Notes on Lowry and War: A Walk in Liverpool 6th July 2014 Part 2

A British trench near the Albert-Bapaume road at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. The men are from A Company, 11th Battalion, The Cheshire Regiment.

The second set of notes for a walk I led around Liverpool's Business Quarter and Riverfront organised by The Bluecoat, Liverpool.

Read Part 1
Read Part 3

Stop 3 Pierhead, Liverpool 

Lowry makes several references to the Pierhead and the Liver Buildings in his work. Also the setting for a whole chapter in forthcoming publication of previously unpublished novel In Ballast to the White Sea (October 2014).

Pier Head Liverpool Circa 1930s

Lowry's brother Stuart told their father Arthur that if he survived the First World War he would climb the Liver Building and retrieve one of the Liver birds. (Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 14). Stuart returns from WW1 suffering from arthritis of the foot. Stuart apparently shattered by deaths of comrades. Injury prevents a military career. Finishes war as a Captain (Bowker Pg 15) (See Part 1 for Stuart's army service record)

The Liver Building is topped by the Liver Birds which have become symbols for the city. I am sure that Lowry would have appreciated that irony, with his love of birds, that the mythical Liver Birds are based on the cormorant, which is a symbol of deception and greed - a fitting symbol for Lowry's "terrible city whose main street is the ocean" 'Forest Path to the Spring' (Hear Us O Lord etc pg 226)

The Consul recalls the Liver Buildings in Under The Volcano when he returns to Liverpool aboard his Q-ship Samaritan during WW1; "How strange the landing at Liverpool, the Liver Building seen once more through the misty rain, that murk smelling already of nosebags and Caegwyrle Ale.." (Pg. 135).

Shanghai 1927

Lowry sails to Far East in 1927 from Birkenhead - experiences war first hand in China - Chinese Civil War (See short story China) Later claims that scar on knee is as a consequence of being wounded in the Civil War - a Lowry tall story! ( See Bowker Pg 70.)

Lowry refers to Chinese participation in WW1 in his first novel Ultramarine - the Chinese Labour Corps; "We'll put you in the Chinese Labour Corps. The order of the rising sun - tee hee! - for promiscuous gallantry."  (See Chinese Labour Corps)

Cammell Lairds 1940

'Freighter 1940'  One of several  poems referencing Liverpool during the war written in Lowry's "exile" in Vancouver in WW2 (Collected Poetry Pg. 143);

A freighter builds in Birkenhead where rain
Falls in labourers' eyes at sunset. Then 
She's launched! Her iron sides strain as merchants gaze;
A cheer swoops down into titanic ways.

Lowry referencing Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead.

Lowry writes a poem in 1940 entitled 'Epitaph On Our Gardener, Dead Near Liverpool' when he hears of the death of his old friend - George Cooke - the gardener to the Lowry family who lived in Caldy, Wirral.

Lowry makes reference to the bombing and war on Merseyside;

.....Good folk of Wirral,
Empty the sky one instant of evil.....
Let hatred pause a moment. Rest your gun
Against this stone in heart......... (Collected Poems 210.3)

Continuing with theme that Lowry may have felt guilty about being cut off from his family who were threatened by war? (See Bowker Pgs 270-298) for details of early WW2 "exile" in Canada and relations with his family and possible enlistment in British and Canadian armies) - see poems below written in Vancouver circa 1940

The Prodigal speaks:

I have no forgiveness in my soul
And I want to get out of this hell hole (Collected Poems 209.1)

Read 'Draft Board' 1940-45 :

Back broad and straight from crop to hocks.......
Add 25 counts of progeny
See you in Liverpool (Collected Poems 203.3)

Read 'Dream of Departing Soldier'

Good bye, old comrade, of your death I pray
It proves sweet marjoram nor turn caraway. (Collected Poems 204.2)

Read 'Deserter'

In a refrigerator car at Empress,
Then, lying on bare boards in a small room,
Dead...'Should be in England?' 'Home for Christmas?' (Collected Poems 155.13)

