tower suggests lines relating to Circe’s dwelling which the doctor murmurs aloud in the young man’s hearing. This accomplished bachelor has purchased with an inheritance the Folly, extended it generously and in the original tower made a bedroom, a dining-room and a library. In the last, on the upper floor, Doctor Opimian is impressed to find an excellent collection of the major works of Latin and Greek, together with numerous works in English, French and Italian. Mr Falconer endorses Porson’s remark that “Life is too short to learn German”.

Porson, it could be added, was self-taught, a polymath and Greek scholar, who grew up with few books notable amongst which was one stray volume of Caxton’s Cyclopedia washed ashore like Steerforth from a wrecked freighter.

And were we to retraverse the wild woods in search of the doctor still on his way from the vicarage to the tower we might note the intense complexity, the folded inkblot or lace tracery of the woods, as depicted by Samuel Palmer – the tangle of vine or liana round tree trunks as if they were not self-supporting alone, the ink-black pattern of leaves – all eager to be part of the project, Everything An Emblem.

There might even be a schematic but incomplete lime-rick leaning fragrantly in a glade in those woods:

On a midsummer morning …

The doctor sets out ……..

….. without bound

With his Newfoundland hound

On the dew-covered ………

Delighted in the labyrinth, the doctor is pleased to find a fair imitation of one in Mr Falconer’s library.

The doctor is invited to refreshment before setting out to return. Mr Falconer explains that he lives alone happily with only female domestics, principal among whom are Seven Sisters. Two of these – girls of about sixteen or seventeen, modestly but prettily dressed, serve hock and madeira and a pleasing selection of cold meats. Afterwards Mr Falconer accompanies him for the part of the way back through the woods.

I’ve no doubt had I not been reciting

Several lines from the Odyssey’s flighting

It well may have been

I might not have been seen

And life would be much less exciting.

The lime-rick seems ideally suited to the path through the woods.

Mr Falconer’s knowledge of Homer

Has ensured that I stay no mere dreamer,

For within these stone walls

His Odyssean halls

Make the guest his own Vasco da Gama.

The Reverend Doctor Opimian and Mr Falconer traverse the forest in the reverse direction towards the vicarage. They discuss the moral opprobrium with which the indiscriminate world might view Mr Falconer’s domestic arrangements – that he lives unattached in a household attended by seven maidens, his Vestals, Seven Sisters of whom the Doctor had seen but two and pronounced them pretty. Mr Falconer cheerfully dismisses such lack of charity, and he enthuses over the attractions of living like a hermit at the top of a tower. The doctor notes the charm of forest scenery, whose poignancy the two agree is increased by the likelihood of its destruction under some Act of Enclosure.

An oak with a deer in its shade

Dims the blaze of the foxglove in plaid

With the ferns in a frieze

Curling up through the breeze

To a beech-grove in beams lightly frayed.

The doctor’s marked tendency to meandering speculation and association might be likened to the often remarked preference in Schubert to favour modulation for its own sake, and for lingering in remote keys to suggest distant vistas. Doctor Opimian walked on alone, enjoying, as the faintly familiar landscape passed in reverse, the reverie of thoughts neither advancing nor retreating.

The tower, an excellent library,

A bedroom which he did not see,

The waiting-maids like sunlit shade

That glimmers in a forest glade

Their hair under no Vestal cloud

Such as their Counterparts employed

– Or were true Vestals shaved on entry?

His thoughts now bear upon the question of feminine beauty insofar as it depends on the hair, thoughts running – flowing in the breeze – round him.

Apuleius singles out the head

Denuded of its hair and thus despoiled

Even if descended from the clouds,

Born of the sea and raised amongst its waves …

Venus herself with her attending Graces,

Cinctured with fragrance, caparisoned in light,

Would still not please the gods nor man

Without her Botticellian plait.

But what of these maidens attending the Tower, with their hair unusually luxuriant? He fears that Mrs Opimian would join the world in finding no virtue in their situation.

The doctor honouring his promise to return to the Folly set out some days later in midmorning – since he intended to stay overnight. The day was hot; he paused often under trees, noting species which even to him seemed unfamiliar. In the cool of the evening the two friends dined. Doctor Opimian was surprised to see musical instruments set out and even more so to be given a concert by the Seven Sisters dressed in white and purple – the seven Pleiads! After sacred works by Mozart and Beethoven the concert ended with a hymn to Saint Catharine.

Its last line lingered with the doctor and returned even after a pleasant sleep – the Latin text which might be rendered in the most exquisite and evocative tetrameter depending as it does on the opening of the flower to its full three syllables: vi-o-let.

Seven Pleiads arrayed in white lawn

With their hair piled like clouds before dawn,

A harp and an organ

No sign of a Gorgon –

Only glances as soft as a faun.

After breakfast Mr Falconer again accompanied his new friend for part of the way back through the forest. They discussed a variant of the Language of Flowers and Mr Falconer was dazzling on the theme. The Codification of the Language of Trees in which he adumbrated the voices, pleas, vociferations, innuendoes, intimations, implications and opinions of many species noted along the way.

Once alone the doctor enjoys the reverie of walking.

Alone walking home through the woods

He mused on their lapidary shades

But hearing a cry

And a heart-rending sigh

He found a poor swain in the reeds.

The young man is, it transpires after much tactful inquisition, a rejected suitor of one of the Seven Sisters. Harry Hedgerow (for that is his name) is of good yeoman stock but has made no progress and suffers.

“And what is her name?” said the doctor.

“Dorothy,” said the other; “her name is Dorothy. Their names follow, like ABC, only that A comes last. Betsey, Catherine, Dorothy, Eleanor, Fanny, Grace, Anna. But they told me it was not the alphabet they were christened from; it was the key of A minor, if you know what that means.”

“I think I do,” said the doctor, laughing. “They were christened from the Greek diatonic scale, and make up two conjunct tetrachords, if you know what that means.”

The doctor counsels optimism and at the same time sees a ray of hope. He has conceived the idea of introducing Algernon Falconer and Miss Gryll, and he sees that while the Seven Sisters form a sort of obstacle or shield, the marriage of one of them – Dorothy – to Harry Hedgerow would “break the combination”.

On the number 7, a review: 7 sisters;

7 Vestals (except that these used to be 6);

7 Pleiads; 7 planets (but now more).

Mrs Opimian: 7 Deadly Sins?

The doctor and Mrs Opimian have a spirited conversation on modern follies.

