Complete Nonsense

by Mervyn Peake

  p. 15 ‘The Dwarf of Battersea’: f.p. BN, pp. 13–21. Source: in the absence of the MS, apart from the first five stanzas reproduced in BN, p. 16, we have followed the text printed in BN, which gives the date. In the MS, the refrain ‘Sing you-O, to me-O’ is different in each stanza (with and without a comma, with and without dashes); we have normalized it throughout. The line ‘But he has now passed over see’ in the last stanza leaves us in a quandary: is ‘see’ a misreading of ‘sea’, or is it a pun for ‘But he has now passed over [i.e., he is dead], [do you] see?’ In doubt, we have left the line as it is. Date: in her introduction to BN, Maeve Gilmore describes the genesis of the poem as follows: ‘In early 1937 [Peake] rented an ex-barber’s shop in Battersea Church Road, which he used as a studio. The house, No. 163, now about to be demolished, is very close to a church which Blake, whom he so admired, frequented. It was at No. 163 Battersea Church Road that he gave me, before we were married, an envelope. Inside, in a beautiful longhand, was “The Dwarf of Battersea”, the first poem he ever wrote for me.’

  p. 16 ‘Thank God for a Tadpole’: unpublished. Source: N1, unpaginated section. Date given in MS. A full stop has been omitted at line 3.

  p. 17 ‘About My Ebb and Flow-ziness’: unpublished. Source: N1, unpaginated section; hence the conjectural date. This is the first of several instances of Peake playing with ebbing and flowing; see ‘A Fair Amount of Doziness’ (p. 43), ‘My Uncle Paul of Pimlico’ (p. 86), and ‘I Waxes and I Wanes, Sir’ (p. 100). Similarly, in TG Nannie Slagg complains to Dr Prunesquallor: ‘I ebbs and I flows, sir […] and I falls away like’ (p. 400).

  p. 18 ‘A Fair Amount of Doziness’: unpublished. Source: N1, unpaginated section; hence the conjectural date. See note to ‘About My Ebb and Flow-ziness’, above.

  p. 19 ‘Ancient Root O Ancient Root’: unpublished. Source: N1, unpaginated section; hence the conjectural date. These lines anticipate the longer poem about ‘The Hideous Root’ (p. 140). ‘Root’ has been a slang term for the penis since the sixteenth century.

  p. 20 ‘The Frivolous Cake’: f.p. TG, pp. 70–1, which is our source. An early draft is in N1 (where the cause of the flying crumbs is a wound made by the knife); hence the conjectural date. The first four lines of the third stanza form the first four lines of ‘All Over The Lilac Brine!’ (p. 78), with one small change. The poem recalls Charles E. Caryll’s pirate song ‘A Capital Ship’ from Davy and the Goblin (1886); see G. Peter Winnington, ‘Parodies and Poetical Allusions’, PS, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 2002), pp. 25–9. In TG, p. 70, Fuchsia reads it in ‘a big coloured book of verses and pictures’, where it is ‘a great favourite’ of hers. For another poem from the book see ‘Simple, Seldom and Sad’ (p. 47).

  p. 21 ‘Simple, Seldom and Sad’: f.p. TG, p. 128, which is our source. There is a draft in N1 – hence our date – and another version in RWR; see ‘Sensitive, Seldom and Sad’ (p. 106), and note. In TG, Steerpike reads the poem in Fuchsia’s ‘large hand-painted book’ of pictures and verses (see ‘The Frivolous Cake’ note, above).

  p. 22 ‘Linger Now with Me, Thou Beauty’: f.p. TG, pp. 119–20, which is our source. Date given in MS of TG. In TG the verses are recited by the Castle Poet; for another poem by him, see ‘Song of the Castle Poet’ (p. 156). In 1937 an obscure American poet, Mabel Ingalls Wescott, published some verses beginning ‘Let me linger by the trellis’ which borrow phrases, the trochaic rhythm, and the ‘old fifteener’ line from Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’. In ‘Linger Now with Me, Thou Beauty’ Peake uses the same metre and repeats Wescott’s key verb, ‘to linger’ (which is not prominent in Tennyson, nor is there any hint in Peake’s poem that he was aware of ‘Locksley Hall’). It seems improbable that Peake should be parodying Ms Wescott’s lines, yet passages in his play WW also echo her poem. For more on this, see VH, pp. 270–1.