Above poem probably based on yet to be identified newspaper article read by Lowry circa Winter 1939 - probably expresses his feeling that he would not fight/desert if forced to enlist - uses irony of over optimistic prediction that war would be over by Christmas which many thought in WW1. Lowry may also be refering to political situation within Canada in 1939 with regards to conscription (Read more about conscription in Canada in WW2)

Notes on Lowry and War: A Walk in Liverpool July 2014 Part 1

Last Sunday, I led a walk organised by The Bluecoat, Liverpool around Liverpool's Business Quarter and Riverfront stopping at sites linked to Lowry and his writings and experiences of war.

Part 2
Part 3

Below are notes based on the walk with links to further material plus references to Lowry texts.

Stop 1 Cook Street/Castle Street Liverpool

Cook Street Arcades Liverpool 1941

Read poem 'Imprisoned in a Liverpool of self' Collected Poems 233.2

One of several poems referencing Liverpool during the war written in Lowry's "exile" in Vancouver

Did Lowry see photographs of "gutted arcades" in Liverpool following 1941 German bombing blitz?

These poems appear to be a nostalgic contemplation of a lost past which is threatened by war.

Refer to short story 'June 30th 1934' (originally entitled 'Metal' and begun in 1934 but still being worked on in 1939 - see Bowker Pg. 292) - influenced by Lowry's reading of Ernst Henri's Hitler Over Europe which predicts WW2 and possibly H.J. Massingham's "metallic age" in People and things, an attempt to connect art and humanity 1919 (Note also Lowry's references to Crete may stem from Lowry's reading of Massingham's Through The Wilderness 1935.

Lowry's alter-ego Bill Goodyear seems to reflect guilt of not fighting/volunteering when Goodyear lies to Firmin, a WW1 veteran, who has met on a train while crossing the battlefields of the Somme. This theme underlies Lowry's own experiences of not volunteering for the Spanish Civil war unlike his friend John Sommerfield. (See Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Chapter X)

John Cornford

See Spanish Civil War references in Chapter 6 of Under The Volcano - a chapter on Hugh - the consul's half-brother e.g. John Cornford - There is a strong element of Cornford in the characterisation of Hugh: the Communist leanings; the romanticism of Rupert Brooke (Cornford's name-sake); and the desire to rush off to Spain in defence of a dubious freedom. Chris Ackerley 

 'June 30th 1934' WW1 details may be based on Lowry's brother Stuart who fought in WW1.

Stuart's service career 11th (Service) Battalion  Cheshire Regiment. 17.09.1914 Formed at Chester as part of the Third New Army (K3). Stuart enlists 22/9/1914. And then moved to Codford St. Mary in the 75th Brigade of the 25th Division and then moved to Bournemouth. May 1915 Moved to Aldershot. 26.09.1915 Mobilised for war and landed in France and engaged in various actions on the Western Front including; 1916: German attack on Vimy Ridge May 1916. German attack on Vimy Ridge, The Battle of Albert, The Battle of Bazentin, The Battle of Pozieres, The Battle of the Ancre Heights. 1917 The Battle of Messines, The Battle of Pilkem.

Joins as Lieutenant 26th Service Battalion of Royal Welch Fusiliers - 16.07.1918 in France from the 4th Garrison Guard of the 176th Brigade of the 59th Division. 11.11.1918 Ended the war in Delpre N.E. of Tournai, Belgium.

Did Lowry feel guilty about being cut off from his family who were threatened by war? (See Bowker Pgs 270-298) for details of early WW2 "exile" in Canada and relations with his family and possible enlistment in British and Canadian armies)

Lowry claims to have argued with his father Arthur Lowry in 1934 over possibility of war (Bowker Pg 274)

Lowry - "I continued warning my family but they took no damn notice. Result: they'll probably not only lose all their money, but be killed, when they might have been living in Jerusalem" (Letter to Margerie Bonner Sept. 1939)

Stop 2 Nelson's Monument, Exchange Flags 

Exchange Flags circa 1900

Arthur Lowry worked as cotton broker at Buston's & Co. in Exchange Flags before moving to new purpose built Cotton Exchange in 1906.