In which Lord Curryfin and his lecture on fish are mentioned; plans for the Aristophanic comedy discussed; the suggestion made that Mr Falconer be invited to the Grange in the hope that he will participate; the absurdities of the newfangled Science of Pantopragmatics of which Lord Curryfin’s lectures on fish are instanced, being as useless as a cook lecturing on bubble-and-squeak.

And were Doctor Opimian to extend the range of his disparagements into the future, he might well censure that aspect of progress by which the television screen became rectangular and by an imperfect technology of ratio conversion, even long-legged Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon is made to look squat.

Doctor Opimian sets out once more to visit Mr Falconer with a view to inviting his participation in the Aristophanic comedy performance planned for the Grange.

The day was mild, enchanting as the smile

On certain painted saints, eyes raised towards the heavens.

The day smiled elusively. Behind the curtain of sun-dappled trees, confidences and a general Confidence seemed imminent. Speculation or Fantasy need not venture far into the extraneous before one imagines the doctor’s walk enlivened by encounters with a unicorn, a griffin, a wizard, an immovable object, the Single Actor from the earliest drama, a few Platonic Forms in search of a cave. One might even picture him equipped with a map on a scale bordering on parity which lists every ancient name for every rivulet, rise, declivity, outcrop, grove, ruins, standing stone. The Trickle of Russet, The Lightning Strike, The Glen of Content, Porson’s Bridge, The Enigma, Half-way, Zeno’s Last Stand.

At the Folly, Mr Falconer agreed to visit and take part in the play; and after the doctor’s request to see other rooms hitherto hidden he was shown his host’s bedroom decorated in tribute to Saint Catharine. Paintings in oils, stained-glass, decorative panels depicted the saint who, Mr Falconer explained, had been adopted as a testament to ideal beauty rather than mystifying faith.

But, thought the doctor, how pale and bloodless are depictions of the saints.

St Catharine is white as a sheet

From her face to the tips of her feet

But perhaps extreme pallor

Betokening valour

May seem meet to the man in the street.

Mr Falconer’s fastidious idealism is expressed in a statement worth repeating at length:

“I wish to believe in the presence of some local spiritual influence; genius or nymph; linking us by a medium of something like human feeling, but more pure and more exalted, to the all-pervading creative and preservative spirit of the universe; but I cannot realise it from things as they are. Everything is too deeply tinged with sordid vulgarity. There can be no intellectual power resident in a wood, where the only inscription is not ‘Genio loci’, but ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’; no Naiad in a stream that turns a cotton-mill; no Oread in a mountain dell, where a railway train deposits a cargo of vandals; no Nereids or Oceanitides along the seashore, where a coastguard is watching for smugglers.”

The two friends parted, mutually cheered by such sentiments and an enthusiasm for the forthcoming comedy.

Here at once must be incorporated, like a secondary thread in a weft shuttle to be hurled across the warp, the incident in Sense and Sensibility when Marianne is opportunely rescued by Willoughby – and, indeed, in Pride and Prejudice when Jane, chilled from a cloudburst, is obliged to recuperate in the Bingley household.

Morgana Gryll has ridden by coach and pair with her uncle to view the Folly after Doctor Opimian’s glowing descriptions, and almost at its door they are struck by lightning. One of the horses is killed and Miss Gryll either injured or shocked sufficiently to have to remain at the Folly. She is accommodated in the female quarters and attended by the Seven Sisters. Meanwhile Mr Gryll and Dr Opimian – who has been visiting Mr Falconer at the time – having satisfied themselves of Morgana’s comfort, enjoy a splendid and genial dinner.

The storm’s an impressive machine

As grave as Giorgione’s had been.

When she’s thrown to the floor

Miss Gryll will need more

Than umbrellas as Fates intervene.

An erudite discussion of electricity, many aspects of which were known to the ancients. Here the doctor slips in frequent references to “Homer, Aeschylus, Aristotle, Plutarch, Athenaeus, Horace, Persius, and Pliny” in support of the assertion. The dubious value of more recent applications of the phenomenon is questioned – the nuisances occasioned by the electric telegraph, for example.

Here the discussion might easily have advanced to even more recent indulgences – the pervasiveness of the stuff, the search for fundamental particles, the hunting of the quark, sleep-overs at the edge of black holes, and in a modern transposition, a near-singularity where

The Hadron Collider

Sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Gryll in her coach.

A charming young lady named Gryll

Found in Nature the ultimate thrill.

As the storm turned skies white

And the horses took fright,

She was caught in a long-sounding trill.

There are recuperative lunches in sunlight on the lawn:

The sun on our faces

The air like a swan

The forest in laces

With winter begun;

The shades of past summer

Conveyed on the wing

With a courteous glimmer

Still able to bring

Convivial pleasure

To the company at large

And discourse at leisure

Like a slow-moving barge.

Miss Gryll’s complete recovery so ardently wished by all parties including Mr Falconer is nevertheless by him to be regretted, in that it signals her departure.

After this he resorts to the library, to the depictions of ideal beauty therein, including representations of the pale St Catharine. He is restless. Two hand-maidens of the seven serve luncheon and he is temporarily appeased. But soon afterwards, with a slashing stick and his dog (a companion animal to that of the doctor’s) he plunges into the forest.

For one who tends to favour ideal pasts

Over present turbulent contingencies,

The forest with its ancient oaks appears

To offer solace. Here Maid Marian

Etc, etc.

“The forest depths through which Angelica fled”

Etc, etc.

Laura, Rosalind etc, etc.

And the sense of history is palpable.

The oak branches proffer their peace

Or, from sighs, sympathetic release

Where calmed by the years

In tiers after tiers

This turbulence may find surcease.

Still unassuaged however, Algernon Falconer returns. He is greatly disturbed by the intrusion of the real or, we might venture more recently to say, the hyper-real: the supervening of a real person with beating heart and pulse and infinitely variant gaze, on the wall frieze of the Ideal.

In the evening the Seven Sisters soothe him by musical offerings but he is still troubled – for he is a person who believes, or wants to believe, tranquillity superior to excitement. In this state of disquiet he is pleased one morning to greet Doctor Opimian. He adduces Pindar and the ninth Pythian ode in which Cyrene wrestles with the lion. He believes that love which encourages the lover to see everything through the imposed image of his mistress would be a disaster – a calamity not just in its effect on such perceptions but a mischance, a lightning strike to be avoided. He prefers the tranquillity of Wordsworth’s

“days so like each other they could not be remembered”.

Like the oak tree unmoved in a glade

Not remembering each sequence of shade

I would wish to remain

Without love’s bright pain

In the shadows, serene, undismayed.

