Smith / Doorstop Books ISBN: 978-1-906613-47-1 (hbk) £12.95 69pp
This delightful and beautifully produced book has been a pleasure to read and has persuaded me to arrange a trip later this year to the place which is its immediate subject and somewhere I should long since have visited. Immaculately printed on high quality paper, it does equal justice both to the text, the twenty-four excellent photographs, one alongside each poem, and the four additional photo collages contained in the Notes. Poems and photographs together take us on a journey through Shandy Hall now a literary museum situated in the North Yorkshire village of Coxwold and headquarters of the Laurence Sterne Trust, but between 1760 – 1768, the home of Laurence Sterne himself, novelist, local clergyman and, most famously, author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
Although Sterne suffered from consumption (tuberculosis) during this time, there were, as a photographed fragment of one of his letters dated 7th June, 1760 makes clear, some considerable compensations: I am as happy as a prince at Coxwould (sic), and I wish you could see in how princely a manner I live – ’tis a land of plenty. I sit down alone to venison, fish and wild-fowl, or a couple of fowls or ducks, with curds, and strawberries, and cream, and all the simple plenty which a rich valley under the Hambleton Hills can produce. The pleasure which he describes here with such lip-smacking relish seems to me also to reflect the authors’ clear intention that their poems and images together should be enjoyed not only for themselves, but also as an introductory glimpse into a place that has been home to many people since the original village parsonage was built in 1430. The point is well made both in the poem DIY: Even today there’s not much evidence / of the worst excess – artex, woodchip, warping / MDF, those classic errors of taste – / or crack-brained solutions / to a crooked chimney, leaking roof, sloping floor, / wet-rot, dry-rot, death-watch beetle … the photograph of a commemorative plaque above the front door:
SHANDY HALL.
HERE DWELT LAURENCE STERNE,
MANY YEARS INCUMBENT
OF COXWOLD.
HERE HE WROTE TRISTRAM SHANDY
AND THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.
DIED IN LONDON IN 1769
AGED 55 YEARS.
and the brief quotation from Sterne’s novel which accompanies it: -’tis all one to me – please but your own fancy in it. Anyone who has ever moved house will recognize the truth in his wickedly off-hand comment.
Reading the book, it’s impossible, as the above examples show, not to notice that each photograph is accompanied by a brief quotation, no more than a line or two, from somewhere within Sterne’s nine original volumes. What is being pointed out is self-evidently true, a knowledge of the novel would be helpful to a reader’s understanding of the relationship between it, the poems and the photographs. Whether or not this is asking a lot depends on the reader’s interest and curiosity, of course, although, that said, in many cases the links are so universal as to be crystal clear. The poem Graves, for example, reminds us that funerals / recall more personal memorials and speaks of the inevitability of erasure and forgetting, of how quickly stone / becomes its own blank page / in the obliterating rain. On the facing page, a photograph of Coxwold churchyard, with its many gravestones disappearing into deep shadow, works powerfully with the poem, as does the blackly humorous quotation from Sterne’s novel with its nod towards the graveyard scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: – not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it, – and sighing as he walks on, Alas, poor YORICK!
Whilst it would be inaccurate to describe Asterisk* as a guide book, it does, as the Introduction points out, fulfil some of those functions, in that it comes complete with helpful notes, provides an informative photographic record of its initial subject, Shandy Hall, and sets out to approach the place in the spirit of Sterne himself, that is playfully and with a mind to explore the unexpected. It is, though, also a good deal more than this. The photographs, for example, are finely observed and executed, they support and frame the poems very effectively and so go well beyond their obvious documentary function. The same is true of the quotations from the novel. Selected to shed light, often ironic and witty, sometimes more darkly philosophical, they do exactly that, not only upon the poems, the photographs, the house and grounds of Shandy Hall, but upon the author himself and the working of his mind. The photograph entitled Sterne’s Study is a good final instance of this. Cropped to suggest a small room, it has as its background threequarters of an open fireplace in front of which are shown the corner of a desk, neatly arranged manuscript and a small black pot containing three quill pens. The accompanying quotation is brief and pithy: Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation, whilst the poem, Study, ends as follows: But here, feel yourself grow as you step inside / the tiny cockpit; the tooled leather console / and its hidden circuitry all at your fingertips; / a reassuring co-pilot appearing at your side. I wouldn’t want to exchange my laptop for Sterne’s parchment and quill, but sitting in front of it now and typing these words, I recognize that feeling. I think Sterne would have, too. As writers, I’m sure we all do.
Asterisk* can be ordered from Amazon.