Volume 1, issue no.1, 2014 Clio50

Digital Lakes, Richard Who?, Com- memorating the First World War, The type- set of choice, A Por- tuguese in Barrow, Find the wall,The per- sistence of poverty, Could you manage a pudding? Lancaster University opened its doors to in Octo- ber 1964, with eight library staff, fourteen adminis- trative staff and forty-five academics, of whom thir- Helvetica, 1957 teen were professors. One of these last was Professor Austin Woolrych, the founding professor of the Department of History, designed to be the leading arts’ subject at this new university. While the univer- You see it everywhere: every day. It’s so common you probably don’t notice. sity and the new university movement of the early Aristotle Kallis unveils the typeface so ubiquitous it became a mundane 1960s reflected the optimism and promise of the age, Woolrych was a rather old-fashioned person, but a background. far from conventional academic. Clio50 apologises to Aristotle for this fancy font: pcs don’t do Helvetica.

He had been a clerk in Harrods, and served Professor Woolrych died in 2004, but his Depart- It leads a discreet life in all our desktops, very much a citizen of the world. Its spectacu- throughout the war, being wounded at El Alamein; ment is still going strong, and so this year celebrates lar success is mystifying or infuriating to some its fiftieth year along with the University itself. To notebooks, and mobile devices. For decades he was a passionate walker and was still trekking and plainly obvious to others. Few typefaces across China and New Zealand in his eighties, and mark it, and to provide another way to tell those it has been the typeface of choice for many he continued to write his books in a painfully-neat both inside and outside the university what is hap- designers: posters and advertisements, have divided opinion so spectacularly. Some inky hand. His was the last hand-written book man- pening within its new (rather austere white) walls corporate logos, some of the most extensive swear by it and have used it in a near-exclu- uscript to be delivered to a publisher: the University (we moved buildings on campus two years ago) we signage systems. But it has also given mate- sive way; others hate it viscerally as the closest Library wanted to display it, but the publisher had have put together Clio50, a magazine of writings by rial existence to all sort of text documents, that graphic design will ever come to ‘totali- destroyed it. members of the History Department, University of tarianism’. Helvetica is the closest we have to a Lancaster. exchanged by hand and over the internet. Helvetica carries a Swiss passport but is universal popular language of modernism. It is

In this issue Everyone’s favourite font ...... p.3 Locate that wall ...... p.5 Digital Lakeland ...... p.8 Shakespeare’s discourse on land ... p.11 The underclass in history ...... p.12 Commemorating War ...... p.13 The Portuguese sonnets of Barrow p.15 Afterword .... pudding ...... p.18 Clio50, Vol.1, issue no.1, 2014. All articles and artwork provided by staff within Lancaster University History Department, and any and all permissions have been secured. This edition has been edited by Sarah Barber.

2 Clio Clio 3 the Bauhaus of typography. opting for the adjective (‘Helvetica’ means To understand the birth and rise to ubiqui- ‘Swiss’) and focusing instead on the type- if not our digital one, to the point that we tinguished life, and with a fascinating story to ty of Helvetica one needs to search back for face’s lack of historical baggage - something have even stopped noticing it. When a New tell. It was never a rebel but it was revolution- its intellectual connections with the modern like a clears start in design, turning its back Yorker decided to have a Helvetica-free day, ary in its own quiet, unflashy way. Now, nearly movement that flourished in Europe in the on norms and legacies of the past. Some he found it impossible to perform even the six decades after its birth, it remains universal years between the two world wars. An interna- later accused it of being devoid of any char- simplest tasks and steps of his daily routine and always modern. One of its greatest rivals tional group of young and talented designers acter - boring, mechanical, without any - catching the Subway, wearing his favourite in the sixties was another typeface from Swit- sought to break with established tradition in aesthetic or historical value. And yet Hel- t-shirt, ordering food from the take-away zerland, equally functional, simple, and clean. every form of design and embrace the lan- vetica became so phenomenally successful - without confronting Helvetica. If he were Its name - Univers - spoke even more explicit- guage of simplicity, function, clarity, purity precisely because of its sheer simplicity and using an iPhone today, he would have