The William Roberts Society


John David Roberts:

Hove Notes


Hove Notes was published in a photocopied edition of ten copies in 1991. It records JDR's musings during one of the visits that he and his mother, Sarah, made to Hove towards the end of her life.


© The Estate of John David Roberts. Reproduced with the permission of the William Roberts Society.


The Jesuitry of Gadgetry
*

I hear the song of my old friend the thrush. Over sixty years: threnody and thrush.
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– with the least possible trouble for the organiser and the least comfort for the organised.
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Thrice-blessed Tea!
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Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer!
– Listen to the idiots, said Hitler.
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I ask simply to be allowed to get on with my work. Who could ask for less? Or more?
*

It's ambition to show of his knowledge that gives a man away.
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The art of life is to get through the day; just as the art of the day is to get through life.
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He is a bold man who says: 'I have learnt the art of life.' The art of life is learnt on one's deathbed.
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I feared for my sanity; and my sanity feared for me.
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How nice, after all, to be alive. (Midnight, and another cup of tea.)
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Let them give me a straight road, clear of obstacles; then you'll see.
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He had the pleasant manner, the confident charm, of one about to swindle you.
*

After the Great Fire and the Great Plague, Evelyn gets up on his hind legs and thanks God for preserving him.
*

Never secure . . . never secure . . . never secure . . . Hilter's long supply line.
A global strategy, based on lies, and finally, on impotence.
*

I hear in my dreams, forever, the thunder of the Russian guns, as the tanks enter Berlin.
*

To a scholar, ink is his blood, and paper is his long food.
Now laugh at him.
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I'm still alive, but whose fault is it?
*

To make yourself Pope – the potentate, not the poet – and get yourself killed by Socialists, must mean that you don't know why you made yourself Pope.
*

Dreamt I was made President of Argentina. The voters of the nation produced a board of ten electors, who co-opted five others of note: poet, musician, philosopher, even an honest soldier; this fifteen then elected me, and I awoke.
*

In bourgeois Hove I lurch along
while memory upon memory prods.
The thrush,from altitudes of song
looks down upon both men and Gods.

*

The Actor: if he plays Uncle Vanya, he's more important than Chekhov; if the Master Builder, more than Ibsen; and if Hamlet, he's more important than Shakespeare.

O noble actor!
*

They read my poems, look the other way –
the idle singer of an idle day!

*

The diving rod, and pointer of marvels: My pen.
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I haven't so far seen a book, let alone a bookshop.
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With a phrase, to overturn an empire!
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Would my every sentence were tipped with God's fire!
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Two poems I wanted to write: Hitler in the Bunker, and Stalingrad.
I was never equal to the conception.
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I was never conspicuous for common sense; but my parents . . .
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The advertising industry is built on bad puns, the worse the better.
*

I write the sort of books that no one reads.
I get them printed (but not read) at last.
Plans for the future, sarcasms for the past!
While Earth rolls on, indifferent to her needs.

*

My Guardian Angels: Luck and Judgement.
*

If the cap fits, throw it away.
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At this hour . . . not Milton, but a few honest determined men are needed. We wait in vain.
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It was Schopenhauer who said: the more I see my dogs, the more I like young women.
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Give way to hooliganism once, and give way forever.
*

Chinese notebooks, e.g. this one: I bought enough of them, but nearly did not; not realising that they were a job lot, and unrepeatable.
*

They don't like to think, or even to think about thinking.
*

At the public library here I bought the Diary of a Nobody, Everyman, 30p, and some Moroccan Tales by Richard Hughes, 20p. Of these, 'The Vizier's Razor' was a knockout.
*

Evelyn, l9th Nov. 1673/4:
I heard that stupendous violin Signor Nicholao (with other rare musicians, whom I never heard mortal man exceed on that instrument. He had a stroke so sweet, and made it speak like the voice of a man, and, when he pleased, like a concert of several instruments. He did wonders upon a note, and was an excellent composer. Here was also that rare lutenist, Dr. Wallgrave; but nothing approached the violin in Nicholao's hand. He played such ravishing things as astonished us all.

*

You must get through life by every possible stratagem.
*

I am a Londoner; (certainly no Englishman). Define 'Londoner'.
*

He thinks he's discovered the secret of life; but she knows better.
*

I have studied the guitar for fifty years, but have never been able to play it.
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I still can't understand Hazlitt's adulation of Napoleon; who would have just laughed at him.
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And what's the result of their running after the great ignorant mob of a public? Their institutions are derided, and are ever more in debt.
*

As I have read, Napoleon on St. Helena saw that the game was up; and devoted his energy to spinning a Napoleonic dynasty out of himself. The result being Napoleon the Third, i.e. disaster.
*

