While Bess is reciting the poem, Will will copy it down and then presents the copy to the customer to keep as a memento.
(image credit 1716.1)
Most of the first lines have to do with the ice. What wondrous magic the ice on the Thames doth be, to which Bess followed with, The river enslaved, but the people of London set free. But over the course of the days and weeks she has made every possible rhyme and really there are just so many words that will match up with ice. She is tired of nice and price and concise. She is sick to death of thrice and dice and wise, which she pronounces as wice to get the rhyme.
“I need a rest,” she says to Will, who has returned to the booth and has, she sees too late, returned with a man in a top hat.
“What?” says Will.
“This day I trod upon the ice,” says the man.
Bess could scream. She could open her mouth and tip her head back and scream until her voice shredded in her throat.
Will and the customer look at her expectantly.
“This day I trod upon the ice,” says the man again, helpfully.
Bess is tired of being an oddity. Her gift has made her little better than a performing dog. It has not done her any good at all. The money they earn, Will spends at the ale tent. She is freezing cold from being all day out on the river. This is not how she wants to live.
The only way out of somewhere is by the door you came in.
“This day I trod upon the ice,” she says. “I paid and paid a dreadful price./I will not pretend that this is nice./A poet as whore will not suffice.”
1740
—
The winter is full of malice. This is how it seems. The river is choked with icebergs, the rugged chunks of ice growing more immense each day as the ice is broken up every twelve hours by the high tides, refreezing as the water ebbs and creating a spectacular ice field as a result of all the tumult. Several people fall through the ice and drown as the surface looks solid but is really too weak in places to be safely walked upon. A Frost Fair has been established on the most stable section of the Thames.
The winter is so cold that passengers being rowed across the open portions of the river have perished while sitting in the wherries. Post boys have died from the cold while riding out on horseback. A woman with a baby is found dead, her living child still suckling at her frozen breast. Farmers spend their time breaking the ice on the troughs so their animals can drink. Ale and wine freeze, and even bottles of ink in the drawing-rooms of houses turn to ice.
All those who depend on the river and the good weather for their livelihoods begin to starve. They parade through the streets of London – the watermen, fishermen, carpenters, gardeners – carrying the tools of their trade and dragging a peter-boat, singing dirges for their lost wages and begging for relief money.
Ice stops the words from flowing to the page; the wine flowing to the glass. The line cannot drop to catch a fish. The vegetables and fruit will not grow in the frozen earth.
(image credit 1740.1)
The winter is not just cold in England. In Russia, the Empress Anne has an ice palace constructed with walls that are three feet thick and all the furniture – beds and chairs and tables – made of ice.
The thaw of the Thames goes just as badly as the freeze. It comes fierce and sudden, huge slabs of ice crashing through the arches of London Bridge, damaging the bridge and carrying away portions of the Frost Fair. Booths and huts, upright and unmanned on their ice floes, hurtle downstream, some with their signs still attached to the front of the structure. It is as though the people of London need reminding that the river is a wild thing and this cannot be forgotten because, if it is, the Thames will simply arch its back and throw anything off that tries to tame it.
1762
—
COLD, kold. a. [Sax.] Not hot; not warm; gelid. Milton. Causing sense of cold. Milton. Chill; shivering; frigid. Hooker. Unaffecting. B. Jonson. Reserved; coy. Shak. Chaste. Shak. Not welcome. Shak. Not hasty; not violent. Not affecting the scent strongly. Shak. Not having the scent strongly affected. Shakespeare.
To FREEZE, freeze. v.a. pret. froze. [vrieson, Dutch] To be congealed with cold. Ray. To be of that degree of cold by which water is congealed. Shakespeare.
To FREEZE, freeze. v.a. pret. froze. part. Frozen, or froze. To congeal with cold. Milton. To kill by cold. Shak. To chill by the loss of power or motion. Shakespeare.