had ly of the Swiss designers’ ambition to appeal to - a kind of design without (‘unnecessary’ as neutrality. It was legible and distinctive to switch it off: since the autumn of 2010, the widest possible international audience. The they saw them) adornments, freed from the (quickly adopted by New York for its over- Apple’s mobile handsets feature a digitised success of both these typefaces underlined the weight of history. Their inspiration came from haul of the Subway’s entire signage system). version of Helvetica as system font for the collective longing of the people for escape - a unique sense of opportunity - to innovate, It was bold and authoritative - hence its operating system. from the memories of the recent past, from the to develop international and universal forms appearance in the logos of so many world Ironically again, Helvetica has become a ghosts of nationalism, from the clouds of war, of communication, to rediscover simplicity in brands, from airlines to popular clothing kind of classic design in our days. It is histo- and from ‘history’ itself. design, unfettered by norms and legacies of chains. Above all, however, Helvetica had ry now - a typeface with a long and dis the past. this rare quality of never feeling out of The traumatic experience and consequenc- place in locations as varied (geographically, es of the Second World War cast the darkest culturally, historically) as New York, Italy, of shadows on this optimism; but it did not and Tokyo. weaken the aspiration that underpinned it. Helvetica expressed the desire to turn the As Europe started to come out of the post- page of history, shed the oppressive legacies Where’s the wall? war devastation in the 1950s, trying to look of the recent past, and start afresh. Its pop- Research takes Sarah Barber to some interesting (weird?, hairy?) places. to the future by turning its back to the pre- ularity peaked in the 1960s and early 1970s, The wall that graces the cover of this edition isn’t any old brick wall .... vious decades of bitter division and conflict, before younger designers came to the fore (but it is a metaphor). modernism emerged once again as the shared and rejected it as too severe, conservative, language of break with the past. History, it controlled and controlling. Some even now seemed to many, weighed too heavily on accused it of being the brand of corporate I love SU the collective shoulders of European nations. It capitalism - a typeface that lost its soul be- Well, yes, I do. But I have a love/hate relationship was the ghosts of this history that had plunged cause of its meteoric success. Yet, with the with South America’s least-known country. The the continent into two devastating world wars advent of the digital era, Helvetica acquired general population of the UK is now much more in less than four decades; and some believed a new lease of life. In the early 1990s Apple au fait with matters Surinamese than it has been that it would do it again soon. Suddenly, a Macintosh was the first personal computer for 350 years. I blame ‘Pointless’. There were sev- future without the shadow of history appeared to offer typographic choices that looked eral series when my knowledge of obscure parts blissfully promising. good on the screen - a revolutionary de- of the Caribbean stood me in good stead, but Ironically, Helvetica was very much a prod- parture from the dreary world of early now all manner of people happily shout ‘Surina- uct of a specific national context. It was born pixelised PC typography - and it chose the me’ and its capital ‘Paramaribo’ at the television, in Switzerland in the mid-1950s and expressed original Helvetica instead of its plagiarised though they still get their Guianas muddled up an explicitly Swiss attitude to design- simple, copy, Arial, used on PCs. Apple eventually with their Guineas. functional, unobtrusive, solid, dependable, lost out massively to Microsoft - and the Suriname is a fascinating country. Its history beautifully designed yet completely understat- digital reincarnation of Helvetica also lost means that it is the most ethnically diverse place ed. Max Miedinger, its chief designer, initially out to Arial and Times New Roman (for on earth. Several indigenous American peoples wanted to name it ‘Helvetia’ - the Latin name years the default typefaces of Microsoft were joined in the sixteenth century by European for Switzerland. He quickly changed his mind, Word). But Helvetica remained so en- adventurers in search of El Dorado. These in- trenched in our everyday visual life, 4 Clio Clio 5 which it was known as Fort Willoughby signs of people being shot in the back. and Surinam was called - by its English But in 2009, then President Venetiaan un- proprietor, Francis Lord Willoughby of veiled a plaque at Fort Zeelandia (see below) Parham, at least - Willoughbyland. Suri- to the fifteen