After all your tapes, videos, lectures, mouthings, the mob cares no more about Constable than it did before.
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The disaster was 1870; followed by fifty years of heel-clicking.
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The stupider they are, the more trouble they can cause.
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Poets and authors indeed aspire after immortality, but do not reject any present advantages that may offer.
Giraldus Cambrensis.
*

Sir Jack Hobbs 1882–1963
Surrey and England Cricketer
Lived Here (Palmeira Avenue)

*

If you can find a place where poor people are getting value for money – stay there. The poor sometimes get value for money, the rich – never.
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He didn't knock me down, but he asphyxiated me.
*

(Out for a drive with his son). His conduct was shocking. When we passed Highgate Archway, he tried to pass everything and everybody. He shouted to respectable people who were walking quietly in the road to get out of the way; he flicked at the horse of an old man who was riding, causing it to rear; and, as I had to ride backwards, I was compelled to face a gang of roughs in a donkeycart, whom Lupin had chaffed, and who turned and followed us for nearly a mile, bellowing, indulging in coarse jokes and laughter, to say nothing of occasionally pelting us with orange peel.
(Diary of a Nobody).
*

I have enough lost causes on my hands.
*

The Red Cross charity shop had one book worth buying: The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingley, of Columbia University.
Hear what the Professor has to say about Philip II: 'When a diplomatic pouch reached the Escorial its contents, however urgent, were received by the appropriate official, deciphered by the appropriate clerk, and placed along with the originals on the appropriate corner of the long table in the cheerless little room in which the King now spent most of his waking hours, All sorts of official papers lay piled on that long table. It held the correspondence of ambassadors, the reports of viceroys and governors, of customs and treasury and municipal officials; it held petitions and memorials and the findings of judicial investigations, the accounts of dockyards and mints and mines, and of the royal household. Every day the papers came in from all the kingdoms of Castile and of the Crowns of Aragon; from Portugal now, too, and from Philip's other dominions; from Naples and Sicily and Milan, from Franche Comte and the Belgian provinces, from Mexico and Peru and Brazil, from golden Goa and African Sofala the islands of the eastern and the western seas. Nobody since the beginning of history had ever ruled so much of the earth's surface as Philip II of Spain. Nobody had ever owned so many titles of kingdoms dukedoms, counties, principalities and lordships of all sorts. And nobody, surely, had ever had so many papers to read. Sooner or later Philip read, if not all, at least a very great many of them, leaving in his spidery scrawl in their margins shrewd states manlike comments and trivial corrections of spelling and grammar, each annotation a witness to posterity of his appalling, his stupefying industry.
*

Stickers on lamp-posts (all with vignettes):
1. Bondage and Correction
2. Strict Domination, Thigh-high boots.
3. C.P. for Miss Julie,Teenage Schoolgirl.
(A new view of Hove). The telephone numbers had been defaced.
*

W.R. was a puzzle; and perhaps more of a puzzle to me than to anybody else.
*

To use words so that they suggest as much as you want . . . and no more!
That includes commas, dots . . . and exclamations!
*

Silence, and dreams.
*

Put a fancy label on a product, charge twice the price; three words of blurb, five times.
*

Plaques in Brunswick Square:
Admiral Sir George Augustus Westphal served in over 100 actions and wounded at Trafalgar on H.M.S. Victory, lived here 1836–1875. Hove Borough Council.

Roger Quilter Composer was born in this house on 1st November 1877. Erected by the Regency Society.

Dunbar Nasmyth Home In deepfelt gratitude to the gallant Polish Sailors for their devoted service in the 1939–45 war.
From their British friends.

*

I am constantly meeting and reading books of which I think: this book, I should have read, and absorbed thoroughly, many years ago.
*

Segovia didn't know the first principles of fingering – when did he have time to study them? He relied on his agility, and this can only lead to an impasse, for himself and others.
*

Maintenance
 He mends the firmament, when once it's cracked;
to every lonely sufferer sends a dream;
controls the outhouse where the stars are stacked;
Archangel Michael, odd-job man supreme.

*

It takes a dozen journalists and a hundred restaurateurs to create the illusion that there is an eatable meal in London, at any price.
*

The guitarist must always have in mind the story of the chessboard and the grains of corn.
*

Tele-wondrous-communication, and nothing to communicate.
*

The British Legion in Hove: elderly men and a brass band and banners, half the men in bowler hats.
*

'One feels the whole British Legion is on the brink somewhere; about to step off into space.' (A cultured elderly woman, perhaps an organiser.)
*

From another Charity shop: 'Eighteenth Century France' by John Lough of the University of Durham, formerly of St. John's, Cambridge.
The Itinerary and Description of Wales, by Giraldus Cambrensis, I brought with me. An Everyman, it has been many years waiting to be read. But it has footnotes in small print, for which I need a magnifying glass, I turn instead to Basil Dean's autobiography, also brought with me.
*

Galsworthy – 'clad always in well-cut tweeds'. – Basil Dean.
*

To gain some small advantage, a foolish politician will remodel heaven and earth.
*

Physiognomy – towards the end of one's life one attains a certain certainty in judging it. (Certain = uncertain.)
*

The Wanderer Under God
The World lies round me like a wraith
                                                    said Seth.
Wonder, to make one hold one's breath
                                                    said Seth
God says 'My World's of truth and myth'
                                                    said Seth
'For one who rightly wandereth'
                                                    said Seth
'and on all meanings pondereth'
                                                    said Seth
You cannot baulk the approach of Death
                                                    said Seth
Go then. The sky above, the earth beneath!
                                                 – said Seth.

