Wednesday, May 27th
I could not sleep at all last night, and not because police sirens were going off all over the place and I could hear Cook wandering around the house talking out loud to herself about how we were all going to be killed in our beds because the Soviets were coming, and they had back-up from two-headed aliens. I do not know where she gets it all from, although I suspect Amontillado. But no, that was not what was keeping me awake. I had been struck by a lightning bolt of inspiration, and as any half-decent poet knows (and I am not half-decent, I am several multiplications of that, i.e. a genius) one must strike while the kettle is boiling, when cauldron is a-froth, and pick up the quill when the moment demands that the quill be picked up. But I could not be arsed to get out of bed, so I snuggled down and exercised what Hercule Parrot calls the little grey cells and thought very, very hard, which when a genius poet does it is really very hard indeed.
I do not usually talk about my ideas before they have taken full shape and form and become great poems, and actually this is something of a distraction because I am supposed to be writing my autobiography, and I know there are at least two people, maybe three, out there in the world waiting eagerly for Episode 4 of my life, but they will have to go on waiting. I cannot pander to an audience unless they pay me, and most of the time I must do what I must, and obey my muse.
So I am taking a break from writing the autobiography. It will have to wait. I have an important poem, or probably poems plural to write. Yes, let us do a series of important genius poems and call it a sequence. I do not know where the idea came from, but I will put it down to divine intervention, or perhaps it came from God. We shall never know. I want to write about trees. Yes, I was surprised too. In fact, I had to check that it was my brain that had delivered this bombshell into my bedroom, and not some bizarre imp of the perverse with nothing better to do. But there I was in the middle of the night, and I was thinking about poetry trees. And let us face it, when it comes to trees there is a lot of thinking that can be done, and this thinking can be and probably must be expressed in poetry, but only by very, very genius poets. In the hands of an ordinary bard it would be a disaster. But yes! It is my intention to capture the essence of tree. I am not completely sure what that means, but I am more than capable of finding out, or faking it if that proves to be impossible. Either way it will be brilliant.
To this end, and when the otherwise dreadful more or less sleepless night was over and rosy-fingered dawn had parted the curtains to reveal another day, and Cook (tottering around and looking slightly the worse for wear) had served up bacon and eggs and toast and marmalade and good strong coffee, I instructed her to prepare a packed lunch and just in case a packed tea in the largest hamper she could lay her hands on, and to make sure there were at least four bottles of decent wine, 2 red and 2 white, the latter suitably cool-boxed etc., and I ordered Jethro to get the horse and cart ready, and when all was set and prepared, with Jethro at the reins, your Poet set off to his Land of Trees, which is situated on the far side of the estate, a 10-minute horse-trot away.
As we jogged along in the cart heading for those farthest reaches, where if memory served me right a lot of trees were to be found, I perused Ovid’s famous (to the well-educated, at any rate) gathering of the trees in his Metamorphoses to get me in the mood. It is in my anthology of things people almost never read these days:
There was a hill, and, on the hill, a wide
Level of open ground, all green with grass.
The place lacked any shade. But when the poet,
The heaven-born, sat and touched his lyre
Shade came in plenty. Every tree was there:
The oak-tree came with its deep foliage
And the poplars; the soft lime-tree;
The beech; the virgin sweet-bay; laurel;
The hazel, frail; the ash-tree, used for spears;
The sweeping silver-fir; holm-oak, heavy with acorns;
The pleasant plane-tree; the many-coloured maple
With the river-haunting willow; lotus, water-lover;
Boxwood ever-verdant; the slender tamarisk;
The myrtle with, over and under its leaves,
Its two shades of green; and the blue-berried wild-bay,
Laurus tinus. Also came twining ivy, together
With shooting vines; the vine-supporting elms;
The flowering ‘manna’ ash; the spruce;
The strawberry tree, weighed down with its red fruit;
The pliant palms, the winner’s prize;
And the shaggy-topped pine tree, armed with needles . . .
It was a lovely day, what with it being in the middle of a heatwave, and when we reached the trees it was lunchtime so we settled down, Poet and Jethro, and cracked open the first bottle of vin and set about the pies and sandwiches and sweetmeats and cheeses and gateaux and it was all very pleasant. I do not usually “socialize” with the help, but Jethro is not a bad chap underneath all the grime, and he can be decent company on a good day. And I was in such a good mood that I did something I almost never do except at Christmas, and sometimes not even then. I gave Jethro one of my cigars. Then we had a good nap, in the shade of – let me look this up: Oh yes, in the shade of the oak tree with its deep foliage.
When I awoke it was getting on for 3 o’clock, and almost time for tea, but I thought I really should make a start on trying to capture the essence of tree, or trees plural. There were loads of them about. It was then I realized I had forgotten to bring anything to write on or with. Bugger! And it was no use asking Jethro if he had a notebook or pen with him – he cannot even read, never mind write. Double bugger!
But we still had two bottles of wine left, and the tea Cook had packed was untouched, so we opened another one and tucked in again. Ham sandwiches, tongue sandwiches, sandwich sandwiches, and a variety of cakes. Meanwhile, the birdsong was extremely pleasant. I had not really noticed that before. It occurred to me that I might write about trees and birds. But the actual writing would have to wait until later.
Friday, May 29th
Writing about trees and birds is proving more difficult than I had envisaged. I am thinking I might put the idea on hold and pick up the autobiography again. But not today. I am not in the mood.
Sunday, May 31st
I am still not in the mood.
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James Henderson
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