martyrs for democracy - lawyers, name has a long history of overbearing journalists, academics - and the Surinamese dictatorial rulers. government began proceedings against its The first times I visited Suriname was former leader for their murder. The US govern- in the Spring of 1991. It was less than ment attempted to have Bouterse extradited on three months since Desiré ‘Desi’ Bouterse drug-trafficking charges. had taken power (again) in the so-called These photographs were taken in the spring Christmas Eve coup. With his control of of 2012. In many ways, not least that Fort Zee- the military, he was able to override ef- landia has been re-opened as a museum and fective parliamentary and representative was struggling to run a cafe, Suriname has government. The military also played a changed. Businesses have started to exploit Su- big part in a vicious civil war - largely be- riname’s bauxite-rich earth and there are plans tween the indigenous and maroon com- to develop the tourist industry. I am still staying munities but mediated, brokered, (maybe in some places which are not quite covered by engineered?) by the military and elements the word ‘basic’, but there are now hotel options in the government. Despite its antiquated which did not exist twenty years ago. The visa look, the sturdy brick-built Fort Zeelandia office in Amsterdam, is now crammed with assumed massive significance as a symbol potential returnees. But they are overseen by a of government. For the supporters of elec- photograph of their President, described by Al tive government it represented liberty: for Jazeera as ‘one of Suriname’s wealthiest men and cluded Sir Walter Raleigh who built two indenturers. In the case of Suriname, the labour the Bouterse military it was a haven. In most popular politicians’. Despite being want- ‘houses’ on the banks of the Para River, came from a far wider afield than often the case. 1991 it wasn’t possible to photograph Fort ed by Interpol and indicted for murder, Desi but there were French and Dutch and Along with the considerable population of Indi- Zeelandia; to make the point, there were Bouterse was re-elected in May 2010. Spanish and Portuguese and Jewish set- an and Chinese, Suriname’s place in the Dutch tlements within the Guianas, and several empire meant a sizable influx from south-east specifically Irish attempts to settle there. Asia, particualrly Java and Indonesia, and there In the seventeenth century the English were Libyans, Lebanese and Korean. With misce- and then the Dutch carried Africans genation came a different name for the offspring into slavery there. Britain’s first known of any combination. The result is a fantastically English female playwright, Aphra Behn, vibrant culture, with little racial tension, though wrote a novella about a slave rebellion there is some sense of grievance that indigenes amongst the English settlements, led by lack the recognition they have received in oth- the Akan prince and eponymous hero, er South American countries, and the maroons Oroonoko. From the seventeenth century have a long-standing sense of exclusion. on, slaves who escaped the plantations So, where is this wall? along the rivers could utilise Suriname’s The wall on the cover is a mixture of sev- undeveloped rain-forest interior to avoid enteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century recapture, re-Africanise their society, and bricks and makes up a section of what is now a create autonomous ‘maroon’ communites. free-standing part of the defences of the city of Also developing their own semi-autono- Paramaribo, close to the estuary of the Surina- my was the Jewish community at Joden- me River. Just along from it is Fort Zeelandia, a savanna. With the abolition of the slave section of which, rebuilt in 1784, is shown above. trade, the need for labour was met by The Dutch took over the fort in 1667, before 6 Clio Clio 7 Image 1:

This series of maps dis- plays the Lake District tours of Arthur Young (a), Thomas Gray (c.) and Thomas Pennant (b. and d.). Lancaster’s History Department is the home of a European Research Whereas Gray and Council five-year Spatial Human- Young visited the re- Romantic ities project. Its Principal Investi- gion once, in 1768 and gator is Ian Gregory, working with 1769 respectively, Pen- a team of five in different areas. Lyrical nant passed through Here, Team Member Chris it twice, once in 1769 Donaldson introduces some and again in 1772. Ethereal graphics which show what can be done to analyse that most distinc- Virtual tive of spaces, the Lake District. Image 2:

Digital This set of maps of England and Wales as a whole shows the distribution and the fre- quency of places associated with cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery in the annual re- ports of the General Register Office for England and Wales between 1840 and 1880.

