My favourite Roman ........ Catullus ..... part 2

I have returned to the poems of Catullus.

1968 edition

I first came across him in 1975, during a very messy moment at the end of a relationship.

He was born around 84 BC and died thirty years later and was “one of the most lyrical and passionate poets of any age, [who] found inspiration in the glittering Roman society of the late Republic.

There he met and fell in love with the Lesbia of these poems – a love that brought him ecstasy, pain, and disillusionment.  But Catullus is more than a love poet, whether he is lamenting a dead brother, eulogizing his beloved yacht, or satirizing his acquaintances his sincerity is apparent”.*

Given how I was feeling at the time I was drawn to those poems relating to his love affair with Lesbia, which had also gone horribly wrong.

In poem 8 he opens with that bitter advice to himself which many of us will empathize with,

“Break off
                fallen Catullus
                               time to cut losses”

Continuing,

“a clean break
              hard against the past” 

and ends with that all too familiar bitterness.

2004 edition

But he could also be more thoughtful, reflecting in no. 85

“I hate and I love.  And if you ask me how,
I do not know:  I only feel it and I am torn in two”.

Added to these there are many more poem, some very funny and unprintable and many more that fall into the category of “everyday life”.

My return was occasioned by a discussion on the wireless about Catullus, which in turn sent me off looking for that 1975 edition, only to discover it was lost.

Now having read other translations, Mr. Whigham’s best captured my sense of the poet, so I ordered up a new edition, which arrived on the day I found the old one.

Never mind my first copy was pretty battered, so it will sit beside the new one which I suspect will become equally well used.

Pictures; cover of The Poems of Catullus, Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, cover shows a portrait of Arteidorus from Hawara, Egypt, second century, British Museum 1974, reprint, and Catullus The Poems Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, 2004, cover shows a detail from a Roman mosiac 3rd-4th century AD in the Piazza Armenia villa of Maximinorous. Sicily, photoo AKGO/Eric Lessing


*Sleeve notes from The Poems of Catullus, Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, 1968

In Rusholme .... with a lost street, a closed pub and a long gone Institute

Now, I am following in the footsteps of Andy Robertson who wandered down Victory Street a few days ago.

Wood's Buildings West, 2020

It is one of those almost lost streets, which for most of its existence was called Nelson Street, and originally ran from Monmouth Street to Summer Place, boasting 29 houses, two pubs, a laundry, along with a Working Man’s Club and The People’s Institute.

Just when Nelson Street became Victory Street is unclear, but I guess it will have been when the City undertake a vast set of street name changes during the late 1960s or early 1970s.

But what escaped the cull of name changes was Wood's Buildings West, which is a narrow thoroughfare leading from Nelson Street to Eillen Grove.

Victory Street, formerly, Nelson Street, 2020

The sign is still there, although it is much knocked about and I doubt will last into the next decade.

At which point Andy’s pictures offered up a number of promising research paths of which the People’s Institute seemed particularly intriguing.

What is left of it has been incorporated into the Sahjalal Mosque and Islamic Centre.

The People’s Institute was “established on Nelson Street in 1872 by members of different Christian faiths in Rusholme. The 'Peoples Institute' served as a Mission Hall for religious services, to provide educational and recreational facilities and where the first 'Boys Club' in Manchester was based.
In the photograph of the Hall is a notice in the window stating that the 'Penny Bank' was open on Saturday mornings”.*

Nelson Street, 1969

A new hall was opened in 1910 with the name of the McLaren Memorial People’s Institute.

It is a place I intend to return to., along with Wood's Buildings West, but for now I shall close with the pub which carried the street sign on its gable end.

At present it is closed, and now belongs to the Mosque,  but as late as 2008 it was trading as the Osborn House, although even then the writing was on the wall, or more accurately on the notice form the brewery announcing “Tenancy Opportunity”.

Nelson Street, 1896

In more happier times it was one of the two pubs on Nelson Street and in 1911 was run by Mr. and Mrs. Metcalf, who lived in the property with their two daughters and Ada Sharpe who was employed as a domestic servant.

And here there may just be a clue to that sign for Wood's Buildings, because according to the 1911 census Metcalf's property consisted of four rooms, and yet the existing building looks larger.

Moreover, the OS map for 1896 shows 14 back to back properties stretching back into what was the car park.  Seven of which faced out on to Wood's Building's West.