*

When a large sum of money moves about, everybody in its way benefits.
*

There is only one thing certain about the vihuela, that the Paris instrument is not one.
*

Feeding pigeons: six herring gulls came down, two being lame. These fierce-looking gulls made no attempt to molest the pigeons.
A starling came down, tore off its piece of bread, and flew away over the house-top.
*

The baseball cap is now de rigueur in England. Pardon the expression.
*

On a big van: Kelly's Kippers.
*

We are born into this world to be irritated, night and day.
*

An endless array of middlemen, each craftier than the last.
*

When we approve of a politician's manoeuvres we call him a statesman.
*

My money was disappearing so fast that I began to worry. Fortunately, I found a little hotel run by a jolly Frenchman just behind the Palace Theatre, rough but clean, bare boards, unstarched linen tablecloths – where one could get a three-course lunch; soup, meat or fish, cheese and a bottle of vin (très) ordinaire for one-and-six.
(Basil Dean)
*

A civilisation built on coloured paper.
*

Judging by what America has done to Britain, there can't be much there worth seeing. However, we don't judge America by Britain.
*

The partition in one hotel was of matchboard, and the three men in the next room talked till two a.m.
*

'All my reports go with the modest truth not more, nor clipped, but so.'
Kent, in Lear.
*

'Breakfast is served in the dining-room between 08.00 hrs and 09.00 hrs.'
Typical of our computerised age.
*

Smocked Mackerel
*

Brighton Race-Course. Mammoth Toy Collectors Fair. Sunday June 11th 1991 11–4
Parking for 5000 cars. (100 was enough.)
*

The price of Boredom is eternal vigilance.
*

A good principle may be pushed to absurdity.
*

Every subject can be a life study. E.g. the social behaviour of pigeons.
*

Wordiness there must always be; the question is whether it is to be English or American wordiness, or a mixture.
*

Terms, in any subject, are chosen so as to avoid thought, or to provoke the least.
*

The critical point is where you can get about on your own, albeit with difficulty, and where you can't without someone in attendance.
*

Lough's is the only book that has made the French Revolution a little clearer to me.
*

The Jack and Jill, please, said a Yorkshireman in the restaurant.
*

Electric Kettles – I detest them.
*

Vividness of thought and speech;
that is what no book can teach.

*

Things in this room I can do without: The three extra mirrors; the radio-cum-clock-cum-telephone; the small bedside cupboard that used to hold a pisspot (that I could do with); the small flower painting; the brass ornamental bedhead, not attached to the bed; the second pillow; the patent container of liquid soap; the central heating; the lace curtain; the window box, of real flowers; the television; the wobbly stool; the notice saying 'welcome to Gulliver's;' the fire instructions; the box of dinky coloured serviettes; the electric kettle; the tray containing eight useless teabags, 8 sugars, 5 U.H.T. milks, chocolate drink, and two jars of patent coffee; tablet of their soap; solid glass ashtray; the extra towel.
– Come again.
*

I conclude that several generations of experience are needed to run a good hotel.
*

Bought in Lewes: Selections from Swinburne, by Gosse and Wise, 1933. Couldn't read it, not all the way.
*

By the Statue of Queen Victoria in Hove
The Poet:
All hail, O melancholy monolith!
You have a century or so of ease
to meditate, to chew the bitter pith
of vanished Empires and indifferent seas.

The Queen:
We're not amused, or angry, but imbued
with thoughts exultant, now that Time has shown
how every least Victorian is reviewed
repeatedly; and you, my friend, unknown.

*

My mother retains always the right to discriminate, to distinguish, and not to decide.
*

The People's Will; very good, but who are the People, and why should I be subject to their Will?
*

Bought in Lewes, cont: English Prose Style by Herbert Read, £3, Also Road Making and Maintenance by T. Aitken, President of the Road Surveyors of Scotland, £8, a wonderful book (1900).

Bought in Brighton: Autobiogs of Irene Vanbrugh and W. A.Darlington. The shop, an incredible mess. The owner's face, a symbol of drink.
*

– Where's the Pavilion, please?
– I don't know, but I know what you're up to.
*

I am a most relentless farter.
*

The binside manner (of a tramp).
*

I am one of nature's gentlemen, said W.R., with a smile.

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