The Nelson Monument is a monument to Admiral Horatio Nelson, in Exchange Flags, Liverpool, England. It was designed by Matthew Cotes Wyatt and sculpted by Richard Westmacott. It stands to the north of the Town Hall and was unveiled in 1813.

The Battle of Copenhagen, as painted by Nicholas Pocock

Nelson was a hero of Arthur Lowry's (See Bowker Pg. 14 Arthur raises his hat to the memory of Nelson while sailing to Russia in 1914 when passes the site of the Battle of Copenhagan) - the statue in Exchange Flags references that victory - Arthur would have been reminded of his hero on a daily basis.

Lowry refers to his father as a "Tory of Tory capitalists on a grand scale" - Bowker suggests that Arthur Lowry would have been caught up in jingoism of WW1( See Bowker Pg. 14)

Lowry's rebellion against father's politics - apparent in British Empire references in Chapter 6 of Under The Volcano - see Chris Ackerley - Cambridge left wing influences shown in anti-fascist stance in Under The Volcano ( See also references to Spanish Civil War in Bowker)

The monument also features as a key place in political discussions between Sigbjorn and his father in forthcoming unpublished novel In Ballast to the White (October 2014) - these discussions may possibly reflect ones Lowry had with his father.

1916 - Arthur Lowry sails to USA on board USMS St Louis for cotton business (Bowker Pg 15) - impact of dangers on family and Lowry himself

Canadian Poetry Magazine Volume II Numbers 1 and 2

These two magazines both contain poems by Malcolm Lowry. Number 1 has 'Sestina in a Cantina'. Number 2 has 'Old Freighter in an Old Port', 'Port Moody', and 'Indian Arm.'

Thanks to James Reynolds

Vancouver Bus Terminal

A singing smell of tar, of the highway
Fills the grey Vancouver Bus Terminal
- Poem Turned Back at the Border

The above painting entitled Vancouver Bus Terminal 1939 is by Brian Croft. Here is what he had to say about the painting:

As with railroads and airlines, tracing transportation corporate history is always a jumble of buy-outs and mergers. I’ll pick up the story behind this painting in 1922 when Vancouver entrepreneur, Ivor Neil, decided to expand his small local bus company. He renamed it Pacific Stages Transportation Ltd, purchased a few more buses and commenced service between Vancouver and Port Moody and Coquitlam.

Expanding as he went, Neil bought up other companies and eventually served the Fraser Valley and south as far as Seattle. In 1924, The British Columbia Electric Railway Company (BCER) was watching Ivor Neil closely.

The BCER understood the emerging potential of bus travel, sensed competition with its electric streetcar and interurban system and responded decisively. By 1925 The BCER formed BC Motor Transportation Ltd. comprised of Pacific Stage Lines (PSL) still run by Ivor Neil, and a tour bus line called Grey Line.

In a parallel venture it also formed BC Rapid Transport to handle motor freighting in the Fraser Valley. BCER’s BC Motor Transportation Ltd. expanded quickly and in 1926, ground was broken for a stylish new depot and head office on the southeast corner of Dunsmuir and Seymour streets.

When the modestly sized depot opened that fall it was likely the most stylish and modern bus depot in North America. By 1930 PSL ran service to West Vancouver and Horseshoe Bay, south through Surrey to Halls Prairie, Coast Meridian and Johnston, past Haney to Mission and Harrison Hot Springs and out to Sumas Prairie. In 1932 BC Motor Transport merged its BC Rapid Transit freight operation into PSL.

New modern buses were acquired with streamlining and more passenger comforts. In 1936 a Vancouver manufacturer, Hayes, revolutionized the industry by creating a streamlined model based on the Chrysler Airflow. It was nicknamed the Teardrop, a bus so successful that Hayes became the main builder of PSL buses.

