A Date With... Tennyson to Elvis
| This week marks the birthday of Alfred Lord Tennyson, poet in waiting to Queen Victoria and 'master of
melancholia' according to T S Eliot. We should also commemorate Ben Jonson - genius playwright of
the 17th century - who died on August 6th 1637. While singing happy birthday, you might include the
brilliantly named Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt (Theodore's second wife), who would have been about
to celebrate her 139th birthday. Or why not go European and celebrate the birthday of Charles VII, Holy
Roman Emperor. Today marks the 'offical' end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 (quite frankly, it had
already proved itself far from holy, wasn't actually Roman and was no longer much of an empire, but
hey ho). And what do Jamaicans and Bolivians have in common? Today they both celebrate their Independence
Days: So much for empire - patriotic Tennyson wouldn't have been very happy about it at all. But then
he never was. We are fast approaching the close of the US National Psychic week (I assume you already knew I was going to mention that) and International Clowns Week (the two are easily confused), but we are just a day away from both Eat an Apple Week and Smile Week (tough to do at the same time: you are going to have to make a choice here)! If the Clown and Smile week have cheered you up too much and your friends and colleagues think you have finally flipped, then I suggest you make straight for Lord Tennyson (born today in 1809) who was the England's most miserable poet laureate. Not content to write off everyone's favourite classical hero Ulysses as a dull and tired old man, Tennyson also wrote an extremely long elegy to a friend called In Memoriam that is genuinely the most heart-wrenchingly sad stuff this side of Sylvia Plath. Not content, he decided to pen the most famous poem about lots of people dying in battle, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the actually almost unknown poem, The Charge of The Heavy Brigade (I kid you not). Pop-art god Andy Warhol never seemed to grin much either and he was born today in 1927; maybe he knew the Great Depression was about to start and thought he would get in early. At least he is most famous for mass-marketing Lou Reed and his Velvet Underground with a neon banana, which shows some sense of humour. Go and buy their superb album immediately at Amazon. So, for the next week, smile! Or, alternatively eat apples. Ben Jonson did both frequently but he still died today in 1637 having satirized absolutely everybody in the world in the best plays of the early 1600s that weren't written by Shakespeare - try The Alchemist and Volpone. Both of these plays are notable for their casts of genuinely villainous and selfish characters. Speaking of which, it is also National Elvis week from tomorrow. Today is also the anniversary of the US's first use of the electric chair 110 years ago. Haven't we come a long way since the Holy Roman Empire. If you are living in America or England, you might just catch the film Gladiator and get a feel for what the Romans got up to in their national smile week. David Pinching, Editor |
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