Letter to Rebecca #24-07

Blue blood, Austen, comics, dressmaking

Dear Rebecca

Thank you for your recent letter. In it you put forward the following explanations for my blue face:

🔵 That your illness is making you cold. 🥶

🔵 That you are blue-blooded. True, you have long claimed the title of ‘Lord’, but that doesn’t qualify you as an actual royal, does it? 👑⁉️

🔵 That you’ve been coughing and coughing and coughing until you turned blue in the face.

All are true except for the first one: I almost never get cold. When Elaine and I go out sometimes, people stare at us because it’s as though we are in two climate zones. I have been known to walk around on a snowy day wearing shorts and a t-shirt, while Elaine wears several layers, plus gloves and a scarf. If I am cold, it signifies that I am suffering from a terrible malaise and must be treated very kindly and waited upon hand and foot, and not allowed to do any housework. In fact, I’m not feeling too good right now….

I am indeed a Lord, and just to clarify, because precision is important, I don’t “claim” the title of Lord, I had it bestowed upon me. And while, strictly speaking, you are correct that that in itself doesn’t make me royal, it may not surprise you to know that I am a direct descendant of King Eglebert the Musical, who ruled the Kingdom of Essex before Billy the Conquerer took over. Eglebert played an early version of the harmonica, and composed the type of song we’d now regard as blues.

For instance, his best-known ballard, My Wench Don’t Love Me No More, has somehow survived to this day. On his escape from Billy the Conquerer, he composed the seminal work, Yeah you got the crown but you can’t put me down.

Austen’s description of the snowy day is very beautiful, thank you for sharing it. To remind readers, here it is:

The cold, however, was severe; and by the time the second carriage was in motion, a few flakes of snow were finding their way down, and the sky had the appearance of being so overcharged as to want only a milder air to produce a very white world in a very short time.

I do find, though, that sometimes I have to read a sentence two or three times in order to understand it!

Those Chiltern editions do look beautiful, but I tend to prioritise utility. The Penguin, Oxford and Wordsworth editions are not as stunning, but they have introductions and explanatory notes. Not that I've read Austen recently. A large part of the reason I go to classes is not only to learn stuff but as an incentive to read it, and I ended up missing the last four weeks of my course because of that chest infection.  It's not that I don't like reading it, but that I tend to read several books at once, switching between them as the mood takes me. At the moment, for example, I'm reading a Just William book, a book on time travel, and one on artificial intelligence.

Back to Austen, this is what Jeremy Clarkson said in The Times:

You give a kid a book with an actual plot and a lantern-jawed sergeant firing from the hip and you’ll show them that reading is the best hiding place in the world. You give them Emma and, after they’ve got to the first comma, they’ll want to put it down and take up glue-sniffing.

What do you think of that? I think it’s hilarious, and although I have some sympathy with his view, I think he underestimates kids, and it's actually quite patronising in a way.

When I was 14, the English teacher said to us that we were going to start on Macbeth, and asked the class if anyone knew anything about it. My hand shot up.

Me: Sir! Sir!

English teacher: Yes, Freedman? (I went to a boys’ grammar school, so the teachers addressed pupils by their surname.)

Me: That’s the play where the king’s wife is behind a load of murders.

ET: Yes, it is indeed the play in which, as Freedman so picturesquely puts it, the king’s wife is behind a load of murders.

But I was thinking recently, how on earth did I know that? My parents were intelligent but not educated, and about 75% of my reading matter consisted of comics. And then I remembered, one of the series of comics I always read, besides Superman, Batman and The Archies, was Classics Illustrated, and I’d read Macbeth:

Recently I saw a reference in a book about comics to the “infamous” Classics Illustrated series. Infamous? Apparently, its aim was to help educate children about the great works of literature, but the editions were regarded (by some) as “infamous” because they were bowdlerised. I’ve looked at them as an adult and, yes, the text has been fiercely truncated, and the artwork isn’t wonderful, but these comics introduced kids like me to famous novels.

Here’s another example. I was given Oliver Twist as a school prize when I was ten years old, but I found it too difficult. But I obtained the gist of the story from the Classics Illustrated version.

I’d be interested to know what you think. My view is that rather than giving kids the sort of novel that has adventure and suspense but no depth, get them reading fine literature, even if it’s “dumbed down” a bit to make it suitable for their age.

I think it's amazing that you could even think of making a dress. I'm no good at sewing. I sewed a button on once, going over it again and again,  and it simply fell off as soon as I lifted the garment up. This despite the fact that my dad was trained as a tailor and my mum was a dressmaker and milliner. Our local dry cleaners has a man who does all the repairs and he is brilliant. He seems to work miracles. A jacket that Elaine took in for repair, because it needed a new collar, came back looking better than it had originally!

I'm gradually getting back into playing the sax, now that I can do so without collapsing from lack of air after five minutes. Actually, it's ten minutes, but I shall build up slowly. It's getting there.

Easter soon, but no Easter eggs for me. I am becoming sensible in my old age. My body is a finely-honed mechanism, and I have to keep it in tip-top condition. How about you and Jimbo? Will you two be egg-scoffing over the next few weeks? I know you said you like soft-boiled eggs for breakfast, so why not have a couple of Chocolate Creme Eggs instead?

Well, onwards and upwards. What will you be reading after Emma? Do tell.

And now I must leave you in pieces peace. Should anyone reading this wish to see Rebecca’s no doubt chortlesome reply, do subscribe to her newsletter.

Bye for now,

Lord Tel.