Although only five were ever built, Hayes went on to build the magnificent and innovative “Clipper” model. My painting Vancouver Bus Terminal – 1939 is based on an archived photograph by well known Vancouver photographer Leonard Frank.

Although I added hundreds of tiny additional researched details, I made two major alterations by expanding the viewpoint laterally and creating a night scene. The decision to create a night painting meant that the 1939 bus schedules needed to be found and researched.

This done, I am empowered to write that the Hayes Clipper in the foreground is the departing 7 p.m. bus bound for Seattle, Washington. The fare is $3 or $5.50 return. The teardrop in front of the terminal arrived earlier at 6:35 p.m. The teardrop emerging onto Seymour Street is the 7:15 departure to New Westminster via Kingsway.

The PSL emblem on each bus features the flying horse Pegasus signifying strength, speed and beauty. The depot was adorned with radiant neon destination signs and on the corner are pointers with more than 30 additional destinations.

By design, passersby would read these and begin to imagine themselves stepping on board a PSL coach, in every sense, a gateway express to the rest of the globe. The Hotel Dunsmuir anchors the left of my painting; the building survives to this day. The terminal housed several businesses located on the upper two floors. The sidewalk tenants included: Bridge River, a beauty salon, a barbershop, and a shoeshine stall.

The main attractions, however, are close to the corner; Ivor Neil could often be found in Pacific Tour and Travel Bureau under the Travel bureau sign, United Cigars, a well-known chain, occupies the double entry corner location and next door, Fountain Lunch, looks to be a most inviting eatery.

All of this I painted as accurately as possible. The colours are of my own imagination and I painted the entire scene, in my own style, romantically reflected in the glistening evidence of a recent fall shower.

All aboard!
Richmond News

Malcolm Lowry A hundred Years On: A Byronic Perspective

A lecture by Sir Drummond Bone, Liverpool University which I missed back in 2009:

Well why Lowry at this Lecture? Really just because one hundred years after his birth I wanted to think about Lowry again – back in the seventies I wrote a bit about him – and since then of course I have the Liverpool connection – Lowry having being born in 1909 in New Brighton and brought up in Caldy next to Hoylake – and I’ve also had the chance to visit some of the Lowry sights in Mexico. I remember having a morning beer in an empty bar opposite the original of Jacques Laruelle’s....Read more

SOIS PATIENT CAR LE LOUP - Catherine Delaunay, John Greaves

Here is a short piece SOIS PATIENT CAR LE LOUP - Catherine Delaunay, John Greaves after Malc's poem 'Pacific is a feeble symbol of death':



See other poems on Youtube:

No Time To Stop And Think

I have just come across one of Malc's poems put to music by the Consumirantes:

Música: Juan José Rueda
Voz: Eva Paéz
Bajo: Miguel Ángel del Arco
Piano: Juan José Rueda

NO TIME TO STOP AND THINK

The only hope is the next drink.
If you like, you take a walk.
No time to stop and think,
The only hope is the next drink.
Useless trembling on the brink,
Worse than useless all this talk.
The only hope is the next drink.
If you like, you take a walk.

Lowry's Poem 'The Drunkards' in the New Yorker May 5th 1962

"The noise of death is in the desolate bar
Where tranquility sits bowed over its prayer"

The above are the first 2 lines from Malc's poem 'The Drunkards' posthumously published in the New Yorker on 5th May 1962. The poem was written between 1940 and 1954.

You can read the full poem in the Collected Poetry of Malcolm lowry edited by Kathleen Scherf.

Lowry's poem, 'Thirty-five Mescals in Cuautla' 1937

Click on the photo to enlarge

On the pictured calendar, set to the future,
The two reindeer battle to death, white man,
The tick of real death, not the tick of time,
Hearing, thrusts his canoe into a moon,
Risen to bring us madness none too soon

The above lines are taken from Lowry's poem, 'Thirty-five Mescals in Cuautla'. The image of the reindeer locked in battle has always fascinated me. I was recently reading a Life magazine dated 24th May 1937 and there on page 96 was the above article. Could this possibly be the source for Lowry's image of the two reindeer in his poem?