8 Clio Clio 9 Image 3: Here is depicted the distribution and frequency of places associated with the poet William Wordsworth in a sample Rooting kingship of two dozen Victorian Lake District tourist publications. As rare as hens’ teeth, Sarah Barber managed to get a ticket for her fa- vourite Shakespeare, Richard II, with in the title role ..... David Tennant.

The curlicues, flourishes and bon-mots of Shakespeare is very clear: do not treat Richard’s sophisticated prose were the Doc- lightly of the ground. If there is a hero in tor’s dismissive falsetto. And thus they earned Richard II, it is the ground itself. The hierar- a ripple of recognition, appreciation, familiar- chy of territory is everywhere: in the humble ity from the Tennant factor, but they weren’t garden and the ‘other Eden’, this ‘demi-para- the way to earn sympathy for Richard’s dise’. The only thing to emerge with its rep- character. The set pieces which chart Rich- utation unscathed is England itself as rivals ard’s lack of authority are all in the mouths claim to act in the name of its soil (even from of famous actors here, and performed in an exile) and only end up besmirching it in civil actorly way. Jane Lapotaire’s Dowager Duch- broils. ess of Gloucester is magnificently distracted by her grief ... to the point of bemusement. The Barbican seems an odd venue, all con- Michael Pennington is Richard’s uncle Gaunt. crete, plastic and tunnels. Surely it would He therefore gets to set up the ‘this earth, this have looked more fitting in the main RSC realm, this England’ speech of disappoint- theatre in Stratford. And the audience is ment at the state of his nephew’s stewardship. much younger than the usual Stratford Here, it is not a soliloquy, and an understated, crowd. And far more women than men: an but nevertheless mannered performance. unusual number of Scots. Was this the en- tirety of the London Scottish community or Thus, the three key ‘Ricardian’, poetic state- had they travelled down to see a Scot play the ments of the morality of nobility and breed- English play. Ahhh... the Tennant factor. ing are ‘Frenchified’, as Bolingbroke’s soldierly plain speaking is made to sound like the voice Tennant’s Richard has been described as of the honest yeoman. They failed to get over capricious. He’s not quite fey, but it is man- the play’s ambivalence for me. Richard does nered, placed and occasionally distracted. not get to earn the audience’s sympathy at the His early decisions in the Bolingbroke versus end, and Bolingbroke is insufficiently cast as Mowbray dispute must be changeable and a a usurper. When Richard says ‘let us sit upon sign of failing lordship in that they are arbi- the ground’, in order to chronicle the trials trary, but do not impose the king’s will; dis- and dangers of kingship, I can’t believe Shake- play mercy as a chief instrument of authority speare intended the audience to be amused. but this Richard lacks the power to enforce Sarah Barber is just starting work on a new book on the idea of any decision. And in failing to delineate or planting in English early-modern culture, which will explore plantations in Ireland and the Americas . Richard II is the best protect his boundary, he allows Bolingbroke To learn more, visit the project website: Shakespearean example of metaphors for planting and rooting to break exile and to become the one whose flora, authority or the soil. will exceeds law. < http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/spatialhum.wordpress/>

10 Clio Clio 11 Where does poverty stand within an historical perspective? I guess I’m really trying to show three things. One is to show how ideas of As public debate and political point-scoring con- intergenerational continuities have appeared almost in every decade, in a tinues to colour discussions about the appropriate slightly different form, from the 1880s to the present day. And then I want to show how this cyclical ideas enter the policy debate, and finally show ways in which to commemorate the First World War, what their consequences are for policy development. Why do these ideas keep coming back? Corinna Peniston Bird has a wish list for the activities There’s an interesting balance between continuity on the one hand, but also of the year ahead. some discontinuities, because in a way these are moulded by the particular historical periods in which they come around. But it seems to be they come trenches which dominate the popular imag- around not for any reasons of evidence but really for ideological and polit- ination – understandably so as that is where ical reasons; that the ideas are useful for the policy-makers who put them The firstis that we should not the most dramatic stories of the war are so forward. allow the understandable attention to the often located. Yet we also need to consider What effect have they had on public policy? Western Front and the 5.4 million British the tooth-to-tail ratio, that is, the number of I think the main effect is that they’ve limited the policy debate, often mov- troops who served there to drown out