He confides in Dr Opimian his susceptibility to the more than ideal beauty of Miss Morgana Gryll and his consequent reluctance to venture to the Grange. The married happiness of the Opimians is advanced by the doctor as a persuasion; further the charming presence of Lord Curryfin which might well deflect Miss Gryll’s piercing gaze from the vulnerable Algernon.

A lengthy exchange of argument for and against the possibility of happiness in marriage ensues, with laughter and concessions from both sides. In the end Mr Falconer, as curious to see Lord Curryfin as he is wary of further exposure to the dangerous sunlight of Miss Gryll, agrees to go to the Grange.

Lord Curryfin’s lecture on fish

Has his listeners all hooked, on a dish.

Each fingerling fact

Delivered with tact

Quite exceeds every fish-lover’s wish.

The sight of Lord Curryfin’s jaw

Makes the ladies inclined to adore.

His lectures on carp

To the strains of a harp

Have the erudite longing for more.

Lord Curryfin is crossing the country giving his lectures on fish. He is an accomplished young man who will court Miss Gryll before finally ceding the field to Mr Falconer in facilitating his own attachment to another. His talents are many; he has charm and daring. He is equal to the challenges of difficult figure skating, the taming of horses; he has brought a variety of inventions… He will single-handedly construct the stage-set for the Aristophanic comedy.

His talents and interests include

Engineering feats (where risks intrude),

A hot air balloon

Figure skating and, soon,

Whatever caprice suits his mood.

Lord Curryfin “with his usual desire to have a finger in every pie” has been invited to the Grange. Here he is struck by the startling beauty of the resident Miss Gryll. One might compare the following from Peacock’s unfinished Calidore fragment – “Nature had gifted our youth with a very susceptible spirit, and the contemplation of this beautiful creature fanned the dormant sparks of his natural combustibility into an instantaneous conflagration.”

The ladies leave the gentlemen to discussion over wine; Mr Falconer, deferring to the ancients, defends the Greek musical scales: he is not overfond of the piano since it is tuned in tempered or approximate scales and not natural harmonics; Mr MacBorrowdale is reluctant to be drawn on any subject other than the wine; the Reverend Doctor Opimian voices the important principle relating to realism in art: “I must take pleasure in the thing represented before I can derive any from the representation”; Mr Pallet discounts Mr Falconer’s advocacy by scorning the lack of perspective in ancient art; a discussion of fools allows the doctor to castigate several classes of them, including the “competitive examination man who would not allow a drayman to lower a barrel into a cellar unless he could expound the mathematical principles by which he performed the operation”.

Mr Falconer Silently Appeals to the Power of the Ancient Modes.

“The musical scales before the imposition

Of Just (or Contrived) Temperament – an art

Now lost to us – must have been prodigal

In the expression of a complete range

Of passions such as now I mutely suffer

Since Miss Gryll was struck by that same lightning

As that day struck me in meeting her.”

– Algernon Falconer

Dinner at the Grange. Mr Gryll went in with Miss Ilex, a sympathetic older woman not previously mentioned, who will later regale Miss Gryll with confidences. Lord Curryfin went in with Miss Gryll, and Mr Falconer by misfortune found himself at the opposite end of the table from them.

Unexpectedness: Mr Falconer’s excess of discomposure at seeing Lord Curryfin far away at table with Miss Gryll; Doctor Opimian’s surprise at seeing Mr Falconer’s preference for Miss Ilex over several other young ladies in the room; Miss Ilex’s assertion that in respect of expression and “redundancy of ornament” Donizetti might be preferred to Mozart; Miss Gryll’s rendering of The Dappled Palfrey, a ballad, which appears to cause agitation in Mr Falconer; unexpected modulations.

In Headlong Hall, by the author of Gryll Grange, unexpectedness is asserted as the quintessence of architecture.

By analogy, unexpectedness to be valued in narrative.

Fragment from an epistolary novel: a letter not sent.

“My dear Miss Gryll,

When I heard – and saw – you lead The Dappled Palfrey gently into our midst I was greatly disturbed. Forgive me for resorting to redundancy of ornament but I must explain that previously I had, in the remoteness of the Tower, aspired to the serenity of the Mozartian in which temporal progress and retarding expression are in perfect accord; but you have plunged me into the turbulence of a Donizetti aria filled with sighs and protestations – ” [to be continued]

Is her particular timbre best suited

To the clavicymbal or clavicytherium or clavicithern?

Lord Curryfin: On that I cannot pronounce

But it would certainly not be a clavicorn

Which is a species of clubhorned beetle.

After Miss Gryll’s delightful performance of The Dappled Palfrey another young lady, rather more reserved in manner, sang the famous and affecting ballad, Love and Age.

Miss Alice Niphet, the young lady referred to, provides a counterweight to the attractions of Miss Gryll. Lord Curryfin is impressed. Peacock’s concession to Southey, whom he has previously ridiculed:

“Marble paleness suits her well.”

Miss Niphet is the only daughter of a gentleman living a few miles distant. She is to be the leader of the Chorus in the Aristophanic comedy. In conversation with her on the many topics on which he is an expert Lord Curryfin is impressed. Later she glimpses him struggling single-handedly with the stage set.

An Odd Perspective

Miss Niphet returning from walking outdoors

Saw Lord Curryfin high in the air,

Swinging backwards and forwards above the board stage

Then vanishing into the sky.

After this strange disappearance into the canvas heavens above the stage, at breakfast Miss Niphet could not prevent herself smiling.

Later at the lake – she in the pavilion to read, he to sail from the boathouse – the absurdity of his disappearance into that artificial blue ether had receded, to be replaced with a concern for his recklessness with boats.

Rehearsals proceed serendipitously. Lord Curryfin is drawn equally and differently to Miss Gryll and Miss Niphet, although there is the complication of a declaration made to the former.

Double Lime-rick

Lord Curryfin “happens” to meet

Miss Niphet each day by the lake.

She is reading of course, and discreet,

While he senses the trill and the shake

In the air which each day

With the sun through the trees

Seems already to play

Like the lake in a breeze

So their mornings continue to make

Arabesques overflowing, replete.

The rehearsals remind us distantly of the rehearsals for Lovers’ Vows in Mansfield Park.

Idyllic Accident

The lake invited daring. Lord Curryfin,

Determined innovator that he was,

Invented an infallible new sail

Which at its first trial plunged him into the mere.

Showering water, shaking himself, he heard

Miss Niphet voice a gratifying concern

Then saw her blush. Impulsively he exclaimed,

“Surely till now I never looked on beauty!”

To which she almost said, then checked herself,

“Surely you have already looked on Miss Gryll.”

