In defence of Belloc ...

I'm not sure if this was coincidence or synergy, but at The Growlery, Felix Grant recently posted the full text of Hilaire Belloc's Tarantella. Felix reports that it attracted a surprisingly hostile postbag (see In defense of verse or worse and The tail of Tarentella) taking him to task for quoting a "doggerellist" rather than some poet of more stature. I find this pretty strange. I'll take the central points in turn.

Was Belloc merely a "doggerellist"? Clearly not: a glance at any biography shows that the light comic verse for which he's now best known - not that Tarantella comes into this category - was only one thread in a prestigious output: Catholic apologetics, histories and biographies, very sharp essays, travel writing, farce and satire.

Is Belloc's Tarantella doggerel or otherwise insignificant as a poem? Again, I don't think so. It seems to me very dark. I don't know at this instant if Belloc ever explained his intended meaning for the poem, which he presented to Miranda Mackintosh 20 years after they had met at an inn in the Pyrenean hamlet of Canranc on the River Aragon in 1909 (see writing.upenn.edu). Anyway "the author is dead" - but I don't think it's an unreasonable analysis to start by noting that the very title, Tarantella, refers to a dance with mixed connotations: on the positive side, courtship; and on the negative a form of dancing mania or dancing believed to cure tarantula poisoning.

The poem itself has two sections. The initial section, imitating the tarantella rhythm, is a recollection of an inn with a frenetic but threatening atmosphere (fleas, wine tasting of tar, jeering muleteers thumping on the door - a real Hammer Films / Wicker Man inn by the sound of it).The second section is an aftermath of doom-laden silence whose repetition of "Never more" could well be an allusion to Poe's The Raven. It doesn't come across at all as being merely about a scruffy inn that has become deserted. I find a strong implication of a remembered sexual encounter (various hints: the focus on bedding, the motion phrases "Backing and advancing ... out and in", and the muleteers' behaviour that matches a charivari). I may be completely off the mark, but whatever the intent, it clearly expresses a powerful emotional experience.

However, as Felix said, these issues are somewhat beside the point. Even if the accusation of "doggerel" and "doggerellist" are untrue in this case, it still leaves the judgement by Felix's correspondents that such poetry isn't worth quoting. More on this later.
-Ray

Belloc's Lord High-Bo

Bibliographic bliss. Three years ago, on my own blog, I posted a request about a mystery poem that my wife and I remembered, but which was proving unusually difficult to find. We were more or less certain it was a Belloc, in the flavour of his Peers series in Cautionary Verses. But there was no sign in anthologies. However, sources have come at last into the Google Books database, and it is indeed a Belloc poem, Lord High-Bo.

Lord High-Bo, getting tired of trains,
Would binge about in Aero-planes,
A habit which would not have got
Him into trouble, had he not
Neglected what we know to be
The rule of common courtesy.
Past bedroom windows he would sail,
And with a most offensive hail
Disturb the privacy of those
About to wash or change their clothes.

Google Books finds two sources: William Cole's 1959 The Fireside Book of Humorous Poetry, and Robert Speight's 1958 Letters from Hilaire Belloc. Neither of us recalls reading either of them. Still, it's great to know it's not a mutual figment of the imagination. It's certainly a little-known one though.

A search tip that may be useful: it's often quite feasible, as I had to with this example, to reconstruct text from search hits that are restricted. We remembered this much ...

[someone?] ... growing tired of trains
Would binge about in aeroplanes.
Past bedroom windows he would sail,
And with a most offensive hail
Disturb the privacy of those
About to wash or change their clothes.

... which turns out to have a couple of minor wording mistakes, lacks the identifying name, and misses out a central section. A search on a phrase we were most sure of, "most offensive hail", found two books giving only snippet view search (i.e. fragments of variable usefuless including the search phrase). Inside one, Letters from Hilaire Belloc, searching on some remembered phrases - "tired of trains", "binge about" and "would sail" returned some snippets- not enough to complete the poem but indicating that the title character to be Lord (High?-??). Passing "Lord High" to The Fireside Book of Humorous Poetry found it's "Lord High-Bo". Passing "Lord High-Bo" back to a general Google Books search got the whole intro to the poem, ending with the words "not neglected what we". And so on, a process of search refinement, correlating the snippets and the Google Books results until there was enough crossover to complete the text.

This kind of iterative search and "Dead Sea Scrolls" approach can be very useful in getting the gist of texts that show up on Google, but don't give full access. As well as books, this also works with journals in restricted-access archives such as JSTOR or Project MUSE, which contain a lot of interesting literature-related material. More on this later.
- Ray