Sympathy with The Lower Classes

One morning the girl was very thoughtful, and answered at random, and did not seem to Toad to be paying proper attention to his witty sayings and sparkling comments.

`Toad,' she said presently, `just listen, please. I have an aunt who is a washerwoman.'

`There, there,' said Toad, graciously and affably, `never mind; think no more about it. I have several aunts who ought to be washerwomen.'

The bats of Lacock Abbey

You may find this surprising, but here at The Batty Society we have this thing for ... bats. And even though we will deny all charges, we do have a slight gothic strain. This video at The Guardian thus has touched our hearts deeply. And out they come flying from the gargoyles mouth!

Alas, alas

It is election time in Norway and for some reason these words by the giant (in more ways than one) G.K. Chesterton springs to mind. Wrong country, but still ...

Elegy in a Country Churchyard
The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And birds and bees of England
About the cross can roam.

But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England
They have no graves as yet.

The title is, of course, a reference to Thomas Grays Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

Autumn Leaves

Autumn Leaves is possibly Deerstalkers favorite painting by John Everett Millais. The beauty of the young girls is set in contrast to the dying leaves. Youth, Millais tells us, is a passing thing. At best it can hope to grow old and die. It is a fundamentally pagan picture.

The painting is said to be inspired by at visit to Tennyson i 1854 and by his poem The Princess, from which the following lines are taken:

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking on the days that are no more.

There remains, though, the riddle of the eldest girls left hand. Why does it look like a demon claw? Millais was as close to a photographer as a painter can get, so there is no doubt that it is intended to look like that. But why?

Pyramid of skulls

A friend of Deerstalker has a human skull standing in his bookshelf. A skull he found in the rubbish of one of Norway's largest hospitals. Deerstalkers envy is almost limitless. Even so, he is not going to start searching hospital bins.

His good friend The Dodo, being extinct, loves running around, showing people pictures of skulls and cry "Memento Mori!" It is, obviously, correct.

Cezanne's skulls, probably painted in 1901, is proof that Deerstalker's and The Dodo's interests are not only bizarre. They are, in their morbid way, beautiful too.