The Herefordshire Wye Valley Holme Lacy Shipley Estate
Shipley's Gardens. Keats. Negative Capability.
A tourism guest came by on the 4th of June 2006,
and after spending much time in the Gardens –
wrote in The Visitor Book :-
Mr J Mc Donald of Denton, Manchester.
“A wonderful essay in negative capability” [ Keats ].
My Dear Brothers, …………….
I dined with Haydon the Sunday after you left, and had a very pleasant day. I dined too [ for I have been out too much lately ] with Horace Smith, and met his two brothers with Hill and Kingston and Du Bois. They only served to convince me, how superior humour is to wit in respect to enjoyment. These men say things which make one start, without making one feel ; they are all alike, their manners are alike, they all know fashionables; they have a mannerism in their eating and drinking, in the mere handling of a Decanter. They talked of Kean and his low company. Would I were that company instead of yours, said I to myself ! I know such like acquaintance will never do for me and yet I am going to Reynolds on Wednesday. Brown and Dilke walked with me back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition [ Oxford English Dictionary. a careful inquiry into any matter by argument ], with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove -tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude [OED. half truth] caught from the Penetralium of mystery [the innermost centre of mysteries], from being content with half – knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
Shelly’s poem is out, and there are words about it’s being objected to as much as “Queen Mab” was. Poor Shelly, I think he has his quota of good qualities, in sooth la!. Write soon to your most sincere friend and affectionate Brother, John [Keats].
Dear John,
I have only just come upon your letter, but it is all the better for the waiting. Nothing much has changed. All my ‘disquisitions’ in search of the obvious truths, are called ‘arguments’. I would that I had your skill in passing them off as ‘careful inquiries by way of argumentative conversation’. The kernel of a crystal has many facets. I live in an age where the truth of a matter, is merely the view point of any one who may wish to comment through their own window of vision. Life and truth is blurred by sell by dates and spin. Time itself is an enigma, with truth found then lost in great increments of pendulum swings that repeat events. I heard that Wellington was saddened by the sight of the dead and dying at Waterloo in 1814. Seigfried Sasson, a poet who I most greatly admire, commented with quiet biting truth upon similar happenings that commenced in 1914, and are still being discussed right now in 2006.
“Good morning; good morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on the way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
“He’s a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
Near a hundred years on from that time, and as I write - a handful are still alive. And presently, politicians are uncomfortable with being associated with large massacres in the knowledge that the comment of Pyrrhus that ‘another such victory and we are all lost’, was becoming repetitious. The present pendulum swing seeks to reverse the plans of the Generals from within the quasi political quango’s of the mid to late twentieth century, that lead our agricultural progress. The River grasslands that spread out before me in the nineteen fifties, were full of Skylarks and Lapwings, Hares and wild flowers and the flutter byes of butterflies. But the Generals of Quango’s that lead our progress, killed them all off. All disappeared many years ago. And the vast tract of land before me is still year upon year, a mono crop of deemed economic necessity – that excludes the right to life of any other creature or wild plant. Progress and truth are curious companions. Colridge was not alone within what you term ‘his half truths’, or indeed within the cause of the making of some of them. Nothing much changes. Glasgow is now identified as the region that has the largest misuse and abuse of alcohol and drugs. And people say, “Well it would be, wouldn’t it. All those slums and high rise and poverty”. And learned commentators say that they require space and tranquillity and the country air, like I have about me as I write. So what is truth when, they seem not to know that this beautiful county is the second of the list for the same misuse and abuse of drugs and alcohol. Being at ease with nature, is a comfortable way of living with a truth. Nature was about the place before I came here and will similarly be so when I leave. And nothing I may do will alter the cycles of its predetermined happenings. My regards to yourself, Shelly and Coleridge. You my know that my own poetry yet awaits discovery, Yours most sincerely, Bob Macadie of Shipley, Herefordshire.