  p. 23 ‘I Married Her in Green’: unpublished. Source: MS of TG, where the date is given. It is not clear that the last two stanzas bear any relation to the first four, nor whether they were intended to be placed in any particular order.

  p. 24 ‘Swelter’s Song’: f.p. PS, vol. 7, no. 2 (April 2001), pp. 5–8. Source: MS of TG, where the date is given. This is the song Swelter promises but never delivers in the published edition of TG, p. 30. He describes it as ‘An old shong of great shadness’ (p. 28), ‘a shong to a hard-hearted monshter’ and ‘a dirgeous mashterpeesh’ (p. 29).

  p. 25 ‘I Cannot Simply Stand and Watch’: unpublished. Source: MS of TG, where the date is given. Question mark and quotation marks added at line 8.

  p. 26 ‘Upon the Summit of a Hill’: unpublished. Source: MS of TG, where the date is given. Full stop added at line 4.

  p. 27 ‘Come, Sit Beside Me Dear, He Said’: unpublished. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, pp. 9v–12r. On the other side of 12 is an early draft of ‘Linger Now with Me, Thou Beauty’, with no reference to Gormenghast. The date of ‘Linger Now’ supplies the conjectural date of this poem. Punctuation has been added as follows: a full stop at stanza 2, line 5, and a quotation mark at line 6; in stanza 3, a full stop at line 2, quotation marks and a comma at line 3, and a full stop at line 6; in stanza 4, commas at lines 2 and 4; in stanza 5, a dash at line 4; a full stop at the end of stanza 6; in stanza 7, a dash at line 3, a comma at line 4, a full stop at the end; in stanza 8, full stops at lines 2 and 6; in stanza 9, full stops at lines 2 and 6, a comma at line 3 and a colon at line 4.

  p. 28 ‘Deliria’: unpublished. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, pp. 1r–2r. This is an early version of ‘The Camel’ (p. 96); hence the date. In addition, p. 1r of the MS contains part of an early draft of ‘All Over the Lilac Brine!’, which reads as follows: ‘Around the shores of the Arrogant Isles / Where the catfish bask and purr / I skim alone in a boat that I made’. An inverted comma has been added in stanza 11, line 2, and full stops at the end of stanzas 1, 2 and 6.

  p. 29 ‘The Sunlight Lies Upon the Fields’: unpublished. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, p. 2v. This is a draft of ‘The Sunlight Falls Upon the Grass’ (p. 80); hence the date.

  p. 30 ‘Mine Was the One’: unpublished. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, p. 3r. This contains elements of the poem ‘What a Day It’s Been!’ (p. 90), and the paper on which it is written is clearly from the same source as ‘Deliria’ (p. 63); hence the date. An opening quotation mark has been added at the beginning of stanza 3, because Peake gives a closing quotation mark at stanza 3, line 4, thus implying that the whole stanza is direct speech. It’s equally possible, of course, that all of the first three stanzas are direct speech; the reader may choose.

  p. 31 ‘The Threads of Thought Are Not for Me’: unpublished. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, p. 3v. The paper on which the MS is written is clearly from same source as ‘Deliria’ (p. 63); hence the conjectural date. For another thread poem, see ‘The Threads Remain’ (p. 123). The term ‘whisky priest’ in stanza 4 was first used by Peake’s friend Graham Greene in The Power and the Glory (1940).

  p. 32 ‘Come Husband! Come, and Ply the Trade’: unpublished. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, pp. 4r–4v. The paper on which the MS is written is clearly from same source as ‘Deliria’ (p. 63); hence the conjectural date.

  p. 33 ‘How Good It Is to Be Alone (1)’: unpublished. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, pp. 2r–2v. The paper on which it is written is clearly from same source as ‘Deliria’ (p. 63), which gives the date. This is a version – probably an early draft – of ‘How Good It Is to Be Alone (2)’ (p. 73). See the note to that poem (below); and also the note to ‘My Uncle Paul of Pimlico’ (below).