Decisive Action

Miss Niphet, after the wayward sail was brought to shore

And hoisted up to dry, set it on fire. “No more,”

She said as he surveyed the ashes in surprise,

“Will that sail ever cast you overboard in sighs.”

Flared Nostrils

Lord Curryfin, expert in exciting praise

Took on himself next day the taming of a horse.

Miss Niphet seeing him from her window on the field

Felt great alarm imagining the headlong rush

Past overhanging boughs. She hastened to the field,

Startled when he returned with fiery mount sedate.

Miss Niphet, marble Melpomene, suddenly

In tears, as suddenly ran like Atalanta.

Flux

At breakfast Melpomene seemed impassive; at rehearsals she performed but was remote, and departed at once afterwards. By the lake Lord Curryfin found the pavilion empty. He asked himself how it could be that he had so recently proposed to Miss Gryll when he was now eager to propose to Miss Niphet. He could not be sure at what stage of incipience or development love was eddying some distance out from shore. He could not be sure the sail was infallible.

Similarly Mr Falconer felt the anchor of the Seven Sisters and their offer of an endless Mozartiana weighing against the impulse in the sail to test the breeze offshore. Miss Gryll felt divided between the Apollonian Algernon and the Dionysian Lord Curryfin.

Only Miss Niphet seemed set on a clear course. After finding Lord Curryfin merely amusing, she now found herself troubled by his attentions to Miss Gryll.

The pavilion was deserted still and filled with shadows,

Lord Curryfin felt its emptiness echo in himself.

But suddenly Melpomene appeared. She took his hand.

“My maid informs me you intend to try that dangerous horse

In harness and in some high phaeton you’ve invented

With thus a double chance to break your neck …

I entreat you therefore to abandon your intentions.”

Lord Curryfin assured her of the infallibility of his invention and his power over horses but that, if she denied him this present course, it was a small sacrifice to abstain from certain projects.

“And from sailing boats?”

“From sailing boats.”

“And from balloons?”

“From balloons? But what suggested balloons? As a matter of fact I have thought of balloons and I have invented an infallible valve – ”

Lord Curryfin Reins In

My inventions are somewhat erratic

But of one thing I am most emphatic –

If you say “No balloon!”

I’ll be down to earth soon;

My New-Leaf-Turning-Over’s dramatic.

Having secured his promises in the matter of horses, carriages, sails, balloons, Miss Niphet was delighted to see his resourcefulness employed in the invention of acoustic devices for the theatre.

Sonority in the Athenian Theatre

Lord Curryfin now turned his attention to the study of sonorous vases as proposed by Vitruvius, whereby the harnessing of Harmonics allowed these to be placed round the theatre to increase sonority. He had made a number of such vases only to find at their first trial a gong-like, intolerable roaring resulted.

The roaring of amplified sea-shells

When supplying a surrogate sea

Now accompanied the slightest stage whisper

And threatened expediency.

The modern reader might recall Gogol’s story in which, in order to hide squalid streets from the impending visit of an important government official, screens are erected around the town square – resulting in a roar of echoes as soon as the mayor’s speech of welcome is begun.

The principle of amplification suggests also the exquisite phenomenon found rarely near waterfalls where a cave in the vicinity has the form of a parabola, so that when one approaches the parabola’s focal point the rays of sound from the falls are focussed there. The result is a splendid enlargement and concentration of the roar of water.

Lord Curryfin was discouraged. Miss Niphet was more positive, cheered by two facts: first that though intolerably noisy the vases could always be removed, and second, that this unsolved problem kept the inventor from more dangerous pursuits.

To test the acoustics of the theatre (with the vases discreetly removed) the participants gave a series of lectures: Lord Curryfin (Fish), Mr Minim (Music), Mr Pallet (Painting), Mr MacBorrowdale (Foreign Affairs). Mr Falconer spoke on Domestic Life in Homer, Mr Gryll on Epicureanism, and Doctor Opimian, rather than subject the company to his usual fare, recited a long-ish version of a poem on Chivalry.

General debate on diverse topics. The electric telegraph is dismissed as regrettable if it facilitates communication with Americans. Other aspects of technical innovation deplored. Mr Gryll proposes Newfoundland salt fish as a possible counter-argument in favour of exchange with Americans but Dr Opimian holds to the view that this benefit is greatly outweighed by other factors less favourable. The conversation is lengthy. Mr MacBorrowdale voices scepticism as to the benefit of lectures on any topic. Dr Opimian returns to his particular dislike – Competitive Examiners, whose precept he takes to be, “It is better to learn to gabble about everything than to understand anything”.

Algernon and Morgana

Winter fields; an early heavy frost; the window and winter light; austere backdrops to the comedy; Miss Gryll reading, quite alone; Mr Falconer at the door.

The whiteness of winter enhances

The earnest demeanour of glances.

In light strangely sweet

Their slow gazes meet

With the force of a thousand hurled lances.

Algernon enters.

Morgana has been reading Orlando Innamorata after whose enchantress she has been named. Courteous greetings are exchanged. “Diffugere nives” hangs faintly on the air – confirming that traces of the past persist. She reads aloud the passage in which her namesake offers the golden lock of hair which Orlando, missing the opportunity, fails to seize. Similarly Algernon is diffident, uncertain, hesitant, and lets the moment pass without making the declaration which both sense as imminent.

Instead they speak of Morgana’s other suitor. She has rejected many, but this present contender – they agree – is mercurial, inventive and malleably eager to please. Yet she finds something lacking in his character which she cannot explain. Algernon notes with generosity his humour and title as advantages. Then slipping out of the sevenfold protection of the Seven Sisters, he ventures a compliment. Morgana blushes. The sevenfold bands are loosened. An understanding or declaration might have occurred had not an interruption prevented it.

After failing at this hurdle Algernon returns through the woods by postilion, and regains at that leisurely gait a measure of serenity, a sort of cushion to place over the horns of his dilemma. He is alarmed at the thought of Morgana becoming Lady Curryfin; his reverie inclines him towards the declaration he did not make. Yet the prospect of the Seven Sisters greeting him and providing music is calming. He is again in the evenly poised dilemma of Rasselas – “the wants of him who wants nothing”. He watches the familiar patterns of the woods slowly passing.

In winter’s chief beauty, the woods,

The rime frost persists in its glades.

The cold sound of hooves

On the bare ground approves

The loud indecision of birds.

At the Grange a learned discussion ensues on the identification of fossils. Lord Curryfin notes “that petrifactions were often siliceous but never pure silex,” an observation not acknowledged by Mr MacBorrowdale.

The distant tower, the calming power of seven,

The charm of indecisive Algernon …

The lake was frozen solid. On the ice

Lord Curryfin performed and, in a trice,

Had dazzled all admirers on the shore.

