Ding Dong Bell
Sep. 24th, 2023 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo Walter de la Mare's Ding Dong Bell is a book I love. It exists in two versions. The first came out in 1924 and contained three stories. I've owned a copy for years. The second was published in 1936 and contained four stories. I finally came across a copy yesterday- in Camilla's fabulous Eastbourne bookshop- while looking for something else.
I say "stories' but that's not quite right. Their narratve content is slight. Each is constructed round a collection of verse epitaphs- all, of course, composed by de la Mare himself. Call them meditations, prose poems, even essays. In the first a young woman gets into conversation with an old man on the platform of a rural railway station, in the second a man and a woman- who may have been lovers or possibly never will be- spend the night in churchyard, in the fourth an elderly traveller has an unearthly encounter. The third- in the new edition- is the most substantial- and takes the form of an elliptical ghost story- or is it?
The epitaphs are variously wistful, humourous, poignant. De la Mare was an absolute master of this kind of thing. My favourite goes like this:
J.T.
Here's Jane Taylor,
Sweet Jane Taylor,
Dark,
Wild,
Dear Jane Taylor,
Couldn't be simpler, couldn't be more perfect.
Fifty years ago a friend and I made a collection of verse epitaphs, collected by ourselves in the churchyards (mainly) of East Kent. It was going to be published, complete with photographic illustrations and would have made a sweet little pamphlet. Then we went our different ways and it never happened. None of our epitaphs- the work of 18th century Dickie Doggerels- were half as good as de la Mare's.
I say "stories' but that's not quite right. Their narratve content is slight. Each is constructed round a collection of verse epitaphs- all, of course, composed by de la Mare himself. Call them meditations, prose poems, even essays. In the first a young woman gets into conversation with an old man on the platform of a rural railway station, in the second a man and a woman- who may have been lovers or possibly never will be- spend the night in churchyard, in the fourth an elderly traveller has an unearthly encounter. The third- in the new edition- is the most substantial- and takes the form of an elliptical ghost story- or is it?
The epitaphs are variously wistful, humourous, poignant. De la Mare was an absolute master of this kind of thing. My favourite goes like this:
J.T.
Here's Jane Taylor,
Sweet Jane Taylor,
Dark,
Wild,
Dear Jane Taylor,
Couldn't be simpler, couldn't be more perfect.
Fifty years ago a friend and I made a collection of verse epitaphs, collected by ourselves in the churchyards (mainly) of East Kent. It was going to be published, complete with photographic illustrations and would have made a sweet little pamphlet. Then we went our different ways and it never happened. None of our epitaphs- the work of 18th century Dickie Doggerels- were half as good as de la Mare's.