  p. 34 ‘How Good It Is to Be Alone (2)’: f.p. PP, p. 491. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, p. 8r. On the other side of the MS is an early draft of ‘Sensitive, Seldom and Sad’, which supports the date. This seems to be the more definitive version of the poem; drafts of it are scribbled round the edges of version 1. Full stops have been added at the end of stanzas 1 and 2. See note to ‘My Uncle Paul of Pimlico’ (below).

  p. 35 ‘Upon My Golden Backbone’: f.p. RWR, p. 8, which is our source and
gives the date.

  p. 36 ‘All Over the Lilac Brine!’: f.p. RWR, p. 10, which is our source and gives the date. The first four lines of the poem repeat ‘The Frivolous Cake’, stanza 3 (p. 45), with one small change.

  p. 37 ‘The Sunlight Falls upon the Grass’: f.p. RWR, p. 12, which is our source and gives the date. A draft of the poem is given above as ‘The Sunlight Lies Upon the Fields’ (p. 64).

  p. 38 ‘The Crocodile’: f.p. RWR, p. 14, which is our source and gives the date.

  p. 39 ‘The Giraffe’: f.p. RWR, p. 16, which is our source and gives the date.

  p. 40 ‘My Uncle Paul of Pimlico’: f.p. RWR, p. 18, which is our source and gives the date. See note to ‘About My Ebb and Flow-ziness’ (p. 224). This is the first of a number of Uncle and Aunt poems Peake wrote throughout his career; see ‘What a Day It’s Been!’ (p. 90), ‘How Good It Is to Be Alone’ (1) and (2) (pp. 71, 73), ‘The Threads Remain’ (p. 123), ‘Aunts and Uncles’ (p. 150), ‘Lean Sideways On the Wind’ (p. 186), and ‘Crown Me With Hairpins’ (p. 220).

  p. 41 ‘It Makes a Change’: f.p. RWR, p. 20, which is our source and gives the date.

  p. 42 ‘What a Day It’s Been!’: f.p. RWR, p. 22, which is our source and gives the date. Part of stanza 3 is echoed in the poem ‘Mine Was the One’ (p. 65), and the last two lines are repeated in ‘I Must Begin to Comprehend’ and ‘The Threads Remain’ (pp. 122, 123). See also note to ‘My Uncle Paul of Pimlico’ (above).

  p. 43 ‘How Mournful to Imagine’: f.p. RWR, p. 24, which is our source and gives the date.

  p. 44 ‘The Jailor and the Jaguar’: f.p. RWR, p. 26, which is our source and gives the date.

  p. 45 ‘The Camel’: f.p. RWR, p. 28, which is our source and gives the date. A longer version of the poem is given above as ‘Deliria’ (p. 63). For the poem’s debt to Wordsworth see G. Peter Winnington, ‘Parodies and Poetical Allusions’, PS, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 2002), pp. 25–9.

  p. 46 ‘I Wish I Could Remember’: f.p. RWR, p. 30, which is our source and gives the date.

  p. 47 ‘I Waxes and I Wanes, Sir’: f.p. RWR, p. 32, which is our source and gives the date. See note to ‘About My Ebb and Flow-ziness’ (p. 224).

  p. 48 ‘The Hippopotamus’: f.p. RWR, p. 34, which is our source and gives the date.

  p. 49 ‘A Languorous Life’: f.p. RWR, p. 36, which is our source and gives the date.

  p. 50 ‘Sensitive, Seldom and Sad’: f.p. RWR, p. 38, which is our source and gives the date. For another version of the poem see ‘Simple, Seldom and Sad’ (p. 47). When Peake gave Gordon Smith a painting called ‘The Sea-Weed Gatherers’, depicting three men beside a yellowish sea, he explained that ‘the fronds of coloured weed they hold and admire […] are poetry’ (Smith p. 42). The symbolism may apply to this poem.