Miss Niphet joins him, and is as like Atalanta on ice as formerly on the lawns. Exertion brings a flush to her cheeks, and Lord Curryfin observes that he now sees absolute confirmation that the Athenians preferred their marble statuary tinted.

The ice is as white as her face

As she skates with a consummate grace.

Yet her cheeks bear a flush

Which is not quite a blush –

She’s like marble with rose carapace.

The skaters are admired by Miss Gryll, Miss Ilex and Doctor Opimian.

Another Dilemma

Miss Gryll watches admiringly this gliding pair, who, Doctor Opimian observes, seem so close as to suggest Jupiter’s creation of apt couples subsequently divided and set in search of one another. Miss Gryll senses that Lord Curryfin’s ardour towards her has perhaps declined into deference; she has deflected his declaration in the greater flame of Algernon’s presence but that presence has evaporated and he is again in an extended retreat in the tower with the Seven.

Miss Gryll and Miss Niphet Muse

A Ballad of Attachments

We are two friends. We admire each other.

We love Lord Curryfin as a brother.

– And yet in Morgana I see a light

Like light in a house approached at night.

– And yet in Alice I see reserve

Like a screen of trees behind which curve

The lights of a coach drawing up at dawn

From which steps down and crosses the lawn

A stranger preceding a shimmering breeze

Who waves and calls to one upstairs.

We are two friends. We share one thing:

We both find Curryfin interesting.

We walk beside the frozen lake

And at its centre for our sake

He skates where summer saw him sail

Aboard the good ship Fallible.

And whether Curryfin sink or swim

Or ride a rampant stallion tame

Or swing above the stage-set scrim

We two friends think the world of him.

Yet another who strides the firmament

Is altogether more diffident;

Morgana sees the light from the tower

And recognises its curious power

Where a sevenfold secret Sisterhood

Suggesting starshine Pleiadic cloud

Hangs like a shadow round that sun…

There in his library Algernon,

Sheltering in Ideality

Is protected from the whelming sea;

And two friends ponder what is meant

In the gaze of this charming diffident.

We are two friends. We are Miss Gryll

And Melpomene or, if you will,

Miss Alice Niphet – both as perplexed

Not knowing whom to favour next.

And yet we are confident calm will prevail

And by Christmas snows will each regale

The other with triumphal calm

When each of our lovers finds his home.

As Christmas approaches, Doctor Opimian reflects on the iconography and associations and rituals and pleasures of that season; halcyon, hearth, holly, mistletoe, sausage, plum-pudding – oblate as the earth’s sphere – punch, roast, yule-log. His reverie is interrupted by a knock at the door. It is Harry Hedgerow who asks the doctor’s help and intervention and advice in his suit and that of six companions. Harry has proposed to Dorothy without success; the other six wish to marry her sisters. All are thwarted by the hermit of the Folly, Mr Falconer. But now they hear that he is to marry Miss Gryll. This being so they wish to press forward into the resulting vacuum and request the doctor’s advocacy. Dr Opimian is hopeful but uncertain. He questions whether there is any dispute amongst the six as to their selections. But –

Each of the seven rustics is by serendipity

Enamoured of a different sister, against all probability.

“That,” says Harry, “is the beauty of it.”

Returning after an absence to the Grange, Mr Falconer observes what he assumes to be Miss Gryll’s renewed interest in Lord Curryfin.

In the Arena of the Quadrille

There are two quadrilles: a) the dance and b) the card game – more convivial and less ill-tempered than whist. In the former Lord Curryfin excels. With Miss Niphet he surpasses all others. Mr Falconer, who does not dance, notes what he takes to be a glistening – jealousy construes it as a tear – in Miss Gryll’s eye. He questions himself ceaselessly; he reproaches himself repeatedly for his failure to declare himself, to seize the golden lock when it was offered.

Could this glistening be really a tear

Like a glimmering sword in the mere

Which condemns my inaction

And futile distraction

And causes this shimmering fear?

While Mr Falconer trudges through the drear land of Near-And-Yet-So-Far, Doctor Opimian, Miss Ilex, Mr Gryll and Mr MacBorrowdale play cards – the relaxed game of Quadrille – an excellent opportunity for a discussion of truth to Nature in several writers. Pope is mildly cautioned by Miss Ilex for errors in his account of the card game in The Rape of the Lock. Wordsworth, Milton and Burns are praised for the accuracy of their observation. The same cannot be said for Moore, who is severely censured for illogic; and Moore fares no better, in Doctor Opimian’s view, in his account of Cleopatra’s complexion.

All this while Miss Niphet has been the cynosure and culmination in the dance, while Mr Falconer sinks into greater Stygian marshes to reflect on his disappearance at a critical moment, his failure to declare himself to Miss Gryll. He has stayed away for too long.

Miss Gryll now planned ways of overcoming the young man’s irresolution, his retreat into the fortress provided by the Seven Sisters, which she feared without her intervention would be of long duration.

She considered the deployment of her power

To bring the dreamer closer to the hour.

Outside, the snow fell through the night

And morning seemed wide-eyed in white;

Lord Curryfin went out to skate

And Mr Falconer looked for Miss Gryll.

She sat serenely in a shade,

Orlando open at her side.

“You have been long away,” she said.

He heard the waxwing’s distant trill.

At this there begins the long circuitous manoeuvre in which both celebrants with artless art act out their roles. Morgana begins by reporting Doctor Opimian’s opinion concerning the sevenfold improbability that he – Mr Falconer – would return. Algernon protests his desire to ask her forgiveness without assuming that which he has no right to assume. She offers to supply the assertion – presumed in this assumption – which she might put into his mouth, this being conditional upon his making no reply for four times seven days. He agrees to the condition. She provides him with the declaration which he should have made when the volume of Orlando Innamorata first lay open at the proffered lock of hair. Placing her finger over her lips she waits his assenting silence, then says “You will resolve to speak only after four times seven days and if not then, never.”

Not to utter for twenty-eight days

The least word of irresolute praise,

But to wrestle with fate,

Then to pass through the gate

And traverse without baulk this bright maze.

The twenty-eight days of silence already exerted their weight.

He feared still Lord Curryfin;

He walked into the park’s snow court,

Resigned to wait in restless doubt

For twenty-eight days of snow-filled thought.

Meanwhile Harry Hedgerow was executing a manoeuvre of his own. To Dorothy he said, “What if the master were to marry? And what if the new Lady Falconer were to take control of the house? What then? What if all your sisters were to marry?” “In these unlikely events, then it would be you I would think of, Harry Hedgerow.”

