Areopagus Volume LXXXVII

Welcome one and all to the eighty seventh volume of the Areopagus. Last time we began with a message from my patrons at Write of Passage — I told you about Writing Examples, their newsletter dedicated to wordsmithing. The link I included in that email was broken. Those who contacted me I gave the working link, but I include it again here for those who did not. If you'd like to subscribe to Writing Examples, click here. And, for a reminder of what it's all about:

So, with all things now in order, we embark once more on a journey through time and space...

I - Classical Music

Summer Night on the River

Frederick Delius (1911)

Performed by the Hallé Orchestra​
​Moonlit Night on the Crimea, Gurzuf by Ivan Aivazovsky (1889)

Summer Night on the River, together with the more famous On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, formed Frederick Delius' Two Pieces for Small Orchestra. They are both symphonic poems: one-movement compositions intended to evoke a particular place or feeling. What I love about Summer Night on the River is how it conjures an atmosphere rather different to the one usually created by summer-inspired music. This is not purely peaceful, not wholly languid or heat-dazed. There is an edge of mystery to Delius' little meditation, even a hint of darkness. Such impressions are surely the result of Delius' use of chromaticism; notice the slight strangeness here, the sporadic atonality, the sense of unresolved notes. With it he leads us along a seven minute musical journey that is elusive, almost unsettled, and gorgeously expressive — and gives us a different sort of summer.

II - Historical Figure

William Harrison

Voice of the Past

William Harrison was a priest and scholar who lived in 16th century England. To give his biography as nothing more than that sentence would not be an error, and it would not understate his role in history. No, William Harrison is not a man who will be found in lists of "the most influential people you've never heard of" or any such thing. He was, by all accounts, a relatively ordinary man of his time — and that is what makes him special.

See, in the 1560s he became involved in a fascinating project. It had started in 1548 with a printer called Reginald Wolfe, who would later become Master of the Worshipful Company of Stationers under Queen Elizabeth. He had set himself the lofty goal of creating:

Wolfe could not complete this monumental task alone, so he ended up hiring Raphael Holinshed and William Harrison, among others, to help him. When Wolfe died his fellow publishers scaled down the scope of this project to the British Isles alone — that is, rather than the whole world. By 1577 the first edition was finished: a sort of encyclopaedia both of British history and of life in modern Britain. Holinshed had taken charge of the historical part and so the work has come to be known as Holinshed's Chronicles. This was a major source for Shakespeare's history plays, and for other Elizabethan writers like Edmund Spenser and Kit Marlowe.

What about William Harrison? He was tasked with compiling the review of modern life. And yet, as he says in the preface:

Despite having not much travelled Harrison was a passionate historian who collected old maps, letters, coins, and all manner of curiosities. He consulted these for much of his work, rifling through libraries and especially through the notes of an earlier Tudor historian called John Leland. And, in the end, he did travel — up and down the country, speaking to anybody who would lend him a penny's worth of thoughts. Thus Harrison created his Description of England. It is a vivid and all-encompassing portrait of the Elizabethan Era, one for which Harrison found no detail or tangent unworthy.

What can we learn from Harrison? It sounds silly, but pretty much everything. The various chapters of his Description range from the total number of parishes in England to its various species of birds and beasts, from criminal justice to local nicknames for alcohol. What time of day did people used to eat? Harrison tells us:

Much of the Description was drawn from first-hand investigation, some of it rigorous and but some of it purely anecdotal — like this excerpt from a passage where Harrison is discussing the snakes of England:

Whereas so many books from history concern nothing but the actions of leaders and princes, and focus on the arts of war and politics and religion alone, Harrison gives us a uniquely broad portrait of the mundanities of life. As when talking of a certain type of dog:

He even describes, in scrupulous detail, the various methods of brewing beer. How does he know about this?

His joyous prose occasionally slips into invective, as when he criticises people for having become obsessed with fashion — a startlingly familiar sentiment, no?

And here Harrison remarks with praise on the education of English ladies:

What makes Harrison's Description so wonderful is his manner of writing. No doubt the things he is talking about are interesting in and of themselves, but they are elevated by his incredibly colourful, often conversational style. To give but one example, in the preface to the Description Harrison refers to it as "a foul and frazzled treatise". Or take this passage:

We feel we know William Harrison — he becomes a friend, guiding us through Elizabethan England and answering all our questions with patience and good humour.

He is shrewd and affable, garrulous and inquisitive, even laying out the various kinds of vagabonds at large in England. As stated, no detail was deemed either too obvious or too uninteresting, and for this we may thank him.