As I have already noted in a post on the Source for "In Memoriam Ingvald Bjorndal And His Comrade", Lowry uses a variety of sources for his work including newspapers, magazines, journals and periodicals.

He may have been reading the Life magazine whilst drinking the 35 mescals in Cuautla! Chris Ackerley notes in Lowry's Collected Poems that Malc claims the poem was written in the town in July 1937. But Chris goes on to say that Conrad Aiken claimed it was sent to him from Charlie's bar in Cuernavaca.


Agua Hedionda Cuautla, Morelos, México, entre 1926 y 1935



I have featured Jose Guadalupe Posada before on the blog and I came across the poster below whilst searcing about Cuautla:



In 1900 Maucci Brothers, a Spanish publisher, commissioned José Guadalupe Posada. Posada to illustrate a series of pamphlets for children on the history of Mexico. Each pamphlet measuring 4 3/4 x 3 1/4 in. is approximately 16 pages. The cover illustrations are probably the only mechanically produced chromolithographs that Posada ever did. See more here

Peer Gynt 1941

Above photo courtesy of Indiana University

I recently re-read Lowry's poem 'The Lighthouse Invites the Storm'. The first part of the poem is called 'Peter Gaunt And The Canals' which has many allusions to Ibsen's Peer Gynt. I came across the above film of Ibsen's play while researching Lowry's original source for his poem.

The 1941 silent, student-made, low budget film version of the play starred a seventeen-year-old Charlton Heston. The film was directed by David Bradley and co-starred Betty Hanisee as Aase.

Here is an extract of the film:

Mexican Day of the Dead: An Anthology by Chloë Sayer

On November 2nd, All Souls' Day, the dead are granted celestial permission to visit friends and relatives on Earth, and the entire country of Mexico is given over to fiesta. This charming anthology celebrates this unique Mexican holiday with poems and prose, photographs and art, including 16 pages in full color.

Chloë Sayer includes Lowry's poem:

For the love of dying

The tortures of hell are stern, their fires burn fiercely.
Yet vultures turn against the air more beautifully
Than seagulls float downwind in cool sunlight,
Or fans in asylums spin a loom of fate
For hope which never ventured up so high
As life's deception, astride the vulture's flight.

Epilogue To The Lighthouse Invites The Storm

New Brighton Lighthouse by David Ward

June too soon.
July stand by.
August look out you must.
September remember.
October all over.
Epilogue to The Lighthouse Invites The Storm in The Collected Poetry of Malcolm Lowry

I am continuing with my look at Lowry's sources in his poetry. The above epilogue is often referred to as a seaman's or mariner's proverb. The proverb refers to the hurricane season in the Caribbean. I was interested to identify Lowry's original source for the quote. It is possible that he read the phrase in his many nautical readings though I haven't discovered a source from the likes of Conrad, Masefield etc. He may have heard it during his association with sailors in Liverpool or Birkenhead or on board Pyrrhus during his voyage to the Far East in 1927.

Another possible source is from a book called Weather Lore by Richard Inwards published in 1898- "a collection of proverbs, sayings and rules concerning the weather". Inwards quotes his source for the proverb about "hurricanes in the West Indies" as Admiral George Nares. Nares wrote a book called Practical Seamanship for young officer cadets to keep the skills of seamanship alive in the days of transition from sail to steam in case the skills were required if steam failed. Nares's book was adapted by the British Admirality and became a standard work on the subject.

Lowry may have had access to Inward's collection in the family library at his home in Ingelwood or at his schools Caldicott and The Leys. He may have also read the proverb in a magazine or newspaper as he was a prolific reader of both as his sources prove.



