Past the bouncers outside and the girls smoking long, skinny cigarettes, past the tinted glass doors and the jade stone Novikov has put in near the entrance for good luck. Inside, Novikov opens up so anyone can see everyone in almost every corner at any moment, the same theatrical seating as in his Moscow places. But the London Novikov is so much bigger. There are three floors. One floor is “Asian,” all black walls and plates. Another floor is “Italian,” with off-white tiled floors and trees and classic paintings. Downstairs is the bar-cum-club, in the style of a library in an English country house, with wooden bookshelves and rows of hardcover books. It’s a Moscow Novikov restaurant cubed: a series of quotes, of references wrapped in a tinted window void, shorn of their original memories and meanings (but so much colder and more distant than the accessible, colorful pastiche of somewhere like Las Vegas). This had always been the style and mood in the “elite,” “VIP” places in Moscow, all along the Rublevka and in the Garden Ring, where the just-made rich exist in a great void where they can buy anything, but nothing means anything because all the old orders of meaning are gone. Here objects become unconnected to any binding force. Old Masters and English boarding schools and Fabergé eggs all floating, suspended in a culture of zero gravity.
There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.
There are places I'll remember All my life though some have changed. Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain. All these places had their moments With lovers and friends I still recall. Some are dead and some are living, In my life I've loved them all. But of all these friends and lovers, There is no one compared with you, All these memories lose their meaning When I think of love as something new. Though I know I'll never lose affection For people and things that went before, I know I'll often stop and think about them In my life I'll love you more. -- Lennon/McCartney, "In My Life", 1965
Henceforth Mrs Gaskell's life belonged to Manchester. She and her husband lived first in Dover Street, then in Rumford Street, and finally in 1850 at 84 Plymouth Grove. Her literary life began with poetry. She and her husband aspired to emulate George Crabbe and write the annals of the Manchester poor. One poetic "Sketch," which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for January 1837, seems to have been the only outcome of this ambition. Henceforth, while in perfect union in all else, husband and wife were to go their separate literary ways, Mrs Gaskell to become a successful novelist, whose books were to live side by side with those of greater masters, Mr Gaskell to be a distinguished Unitarian divine, whose sermons, lectures and hymns are now all but forgotten. In her earlier married life Mrs Gaskell was mainly occupied with domestic duties--she had seven children--and philanthropic work among the poor. Her first published prose effort was probably a letter that she addressed to William Howitt on hearing that he contemplated a volume entitled _Visits to Remarkable Places_. She then told the legend of Clopton Hall, Warwickshire, as she had heard it in schooldays, and Howitt incorporated the letter in that book, which was published in 1840. Serious authorship, however, does not seem to have been commenced until four or five years later. In 1844 Mr and Mrs Gaskell visited North Wales, where their only son "Willie" died of scarlet fever at the age of ten months, and it was, it is said, to distract Mrs Gaskell from her sorrow that her husband suggested a long work of fiction, and _Mary Barton_ was begun. There were earlier short stories in _Howitt's Journal_, where "Libbie Marsh's Three Eras" and "The Sexton's Hero" appeared in 1847. But it was _Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life_ that laid the foundation of Mrs Gaskell's literary career. It was completed in 1847 and offered to a publisher who returned it unread. It was then sent to Chapman & Hall, who retained the manuscript for a year without reading it or communicating with the author. A reminder, however, led to its being sought for, considered and accepted, the publishers agreeing to pay the author £100 for the copyright. It was published anonymously in two volumes in 1848. This story had a wide popularity, and its author secured first the praise and then the friendship of Carlyle, Landor and Dickens. Dickens indeed asked her in 1850 to become a contributor to his new magazine _Household Words_, and here the whole of _Cranford_ appeared at intervals from December 1851 to May 1853, exclusive of one sketch, reprinted in the "World's Classics" edition (1907), that was published in _All the Year Round_ for November 1863. Earlier than this, indeed, for the very first number of _Household Words_ she had written "Lizzie Leigh." Mrs Gaskell's second book, however, was _The Moorland Cottage_, a dainty little volume that appeared at Christmas 1850 with illustrations by Birket Foster. In the Christmas number of _Household Words_ for 1853 appeared "The Squire's Story," reprinted in _Lizzie Leigh and other Tales_ in 1865. In 1853 appeared another long novel, _Ruth_, and the incomparable _Cranford_. This last--now the most popular of her books--is an idyll of village life, largely inspired by girlish memories of Knutsford and its people. In _Ruth_, which first appeared in three volumes, Mrs Gaskell turned to a delicate treatment of a girl's betrayal and her subsequent rescue. Once more we are introduced to Knutsford, thinly disguised, and to the little Unitarian chapel in that town where the author had worshipped in early years. In 1855 _North and South_ was published. It had previously appeared serially in _Household Words_. Then came--in 1857--the _Life of Charlotte Brontë_, in two volumes. Miss Brontë, who had enjoyed the friendship of Mrs Gaskell and had exchanged visits, died in March 1855. Two years earlier she had begged her publishers to postpone the issue of her own novel _Villette_ in order that her friend's _Ruth_ should not suffer. This biography, by its vivid presentation of the sad, melancholy and indeed tragic story of the three Brontë sisters, greatly widened the interest in their writings and gave its author a considerable place among English biographers. But much matter was contained in the first and second editions that was withdrawn from the third. Certain statements made by the writer as to the school of Charlotte Brontë's infancy, an identification of the "Lowood" of _Jane Eyre_ with the existing school, and the acceptance of the story of Bramwell Brontë's ruin having been caused by the woman in whose house he had lived as tutor, brought threats of libel actions. Apologies were published, and the third edition of the book was modified, as Mrs Gaskell declares, by "another hand." The book in any case remains one of the best biographies in the language. An introduction by Mrs Gaskell to the then popular novel, _Mabel Vaughan_, was also included in her work of this year 1857, but no further book was published by her until 1859, when, under the title of _Round the Sofa_, she collected many of her contributions to periodical literature. _Round the Sofa_ appeared in two volumes, the first containing only "My Lady Ludlow," the second five short stories. These stories reappeared the same year in one volume as _My Lady Ludlow and other Tales_. In the next year 1860 appeared yet another volume of short stories, entitled _Right at Last and other Tales_. The title story had appeared two years earlier in _Household Words_ as "The Sin of a Father." In 1862 Mrs Gaskell wrote a preface to a little book by Colonel Vecchj, translated from the Italian--_Garibaldi and Caprera_, and in 1863 she published her last long novel, _Sylvia's Lovers_, dedicated "to My dear Husband by her who best knows his Value." After this we have--in 1863--a one-volume story, _A Dark Night's Work_, and in the same year _Cousin Phyllis and other Tales_ appeared. Reprinted short stories from _All the Year Round_, _Cornhill Magazine_, and other publications, tend to lengthen the number of books published by Mrs Gaskell during her lifetime. _The Grey Woman and other Tales_ appeared in 1865. Entry: GASKELL
1. _Letters of St Paul._--In the order of chronology we must give the first place to the earliest letters of St Paul. The first piece of Christian literature which has an independent existence and to which we can fix a date is St Paul's first Epistle to the Thessalonians. Lightfoot dates it in 52 or 53; Harnack places it five years earlier. We may say, then, that it was written some twenty years after the Crucifixion. St Paul is not an historian; he is not attempting to describe what Jesus Christ said or did. He is writing a letter to encourage a little Christian society which he, a Jew, had founded in a distant Greek city; and he reminds his readers of many things which he had told them when he was with them. The evidence, to be collected from his epistles generally must not detain us here, but we may glance for a moment at this one letter, because it contains what appears to be the first mention of Jesus Christ in the literature of the world. Those who would get a true history cannot afford to neglect their earliest documents. Now the opening sentence of this letter is as follows: "Paul and Silvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you, and peace." Three men with Greek or Latin names are writing to some kind of assembly in a city of Macedonia. The writers are Jews, to judge by their salutation of "peace," and by their mention of "God the Father," and of the assembly or society as being "in" Him. But what is this new name which is placed side by side with the Divine Name--"in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ"? An educated Greek, who knew something (as many at that time did) of the Greek translation of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, if he had picked up this letter before he had ever heard the name of Jesus Christ, would have been deeply interested in these opening words. He would have known that "Jesus" was the Greek form of Joshua; that "Christ" was the Greek rendering of Messiah, or Anointed, the title of