A weary time; there passed a weary time.

At dinner Lord Curryfin went in with Miss Gryll and many miles away at the opposite end of the table sat Mr Falconer with Miss Niphet. A silence largely ensued between these two, cast away as they were into a remote and ill-lit corner of the world. Mr Falconer endeavoured from a distance to analyse every aspect of the gaiety Miss Gryll displayed to the affable Lord Curryfin, who, if not entertaining the company about fish was equally beguiling on a veritable kaleidoscope of other subjects. From their remote vantage Miss Niphet was perhaps more confident than Mr Falconer.

Once again he is out in the snow

And with twenty-eight days still to go

He is snow-blind already

And feeling unsteady

With Morgana far off on a floe.

Mr Falconer’s hopes put to flight

He is plunged in perpetual night

And for twenty-eight days

Must endure Cupid’s rays

While Morgana fades almost from sight.

Love in Memory

A Song

Love in Memory is no less

Than love Still Present. One’s a field,

The other is a library.

In the field the present floats

Above star-flowers in the grass

And love is like its fragrant air;

While in the library it waits

In pages opened long ago

And still as fresh when opened now,

As light brims at the constant glass.

For both project an ideal face

And catalogue shared history;

And both are as concerned as snow

On windless mornings when the field

And library window scan the sky.

The song is performed by Miss Gryll and Miss Ilex. Morgana confides in Miss Ilex her device for bringing Mr Falconer to decisive action; Miss Ilex compliments her on her resolution and confesses that once, long ago, she lacked similar determination and that as a result …

The History of Miss Ilex in Summary

In the labyrinth set with trees

Where every fair face seems to please

There is no single path

To a warm, waiting hearth

And romance may disperse in the breeze.

i.e. In the wild woods lovely with trees

It seems he gave her the breeze.

Miss Ilex gives her grave and touching account of her lover who wandered in the woods of affection upon affection, and could not find any point of repose in the labyrinth. She for her part showed too great a reticence and waited for his decision which never came. She applauds Morgana’s resolve to force the young man to focus the beams of his intentions … Convergence is all. “He would disappear for weeks at a time, wandering in forests, climbing mountains, and descending into dingles of mountain-streams, with no other companions than a large Newfoundland dog…”

“Why!” exclaimed Miss Gryll, “that is a very like description of our author and his dog Luath.”

The Aristophanic Comedy

The theatre’s the place for illusion

Beneficial for mental contusion

Where to see spirits fly

Or events long gone by

Time and space breed delightful confusion.

Thaw and drying wind, the roads favourable, the fifth day of Christmas appointed for the Aristophanic comedy.

Brilliant candlelight in chandeliers illumines the gallery, argon lamps cast a mysterious milklight on the stage.

The scene opens on rooms of the Spirit Rapping Society. Circe and Gryllus who have been sleeping for three thousand years – “a nap indeed” – stir. Their observations on the present state of Society are distinctly unfavourable.

Three spirit-rappers enter with table. Circe and Gryllus summoned. They are still ill-disposed towards what they see.

To persuade Gryllus otherwise a Chorus of Clouds is summoned – “a dazzling array of female beauty revealed by degrees through misty gauze.” They invoke a pageant of Reformers. Gryllus is unimpressed.

Enter seven Competitive Examiners. Their inquisition of candidates proceeds. Several admirably qualified, including Hannibal and Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are rejected. Gryllus is unimpressed. Richard Coeur-de-Lion raises his battle-axe over the heads of the examiners, who are put to flight.

The Chorus summon further tableaux depicting advances in science and gadgetry. Gryllus detects absurdities in each. The spirit-rappers object that he is predisposed to prefer tranquillity to excitement, and insist on the splendours of progress.

Thunderous laughter offstage proves to be that of Jupiter. The table-turning accelerates; table legs dance, chair arms pinch the spirit-rappers and pursue them offstage. Lord Curryfin’s stage invention is here a triumph of ingenuity in contrast with the fiasco of the sonorous vases.

Before returning, Gryllus and Circe concede that one aspect of the modern world may be worthwhile, namely, the gastronomic. A splendid supper is served. Gryllus is impressed.

Miss Gryll’s performance as Circe delighted Mr Falconer; Lord Curryfin admired particularly Miss Niphet as leader of the Chorus. “The supper passed off joyously and it was a late hour of the morning before the company dispersed.”

A week later a ball is to be held. Mr Falconer retreats for the period of his enforced silence to the Tower. Here the Seven Sisters provide some measure of distraction. At the Grange the discussions continue. The veracity of the tradition of the Bald Venus is questioned by Doctor Opimian. While the doctor expatiates on first love, Lord Curryfin is encouraged by Miss Niphet’s animation at battledore and shuttlecock.

Noting her fatigue Lord Curryfin at last catches the shuttlecock in his hand in order to terminate a prodigiously long rally.

In the secluded drawing room Alice Niphet and Morgana Gryll seal their friendship in a long conversation of great empathy. Morgana, recognising that her friend is undoubtedly attached in affection to Lord Curryfin declares she would release him from any trace of obligation he may still retain from his earlier declaration.

This she does, and Lord Curryfin in turn loses no time in seeking out Miss Niphet. They agree joyfully to use the names Richard and Alice forthwith.

Twelfth Night; the ball; Richard and Alice revelling in country dances, waltzes and minuets; Miss Gryll who might seem to have lost two suitors in one day was nonetheless not lacking partners; the Twelfth Night cake apportioned; a discussion of domestic cookery and numerous other matters; amongst participants in a Quadrille (the dance), Miss Niphet’s transformation from marble beauty to animated beauty was universally noted; punch was enjoyed by the gentlemen and “not absolutely disregarded by the young ladies.”

As Alice and Richard performed a quadrille

And the Twelfth Night cake was apportioned to all,

While admirers surrounded Miss Gryll in a whirl,

Far off in a tower’s pale hall

A hymn to Saint Catharine was weaving its pall.

On his way to the Tower, Doctor Opimian met Harry Hedgerow. The Siege of The Seven Against Thebes, proceeding as well as it might, is dependent only on the capricious citadel and capstone of Mr Falconer, a citadel which might yet fall.

Walking on alone, the doctor ruminated. He is concerned for Miss Gryll. Perhaps she should have pursued the attachment of Lord Curryfin. And yet Miss Niphet and he are admirably suited. And Miss Gryll seems now cast adrift at the pleasure of the gods. And Mr Falconer has been silent – and notably absent in the Tower.