  p. 51 ‘Roll Them Down’: unpublished. Source: N2, p. 63; hence the conjectural date.

  p. 52 ‘One Day When They Had Settled Down’: f.p. PS, vol. 5 no. 4 (April 1998), p. 21. Source: Bonham’s catalogue for the sale of this text, with its accompanying image, on 16 December 1997. Date given in catalogue. One of five poems commissioned by Henry Hobhouse for publication in a new monthly magazine called Outlook, which never materialized.

  p. 53 ‘Again! Again! and Yet Again’: f.p. PS, vol. 5, no. 4 (April 1998), p. 22. Source: Bonham’s catalogue for the sale of this text, with its accompanying image, on 16 December 1997. Date given in catalogue. This is one of five poems commissioned by Henry Hobhouse for publication in a new monthly magazine called Outlook, which never materialized.

  p. 54 ‘Uncle George’: f.p. PS, vol. 5, no. 4 (April 1998), p. 23. Source: Bonham’s catalogue for the sale of this text, with its accompanying image, on 16 December 1997. See note to ‘My Uncle Paul of Pimlico’ (p. 226). Date given in catalogue. Full stop added at end of poem. This is one of five poems commissioned by Henry Hobhouse for publication in a new monthly magazine called Outlook, which never materialized.

  p. 55 ‘The King of Ranga-Tanga-Roon’: f.p. PS, vol. 5, no. 4 (April 1998), p. 24. Source: Bonham’s catalogue for the sale of this text, with its accompanying image, on 16 December 1997. Date given in catalogue. This is one of five poems commissioned by Henry Hobhouse for publication in a new monthly magazine called Outlook, which never materialized.

  p. 56 ‘I Cannot Give You Reasons’: f.p. PS, vol. 5, no. 4 (April 1998), p. 27. Source: Bonham’s catalogue for the sale of this text, with its accompanying image, on 16 December 1997. Date given in catalogue. This is one of five poems commissioned by Henry Hobhouse for publication in a new monthly magazine called Outlook, which never materialized.

  p. 57 ‘The Ballad of Sweet Pighead’: unpublished. Source: Bod. Dep Peake 16, pp. 17r–20r. Date given in MS. Punctuation altered as follows: comma at end of stanzas 1 and 2, line 1. Stanza 2, line 2: full stop, and line 3: comma. Stanza 3: commas removed after ‘human’ and asylum’. Stanza 4: full stop added at line 2, commas at line 3 and end of line 4. Full stop added at end of stanza 5. Full stop added at stanza 6, line 2. Stanza 8: comma added at end of line 1. Stanza 9: comma added at end of line 1, full stop at end of stanza. Stanzas 12 and 13: full stop added at line 2. Full stop added at end of stanza 13. Stanza 14: comma added at line 2. Stanza 15: comma added at end of line 1. Stanza 16: two commas added at line 1, one at line 2. Stanza 17: full stop and inverted comma added at end. Stanza 18: inverted commas added at line 3, comma after ‘mother’, full stop at end of stanza. Stanza 19: inverted comma and comma added at line 1; full stop (replacing semi-colon), inverted comma and capital at line 3; full stop at end of stanza. Stanza 20: inverted comma and two commas added at line 1; dash added (in place of comma) at line 3, comma at end of stanza. Stanza 21: inverted comma added at beginning; commas removed after ‘answer’ and added after ‘found’; ellipsis and inverted comma added at end of poem.

  p. 58 ‘Hold Fast’: f.p. G, pp. 117–18, which is our source. An early version of this poem occurs in Nonsence 1, p. 8v; hence the conjectural date. We have made one change on the strength of another MS in Peake’s hand: in line 26 a full stop has been removed after ‘thrush’.

  p. 59 ‘I Must Begin to Comprehend’: unpublished. Source: Peake Archive MS. The date is conjectural, based on the date of the version entitled ‘The Threads Remain’ (below). The last two lines repeat those of ‘What a Day It’s Been!’ (p. 90). See also note to ‘My Uncle Paul of Pimlico’ (p. 226).

