5.0 out of 5 stars
STAR GAZING PIE, June 10, 2011
This review is from: James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps: The Life and Works of the Shakespearean Scholar and Bookman (Hardcover)
In the shade that a large sycamore tree has elected to dapple with its leafy green lights while it stands sentinel over it, the grave of James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps remains overgrown as I write. Fingers of ivy, clasping like human flesh, roil in and out of the decorative ironwork that measures the extent of the plot. Hard by the church at Patcham near Brighton, in the corner of its graveyard, not even gratitude to Halliwell, for providing him with too much to write about, inclined Marvin Spevack to tidy it. He writes: "Halliwell's tombstone still stands, however, overgrown and forlorn."
Mounted upon steps symbolising the rise of Calvary, the imposing but simple cross, is a metaphor for Halliwell's own independent triumphs which the author meticulously attests. As a young man, precocious as the ivy that now covers him, he was accused of stealing priceless books and passing them onto The British Museum. He fought the taint of these youthful sins with the law; but also with the lifetime of book-dealing that defines him: " No reprint can bring the very times before one like the original." He fought with valour, generosity, hospitality and fun; and we can make amends for him as we have done so often for Prospero, by giving him our hands after reading this book.
Halliwell also married his "Harry", daughter of Thomas Phillipps Baronet, a wealthy friend and fellow bibliophile, who turned into the evil warlord who spent the ensuing years, (all that was left of his daughter's life) despoiling his own lands and legacy so that it would cripple Halliwell when he came into his inheritance. Once Halliwell had pruned out and destroyed all of the vitriol from his records, what is left is as much a love story of a hardworking and driven man for his wife and family. In her diary, his devoted Harry describes "James trying to catch trout in his open umbrella... falling bodily into a stream, covered with mud - new trousers ruined & coat spoilt - he went home roaring with laughter." Although her husband did say, after she was gone, mischievously perhaps, at the age of sixty, in the presence of a young E.V.Lucas who reported it, thirty years after his death: "if he ever chanced to see anything in anyone else's house or in a museum that he thought he was more worthy to possess, and (obviously) more able to protect, than its owner, he had no scruples about taking it."
The book paints a fond picture of the man whose devotion to Shakespeare was grounded in a familiarity with all Elizabethan writers, both great and very small. "I'm going to read every pamphlet." he promised. The achievement of Halliwell flies in that biographical darkness, but is not recorded in "black-letter" at the foot of the cross. His influence made us spell "Shakespeare" as we do. Without his efforts there would be no New Place or Birthplace Museum or sinecures in Stratford today for professors like Stanley Wells whose orthodox type, Halliwell describes: "It answers the purpose, however, to seem positive & dictatorial now & then since it makes weak minds concur from the mere apprehension of differing. They think infallible those who affect to think themselves so." At Stratford he fought for scholarly standards to "relieve us from the censure we at present so richly deserve for the public exhibition of absurdly spurious or trivial objects that are fitted only for a rag-and-bottle shop."
Schoenbaum honours him as "The greatest of nineteenth century biographers of Shakespeare in the exacting tradition of factual research which extends from Malone to Chambers." The book is unnecessarily tedious however, and could have read more like Schoenbaum if the text had not been disfigured on nearly every page with its paranoid references "[18 August 1874; FolgerY.c.1211 [55].]" that should have been filed at the end. Once the decision was made to use the same typeface for lengthy quotations there was no relief for a weary reader. This is yet a great story and is written not without suspense and humour and sympathy. Spevack whets our appetite early on for what was the "tragic accident that befell his wife". He often reminds us that Halliwell preferred to laugh at himself and at his monumental labours: "Wasting his intelligence like Caligula who alarmed the whole world by raising a mighty army, and then led it to gather cockle-shells."
Spevack provides a good analysis of the falling out with the bellicose Furnivall, the type of pal who comes over from the USA and stays for "three weeks"; and then could not forgive the fact that the poet who mocked Furnivall's American pretensions, Swinburne, chose to dedicate a book to Halliwell. Spevack sees clearly that JOHP could not resist the honour from the famous poet, despite knowing that Swinburne's book insulted his recent guest in no uncertain terms. "That Swinburne chose to dedicate his `Study of Shakespeare' (1880) to him was enormously flattering." Halliwell wrote " the greatest compliment I have ever received"; but Spevack acknowledges sadly: "the extent of his submissiveness is glaring." As Morrissey, our own Swinburne, said "fame, fame, fatal fame plays hideous tricks with the brain."
The dust wrapper features the jocund bust of Shakespeare inside Stratford Church; and illustrates, only a foot away in "black-letter", a reminder that the window above, in place within two years of his death, is dedicated to J.O.Halliwell-Phillips. The brass shines with recent attention. Even if he did leave the grave as it was, and clearly had no need to polish that plate, we must be grateful to Spevack for his "unvarnished tale". Marvin reminds us that the antiquary even saved for us records of the " `star gazing pie of Cornwall'. Which is one made of pilchards, the heads of the fish appearing in relief over the crust." Before I bake those pastry waves myself I must down to Patcham once more, to the lonely sea and the sky, and tidy that space over his bones.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing here for Freemasons, November 15, 2009
This review is from: James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps: The Life and Works of the Shakespearean Scholar and Bookman (Hardcover)
An extensive biography, oftentimes rambling. The chapters are set up in chronological order, but then skip back and forth between dates within that period in a manner sometimes difficult to follow. Masons are interested in Halliwell because he 'discovered' the Regius Manuscript, but it gets hardly more than a passing mention here. Probably no more than two pages out of 612, and nearly all of that about the publishing and reviewing process for it. A check at the Masonic Poets Society <[...]> will give a look at that. The majority of the book is about his scandals and his Shakespearean works, and it might have been worth it had that been what I was looking for.
~OwenKL
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