Close to his destination the doctor encounters Mr Falconer pacing in anxious haste. The two walk on to the Tower eagerly conversing. Asked what he has been reading, Mr Falconer points to an edition of Orlando Innamorata. The doctor observes that he has recently seen the same text open at the Grange, but stops short of remarking on sympathy of taste.

Doctor Opimian has resolved to avoid the subject of Miss Gryll, while Mr Falconer is anxious for every and any mention of her, so as to speak of his contract of silence. The doctor almost veers towards the subject only to be distracted by a chance reference to Thor and Odin which blossoms into a very long excursus – across which Mr Falconer finally plunges and speaks of Morgana.

The Seven Sisters are an impediment. Were they his own sisters there would be no problem. Unfortunately marriage – even to the most indulgent or enlightened woman – could only increase the impediment of excessive feminine scruple in the Tower.

The Seven Sisters like emerging stars

Seem strangely an impediment to the moon.

The doctor ventures the suggestion that the marriage of all seven to suitable suitors might just be the solution.

Mr Falconer sent for Dorothy and, propelled by her modest eagerness, sent for Harry Hedgerow. Their discussion advanced with a delighted acceleration towards its natural end: complete sympathetic agreement and the suggestion that Dorothy, at present without a fortune, should arrive at the altar with a handsome settlement.

On the twenty-seventh day of his probation Mr Falconer returned to the Grange with a light heart. But before the twenty-eighth day can bestow its long awaited resolution there must be interposed a recital of ghost stories – in accordance with the tradition of their narration at Christmas. And so the evening is prolonged by a succession of them, many touching on the notable characteristic of such tales – that on the highroad or in the woods some strange and fearful event occurs, some feature of which is repeated like an echo or anomaly when the traveller returns. Thus Dr Opimian, for example, recounts from Petronius the story of a man who sees his companion on the road turn into a wolf; the wolf enters a farm and attacks sheep but is driven off by a spear through the neck. Then on his return the man finds his companion in the care of a surgeon who is dressing a wound in his neck.

In turn Miss Gryll, Miss Ilex, Mr Falconer, Mr MacBorrowdale and Mr Gryll recount tales peopled by sepulchres, ghostly lute-playing, witches, solemn music, buried treasure, shadows cast by moonlight etc., etc. Mr Falconer concludes proceedings by a ghostly ballad about an incorruptible Saint Laura.

A resolution devoutly to be wished may often approach, and, by a curious acceleration in time, seem scarcely to be about to happen before it is being celebrated by admirers and well-wishers. Thus no detailed account is given of the happy end to the embargo on vital discussion between Morgana and Algernon, for “there was little to be said but that little was conclusive”.

Instead of intruding upon this very private dialogue, more rewarding perhaps to imagine than to recount, the text occupies itself with the delight felt by Mr Gryll – which takes the form of his enquiring why she rejected various former suitors. The inventory of her responses makes a pleasing resumé of male inadequacies from which Mr Falconer is charmingly free.

And so we have in a kind of unlikely multiplication – beyond all reasonable bounds – of the twin weddings which end Sense and Sensibility and, one supposes, many a lesser romance, the simultaneous dispatch into bliss and contentment of nine couples. Lord Curryfin and Miss Niphet, Mr Falconer and Miss Gryll (with just the tantalising remains of the notion that these pairings might even have been reversed) and, bringing up the rear, Harry Hedgerow and his Dorothy with a supporting cast of six more sisters and six more swains. All arrive at the Grange to the good wishes of the company. Even Mrs Opimian emerges (like Mrs Elton at the end of Emma – though rather more generous than she) – to comment favourably. And the Reverend Doctor Opimian in his speech wishes them all, as is so often appropriate on such occasions, happiness and good fortune equal to his own.

Loose Ends

To the reader who has read the preceding pages but has not read Gryll Grange by Thomas Love Peacock … Are you mad? Or, to be more constructive, shouldn’t you at once give up everything non-essential and read it at once? Allowing time for say, an egg salad, a massage, a few hours sleep, a brief visit to the gym or a short tram ride along the sea coast, the entire book should take, let us say, two days, time eminently well spent. And to the reader who has lightly skimmed or even just leafed through the preceding pages – that is to say, most readers – it is to be hoped that you will read Gryll Grange by Thomas Love Peacock with considerably more attention.

There are within its gentle pages several significant platforms for bemusement. One is the notion of the wild woods (to import into proceedings Mr Badger presiding in dressing gown), woods extending from the Grange to the Tower which Doctor Opimian and Mr Falconer both traverse several times. Suggestions of the gold-leaf chiaroscuro of Samuel Palmer have already been mentioned. Doctor Opimian with his inexhaustible curiosity about the arcane might find somewhere along its twisting path reminders of several alternative traditions including that of the tarantella, that dance thought to be caused by the tarantula’s bite but later supposed to be its cure: the dancer exerts a frenzy quite foreign to English mode of eccentric reflection, exemplified in conversation at the Grange. Imagine the doctor encountering such a dancer in the woods. What then? Or might the doctor encounter amongst certain mysterious trees whose language he cannot decipher, birds not native to these woods, the whip-bird from south-eastern Australia for example, or the South American hoopoe? What then?

Such dislocation or unlikeliness carries its own particular aesthetic force. What if (one might run on in imagination to suppose) Mr Falconer through restlessness or boredom in the library were to invite the Sisters to accompany him outdoors, there to experience botany, cell growth, the secrets of genetic variation, acids subsiding with ripeness into sugars, the occasional Darwinian adaptation, bird calls, extraordinary weather, crepitation – even a peculiar, never-before-heard music from the woods akin to the presence of Sirens? Or suppose that he goes one day to a nearby village fair with all of the Seven and dances with them?

Put the case – to use the memorable gambit from Great Expectations of Dickens (a writer Peacock enjoyed in old age, favouring Our Mutual Friend over The Pickwick Papers) – that Mr Falconer is actually in love with Dorothy, or that Mrs Opimian’s suspicions, namely that goings-on are going on at the Folly, are well-founded. Or that one day Mr Falconer while plunging into a different part of the woods notices language on the move (like moving clouds perhaps gathering and regrouping) into oddity.

Or the stratospheric improbability that as Lord Curryfin endeavours to prolong the rally a particularly wayward stroke of the shuttlecock from Miss Niphet sends him to the wall where he sees a graffito he hasn’t noticed before – “I ♥ Miss Nymphet”.

