I have long come to the conclusion that I never quite know what I will say next. I am determined however, that whatever I say last shall be more memorable than anything I said first or during any of the intervening years, which is probably not saying much.
So that I don’t end up mouthing what has already been said, I am brushing up on notable quotations to discard. Like ‘I think or not to be,’ for example, which has already been said first by at least two different people.
I also need to brush up on history – roughly from the Common Era to the somewhat less common Golden Age – which is decidedly more challenging, as history mainly consists of memorable things said by people who do not trouble themselves to say them memorably, which is why I tend to recall facts largely fictitiously, to say the least.
The vast majority of histories, especially those I have not consulted, are altogether too long, I find. Things are blow out of all epic proportions, with dates, names and crowned heads – some heavy, some severed – thrust at you, relentlessly (they) and unawares (you), in both quick and bloody succession, ‘succession’ often being synonymous with ‘bloody.’ The saying ‘Uneasy lies the head that facts wear thin’ comes to mind, if vaguely.
At any rate, I am apparently not epicurean enough – or is ‘epidural’ the word? – which is to say that I have been numb to the pleasures of history since birth, an event that occurred so long ago that I have forgotten most of that, too (that last ‘that’ being different from any other ‘that’ in that sentence). I am of an epigrammatical persuasion myself, although more so in my reading than in my writing, I have been told.
Speaking of which (reading, I mean): I was turning the pages of The Murder of My Aunt (1934) the other day (Thursday, I think), and I was reminded by its almost forgotten author, Richard Hull, of a history to end all histories – at least British ones, which used to cover more ground than latterly, with more shrinkage more likely than not. To think that it took a work of detective fiction like Hull’s – which is not, by the way, a continuation of and fatal conclusion to Travels with My Aunt – to point me to a history in which wit is the very soul of brevity, to paraphrase somewhat!
Anyway, according to the narrating nephew of that titular relation, the latter, while yet living (in Wales, no less, to which I can relate, albeit reluctantly at times), had ‘been reading some absurd comic history of England, full, I gather, of elementary humour of the schoolboy variety.’ Apparently, the aunt enjoyed that ‘history’ so much that she named her two dogs after two men – the great and the good – mentioned therein. Just wherein that was the author lacks the accuracy and goodness to state.
The two dogs, meanwhile, are Athelthral and Thruthelthrolth. After several failed attempts at spelling those names correctly, I scoured the internet, filthy place that it is, to discover that they refer to two ancient rulers that most histories have consigned to oblivion, a state that rulers generally make considerable efforts not to end up in, opting – vainly, as it turns out – for largely unread tomes instead.
How could I have never heard of Athelthral and Thruthelthrolth, or, having heard, not recall them by name? I am not a native of any of the British Isles, I should point out in my defense – a word, incidentally, that I insist on not spelling with a ‘c,’ as many British people do, unless they are students of mine, in which case they generally do not concern themselves with spelling at all.
But I divagate, as only the Latin still say now. The point is that the history the aunt made such good use of is 1066 and All That and that it is so good I am quite rooting for her now, even though her survival would make Hull’s ostensible Murder mystery somewhat less of one. What I like most about 1066 – as a book, not a date – is that it is a) short, b) determined to be memorable (a word frequently used by the authors, Sellar and Yeatman), and c) interspersed with ‘tests’ to help me remember what I just read.
About Athelthral and Thruthelthrolth, for instance, it asks readers:
Have you the faintest recollection of
1) Ethelbreth?
2) Athelthral?
3) Thruthelthrolth?
I puzzled for a while, but found the next question encouraging: ‘What have you the faintest recollection of?’ Indeed.
1066, somewhat confusingly, was written quite a few years later than its title suggests and published not until 1930, when it must have been hit so hard by the Depression (the great and not so good) that it disappeared under the rock it came to share with me, eventually. Just before that happened, if ever it did, the book was highly regarded by H. V. Kaltenborn, who, in turn, was a big name in the history of radio, which is the only history that I have not only read but written, a fact that should be reassuring to at least someone, surely.
To get back to those last words of mine, for the breathing of which I am rehearsing at present without any particular urgency. Clearly, I need to cross out another two as unusable: Athelthral and Thruthelthrolth. Had I thought of them to begin with, I would have been confident that they had not already been uttered. Not that I am quite capable of uttering them, at least not with any great confidence or without a tissue to hand.
No matter. I am undaunted by the challenge of having those last words ready for folks to go gentle on me on my last good night. After all, who was it that said ‘Fools brush past where angels fear to sled’? Rosebud, I think. Which reminds me to check whether he was Plantagenet or the House of Elsa Lanchester. I am hoping 1066 and All That will have all the answers.
[This was my eight hundredth post. Most of the others are equal to however you might find this one to be, should you happen to find it at all.]
Harry Heuser 