FRIGID, frid-jid. 544. a. [frigidus, Lat.] Cold; wanting warmth. Cheyne. Wanting warmth of affection. Impotent; without warmth of body. Dull; without fire of fancy. Tatler.
FRIGORIFICK, fri-go-rif-ik. a. [frigorificus, Lat.] Causing cold. Quincy.
FROST, frost. n.s. [Sax.] The last effect of cold; the power or act of congelation. South. The appearance of plants and trees sparkling with congelation of dew. Pope.
FROSTNAIL, frost-nale. n.s. A nail with a prominent head driven into the horse’s shoes, that it may pierce the ice. Grew.
FROSTY, fros-te. a. Having the power of congelation; excessive cold. Bacon. Chill in affection; without warmth of kindness or courage. Shak. Hoary; grey-haired; resembling frost. Shakespeare.
FROZEN, fro-zn. 103. part. pass. of freeze. Congealed with cold. Dryden. Chill in affection. Sidney. Void of heat or appetite. Pope.
ICE, ise. n.s. [Sax.] Water or other liquor made solid by cold. Shak. Concreted sugar. – To break the ice. To make the first opening to any attempt. Shakespeare.
ICICLE, i-sik-kl. 405. n.s. [from ice] A shoot of ice commonly hanging down from the upper part. Brown.
ICKLE, ik-kl. n.s. In the north of England, an icicle. Grose.
ICY, i-se. a. Full of ice; covered with ice; made of ice; cold; frosty. Shak. Cold; free from passion. Shak. Frigid; backward. Shakespeare.
RIVER, riv-ur. 98. n.s. [rivière, Fr.; rivus, Lat.] A land current of water bigger than a brook. Locke.
To THAW, thaw. 466. v.n. [Sax.] To grow liquid after congelation; to melt. Donne. To remit the cold which had caused frost.
WINTER, win-tur. 98. n.s. [Sax.; winter, Dan., Germ., and Dutch.] The cold season of the year. Sidney.
To WINTER, win-tur. v.n. To pass the winter. Isiah, xviii.
To WINTER, win-tur. v.a. To feed or manage in the winter. Temple.
WINTER is often used in composition.
1768
—
Arthur Young cannot get warm. He walks from the bed to the desk, to the window and then back to the bed, to the door and then back to the window. If he stops he starts to feel his limbs stiffening up. If he increases his pace around the room he crashes into the furniture. He wears all his clothes, including his heavy outdoor coat. The thin spew of smoke issuing from the coal fire in the corner of the room does absolutely nothing to warm it. Last night the bedclothes were so cold that Arthur felt he was actually lying under slabs of ice.
From the window the frozen Thames sparkles in the noon sun. The hottest part of the day, Arthur reminds himself as he crosses from the window to the door.
He is in London to meet with his publisher. His book, A Six Weeks’ Tour Through the Southern Counties of England and Wales, is due out this spring and he has had to make some final alterations to the text. The book is the culmination of a walk through the agricultural land of southern England. Arthur is interested in agricultural practices and decided to simply wander about and record what he saw in terms of soil, crops, roads, cattle, farm-buildings, methods of farming. He is also working on a book about his own experiments with agriculture, but he can sense already that his walking tour will be the better book. Sometimes the simplest idea is the strongest one.
Arthur Young has taken a while to find his way to writing about agriculture. He is the son of a rector, was sent to school to learn commerce but showed no aptitude for it. He wrote a pamphlet on the war in North America when he was seventeen and started a periodical called The Universal Museum, which he stopped at the advice of Samuel Johnson. In the few short years after that he wrote four novels and a book on polit
ics, but none of them came to much. When his father died he was left a small estate bridled with debt. He tried farming his mother’s property and then married Miss Alien, a woman he is not particularly happy with and isn’t sure he even loves. In 1766, he rented a hundred acres in Hertfordshire to try his farming experiments on. So far all his experiments have failed. The land he has rented is so poor that it threatens to defeat him. He has written about the place to a friend: “I know not what epithet to give this soil; sterility falls short of the idea; a hungry vitriolic gravel.”