the great King for whom the Jews were looking; he might further have remembered that "the Lord" is the expression which the Greek Old Testament constantly uses instead of the ineffable name of God, which we now call "Jehovah" (q.v.). Who, then, he might well ask is this Jesus Christ who is lifted to this unexampled height? For it is plain that Jesus Christ stands in some close relation to "God the Father," and that on the ground of that relation a society has been built up, apparently by Jews, in a Greek city far distant from Palestine. He would learn something as he read on; for the letter makes a passing reference to the foundation of the society, and to the expansion of its influence in other parts of Greece; to the conversion of its members from heathenism, and to the consequent sufferings at the hands of their heathen neighbours. The writers speak of themselves as "apostles," or messengers, of Christ; they refer to similar societies "in Christ Jesus," which they call "churches of God," in Judaea, and they say that these also suffer from the Jews there, who had "killed the Lord Jesus" some time before. But they further speak of Jesus as "raised from the dead," and they refer to the belief which they had led the society to entertain, that He would come again "from heaven to deliver them from the coming wrath." Moreover, they urge them not to grieve for certain members of the society who have already died, saying that, "if we believe that Jesus died and rose again," we may also be assured that "the dead in Christ will rise" and will live for ever with Him. Thus the letter assumes that its readers already have considerable knowledge as to "the Lord Jesus Christ," and as to His relation to "God the Father," a knowledge derived from teaching given in person on a former visit. The purpose of the letter is not to give information as to the past, but to stimulate its readers to perseverance by giving fresh teaching as to the future. Historically it is of great value as showing how widely within twenty or twenty-five years of the Crucifixion a religion which proclaimed developed theological teaching as to "the Lord Jesus Christ" had spread in the Roman Empire. We may draw a further conclusion from this and other letters of St Paul before we go on. St Paul's missionary work must have created a demand. Those who had heard him and read his letters would want to know more than he had told them of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus. They would wish to be able to picture Him to their minds; and especially to understand what could have led to His being put to death by the Romans at the requisition of the Jews. St Paul had not been one of his personal disciples in Galilee or Jerusalem; he had no memories to relate of His miracles and teaching. Some written account of these was an obvious need. And we may be sure that any such narrative concerning One who was so deeply reverenced would be most carefully scrutinized at a time when many were still living whose memories went back to the period of Our Lord's public ministry. One such narrative we now proceed to describe. Entry: 1
The perfect union in genius and in friendship which has made one name of the two names of these great twin brothers in song is a thing so admirable and so delightful to remember, that it would seem ungracious and unkindly to claim for either a precedence which we may be sure he would have been eager to disclaim. But if a distinction must be made between the Dioscuri of English poetry, we must admit that Beaumont was the twin of heavenlier birth. Only as Pollux was on one side a demigod of diviner blood than Castor can it be said that on any side Beaumont was a poet of higher and purer genius than Fletcher; but so much must be allowed by all who have eyes and ears to discern in the fabric of their common work a distinction without a difference. Few things are stranger than the avowal of so great and exquisite a critic as Coleridge, that he could trace no faintest line of demarcation between the plays which we owe mainly to Beaumont and the plays which we owe solely to Fletcher. To others this line has always appeared in almost every case unmistakable. Were it as hard and broad as the line which marks off, for example, Shakespeare's part from Fletcher's in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, the harmony would of course be lost which now informs every work of their common genius, and each play of their writing would be such another piece of magnificent patchwork as that last gigantic heir of Shakespeare's invention, the posthumous birth of his parting Muse which was suckled at the breast of Fletcher's as a child of godlike blood might be reared on the milk of a mortal mother--or in this case, we might sometimes be tempted to say, of a she-goat who left in the veins of the heaven-born suckling somewhat too much of his nurse Amalthaea. That question however belongs in any case more properly to the study of Shakespeare than to the present subject in hand. It may suffice here to observe that the contributions of Fletcher to the majestic temple of tragedy left incomplete