One other possible source is his brother Wilfrid, as he was a part time naval officer with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in the latter part of WW1 on HMS Eagle seen above in Liverpool, who may have had a copy of Nares's book. If Wilfrid did have the Nares book, I am sure that an inquisitive young Malc would have taken a peek inside as he was fascinated by all things nautical as a youth. By coincidence, Nares was Acting Conservator of the River Mersey in the years before his death in 1915. The Mersey was the river that Lowry crossed many times and sailed out of in 1927 to the far east.



I can find no details whether Nares sailed to the Caribbean during his time with the Royal Navy. Again, he may have picked up the proverb from mixing in naval circles.



According to Malena Kuss, in Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: an encyclopedic history, the actual source for the proverb is from the Anglophonic Caribbean. Kuss details how sea shanties originated with in the Anglophonic Caribbean:

Shanties performed in call-in-response style are relics of the past and still sung in some parts of Anglophonic Caribbean and, according to Abrahams, thrived in areas where different ethnic groups (Europeans, African Americans and European Americans) were brought together to perform a common task. In Deep Water, Shallow Shore 1974, he (Abrahams) traces representations of this tradition in 19th Century English travel chronicles, probes the co-ordination between song-patterns and tasks, and differentiates local repertoires from those influenced by the international sea trade.



Songs might be improvised to suit the occasion or come from a repertoire of shanties "associated with the sea trades in the days of large sailing vessels", and both the local and international types exist side by side. As an example from Nevis whose distribution remained limited to the Caribbean. Caesar, Boy Caesar was one of the local songs most commonly used to haul boats out of the water. The strength required for the task used to congregate men at the beach before the hurricane season and often a big drum ensemble was brought to provide further encouragement, along with vast quantities plenty of rum. The lengthy strophic text which provokes fun at the drummer, is sung without much variation to a simple "western" type of tune whose regular phrase structure is subverted by an "African" call-and-response performance style. The principle of complementary opposition built into the task and established between the leader and the followers is encode in the alternation of shantyman solo with group response.



Both the the tune and the text of Caesar, Boy Caesar were transcribed by Abrahams (1974) but musical notation does not do justice to the rhythmic subtleties in the chanter's performance that he and Lomax recorded on Nevis in 1962 in Nevis and St. Kitts Tea Meetings, Christmas Sports and The Moonlight Night. Instead of sea shanties, short "routines" also were used for heavy lifting as in the following "mnemomic rhyme" also sung to haul boats out of the water before the hurricane season:

June too soon.
July stand by.
August look out you must.
September remember.
October all over

I cannot find the above rhyme in a musical form but here is Caesar, Boy Caesar:




You can buy Caesar, Boy Caesar on a CD issued on Rounder Records called Caribbean Voyage: Nevis & St. Kitts: Tea Meetings, Christmas Sports, & the Moonlight Night



Lowry's work has other references to sea shanties such as Seraphina in his short story Goya The Obscure which I will post about at a later date. You can imagine the young Malc reading Melville or Dana and dreaming about singing songs in the fo'c'sle on Saturday night as seen in the above drawing.

I soon got used to this singing; for the sailors never touched a rope without it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike up, and the pulling, whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting forward very well, the mate would always say, "Come, men, can't any of you sing? Sing now, and raise the dead." And then some one of them would begin, and if every man's arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am sure the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It is a great thing in a sailor to know how to sing well, for he gets a great name by it from the officers, and a good deal of popularity among his shipmates. Some sea-captains, before shipping a man, always ask him whether he can sing out at a rope. (Herman Melville, Redburn: His First Voyage, 1849)

