« La memoire n’a pas de poubelle. »
—Fred Vargas (pseud.), Un lieu incertain [An Uncertain Place]
"Memory has no garbage bin."
Its contents can’t be thrown away.
Recollections ugly as sin
Remain forever fixed to stay.
Be careful, then, what you toss in.
It’ll be there when you’re old and gray!
Cremation makes a fine dustbin—
Disremembering Nature’s way.
September 7, 2024
My name is George Nathaniel Curzon,
I am a most superior person.
My face is pink, my hair is sleek,
I dine at Blenheim once a week.
—Balliol rhyme* mocking the future viceroy and governor-general of India (1899–1905).
“To me the message is carved in granite; it is hewn out of the rock of doom—that our work is righteous and that it shall endure.”
—Lord Curzon of Kedleston
Small, he was made by his governess
—who thrashed him unmercifully, too—
to parade the streets in a conical hat
with written on it liar, sneak, and coward.
Later, his Eton and Balliol pals jovially
hurled at him the epigraph above,
of which he said, "never has more harm
been done to one single individual than
that accursed doggerel has done to me."
Such things mark a man, but he became
a viceroy of whom even Nehru
grudgingly approved (it's said). Dividing
Bengal into East and West, he made
a model for the nation of Bangladesh,
and partition of British India too,
with all the countless resulting dead.
Shall we blame him? Why not! Let's put
to use what little time and space we've got.
He was an erudite traveler, but a wretched swot.
*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balliol_rhyme. Blenheim is the seat of the dukes of Marlborough in Oxfordshire.
Benjamin Jowett, by Max Beerbohm (1922)
First come I. My name is J–w–tt.
There's no knowledge but I know it.
I am Master of this College,
What I don't know isn't knowledge.
—contemporary Balliol rhyme* sending up Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), Master of Balliol College, Oxford
Ben had a love for Flo, and she for him.
How far they got we'll never know.
I doubt they ever had it on:
He translating Plato and Thucydides,
She tending soldiers wounded at Balaclava and Inkerman,
They lacked carnal knowledge of each other,
Seeming content as Bennifer.
Whatever we might think of this,
Probably, they did not kiss.
Happier than friends who err,
They'd think it most impertinent
For folk to wonder how far they went.
You wish to spell the moral out?
No way! Like you, I live in doubt.
Augustus Egg (d. 1863), Unknown Woman. Thought to be a portrait of Florence Nightingale. National Portrait Gallery, London.
September 6, 2024