Arthur should feel utterly devastated at this point in his life, but he actually feels quite buoyant, and as long as he keeps moving briskly around his room at the inn, he need not fear that he will freeze to death today.
He has liked walking through England and writing about the farms and farmers he has found there. He plans to do a walking tour of the north and east and west to complete the survey of the countryside, once the book on the southern sojourn has been published. The summers will be for walking and the winters will be for writing.
Arthur makes another circumnavigation of his room. This time he stops at the window and looks down at the Thames. It still astonishes him to see it frozen. But perhaps even a river needs to rest and, like a garden asleep in winter, will come back stronger because of the pause. Perhaps ice is a kind of sleep.
And looking down at the flat, blank white of the river, Arthur Young thinks something else as well. The small black figures moving along the smooth expanse look exactly like words, exactly like words being set down upon a page.
1776
—
I have to warm my tools in the fire just so I can hang on to them. My hands turn into blocks of stone holding the chisel and hammer, and the actual block of stone I am carving is as cold to the touch as a block of ice.
My breath is as thick around me as fog. This morning when I rose, ice had formed in a crust under my bed. All around my London house the birds are falling frozen from the skies, or swooping weakly down to eat the steaming dung the horses have left in the streets. The horses themselves are so hungry that they have started coming into the gardens and scratching through the frost and snow to eat any of the plants that might be growing there.
In the south a whole flock of sheep was buried in the snow for thirteen days before a dog managed to find them, all somehow still alive.
The river is a block of ice and the ferrymen cannot work. Like the horses, they scrape about for money and food. A great many people are unable to work because of the cold and the frozen river. I must be one of the lucky ones in that regard, for people are always dying in frigid winters, and the dead always need a stone above their heads to mark their graves.
This is what I am doing, carving words into a stone for someone who perished in this cold weather.
I work in the front room of an old house on the south bank of the Thames. I work with the doors open because of the stone dust – how it makes me choke if there is not enough fresh air about – how it crawls into every part of my hair and clothing, every nook and cranny of the house.
From the open doors I can see the river, can see the skaters carving marks into the surface of the ice, as I am carving words into this stone. The Thames has become a tomb, a gravestone for the river that lies beneath. The river that has been buried alive.
I like what I do. It is good, honest work. I like the effort of chiselling words into stone, of writing, for the last time, the name of the man or woman or child who has died. There is a solemnity about the act of carving the name that I appreciate. It takes work and it should. Leaving this world should not be an easy thing, should not be without effort.
Because I have carved so many names, and because it takes so long to carve them, I have remembered every one. They live on in my fingertips, in the brush of my hand over stone. All these people I never knew who have become, in death, members of my own family.
But in all the years I have been making tombstones, I have never made one so strange as this. It almost seems a jest, what this boy’s family have desired me say upon his stone; but I know, having met the family, that they are as upset as any other family about the death of their son. Because his death, the manner of his death, was so strange, they do not know what else to say about it.
Living so close by the river as I do, I have heard the noises the water makes from underneath the ice. It groans like a living creature. I hear it at night, late at night when the streets are quiet. I turn in my cold bed and the river turns in hers, and she lets out a moan as she does it.
I am not alarmed by this. The noise of the river is an odd comfort. It makes me feel not so alone.
I put down the chisel and the hammer, shake the cold from my numb fingers, and stand back to admire my work. It is done. Another soul is stitched to the earth.
In memory of the Clerk’s son,
Bless my i, i, i, i, i, i,
Here I lies
In a sad pickle
Killed by an icicle,
In the year of Anno Domini 1776.
1784
—
Another cold winter. More have perished this year – frozen by the side of the road, buried under drifts of snow – than in any year in living memory.
It only makes good sense to stay indoors.