men in the military needed in support roles ing the focus away from wider interventions which might be more about the experiences of troops in Mesopota- and not in combat. In the First World War, economic and social change. They’ve moved them inside the home, focused mia, Egypt and Palestine, Salonika, Italy. the rear had a growing appetite for men, and on parenting and children and the thing that strikes me about the current Their warfare could well be more fluid, the non-combatant proportion of the army day is the focus on practical help in the home. their lives more vulnerable to disease, rose from 16.3 per cent on 1 September 1914 Is this a particularly British phenomenon? the consequences of injury exacerbated to 33.45 per cent on 1 July 1918 – that’s low In order to make my argument that there is this chain of ideas going back by distance - and of course it could also by modern standards, but it still means that to the 1880s we have to cross the Atlantic at two points: first of all in the involve the most glorious experiences of by the end of the war a third of all serving 1960s to the ‘culture of poverty’ debates, and then secondly in the 1980s travel and foreign climes denied to most personnel did not see combat: what are their when debates about underclass started in the United States and subse- people of that era: In our PhD student stories? quently moved into Britain. It seems to me ‘the underclass’ is a particularly Martin Purdy’s book on Gallipoli, he cites British and American concept. a soldier from Todmorden writing home And does this debate attach morality to poverty? from Egypt: “Tha weant know so mich The third challenge is how to nego- There’s a clear moral dimension to the debate: it’s a debate about culture about this land o’t Pharaohs … well, its’ tiate the powerful hierarchy of sacrifice and rather than economic change, poverty, environment. I think there’s a be- reet enough. There’s some bloomin’ fine specifically the dominance of the stories of lief that ‘if only we can make these people behave differently then we will mosques and two or three puramids up those who died over those who survived. solve the problem’. It doesn’t address the question of why people behave and down. Fools talk about goin’ to Pendle Blackadder’s survival rates are misleading. differently, which is as an adaptive response to the circumstances they find Hill to see t’sun rise, why they may as well We’re never going to have uncontentious fig- themselves in. dig I’bed. By gum, I’ve never seen nought ures, but of the 8.7 million men who served to touch it in all my puff. I think it’s worth in the British Army at some point, 956,703 being riddled wi’ bits of lead to ha’ seen were killed in action, died of their wounds, The British underclass is a hot topic right what we han. I’ve never regretted the step disease or injury, or were missing presumed now. But as John Welshman argued at a re- I took in joinin’ th’ 6th Lancashire fusiliers dead, ( of whom 704, 803 were from the an ‘ never shall do.” British Isles). In other words, statistically cent conference organised by the Poverty you were far more likely to survive the war than be killed in it, a fact you would be hard Alliance, ‘“The Generation Game?” Family, The second is to re-evaluate the pressed to glean from most cultural represen- emphasis on trench warfare, not only to tations of the war, and a message reinforced Poverty and Unemployment’, it’s a topic that ensure coverage of naval and air warfare, by war memorials listing the dead, in pref- comes around with regularity. but also in terms of understanding the erence to those who served. The emphasis lives of the men who served. It is the front on naming the dead, however, mitigates 12 Clio Clio 13 against analysis of the returning men and The most neglected category is the first, and put Barrow on the map of European their ability to reintegrate into society, build yet the significance accorded these roles can modernist verse: or nearly. They didn’t or sustain relationships, find or hold down be read in the aftermath of the war: from 1923, Sonnets from the come to light until the publication of the work. If we find first-hand accounts of any a committee met to ensure that in the event Ática edition of de Campos’s poems in veterans or their families describing those of a future war men performing such roles Portuguese: Álvaro de 1944, and then not under the title ‘Bar- challenges, how exciting that would be. would not be allowed to join up, neither to row-in-Furness’ but ‘Barrow-on-Fur- volunteer or under conscription: As the final Campos’s ness’. However, the people who are most forgot- report of The Committee of Imperial Defence, ‘Barrow-on-Furness’ Critics puzzle over the source of this ten, most excluded from narratives of the Sub-committee on Manpower, National Ser- seemingly infelicitous slippage in de war, are not a minority. It is the majority, vice in a future war, argued, ‘The experience of Barrow-in-Furness lies on the east- Campos’s geography, which leaves the and the majority of men whose