Friday, November 8, 2024

Into the Archive: Death's Jest-Book


The Background

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (30 June 1803 – 26 January 1849) was an English poet, dramatist and physician.

Biography

Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He published in 1821 The Improvisatore, which he afterwards endeavored to suppress. His next venture, a blank-verse drama called The Bride's Tragedy (1822), was published and well-reviewed, and won for him the friendship of Barry Cornwall.

Beddoes's work shows a constant preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to study medicine, motivated by his hope of discovering physical evidence of a human spirit which survives the death of the body. He was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to complete his training. He then wandered about practicing his profession, and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported from Bavaria in 1833, and had to leave Zürich, where he had settled, in 1840.

He continued to write but published nothing.

He led an itinerant life after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed and committed suicide by poison at Basel, in 1849, at the age of 45.



For some time before his death he had been engaged on a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T. F. Kelsall. His Collected Poems were published in 1851.

Reception

Critics have faulted Beddoes as a dramatist. According to Arthur Symons, "of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation." His plots are convoluted, and such was his obsession with the questions posed by death that his characters lack individuation; they all struggle with the same ideas that vexed Beddoes. However, his poetry is "full of thought and richness of diction", in the words of John William Cousin, who praised Beddoes's short pieces such as "If thou wilt ease thine heart" (from Death's Jest-Book, Act II) and "If there were dreams to sell" ("Dream-Pedlary") as "masterpieces of intense feeling exquisitely expressed". Lytton Strachey referred to Beddoes as "the last Elizabethan", and said that he was distinguished not for his "illuminating views on men and things, or for a philosophy", but for the quality of his expression. Philip B. Anderson said the lyrics of Death's Jest Book, exemplified by "Sibylla's Dirge" and "The Swallow Leaves Her Nest", are "Beddoes' best work. These lyrics display a delicacy of form, a voluptuous horror, an imagistic compactness and suggestiveness, and, occasionally, a grotesque comic power that are absolutely unique."

The Bride's Tragedy and especially Death's Jest-Book are much quoted from in epigraphs to the chapters of Dorothy L. Sayers' book Have His Carcase.” – Wikipedia.

And that, of course, is where I first found him, and have been fascinated with his reputation and work ever since. I was pleased to find this edition available on Amazon, and thought it was about time I finally gave it a shot, though not absolutely enamored with the cover. Falling between the Romantics and the Victorians, he occupies the same time-slot that Edgar Allan Poe does in the United States, and evokes the same kind of lush, macabre ornateness. Old Adam, the Carrion Crow appears as a song in Death’s Jest-Book .



Old Adam, the Carrion Crow

Old Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
And through every feather
Leak'd the wet weather;
And the bough swung under his nest;
For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow,
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts' moonshine.

Ho! Eve, my grey carrion wife,

When we have supped on king's marrow,

Where shall we drink and make merry our life?

Our nest it is queen Cleopatra's skull,

'Tis cloven and crack'd,

And batter'd and hack'd,

But with tears of blue eyes it is full:

Let us drink then, my raven of Cairo!
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts' moonshine.

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