  p. 60 ‘The Threads Remain’: f.p. BN, p. 78. Source: Nonsence 1, p. 36r; hence our conjectural date. We have deviated from the source at line 14: Nonsence 1 gives ‘a man’ in place of ‘who’s bred’, but we have preferred the BN reading here. The poem is a version of ‘I Must Begin to Comprehend’ (p. 122). The last two lines repeat those of ‘What a Day It’s Been!’ (p. 90).

  p. 61 ‘White Mules at Prayer’: this version f.p. PS, vol. 7, no. 1 (November 2000), pp. 20–1. Shorter versions were published in the first two editions of TA; see TA 1 p. 38 (where we are told ‘It was obvious that the poem was still in its early stages’), and TA 2, p. 42. (For the first edition Peake removed the first four stanzas of the poem at the suggestion of Maurice Temple Smith, his editor at Eyre & Spottiswoode, who felt it was too long.) Source: the MS of G, dated April–May 1949, where it is sung to Rottcodd, the keeper of the Hall of the Bright Carvings, by his mother. Date: another shorter draft occurs in Nonsence 1, pp. 35r–35v and p. 8v; hence the conjectural date. In stanza 12 we have removed ‘who’ after ‘spurs’ to preserve the metre and added a comma at the end of the line; we have also added a comma after ‘skull’ in stanza 13. Both of these changes are based on the Nonsence 2 draft, which is in Peake’s hand.

  p. 62 ‘O Love, O Death, O Ecstasy’: f.p. BN, p. 45, in a version based on Nonsence 2, p. 16v, with another poem (‘Along the Cold, Regurgitating Shore’, p. 204) accidentally added to it. Source: Peake archive MS. Date: A draft of ‘White Mules at Prayer’ (p. 124) is on the reverse of the MS; hence the conjectural date. Note the occurrence of rhubarb by the sea in both poems. An exclamation m
ark has been added at stanza 2, line 2.

  p. 63 ‘Tintinnabulum’: f.p. BN, pp. 51–8. Source: Nonsence 1, pp. 1r–3v; hence the conjectural date. Punctuation has been added as follows: stanza 1, comma added at line 1; stanza 3, comma added at line 2; stanza 15, double inverted commas added at lines 1, 3 and 5; stanza 21, comma added at line 1; stanza 24, full stop added at line 2; stanza 28, full stop and inverted comma added at line 2; stanza 30, full stop added at lines 2 and 4; stanza 35, inverted commas added at lines 1 and 4; stanza 37, dash added at line 2; stanza 38, full stop added at line 2. See note to ‘Ode to a Bowler’ (p. 223).

  p. 64 ‘Squat Ursula’: f.p. BN, pp. 74–6. Source: Bod. Dep. Peake 16, pp. 6r–6v. Nonsence 1, p. 10v, has the title SQUAT URSULA on it, with no poem; hence the conjectural date. Of all Peake’s parodies, this is the most obvious, deriving from the hymn ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ (Bernard of Cluny, trans. J. M. Neale), which begins ‘Jerusalem the Golden, / With milk and honey blest’.

  p. 65 ‘The Hideous Root’: f.p. BN, pp. 59–64, which omits stanzas 13 and 27. Source: Nonsence 1, pp. 4r–7v; hence the conjectural date. Stanza 24 was never completed; we have therefore left it in fragmentary form. Punctuation has been changed as follows: a full stop has been added to the end of stanza 9; in stanza 11, a comma has been removed at the end of line 4; in stanza 12, a comma has been removed after ‘remembered’ at line 1; full stops have been added in stanza 14, line 4, and at the end of stanzas 18 and 20; an exclamation mark has been added at the end of stanza 22; in stanza 23, a full stop has been added at line 2 and Root has been capitalized in line 6; in stanza 27, full stops have been added at lines 2 and 4, a comma at line 5 and an exclamation mark at line 6. Also in stanza 12, the word ‘obstructed’ has been crossed out and ‘confused’ inserted in the MS, but we have retained ‘obstructed’ to preserve the metre (Peake may have intended ‘confused the deploy of his charms’). See note to ‘Ancient Root O Ancient Root’ (p. 224).