stories we the last war shows how difficult it is to get men ern edge of the Furness Peninsula; for reader to infer that Barrow lies not on have yet to tell, indeed, yet to seek. The male into their right places once they have got in more than 400 years the domain of the the seaward side of the Furness Peninsu- British population in 1911 was 17,445,608: the wrong ones…’. Unlike the First World War, monks of St Mary’s Abbey, who moved lar, but on the banks of an imaginary riv- over the course of the war 5,704,416 were conscription was in place prior to the outbreak their order to this remote coastal plain er named Furness (which, incidentally, to serve from the UK alone: under a third of the Second World War, and so too was the in 1123. The town takes its name from puts de Campos’s sonnets on a par with of those men. Those who remained were schedule of reserved occupations. the Norse word barrai, or ‘bare island’, Barrow’s other literary claim to fame: composed partially of those too young or which seems apt considering that as late Wilbert Awdry’s The Railway Series, too old or too infirm to enlist. But the ma- Because of their capacity to disrupt conven- as 1845 the hamlet that stood on the spot whose ‘little’ North Western Railway jority of men who stayed at home, stayed at tional narratives of service and conventional was home to scarcely 68 souls. But that joins the British mainline at Barrow.)But home because their roles there were deemed hierarchies within the gender order, the mun- was to change in 1850, when a team of de Campos’s sonnets repeatedly invoke a more important. Up until 1916 of course, dane majority remain largely invisible. Civilian prospectors discovered the Park haema- ‘rio Furness’. service in the Forces was voluntary, or at men have only tenuous access to memorial- tite deposit: a nine-million-tonne bed According to de Campos’s own in- least as voluntary as peer and state pressure isation, echoing contemporary suspicions of of pure iron ore that launched the local scrutable testimony, he composed this allowed it to be. But once conscription was their commitment to the war effort – such community into the industrial age. sonnet series while ‘sitting atop a barrel introduced, exemption could be claimed on men were vulnerable to the accusation of be- By 1873, it was home to 40,000-plus on an abandoned dock’ after ‘finishing a one of four grounds, of which the first was ing shirkers, just as their ability to progress in people, an expanding naval construction job of tonnage’. This claim accords with whether it was in the national interest for their careers could be seen as war profiteering. yard and the largest steelworks in the what little is known of de Campos’s bi- the individual to be engaged in other work So where does that leave us? With the world. By the early 1920s, shipbuilding ography. But, its credibility is compro- (the other three related to resultant hard- multi-dimensionality of war. We need to had outstripped steel as Barrow’s prin- mised by the fact that de Campos did ship; ill health and conscien- know about national experiences, and look cipal industry, with the Sheffield-based not, in all actuality, exist—his identity tious objection). across boundaries for similarities and differ- company of Vickers Ltd. employing most being a product of the pen of his creator, ences, we also need research which con- of the town’s male workforce. The men the poet and critic Fernando Pessoa centrates on small groups, individual lives, on Vickers’ payroll were Irish, Scottish or (1888-1935), who, though an ardent An- the events of a few days or weeks, from Lancashire; but their number also glophile, never set foot in the UK. but which also places decades in included men from Staffordshire and Pessoa is known to have written un- their context. The First World War Cornwall, as well as a few migrants from der the guise of some seventy heter- is a collage of experiences and further afield. One of these, as various onyms, two of which (or, perhaps, one images, none alone can be sources attest, was a bemonicaled Portu- should say of whom) composed in En- representative. We are left guese poet and engineer named Álvaro glish. But, English-speaking de Campos with the challenge to find de Campos. provided Pessoa with a Portuguese voice commemoration appropriate to the Highly regarded by Lisbon’s literary through which to align himself with the twenty-first century both in form vanguard, de Campos was not known Anglo-American literary canon. ‘Bar- and in message. Stig Foerster argued that Total as a poet in Britain during his stint at row-on-Furness’, though written at a War demands Total History. It also demands Vickers. But the series of five sonnets he later phase of de Campos’s career (and Total Commemoration. composed towards the end of his stay in a decidedly more minor key) also 14 Clio Clio 15 constitutes a kind of poetic saudação, or traced back to Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, major ports, including Newcastle, Cardiff physical and imaginative terrain as his