Location; Rusholme

Pictures; Nelson Street, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1969,D. Wildgoose, m39128, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and in 1896 from the OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The Peoples Institute, Nelson Street, Rusholme, Rusholme and Victoria Archive, https://rusholmearchive.org/the-peoples-institute-rusholme

Looking for that lost story of Woolwich Arsenal

Today, I went looking again for A Woolwich Arsenal Mystery, a tale of Sexton Blake.

This front cover of the 1907 edition was found yesterday by my friend Kath and both of us decided that this offered up a story that couldn’t be turned down.

It wasn’t just the connection with the Arsenal but a curiosity about Sexton Blake who I knew only from the telly.

Sadly to date neither of us has been able to track the book down but in the process I discovered that there have been over 4000 Sexton Blake stories since the first in 1893 written by 200 authors.

Added to which along with the books there have been countless films along with plays and TV series.

So you learn something new every day and perhaps A Woolwich Arsenal Mystery will yet turn up and maybe even discover more about its author who was E J Gannon.

But undaunted by such obstacles Kath with more persistence than me tracked down the BLAKIANA   site dedicated to Sexton Blake.*

And there for 1907 was an entry for A Woolwich Arsenal Mystery, which sadly had no more than  THE BOYS' FRIEND LIBRARY • Issue 27 • Oct. 1907 • Amalgamated Press • 3d
A WOOLWICH ARSENAL MYSTERY
by Anon. (E. J. Gannon) • Illustrator: Unknown
Other content: None
Notes: I own a copy of this issue but its cover is missing.
Unrated

But that is a start and I guess the next step with be to contact the organisers of the site.

All of which leaves me to reflect that “the world has not heard the last of Sexton Blake in Woolwich” which of course is the pub quiz question ................. who said the original and when?

Picture; A Woolwich Arsenal Mystery, 1907 found by Kath May

*BLAKIANA, http://www.mark-hodder.com/Blakiana/

**BIBLIOGRAPHY 1907, http://www.mark-hodder.com/Blakiana/year-1907/

Picture; A Woolwich Arsenal Mystery, 1907 found by Kath May

My favourite Roman …….. Catullus …….. one I am listening to

I first came across the Roman poet Catullus over 40 years ago and instantly took to him.

So I have enjoyed today’s Radio 4 programme on the man from the series In Our Time.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Catullus (c84-c54 BC) who wrote some of the most sublime poetry in the late Roman Republic, and some of the most obscene. 

He found a new way to write about love, in poems to the mysterious Lesbia, married and elusive, and he influenced Virgil and Ovid and others, yet his explicit poems were to blight his reputation for a thousand years. 

Once the one surviving manuscript was discovered in the Middle Ages, though, anecdotally as a plug in a wine butt, he inspired Petrarch and the Elizabethan poets, as he continues to inspire many today.

With

Gail Trimble
Brown Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Trinity College at the University of Oxford, Simon Smith, Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, poet and translator of Catullus, and, Maria Wyke, Professor of Latin at University College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson*

Pictures; Rome, 2020, from the collection of Saul Simpson

*Catullus, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d1rg

The cranes of Salford ...... no. 12

A return of the series …………. on the cranes of Salford.

It has been some years since Andy Robertson, started his project on The cranes of Salford, and I am pleased he has returned to recording the changing Salford landscape.

Location; Salford Quays



Picture; The cranes of Salford, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Salford by water ………. No. 2

Now, I know, not everyone is a fan of Salford Quays.

Over the years more than one person has mourned the passing of the docks, and can’t quite accept the transformation.

But given that the closure of the docks was beyond my control, I can only reflect on what has replaced them, and I like what I see.

So here is a short series from my old friend Andy Robertson who roamed across the Quays recently intent on capturing Salford by water.

Location; Salford Quays

Picture; Salford Quays, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Just who was visiting Harrogate in 1836? ………… another ghost sign

Now Harrogate being Harrogate, and me being curious, I rather think I would have bought the Harrogate Advertiser just to see who was in town on a Saturday in the 1840s.

And given the attractions of the Georgian Theatre which was opened in 1788, and the Pump House which was built just 50 or so years later, there would have been lots of those “people of plenty”, parading the town, taking the waters, and splashing their cash.

And here I have to admit that on our visits to the place I never clocked a copy of the Harrogate Advertiser, which started up in 1836 and is still going strong.

So, it was by chance I came across a series of ghost signs on the side and front of a building which is now occupied by the Slug and Lettuce.


In the fullness of time I will go looking for the rest of the story on the newspaper, but for now that is it.

Location; Harrogate

Pictures; ghost signs, the Harrogate Advertiser, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson