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| J. Milton Hayes |
After I’ve had my fill of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Yeats, I tend to turn to Flecker, Frost and (recently) Ezra Pound. But occasionally, when I’ve had enough of sensitivity, thoughtfulness, difficulty and strangeness, I like to get my teeth into the literary equivalent of a big, straightforward, juicy steak – in other words, an English narrative poem which features lashings of heroism, sacrifice and good old-fashioned patriotism, and which doesn’t require any form of mental effort.
I have three particular favourites, two of which are so politically incorrect, they’ll probably have liberals reaching for the smelling salts. But I’ll start with the one that’s the least offensive to current sensibilities.
“The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God” needs little introduction, given that it has probably been the most frequently recited story poem in Britain for the past century - whether for dramatic or comedic purposes.
Mad Carew, a British officer on service somewhere to the north of Katmandu during the days of Empire, has the hots for the Colonel’s daughter – and the attraction is mutual. When Carew (today, I presume, we’d refer to him as “Mad”, in our chummy, egalitarian, first-name way) asks her what present she’d like for her forthcoming birthday, she jestingly demands the gem which forms the “green eye” of a local idol, not expecting the daft sod to act on her suggestion. But he didn’t get his nickname for nothing, and, after disappearing for a while, he eventually crawls back to camp, half-dead, having stolen the emerald. That very night, as the birthday ball is in progress, the yellow god extracts its bloody revenge!
J. Milton Hayes wrote the piece in 1911 (much later than I’d realized), and had no illusions about its status as poetry: “It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be, but it does what it sets out to do. It appeals to the imagination from the start: those colours, green and yellow, create an atmosphere. Then India, everyone has his own idea of India. Don't tell the public too much. Strike chords. It is no use describing a house; the reader will fix the scene in some spot he knows himself. All you've got to say is 'India' and a man sees something. Then play on his susceptibilities.” Okey-doke, Milt!
Here’s the poem in written form. And here it is being impressively recited by Bransby Williams, in the year following its publication.
I’ve often thought that”Mad”might make a good hero for a series of “prequel” novels by some rip-roaring, yarn-telling author in the mould of George Macdonald Fraser, in which we discover how the lusty young hothead earned his intriguing soubriquet.
I’ve always found G. K. Chesterton’s poetry the least satisfying part of his literary output. But the best of his poems is “Lepanto” (it narrowly beats “The Rolling English Road” into second place) is a doozie. It’s the one about “Don John of Austria” who commanded the Christian fleet against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
After years of having to tip-toe around Muslim sensibilities, it’s somewhat of a relief to find the battle referred to as a crusade. This is unarguably a coalition of Christian forces. Don John is described as the “love-light of Spain” and “death-light of Africa” (hate crime alert!). The Pope has “called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross”. And, when it comes to the moment of victory, the Catholic convert, Chesterton, doesn’t hold back:
“Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!”
There’s an excellent recitation of the poem here – the pleasing J.B. Priestley-style Northern tones work perfectly. One imagines Don John himself was nothing if not bloont.
John Buchan attested to the stirring nature of the poem when he wrote to the author in 1915, “The other day in the trenches we shouted your Lepanto”. (So, Chesterton was a war-monger as well.)
Interestingly, the poem which was written after G.K. had heard a priest describe the battle at a debate in Leeds in 1912, never mentions The Prophet, or Muslims, or Islam – which, given that the battle was fought to prevent further Muslim encroachment on Europe, is odd, but I somehow doubt the forces of political correctness were particularly vigorous 98 years ago. The sheer no-nonsense physicality of Don John - the illegitimate son of Emperor Charles V, by the way - and his determination to do his duty, no questions asked, is contrasted with the endless squabbles amongst Christian sects: “The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes”. This, plus the side-swipe at the “cold Queen of England” - i.e. protestant Elizabeth - is Papist propaganda at full tilt.
Islam again fails to get a direct mention in my final choice, Sir Henry Newbolt’s “He Fell Among Thieves”. In this 1898 poem, a band of Afghan fighters attacks a camp of British soldiers as they sleep, massacring all but one. The survivor, a young officer, asks to be spared until dawn, so that he can see the sun come up one last time, and his request is granted. He spends the night contemplating the people and places which have shaped him. As this is Newbolt, the poet of Empire – even more so than Kipling – we half expect a last-minute rescue by chaps wearing school uniforms, armed with nothing more than cricket bats and rugby balls. But it never comes: his captors, who were once allies (some things never change) behead him.
It is not great poetry, but it is moving. It kept running through my head on a recent visit to the marvellous Shropshire Regimental Museum in Shrewsbury, where so many brave men are honoured, and where the reality of today’s serving men and women is brilliantly evoked. No matter what your views on Britain’s colonial past, you’d have to be a real creep not to respond to endless tales of unbelievable courage, especially when accompanied by mementoes of the various battles, and, in many cases, photographs of the Victoria Cross recipients – most looking like those boys pretending to be soldiers we half expect to save the day in Newbolt’s poem.
It’s tempting to sneer at Sir Henry’s somewhat airbrushed and sentimentalised accounts of the glories of war – after all, he was responsible for the line “Play up, play up, and play the game”, and one can’t help wondering whether his portrayal of battle as an adult version of school and Varsity sports events was actually some subtly subsversive form of parody – but that would be grossly insensitive at this time when the people of Britain have once again demonstrated a need to honour those who risk their lives on their behalf, no matter how unconvincing the cause.( It just goes to show that even decades of left-wing social engineering have failed to extinguish our natural, very human response to physical courage.)
Newbolt, a barrister by trade, was asked to organise British propaganda during the First World War – a good choice, one imagines - and was generally a pillar of the establishment, as one might have expected. But, surprisingly for someone so outwardly respectable, it now appears that he lived in a ménage a trois with his wife and her lesbian lover – who was hislover as well. Crikey!
My edition of Newbolt’s Collected Poems (1897-1907) is dedicated to Thomas Hardy – I don’t really know why that surprises me, but it does.
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