by Shakespeare show the lesser workman almost equally at his best and at him worst, at his weakest and at his strongest. In the plays which we know by evidence surer than the most trustworthy tradition to be the common work of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is indeed no trace of such incongruous and incompatible admixture as leaves the greatest example of romantic tragedy--for _Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's Tale_, though not guiltless of blood, are in their issues no more tragic than _Pericles_ or the _Tempest_--a unique instance of glorious imperfection, a hybrid of heavenly aid other than heavenly breed, disproportioned and divine. But throughout these noblest of the works inscribed generally with the names of both dramatists we trace on every other page the touch of a surer hand, we hear at every other turn the note of a deeper voice, than we can ever recognize in the work of Fletcher alone. Although the beloved friend of Jonson, and in the field of comedy his loving and studious disciple, yet in that tragic field where his freshest bays were gathered Beaumont was the worthiest and the closest follower of Shakespeare. In the external but essential matter of expression by rhythm and metre he approves himself always a student of Shakespeare's second manner, of the style in which the graver or tragic part of his historical or romantic plays is mostly written; doubtless, the most perfect model that can be studied by any poet who, like Beaumont, is great enough to be in no danger of sinking to the rank of a mere copyist, but while studious of the perfection set before him is yet conscious of his own personal and proper quality of genius, and enters the presence of the master not as a servant but as a son. The general style of his tragic or romantic verse is as simple and severe in its purity of note and regularity of outline as that of Fletcher's is by comparison lax, effusive, exuberant. The matchless fluency and rapidity with which the elder brother pours forth the stream of his smooth swift verse gave probably the first occasion for that foolish rumour which has not yet fallen duly silent, but still murmurs here and there its suggestion that the main office of Beaumont was to correct and contain within bounds the overflowing invention of his colleague. The poet who while yet a youth had earned by his unaided mastery of hand such a crown as was bestowed by the noble love and the loving "envy" of Ben Jonson was, according to this tradition, a mere precocious pedagogue, fit only to revise and restrain the too liberal effusions of his elder in genius as in years. Now, in every one of the plays common to both, the real difficulty for a critic is not to trace the hand of Beaumont, but to detect the touch of Fletcher. Throughout the better part of every such play, and above all of their two masterpieces, _Philaster_ and _The Maid's Tragedy_, it should be clear to the most sluggish or cursory of readers that he has not to do with the author of _Valentinian_ and _The Double Marriage_. In those admirable tragedies the style is looser, more fluid, more feminine. From the first scene to the last we are swept as it were along the race of a running river, always at full flow of light and buoyant melody, with no dark reaches or perilous eddies, no stagnant pools or sterile sandbanks; its bright course only varied by sudden rapids or a stronger ripple here and there, but in rough places or smooth still stirred and sparkling with summer wind and sun. But in those tragic poems of which the dominant note is the note of Beaumont's genius a subtler chord of thought is sounded, a deeper key of emotion is touched, than ever was struck by Fletcher. The lighter genius is palpably subordinate to the stronger, and loyally submits itself to the impression of a loftier spirit. It is true that this distinction is never grave enough to produce a discord: it is also true that the plays in which the predominance of Beaumont's mind and style is generally perceptible make up altogether but a small section of the work that bears their names conjointly; but it is no less true that within this section the most precious part of that work is comprised. Outside it we shall find no figures so firmly drawn, no such clearness of outline, no such cunning of hands as we recognize in the three great studies of Bellario, Evadne and Aspatia. In his male characters, as for instance in the parts of Philaster and Arbaces, Beaumont also is apt to show something of that exaggeration or inconsistency for which his colleague is perhaps more frequently and more heavily to blame; but in these there is not a jarring note, not a touch misplaced; unless, indeed, a rigid criticism may condemn as unfeminine and incongruous with the gentle beauty of her pathetic patience the device by which Aspatia procures herself the death desired at the hand of Amintor. This is noted as a fault by Dyce; but may well be forgiven for the sake of the magnificent scene which follows, and the highest tragic effect ever attained on the stage of either poet. That this as well as the greater