salutation, to a doyen of Anglo-American and came of age during the latter half of and Liverpool. But this only makes us Romantic precursor. poetry, but the salutary gestures it makes the eighteenth century, when Thomas wonder all the more at the poem’s setting. ‘Barrow-on-Furness’ is thus, it seems are somewhat more oblique. Warton’s much-imitated sonnet ‘To the Indeed, why set these sonnets beside a to me, a work rich in geo-specific inter- The five sonnets that comprise ‘Bar- River Lodon [sic]’ established the river- make-believe river in Barrow, and not on textuality: a sort of topographical con- row-on-Furness’ are fundamentally En- bank as a popular topos for meditation the Tyneside or Merseyside, or along the versation poem that, in creatively cohab- glish compositions. They include English and self-reflection. Severn, the Ely or the Taff? Why go to the itating with Wordsworth’s sonnets, lays sonnet types (Petrarchan, Spenserian, and The rivers featured in the riparian trouble of inventing an industrial river Shakespearean), and are peppered with sonnets of Warton and his imitators when one already has so many from which are, like the ruins that dot to choose? the landscapes of so much Any answer to these questions must eighteenth-century verse, be tentative. But, it seems most likely to spatial embodiments of me that Pessoa pinned Barrow’s name to passing time. In de Cam- de Campos’s sonnets because, in doing pos’s sequence, where the so, he was effectively writing himself into quayside of the make-believe the landscape of one of the masterworks river Furness provides the of the English riparian tradition: William speaker with a stage for dra- Wordsworth’s sonnets to the River Dud- matizing feelings of intran- don. Published in 1820, and set on the sigence and exile. ‘Run on, borders of the Furness Peninsula, this se- you damned river,’ the poet ries of 33 (and later 34) sonnets has long exclaims in sonnet ‘III’, ‘car- been recognized amongst Wordsworth’s rying my subjective indiffer- most significant works. ence out to sea.… What does Now, it is well known that Pessoa en- your disdainful presence countered Wordsworth’s poetry in his have to do with my thoughts childhood, and that he regarded him as an or me?’ important creative resource. As early as Once we recognize the role 1911, for example, he had translated three the river plays in facilitating of Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ poems for the Bib- the poet’s tortured self-in- lioteca Internacional de Obras Célebres. allusions to canonical English sonneteers. terrogations, Pessoa’s fictionalization In 1914, moreover, he borrowed the theme The concluding line of de Campos’s first of Barrow’s geography begins to make of Wordsworth’s ‘The Solitary Reaper’ sonnet, ‘Acaba lá com isso, ó coração!’ perfect sense. Not only does this in- for his ‘Ela Canta, Pobre Ceifeira’ and, [‘Stop all that right there, heart!’] negates vented English river provide the per- in doing so, placed his precursor’s poem the conclusion of Sydney’s Astrophil and fect counterpart to de Campos’s song in the collective conscious of Portuguese Stella: ‘looke to thy heart and write.’ But of existential consternation, but it also verse. It therefore seems reasonable to it is not only by way of such intertextual aligns that song with an established lit- conjecture that Pessoa’s decision to set de echoes that ‘Barrow-on-Furness’ achieves erary pedigree. And yet, for all that, one Campos’s lyric sequence within the wider the uncanny effect of writing English son- is left wondering why Pessoa should landscape surveyed in Wordsworth’s son- nets in Portuguese. have selected Barrow as the locus for de nets, bespeaks a desire to occupy the same The setting of ‘Barrow-on-Furness’, Campos’s lyric sequence. with its invocation of an otherwise Naturally, as other critics have ob- non-existent river, aligns de Campos’s se- served, the town accords with the biog- This is a piece by Chris Donaldson, Team member of the Spatial Humanties project. quence with the quintessentially English raphy Pessoa invented for de Campos, The illustrations are taken from the concrete mural sculpture plaques in Barrow-in-Furness. tradition of riparian lyric poetry. This can who as a Glasgow-trained naval en- be gineer spent time in most of the UK’s 16 Clio Clio 17 dates were usually used instead. At some were just as likely to be eaten at All Hallows Afterword point in the sixteenth century meat seems to (1st November) or New Year’s. The precise have disappeared from these puddings, though Christmas association seems to date from suet remained. It was probably around this the 1670s, and may have been a Resto- With only 300-odd days left till Christmas, Andrew time as well that pottage became pudding, ration-period response to the prohibition on partly because more homes began to have special foods at Christmas under Cromwell’s Jotischky takes a retrospective look at one of our best- ovens where food could be baked, and partly commonwealth (1649-60). But if we are loved (unless you hate it) puddings.

