Bits, Bobs, and Oddments

I have been away from the rehearsal process for a bit (working on another play) so I am feeling a bit disconnected. I am looking forward to coming back and witnessing what has happened while I have been gone. In the meantime I am including some bits and pieces, quotes and facts and tidbits from things I have been reading that resonate with Neverwhere.

"If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th time, you are in danger of seeing it for the first time." – G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely the effect of all miracles--they changed the universe. He discovered the fact that all romantics know--that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones." – G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"He was a genuine natural mystic, one of those who live on the border of fairyland. But he was perhaps the first to realise how often the boundary of fairyland runs through a crowded city." – G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

" Of the thousand millions of human beings that are said to constitute the population of the entire globe, there are -- socially, morally, and perhaps even physically considered -- but two distinct and broadly marked races, viz., the wanderers and the settlers -- the vagabond and the citizen -- the nomadic and the civilized tribes." – Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

“The Street-sellers of Mineral Productions and
Curiosities -- as red and white sand, silver sand,
coals, coke, salt, spar ornaments, and shells.

These, so far as my experience goes, exhaust
the whole class of street-sellers, and they appear
to constitute nearly three-fourths of the entire
number of individuals obtaining a subsistence in
the streets of London.

The next class are the Street-Buyers, under
which denomination come the purchasers of hare-
skins, old clothes, old umbrellas, bottles, glass,
broken metal, rags, waste paper, and dripping.

After these we have the Street-Finders, or
those who, as I said before, literally "pick up"
their living in the public thoroughfares. They are
the "pure" pickers, or those who live by gather-
ing dogs'-dung; the cigar-end finders, or " hard-
ups," as they are called, who collect the refuse
pieces of smoked cigars from the gutters, and
having dried them, sell them as tobacco to the
very poor; the dredgermen or coal-finders; the
mud-larks, the bone-grubbers; and the sewer-
hunters.

Under the fourth division, or that of the
Street-Performers, Artists, and Show-
men, are likewise many distinct callings.”

– Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville, Moby Dick

A station agent at King’s Cross station said there were two suicide attempts per week – Stephen Smith, Underground London

The closed Angel station was used as a bomb shelter during World War II - Stephen Smith, Underground London

“This author’s endeavour should be to make the Past, the sense of all the dead Londons that have gone to the producing of this child of all the ages, like a constant ground-bass beneath the higher notes of the Present. “ Ford Madox Ford, The Soul of London

The city does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand.” Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

The beating of wings, candlelight and a game

When I started my reread of Neverwhere a couple weeks ago. I noticed the quotes Gaiman gives the reader at the beginning of the novel and thought it might be worth thinking about them a bit.

"I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come upon a blood red cup and the beating of the wings of an eagle."

The first quote is from G.K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Which is a brilliant choice to allude to. Chesterton's novels blend the fantastical and the real in fascinating and disturbing ways, and although he was writing at the turn of the last century, I am always stunned by how modern Chesterton's books feel. The Napoleon of Notting Hill takes place in a future London (1984) that is much like the London of 1904, when it was written, but it is just a bit off. By agreement and lack of interest the England, which seems to have amassed more empire in the intervening years, now choice a king by alphabetical drawing. There are many analogous interests in the story. The people of London seem to have become entrenched in the ordinary, accepting of their class system and social roles. Clerk Auberon Quin is made king, and being of a whimsical (and possibly mad) nature starts requiring the provosts of the various districts of London to dress in obscure and antiquated ways. As king he also makes up some fairly fantastical histories related to London place names.

The relationship to a fantastical London in which the place names are tied to different histories than we might expect is clear. I think there is more. I confess I am a fan of Chesterton but had not read The Napoleon of Notting Hill, I am about half way through now. I have long reading history with especially The Man Who was Thursday but also The Man Who Knew Too Much and even Father Brown. It struck me how often Chesterton uses the word nightmare. Both Chesterton's worlds and Gaiman's worlds take on a nightmare-like quality in the true sense of a dream the feels real but in which normal things are displaced, distorted or somehow menacing. Both also freely mix humor with societal or personal events that are much more terrifying like say anarchists or murder. Both writers unapologetically take you to that place that is familiar and frightening and fantastic without explaining or making things easy for the reader which, I think, is a mark of respect for the reader, not to explain too much.

The second quote is the 14th century Lyke Wake Dirge from north Yorkshire

If ever thou gavest hosen or shoon

Then every night and all

Sit thou down and put them on

And Christ receive thy soul

This aye night, this aye night

Every night and all

Fire and fleet and candlelight

And Christ receive thy soul

If ever though gavest meat or drink

Then every night and all

The fire shall never make thee shrink

And Christ receive thy soul

The portions of the dirge, or funeral hymn, that Gaiman quotes all refer to the acts of charity that one might have done while living which in the last stanza protects one from the fire (presumably the fires of hell). Lyke is a dead body and wake is the watch that would be held for the deceased. Hosen are stockings and Shoon is an archaic plural of shoes. Fleet can be a small stream but I also saw a variation on the dirge that seemed to substitute hearth or home for fleet. Sleet is sometimes substituted for fleet which is an old form a salt that may have to do with early funeral rituals. The refrain with firelight and home contrasts with the judgment meted out to those who were not generous in life. It fits nicely with Richard's act of kindness that starts everything for him.

Another reference Gaiman has mentioned in interviews is a children's game with a map of London. I suspect it might be Scotland Yard. Where a group of detectives chases the criminal Mr. X through London using the bus, the underground and taxis (why Scotland Yard does not get its own vehicles is never explained.) What is splendid about the game is how much time you have to look at the map of London with all its place names. Before I had visited London I had played the board game and spent time staring at the map, not just trying to win but as if it might give me understanding of London when I should finally visit (it didn't). Nightmare, dirge, game, it is somehow right that they should all fit together.