Such extremities might also suggest that Lord Curryfin’s inventiveness could also have led, given world enough and time, to such world-benefiting innovations as

a) The “Moving Retention image” (or Cinema); “Noting the fact that the retina struggles for a slight interval to shrug off its captive image, a device might be contrived which transmits light through an image engraved on a glass lozenge; further, imagine a machine by which a succession of such lozenges are passed before a lantern.”

b) “Rapid Walking on Water” (Water Ski-ing) with the possibility of a single ski for the intrepid.

c) A dirigible or navigable air balloon.

d) Electricity, known to the ancients and available in lightning, to be captured for domestic use – a splendid notion – and a subject suitable to succeed fish as a touring lecture.

e) An electrical musical instrument – perhaps in which the performer interferes with the electrical flow by interposing himself.

In such a mode of supposition, imagine that one evening at the Grange (in the manner of La Boutique Fantasque) the characters in Gryll Grange decide to act out an Aristophanic comedy about him, thus:

A Life of Thomas Love Peacock

As Enacted by the Grange Players

The players are Miss Ilex, Miss Gryll, Miss Niphet, Mr Falconer, Mr Gryll, Doctor and Mrs Opimian, Lord Curryfin – who has dropped in by yet-to-be-invented Dirigible. Cuckoos trill, finches chirr, nuthatches hatch a plot.

Scene 1

Miss Ilex: Thomas was a remarkably beautiful child.

Queen Charlotte stopped in her carriage,

Stopped and bent to kiss the young child.

Mrs Opimian: He has powerful eyes

And will never wear spectacles

Despite being a prodigious reader.

Miss Gryll: We summon the ghost of Fanny Falkiner.

Mr Falconer: They met in the ruins of Newark Abbey.

Lord Curryfin: Fanny and I have become engaged.

Miss Niphet: We have become engaged.

He has taken a lock of my hair.

He wears it in a locket.

Mr Gryll: Fanny’s parents have decided otherwise.

Dr Opimian: I will read to you Coleridge’s letter to Sara Hutchinson

Written from the peak of Skidaw,

Filled with longing.

Music in the Key of A Minor sounds.

Scene 2 Lord Curryfin waves a wand invented for the occasion. The scene becomes their author’s library. Enter Edith, Peacock’s grand-daughter.

Miss Gryll: Edith was the only human allowed

To visit freely this dry vanilla library air,

These gilt and leather vistas,

These pages of subsumption and argument,

These echoes, these splendid incursions, these neologisms.

Lord Curryfin waves a trout rod and disclaims.

Lord Curryfin: This week’s Word of the Week

Is Jeremytaylorically,

A word I believe invented by our author.

Music in natural harmonics sounds. Miss Niphet steps up to the lectern.

Miss Niphet: Edith reported many years later

That in his last weeks

After the disastrous library fire

He had recurring dreams of Fanny Falkiner.

Scene 3 A backdrop of Welsh mountains.

Miss Gryll: He meets Jane Gryffidh

She is in love with him

But he makes no sign.

Mr Gryll: With Doctor Gryffidh

He went at midnight

To view the Black Cataract.

Dr Opimian: But sadly for Jane Gryffidh

There intervened the landslide and aurora and sunshowers

Of Miss Marianne de St Croix.

Lord Curryfish plays natural harmonies on a hastily improvised trumpet.

Miss Gryll: Miss Marianne de St Croix

Was as intriguing as her name.

Miss Niphet: And Jane Gryffidh vanished like sunlight in a forest

And was obliged to wait in shadow.

Scene 4 A waterfall

Lord Curryfin: In 1812 our author had met Shelley;

The poet was 20, Peacock 30.

Shelley’s enthusiasm was in full flood.

Producing inventions at a prodigious pace.

Miss Niphet: Our author had called Jane Gryffidh

“The Caevnavonshire Nymph”.

Miss Gryll: And Shelley named her

“The milk white Snowdonian antelope”

At this time Shelley was pursuing

The sixteen year-old Mary Godwin.

Miss Niphet: And was about to abandon his wife Harriet.

Miss Ilex: And our author was dazzled by Marianne de St Croix.

Scene 5 A Storm – Lord Curryfin supplies stage thunder by hurling sonorous vases to the floor.

Miss Ilex: After a breach with Miss St Croix

Sees an end to the Caprices of Marianne –

Miss Gryll: Our onlie true begetter

Proposes to Jane Gryffidh by letter

Not having seen her for eight years.

The couple had a son and three daughters.

Miss Niphet: The second daughter died in 1826

Occasioning great sadness

And the couple adopted a cottage child

Because of her resemblance to their lost daughter.

Scene 6 The library. Subdued light. A spirit-rapping. A great many voices issue from the shelves. One – that of Edith – prevails.

The voice of Edith:

A fire broke out here

In the library of his house on the Thames.

He was injured in his attempt to save books.

In his last weeks

He had recurring dreams of Fanny Falkiner.

Curtain

And now Elaboration, already swimming dangerously beyond the breakers of the Arbitrary, reaches the outer sea of Irrevelance. For, in a parallel universe somewhere near you in a forest glade resembling that between Gryll Grange and the Folly, a reading group is picnicking. Lord Cucumber, the Earl of Mercury, Doctor and Mrs Linguini, Genevieve Angle, Miss Artmiss, Miss Argot & Henry Lancelot have met to discuss Gryll Grange and a body of musings about it. In between sandwiches and cordial, and speculations about technologies not yet invented – teleporting being their favourite – they are sifting through a pile of papers secured against the breeze by the picnic hamper.

Lord Cucumber: “Here’s an unfinished lime-rick. It’s about the lovely Morgana.

Morgana at first was named Circe

But Peacock, rethinking, showed mercy,

And intelligent grace,

So replete in her face,

………………………………………”

His fellow picnickers search for similar unconsidered trifles. Mrs Linguini: “Here’s something. It says here, ‘Even approaching the age of 80, the author’s gastronomic preclivities were undiminished’”.

Henry Lancelot (scrabbling): “Do we have anywhere a likeness of Edith, his grand-daughter?”

The Earl of Mercury (reads): “Rising in the dirigible of his prose over the floodplain of events –”

Genevieve Angle: “Who wrote this stuff?”

Miss Artmiss (suddenly distracted): “It is clear Euclid’s postulates are awry, particularly in relation to parallels. For here we are in a parallel universe, supposedly non-intersecting, yet, surely, the folly visible above the trees is that of Algernon Falconer. And the faces at the window, seven in number – ”

“Why yes!” joins in Doctor Linguini, “It is Dorothy and her sisters, trying on their wedding finery.”

Lord Cucumber: “Nevertheless we are here and seemingly unencumbered, and I urge that we resolve to continue indefinitely the pursuit of digression – for, as has been wisely said, ‘No-one likes a didact.’ And if we are – with tea and cakes – to celebrate happy endings, we should begin.”