On Christmas Day most of us will claim this one. Another French food writer, sit down to a large dinner made of the same Bourdeau, thought that the prototype for kind of food: turkey and stuffing, various ‘English’ plum pudding was an ancient Greek trimmings, brussels sprouts, followed by dish described in Athenaeus’ account of a Christmas pudding and mince pies. We take wedding feast in the late second century AD. it for granted that this is traditional Christ- Plum pudding goes back to the late Mid- mas food, even if we are aware that turkey dle Ages. Originally it would have been very replaced goose only in the twentieth centu- different from the steamed pudding brought ry, and that there is a huge variety of other to the table with a halo of flames to which kinds of seasonal foods, including spiced we are accustomed. For one thing, it would beef and ham. Europe has a huge variety of have been served not at the end of a dinner Christmas bread and cakes from the Greek but at the start. In fact, it is referred to in christopsomo to the Swedish julbröd, and fifteenth-century sources as ‘pottage’, and it these days we can find Italian pannetone would probably have resembled a thick soup in our supermarkets. But if we want to eat rather than a pudding. These early types of something typically English and traditional plum pudding or pottage reflected the me- to the Christmas season, nothing but plum dieval taste for mixing meat and fruit in the pudding will do. How English it really is, same dish. Typically they contained chopped however, how old the tradition of eating it at beef or mutton, onions and sometimes a root Christmas is and even what it really consists vegetable such as turnip, dried fruit, and of, are not so simple. breadcrumbs, which were usually used to The French cook Alfred Suzanne, who thicken stews in medieval recipes. published his La Cuisine Anglaise in 1894 A fifteenth-century Middle English man- after having worked as chef to the duke of uscript in the British Library (Harleian MS Bedford, described in awed tones the Christ- 4016) contains a variant in the form of a mas preparations in a typical grand English seasonal Christmas recipe for ‘grete pye’, household, which included ‘hetacombs of containing beef, capons, hens, duck, wood- turkeys, geese, game of all sorts .. and moun- cock or other game birds, all chopped into tains of plum puddings, ovens full of mince small pieces and mixed with suet, then baked because of the invention of the pudding cloth looking for the earliest recipe that conforms pies.’ His contemporary Philéas Gilbert in a ‘coffin’ of pastry with dates and currants, in the early seventeenth century – before this to our notion of Christmas pudding, we have (1857-1942), denied that the English had and seasoned with mace, cloves and saffron. a steamed pudding was usually made in the to look no farther back than the nineteenth invented plum pudding, or even that there ‘Plum pudding’ is a misnomer, because these lining of a pig’s stomach. century, the age when so many of our sup- was anything particularly English about it. dishes did not contain plums at all. ‘Plum’ in Originally plum puddings were not specifi- posedly venerable traditions really began. But as he said, the English have so few dish- late medieval usage could mean any kind of cally associated with Christmas, and they es of their own that they can be allowed to dried fruit, and although plums were cultivat- ed in medieval orchards, raisins, currants and 18 Clio Clio 19