A song is as necessary to sailors as the drum and fife to a soldier. They must pull together as soldiers must step in time, and they can't pull in time, or pull with a will, without it. Many a time, when a thing goes heavy, with one fellow yo-ho-ing, a lively song, like "Heave, to the girls!" "Nancy O!" "Jack Crosstree," "Cheerly, men," &c., has put life and strength into every arm. We found a great difference in the effect of the various songs in driving in the hides. Two or three songs would be tried, one after the other, with no effect,-- not an inch could be got upon the tackles; when a new song, struck up, seemed to hit the humor of the moment, and drove the tackles "two blocks" at once. "Heave round hearty!" "Captain gone ashore!" "Dandy ship and a dandy crew," and the like, might do for common pulls, but on an emergency, when we wanted a heavy, "raise-the-dead pull," which should start the beams of the ship, there was nothing like "Time for us to go!" "Round the corner," "Tally high ho! you know," or "Hurrah! hurrah! my hearty bullies!" (Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, 1840)

Lowry's own experiences, at sea on the voyage to the Far East, fell short of the camaraderie he had dreamed about as a boy. His first novel Ultramarine chronicles his disappointment that Pyrrhus didn't have a fo'c'sle and no one sang sea shanties either!

I couldn't find a drum ensemble from St. Kitts but I did find this ensemble from Haiti:



If we take the description of Kuss's above of the "mnemomic rhyme" about the hurricane season then I presume it may have sounded similar to the Haiti video.

Postcript

After posting the above, I returned to the The Collected Poetry of Malcolm Lowry and noticed that Chris Ackerley had included a reference to Hart Crane's poem Eternity in his annotation for the Epilogue to The Lighthouse Invites The Storm. Hart Crane wrote the following as an epilogue to Eternity:

September - remember!
October - all over.
Barbadian Adage

Hart Crane wrote Eternity following a hurricane which hit Cuba during his stay on the Isle Of Pines (now called Isla de la Juventud)on October 18th 1926. Hart Crane may have picked up the adage from fishermen on the Isle Of Pines or he may have heard it from one of his sailor friends or acquaintances. Lowry himself was familiar with Crane's poetry and probably picked up a copy of Crane's posthumous Collected Poetry published in 1933 which included the unpublished Eternity.

Below is a postcard of a steamer similar to one Hart Crane refers to in Eternity as being wrecked by the hurricane.

The Six Brown Brothers Peter Gink

And later Grieg, and later still the six
Brown brothers, hot forerunners of the riffs.
Let the pun pass, remembering Peter Gink;
And so make way for Mr Peter Gaunt.
Peter Gaunt and the Canals - an extract from a poem by Malcom Lowry

Lowry is referring in the above poem to the track by the Six Brown Brothers called Peter Gink which is a humorous take on the Grieg classic Peer Gynt:





Other than a copycat act, the Six Brown Brothers were the only saxophone ensemble to make commercial records between 1911 and 1917, and they ushered in the "saxophone craze" that had the country entranced in the mid-1910s. From the group's start in 1908 playing in the Ringling Brothers' circus until their final breakup in 1933, the shifting personnel of the outfit always included leader Tom Brown and at least one of his five brothers. On records for U.S. Everlasting, Columbia, Victor, and Emerson, the Brown Brothers set feet a-tapping to their joyous sound and comical routine. Read more at Hungry Tiger Press

You can hear more of the band's music on a CD Those Moaning Saxophones. You can also hear most of their music on Internet Archive.

The Source for "In Memoriam Ingvald Bjorndal And His Comrade"

Just thought I'd give you a taster of my latest Lowry research.

I have been diving deeper and deeper into Lowry - I was reading Chris Ackerley's excellent "Explanatory Annotation" in the The Collected Poetry Of Malcolm Lowry. I was sitting there thinking of what Chris had written and how my own "encyclopedia" was growing. His essay could have been a preface to what I am trying to achieve! I was thinking that the more I delved the more I was connecting with Lowry's sources.

As I leafed through Chris's annotations to the poems, I noticed that he had been unable to discover the source of Ingvald Bjorndal in the poem In Memoriam Ingvald Bjorndal And His Comrade. I thought let's have a try and behold Lowry's source rises from the deep of the Net in the form of a Montreal Gazette newspaper article from January 29th 1941 as seen above.