part of those other scenes which are the glory of the poem is due to Beaumont might readily be shown at length by the process of comparison. The noble scene of regicide, which it was found expedient to cancel during the earlier years of the Restoration, may indeed be the work of Fletcher; but the part of Evadne must undoubtedly be in the main assigned to the more potent hand of his fellow. There is a fine harmony of character between her naked audacity in the second act and her fierce repentance in the fourth, which is not unworthy a disciple of the tragic school of Shakespeare; Fletcher is less observant of the due balance, less heedful of the nice proportions of good and evil in a faulty and fiery nature, compounded of perverse instinct and passionate reaction. From him we might have had a figure as admirable for vigour of handling, but hardly in such perfect keeping as this of Beaumont's Evadne, the murderess-Magdalen, whose penitence is of one crimson colour with her sin. Nor even in Fletcher's Ordella, worthy as the part is throughout even of the precious and exquisite praise of Lamb, is there any such cunning touch of tenderness or delicate perfume of pathos as in the parts of Bellario and Aspatia. These have in them a bitter sweetness, a subtle pungency of mortal sorrow and tears of divine delight, beyond the reach of Fletcher. His highest studies of female character have dignity, energy, devotion of the heroic type; but they never touch us to the quick, never waken in us any finer and more profound sense than that of applause and admiration. There is a modest pathos now and then in his pictures of feminine submission and slighted or outraged love; but this submission he is apt to make too servile, this love too dog-like in its abject devotion to retain that tender reverence which so many generations of readers have paid to the sweet memories of Aspatia and Bellario. To excite compassion was enough for Fletcher as in the masculine parts of his work it was enough for him to excite wonder, to sustain curiosity, to goad and stimulate by any vivid and violent means the interest of readers or spectators. The single instance of noble pathos, the one scene he has left us which appeals to the higher and purer kind of pity, is the death of the child Hengo in _Bonduca_--a scene which of itself would have sufficed to enrol his name for ever on the list of our great tragic poets. To him we may probably assign the whole merit of that fiery and high-toned tragedy, with all its spirit and splendour of national and martial passion; the conscious and demonstrative exchange of courtesy between Roman and Briton, which is one of the leading notes of the poem, has in it a touch of overstrained and artificial chivalry characteristic of Fletcher; yet the parts of Caratach and Poenius may be counted among the loftiest and most equal of his creations. But no surer test or better example can be taken of the distinctive quality which denotes the graver genius of either poet than that supplied by a comparison of Beaumont's _Triumph of Love_ with Fletcher's _Triumph of Death_. Each little play, in the brief course of its single act, gives proof of the peculiar touch and special trick of its author's hand: the deeper and more delicate passion of Beaumont, the rapid and ardent activity of Fletcher, have nowhere found a more noticeable vent for the expression respectively of the most tender and profound simplicity of quiet sweetness, the most buoyant and impatient energy of tragic emotion. Entry: BEAUMONT
Added to senile dementia there is often found a condition of mania or melancholia or even of systematized delusional insanity. The chief symptoms of the maniacal attacks are the great motor restlessness and excitement, which are worst during the night time. Sleep is almost always seriously disturbed, and the patients rapidly become exhausted unless carefully nursed and tended. The actions of senile maniacs are often puerile and foolish, and they may exhibit impulses of a homicidal, suicidal or sexual character. The melancholic cases are also extremely restless, and their emotion is loudly expressed in an uncontrollable manner. They often have delusions of persecution. Their cries and groans have an automatic character, as if the patient, though compelled to utter them, did not experience the mental pain which he expressed. They also, many of them, eat their food ravenously, although a few obstinately refuse it. The senile delusional cases may manifest any of the classical forms of paranoia described above, but their delusions are of a rudimentary and unfinished type. The most common of all senile delusions is that they are being robbed. They therefore often hide their small valuables in corners and out-of-the-way places, and as their memories are very defective they are afterwards unable to find them. Others, who live alone, barricade their doors and try to prevent any one entering for fear of thieves. Delusions of ambition in senile subjects are usually of a very improbable and childish character. Hallucinations are generally present in the senile delusional cases. Entry: SENILE