Thoughts on a Green Shade

[steepholm]

Who knows what song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women? Not me, guv, but I can tell you Horatio Nelson’s hat size (7¼ in), and Captain Hardy's for that matter (6¾ in). Despite this cephalic deficit, Hardy was much the taller of the two, at over six feet, while Nelson at 5’6” (about the same height as Napoleon) was able to glide effortlessly beneath the 5’8” beams in the Victory – at least, when he wasn’t wearing a hat.

I owe most of this to a children’s-book-writing friend (also a scion of the firm) who alerted me to his brother Kenneth Cliff’s Mr Lock the Hatter Went to Sea, an account of the hat purchases made from the Lock's the Hatters not only by Nelson and Hardy but by all the other British captains who took part at Trafalgar - which volume has formed an unscheduled part of my Christmas reading. Lock & Co. were not only the inventors of the bowler hat (more properly called the Coke), but from their foundation in 1676 to the present day have fitted the most illustrious bonces of this nation (c.f. the companion volume: Mr Lock the Hatter: Victoria Cross Holders 1856-1919).

In one sense, of course, these details don’t matter a fig, but in another they alter one’s whole sense of what went on at Trafalgar, and indeed afterwards. Looking through the company ledger as a small boy, my friend was shown the purchases made by Lord Rosebury, Disraeli and the rest, and came to realise that they were not just Prime Ministers but men, who needed hats. And what more valuable historical lesson could there be?

By the way, Nelson did not have an eye-patch, but he did (pace the statue in Trafalgar Square) have a green eye shade built into his Lock’s hat. It was there, not to cover his blind eye but to protect his remaining one, which was also given to inflammation. Compare and contrast:



A tit-bit for the next series of QI, perhaps?

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

For the Siren's song, see here:

http://malkhos.livejournal.com/tag/sirens%20homer%20poetry

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Interesting. From that passage, it appears that the Sirens' appeal lay not in the haunting beauty of their song but in their claim to be a comprehensive source of information.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Well, there's the enchanting sweetness, too. And no doubt Odysseus quite liked hearing about himself. Re Achilles, it's usually reported as Pyrrha, though I'm not sure whether there's any more to that than the fact that his resulting son is sometimes Pyrrhos when he isn't Neoptolemos.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I shall be sure to take the news back to Sir Thomas Browne!

[sovay]

From that passage, it appears that the Sirens' appeal lay not in the haunting beauty of their song but in their claim to be a comprehensive source of information.

And that would be a draw for Odysseus: when Athene is making comparison between them in Book 13, she refers to herself and her favorite hero as

εἰδότες ἄμφω
κέρδε᾽, ἐπεὶ σὺ μέν ἐσσι βροτῶν ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος ἁπάντων
βουλῇ καὶ μύθοισιν, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἐν πᾶσι θεοῖσι
μήτι τε κλέομαι καὶ κέρδεσιν

we two who know
guile, since you are by far the best of all mortals
at plans and stories, while among all the gods
I am famous for craft and clever ways

Storytelling is woven all through the Odyssey, even when it's just Odysseus' Cretan lies. (Even when you come home, Athene says earlier in the same passage, laughing at him for starting to spin another tale of false identity and a war that wasn't quite his own, you won't stop telling stories. That's why I like you.) The homecomings of the other heroes become possible guides to the way this last, long-delayed νόστος will play out; Agamemnon is a warning template for Odysseus, Orestes a model for Telemachos. All their first night together in twenty years, in the olive-tree bed that is the shorthand of their marriage, what Odysseus and Penelope do is tell one another the different kinds of epic they've lived.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think there's just a hint of Unresolved Sexual Tension there between Athene and Odysseus. But it isn't to be: he likes strong women, but after Circe and Calypso he's had it with goddesses.

I remember being very struck by that passage you quoted, when I read it - in Rieu's translation, of course - as a teen. Or one very like it. He's just washed up on Ithaca, and Athene appears to him in friendly guise, but although he's exhausted and dizzy with relief he's still cool-headed enough to be cautious and suspect a trap. And that appeals to her mightily. (Is that the bit?) "You're so level-headed! So intelligent!" she says in Rieu, or words to that effect. And I remember thinking something on the lines of - What, so some people find intelligence attractive? In preference to beauty or muscles?? A revelation.

[sovay]

I think there's just a hint of Unresolved Sexual Tension there between Athene and Odysseus. But it isn't to be: he likes strong women, but after Circe and Calypso he's had it with goddesses.

It's probably best to think of it as an intellectual love affair: Athene doesn't have sex with anyone (and when people try, it goes weird. She's not a virgin, which implies a potential change of states. She's a male-female; her gender identities cancel each other out, rendering her a kind of sexual null space. Thanks ever so, classical Greek binaries). That said: I like your take on it.

but although he's exhausted and dizzy with relief he's still cool-headed enough to be cautious and suspect a trap. And that appeals to her mightily. (Is that the bit?)

That's it!

κερδαλέος κ᾽ εἴη καὶ ἐπίκλοπος ὅς σε παρέλθοι
ἐν πάντεσσι δόλοισι, καὶ εἰ θεὸς ἀντιάσειε.

He would have to be all chance and guile, whoever got past you
in any sort of trickery, even if it were a god who tried.

Her affectionate term for him is κάμμορος, which is best translated as "clever bastard."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Her affectionate term for him is κάμμορος, which is best translated as "clever bastard."

Not in E. V. Rieu's vocabulary, but it seems just right.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'm getting either "ill-fated" or "crayfish." (The Ill-Fated Crayfish would be a good name for something. A bar? A blog?)

[sovay]

Not me, guv, but I can tell you Horatio Nelson’s hat size (7¼ in), and Captain Hardy's for that matter (6¾ in).

Thank you; this post improves my afternoon.

while Nelson at 5’6” (about the same height as Napoleon)

I learned that from Kate Beaton: "Someone has also drawn you comically small during this whole time."

[owlfish]

It's quite a nice hat shop, if rather pricy! We've tried on hats there, and gone away and bought less expensive iterations elsewhere. But I still think about buying one of their more reasonably-priced winter hats, a particular deep brown one with a wide, floppy brim.

Good to know something of how much else they've done over the years!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've never been there, myself. I shall try to make a point of dropping in next time I'm in London.

[kevin faulkner (from livejournal.com)]

But the explicit point Browne is making which is failed to comprehend here, is the unknowingness of the human condition, the rest is mere idle speculation, in other words, its unknowable and profitless to speculate upon minor queries in myths of antiquity. The whole discourse 'Urn-Burial' is peppered with such queries, 'Who knows when the Equinox was?' for example.

I love to lose myself in a mystery...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks for dropping by. This wasn't really an entry on Browne, but I take your point. However, the other side of Browne's awareness of the profitlessness of speculation is his acceptance that it's in human nature (and certainly in his nature) to speculate anyway - as indeed he did at some length, not least in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, with its enquiries into whether Adam had a navel, etc.