William Harrison is one those people with whom we can almost talk, face to face, not as an earth-shattering titan of history but as a fellow human being, recording his observations and thoughts about the world as he knew it. And, when we do, the world he knew and lived in does not feel quite so different to ours. For there is also a heavy dose of nostalgia in Harrison's work. Though he praises much of life in modern England, he can't help but look back on the good old days as somehow better:

Some things never change. How often do we hear people in 2024 wondering whether the past was a time of greater moral fibre, of hardier and more decent folk? Still, Harrison clearly loved England and was fond of claiming for it all manner of accolades, as when he said:

If you want to learn about the past, and what life was like, I can think of few better people to help you than William Harrison. Rarely is reading history so much fun — and so wonderfully revealing. Of course, Harrison's Description is specific to Elizabethan England, so for anybody who wants to learn about that particular age his work is a must-read. But, even if the 16th century doesn't interest you, the sheer detail and generosity of Harrison's investigations give it universal appeal.

I let William Harrison close this section out — with one of his lasting hopes for England, and a humble and rather beautiful one at that:

III - Painting

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Henri Rousseau (1905)

Pablo Picasso once said, and very famously, "it took me five years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child". Whether this is a statement of genius or of hubris I am unsure. But, I think, there is something there. Everything we are — how we think about the world and about ourselves, what we do and what we say — has been shaped by an avalanche of ideas and systems created by other people. This is most obviously true of artists, who inevitably paint in the way they were taught to paint. Hence those artists (of all kinds) who have managed to break free of such influence and create something authentically theirs are the ones we praise most highly. Consider this, the first line from a review of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, published in 1927:

This line of thinking explains, in part, the success and charm of Henri Rousseau. He was a French painter, born in 1844, who became something like a poster boy for those avant-garde artists who gathered in Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Why? Because he painted like he had fashioned the art of painting himself. See, Rousseau served in the army and then worked as a tax collector; he didn't start painting properly until his forties. Thus, given his lack of formal training, Rousseau simply painted as he saw fit. The result was an almost totally novel style, thoroughly idiosyncratic and unlike either the art of the Parisian artistic establishment or even that of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist rebels.

To me Rousseau's art seems almost like an old-fashioned animation or pop-up picture book, made up of different plates superimposed atop one another. A sense of three-dimensional depth is created by the layering of two-dimensional images.

Although Rousseau is most famous now for his jungle scenes, he painted plenty of other subjects. His cityscapes are especially delightful. They, like all Rousseau's work, have a wonderfully child-like, illustrative quality. If Rousseau's art looks original even in 2024, imagine how it must have seemed when it was first exhibited in 1886! He caused a stir because he seemed to have achieved, without really trying, what a generation of avant-garde artists could not — he reinvented painting for himself.

View of the Ile de Cité Paris / The Seine at Suresnes

We return to Picasso. So the story goes, he came across a painting of Rousseau's for sale on the street — not to purchase as art, but as a canvas to be pasted over and reused. He immediately recognised Rousseau's natural talent and made contact with him. They became friends and, in 1908, Picasso organised a dinner in Rousseau's honour at Bateau-Lavoir, his studio in Montmartre. The guest-list included, among others, Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris, and Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler. It was a veritable who's-who of the avant-garde Parisian art scene — all to recognise the achievements of this tax-collector-turned-painter.

IV - Architecture

The National Gallery

Forgotten Failure?

Two hundred years (and a couple of months) ago, London's National Gallery was founded. Its first paintings were donated to them by a man called John Julius Angerstein, and the Gallery was actually based at his old house on Pall Mall. Soon enough, as the National Gallery's collection grew, it became clear that purpose-built and more extensive premises would be necessary. After briefly moving to an alternative and again inadequate site, a competition to design the new National Gallery building was held in 1831. The winning design was submitted by an architect called William Wilkins. The location? Trafalgar Square, at the heart of the London.

Construction began in 1832 and was finished by 1838. The intention had been to create a building which, like the Parthenon in Athens, dominated the surrounding area and served as a sort of cultural fulcrum for the city. This did not happen. The project was riddled with inconveniences, including adjacent buildings that could not be demolished and an awkward right of way. Columns were recycled from a recently demolished building called Carlton House, but these were too small and so only the bases and capitals were used. In the end, after bickering and compromise and lambasting from the press, what should have been a towering and noble edifice ended up looking rather squat and paltry. A contemporary picture (of a proposed monument) shows the problem — it fails to command the square and simply fades into the background.

Picked out for particular criticism (by the press and the public both) was its inexplicably small dome and the two equally puny turrets on either side. Compare Wilkins' original plan with what ended up being built, and you can see how far the domes and flanking porticoes were scaled back:

This may not be something that you have noticed, but compare the National Gallery to other domed neoclassical buildings and you will never be able to "unsee it", as they say. In fact, the building was nearly demolished and rebuilt in the 1860s, and a plan was even drawn up by E.M. Barry. You can see, in Barry's design, the sort of grand building that the National Gallery was always supposed to be. Would this not have been more impressive?

Alas, it was not demolished, and the real problems with the building were more or less solved. See, much of the contemporary complaining had been aimed at its strangely small and narrow interior. This was fixed over subsequent decades as the Gallery was expanded and remodelled. The landscaping of Trafalgar Square also helped; it gave the National Gallery a greater sense of height and scale.

So, William Wilkins' allegedly catastrophic façade remains. A century and a half ago it was considered a national embarrassment, but the millions of tourists who visit the National Gallery each year, or those milling in and around Trafalgar Square, will probably have no such vehement reaction. Perhaps you have been there, and found it to be a charming building — and you are well within your rights to do so! This is an interesting story, I think, because it illustrates perfectly how perceptions can change. What was once detested has become, if not quite iconic, at least inconspicuously pleasant. Shall some of those lamented works of modern architecture undergo a similar transformation? I wouldn't be surprised.

V - Rhetoric

Idiolects

Perhaps you have a friend who talks in a very specific way: there are certain words or turns of phrase they always go to, a particular cadence, a habit of constructing their sentences in an unusual order, or a proclivity for talking in idioms. None of these things alone make their speech unusual; but, taken together, they mean your friend talks in a way wholly unlike anybody else. This is called an idiolect — a dialect of one. Of course, no two people ever speak exactly the same — we all have idiosyncrasies and habits, conscious or otherwise. In this sense everybody has an idiolect, I suppose. But it is clearly the case that some people talk in a way more unusual, more striking, more individualistic, than others.

So that is the word itself: an interesting one that describes a phenomenon you have likely noticed before. It is also incredibly useful, I think. Because we can, should we so choose, cultivate an idiolect of our own. Why settle for the words and ways of speaking that have appeared in our heads, as implanted there by people we have heard or books we have read? Why not consciously choose to speak in a way that we genuinely like? It takes effort, of course, but it can be done. Some might call this artificial — the opposite is true, I daresay! To cultivate an idiolect of one's own is to find a way of talking most authentic to oneself.

And, in addition, to do so can only be a boon for our ability to communicate. Think of it: an idiolect is often what makes a fictional character memorable. Yoda is the most obvious example, but there are dozens more. Why not Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, as played by Tom Hardy? With that strange accent and penchant for gnomic statements he is as idiolectical as it gets. And what is true of fiction is also, necessarily, true of real life. A wonderful thought can be stymied by generic language; why not make our thoughts both wonderful and memorable? That is, in so many words, the effect of an idiolect.

VI - Writing

The Power of Word

Microsoft claims to have something like 95% of the world's word processing market; over one billion people use Microsoft Word. Does this matter? More than we realise. Because Word is not neutral — it is not the same as a blank sheet of paper onto which we can write whatever we want. That is how it feels, but the strange and perhaps uncomfortable truth is that Word contains an almost invisible set of guardrails that restrict and guide how we write. Our willingness to experiment, to break the rules even in the smallest ways, to write freely and individually without fear of being "correct" — all of that is naturally reeled in by a system like Microsoft Word.

There are only so many fonts and only so many templates, for example. This seems trivial, but the smallest of details really do matter — how we write is how we think, after all, and anything that informs the former necessarily influences the latter. Our individuality is surely sapped, even inhibited, by using such a carefully calibrated system where everything from margins to document size has been chosen for us. When you write by hand it is your handwriting, line spacing, letter sizing, and suchlike; when you use Word all of that has been created for you by somebody else, and when changed can only be changed according to rules set by them. All of this may be a necessary sacrifice to word processing, which has surely been a blessing for humankind, but it is a sacrifice we must be aware of.

And it goes further. Not so long ago I ran a little experiment and copied a few lines of the 16th century poet Edmund Spenser into Microsoft Word. His verse was suddenly riddled with jagged lines: errors of spelling, syntax, and punctuation. Even more surprising was that Word suggested "improvements" to Spenser's poetry and gave me several ways to make his clarity, concision, formality, and choice of vocabulary better. Ditto for Shakespeare, Milton, Ruskin, and anybody else you can think of. There is something at least bizarre, if not actually troubling, about the fact that Microsoft Word and its algorithms want to both correct and improve these writers. I do not say they are without fault, of course, but you see my point. Does Word know how to write better than William Shakespeare? Just something to think about next time you use a word processor.

VII - The Seventh Plinth

A Beautiful Game?

Last week I asked you:

Why is sport so popular?

I cannot help but include, by way of introduction, those words from a letter written by Pliny the Younger in 98 AD:

And here are some of your answers...

Paris C

Cindy K

Cerise

Dalton L

Nathan B

Jane L

Patricia M

VR

Ionna H

Matthew L

Sarah S

Rhys W

Question of the Week

And for this week's question, inspired by William Harrison...

Tell me about an underappreciated writer — from any era or place, living or dead.

Email me your answers and I'll share them in next week's newsletter.

And that's all

The heat! The heat! Some words of Tennyson seemed to stir in my mind as I lay in the sun — I rifled through In Memoriam, Tennyson's long and gorgeously life-affirming poem written in memory of a friend who had died, and found them:

With these words — these thoughts in verse — I bid you farewell. Adieu!

Yours,

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