Lowry has virtually used all the words of the article for his poem. This discovery does shed some light on how Lowry scooped up material and "assembled" it into his own work. He may have written down notes or, as you can see in the University Of British Columbia archives, he cut out articles and pasted them into notebooks. The best published example of how he "assembled" his work can be read in La Mordida which was only published in 1996.

In both the above article in the Montreal Gazette and Lowry's poem, you are left with the impression that Ingvald Bjorndal perished. However, I did turn up the following possibility that he survived.

I found this extract on the War Sailors website concerning the last voyage of a Norwegian ship Thorstrand:

Captain Anthonius Stave. Thorstrand departed Liverpool alone on Febr. 27-1943 with about 1500 tons general cargo for St. John, N. B. She was torpedoed and sunk on March 6 by U-172 (Emmermann), position 41 23N 42 59W. Page 4 of the archive documents gives the time as about 19:17 (J. Rohwer gives time as 23:07). The torpedo struck on the port side in No. 3 hatch, destroying the port midships lifeboat. 4 died while 35 crew and the 8 passengers survived.

The next morning, the motor lifeboat took the other 2 lifeboats in tow, heading for the Azores. 1 of the lifeboats had to be given up due to leaks, and after 3 injured men had been transferred to the motorboat it was ordered to go on ahead. It was located on March 14 by an American ship and its occupants landed at Casablanca on the 21st, while the lifeboat continued sailing for 11 days until they on March 17 were taken in tow to Flores by a motorboat which came out ("Nortraships flåte" gives the sinking position as 41 23N 42 50W).

Listed in the survivors was one Ingvald Bjorndal a mechanic - I wonder!

Untitled Holograph Poem/Notes

I came across the above on the Abe Books website.

The holograph is being sold by Ken Lopez - Bookseller, ABAA (Hadley, MA, U.S.A.)for £2420.75. Here is his annotation:

Undated, but probably circa 1954-57. A single page, approximately 200 words, with several changes and corrections. The first line of holograph reads: "Story or poem combining:" and Lowry goes on to jot down a number of images, which read as though they may hang together poetically, as a deliberate work, or may just be the jottings, connected in the author's mind, of images and ideas to use in future writing. The first image is "The windmill, sails ever motionless, transfixed over Polegate." He goes on to write: "Polegate a Railway 'Graveyard.'/ Polegate Station is becoming a 'graveyard'/ for old railway wagons. Work began last month/ On breaking up a large number of wagons/ -- Some over 50 years old -- , and, says the Stationmaster,/ Mrs. Roberts, it will continue for years." There is poetic rumination on the after-effects of the breaking up of the wagons, and the choice of Polegate as the site; and on the twenty-four local men who have been hired to do the work, and then the point of view shifts to that of a passenger on a train passing through Polegate: "For some weeks passengers fr [sic]/ from Bewick on the Eastbourne line [?] have watched the/ swan with delight, as she/ sat, unblinking, believing herself/ hidden on her nest./ To-day she was seen for/ the first time with her/ young cygnet." Polegate Windmill is a well-known landmark in Eastbourne, Sussex, England, which was built in 1817. Polegate Station is a stop on the Eastbourne line from London. When Lowry left Canada in 1954, he returned to England where he had been born in 1909, and lived in Ripe, Sussex, not far from Polegate. He was working on a number of different manuscripts at the time of his death from an overdose of sleeping pills, and this sheet seems to fall somewhere between being an attempt at a formal poem and being notes for a scene from a larger work. Edge-creased with one short edge tear, not affecting text. Near fine; housed in custom folder, chemise and slipcase. Manuscript material by Lowry is very scarce: much was destroyed in a fire in Canada, and much since has been institutionalized. While his letters turn up occasionally, this is the first fragment we have had of a piece that has obvious literary intent. Bookseller Inventory # 019208 Abe Books



You can find out more about Polegate Windmill here.



Polegate Station closed in 1986 but you can read about the history of the station on Subterranean Britannica.