It only makes good sense to find an occupation to fully engage the body and the mind whilst remaining indoors.
I am fully engaged in perfecting the recipe for Jugged Hare. For years I have just made it as I felt, using whatever was on hand and not thinking of how to improve the quality of the taste. Now that I have this forced time indoors I am able to experiment. The cold, however, does interfere with my supply of hares. My husband is kept busy on our small acreage, chasing them through the frosted fields. He has even ventured as far as the frozen Thames in pursuit of a fitting rabbit for my pot.
They are scrawny creatures, these winter hares that he hunts down and brings to me. They always need a little extra stewing to persuade the stringy meat from their bones.
JUGGED HARE
– one jointed hare
– a fistful of flour
– bacon drippings
– onions cut in slices
– a jar of chopped bacon
– some game stock
– a spoon of ground cloves
– a handful of mixed sweet herbs
– a sprinkle of mace
1. Flour the hare and brown in the bacon drippings. Remove the pieces when they are browned and add the onions. Brown them also, and then add the bacon.
2. Return the hare to the pot with the stock, cloves, herbs, and mace.
3. Boil the lot, then simmer for three hours – longer if the hare is old or thin – until the meat is tender.
My husband has become an expert on Hasenpfeffer, as skilled as I am. He sits down every evening with his napkin tucked under his chin. He takes the first bite and shifts the meat from one side of his mouth to the other. Often I cannot wait for his verdict.
“Well?” I say. “Too much mace? Not enough cloves? Too long in the pot?”
My husband is interested primarily in the rabbit, for this has been where he has put his attention. While I have been adding and removing herbs, sifting just the right amount of flour over the pieces of the hare, he has been chasing the beast through the cold winter fields, running his dogs to it, racing behind on his favourite horse. It is the rabbit and the rabbit only that he sits in judgment of every evening.
“I knew this was a plump one,” he will say. “I knew it when I first spied it in the stubble. I knew the meat would be this tender, would slip so softly from the bone. Last night’s rabbit was hard to chew but this one – this one is just right.”
(image credit 1784.1)
1789
—
The freezing of the Thames always occurs above London Bridge because the bridge acts as a dam and the water moves slower above the dam than below it.
But this year the temperature droppe
d so low in December and remained so through January, that the river froze all the way from Putney to a mile below London Bridge at Rotherhithe.
There is another Frost Fair, this one more elaborate than usual. There are puppet shows and roundabouts. A young bear is hunted on the ice at Rotherhithe. Pigs and sheep are roasted whole.
The publican and his wife have been out on the ice, enjoying all the diversions for one whole afternoon. They have left the pub in the charge of their son and daughter and are now making their way back to it over the river. The evening will be busy and they want to be back in time to take full advantage of the lucky fact that their pub is right beside the Thames at Rotherhithe.
It has been a good afternoon. The publican and his wife have laughed together and felt an ease they haven’t remembered feeling since they were first married. Even though they are in a hurry they walk slowly back through the fair. The publican’s wife holds her husband’s arm, likes the feeling of it tucked tight against her ribs.
“Look at that,” says the publican. They stop in front of a small wooden booth. There is a sign tacked on to the front of the hut: This Booth to Let. The present possessor of the Premises is Mr. Frost. His affairs, however, not being on a permanent footing, a dissolution, or bankruptcy may soon be expected, and a final settlement of the whole entrusted to Mr. Thaw.
The publican’s wife is finished reading the sign well before the publican. For the first time she wonders if perhaps she is possessed of more brain than her husband, and this thought makes her even more fond of him.
The pub is full of customers by the time they return to it. All evening the publican and his wife rush about, serving ale and food, sopping up spilled beer, putting more coal on the two fires that burn either side of the downstairs bar. It is only after the last man is ushered out of the pub to the winter darkness and the publican has bolted and locked the door that they have the opportunity to speak to one another again.
The Frozen Thames Page 6
