Thurifer is edging into the light
The walk from the leafy corner of my leafy suburb to the Underground Station is fewer than five minutes. In that distance, eight shop and business closed during the pandemic, from about two dozen outlets. Some have been replaced. The main shopping area has suffered less. None of the closed shops attracted my custom and it looks to be the same for the new ones.
*
One of the enervating aspects of the several lockdowns was the series of hapless ministers and others plodding daily around the interview circuit. I caught them on Today. Interviewers are passive/aggressive, occasionally simply aggressive. Too many of those interviewed seemed unencumbered by charm, unhindered by ability. They mistook wishful thinking for reasonable, modestly expressed hope. Appreciation of the difference between optimism and desperate boosterism was lacking. The witless recitation of tired platitudes was wearisome. Much better was the round of a dizzying number of epidemiologist and modellers who, usually, gave careful, nuanced answers, resisting the temptation to provide a hostage to fortune. My favourite was Sir Mark Walport. He was the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser from 2013 to 2017. He was invariably fluently eloquent, measured and clear in his comments and judicious. Although I do not doubt his ability, I did not warm to Professor Neil Ferguson. His sibilants seemed sinister.
*
Towering above them, modest yet magisterial, was Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England. Seen most often at Press Conferences flanking, with Sir Patrick Vallance, the Prime Minister. Foolishly dismissed by some as a ”doomster and gloomster,” from the outset, he was clear about the gravity and duration of the pandemic. He never talked down but spoke clearly, precisely. Such was his aplomb that he treated every question, however ignorant or dim, with courtesy and answered fully and unhesitatingly. Even while queuing modestly and quietly to buy lunch and was plagued by a foolish youngster as a “liar,” subsequently posted online, he was a model of restraint. Asked about it at a news conference, he even had the grace to say that he was sure that his tormentor would grow up as a sensible, useful member of the community. (I am not so sure). Imperturbable and self-effacing, he is the very model of a modern public servant. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
*
When did incredible come to used as a adjective of approbation? ”Our incredible track and trace” system: “our incredible police force” (the Home Secretary) for example. Particularly as it means impossible to believe. Why do our politicians have such tin ears? Why do they seem to have IQs on the level of a dead gerbil?. One interviewee began the reply, “Me, myself, personally”. Personally, me, myself, I, moi, mich, mismo, me stesso, mnie dislike it.
*
This year the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall was not available for the annual Commemoration of the martyrdom of King Charles I. The Society of King Charles the Martyr transferred the Mass to All Saints’ Margaret Street, from which it was live-streamed. The Mass was sung by Fr James Hill and there was a masked cantor. MC and thurifer (no relation) were also masked. Fr Nigel Palmer, NSM curate at S. Michael and All Angels, Croydon, preached a learned and eloquent discourse, sure that the King would have appreciated the ritual and splendour of All Saints’ even if William Butterfield’s elaborate and vivid decorative scheme might have been less to his taste than the chaste Palladian of Inigo Jones. In its temporary exile, we, there in person or there online, remembered: In the very dead of winter, / Underneath a bitter sky, / Silent crowds in frozen horror / Come to see their Sovereign die. / Silent stand the surly troopers, / Silent fall the people’s tears, / Silent steps he to the scaffold, / Silent lips are moved to prayers. / At the block he says, ‘Remember”’ / Lays aside his George and gown, / Kneels in prayer, then gives the signal / Which bestows the martyr’s crown.
*
One of the greatest and most potent images of King Charles is Anthony Van Dyck’s magnificent triple portrait in the Royal Collection painted in 1634 or 1635. It has been read as prophetic: a solemn, composed, resigned, tragic figure contemplating a dark horizon: a man apart, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. The tripartite composition hinting at the Crucifixion, even of the Holy Trinity. Perhaps out is a visual essay on the divinity which hedges about a king: “within the hollow crown / That rounds the mortal temples of a king / Keeps Death his court.” It is a painting which never fails to move and to disconcert the viewer. Similarly, the triple portrait of Cardinal Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne of 1642 (possible influenced by the Van Dycke) has something of a similar quality, although the Cardinal died in the same year as the portrait and was stricken with prolonged illness and nearer to death that was King Charles in his portrait. Both portraits can be read as an allegory of earthly power that is only ever transient and it is death that has dominion. It would be an experience to see the two portraits side by side.
*
Some may have thought that the pandemic prohibitions were enough of a Lenten discipline. As someone who takes up some discipline and gives up some thing pleasurable, I gave up going to the theatre and concerts and took up the cultivation of a bleak sense of humour.