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T. S. Eliot on causes
for we must know in advance, if we are prepared for that conflict, that the combat may have truces but never a peace. If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.
From T. S. Eliot on F. H. Bradley, via John Ganz
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New Hartley mine disaster
A coal mining accident took like the lives of 204 miners in New Hartley, north of Newcastle, in 1862. The massive cast iron beam of a steam engine used to pump water out of the depths of the mine (which extended out under the North Sea) snapped and fell into the open shaft of the Hester Pit, entombing the workers within. The men survived some time in the earth but succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning before rescuers reached them nearly a week later.
A record of the event, taken some years later, puts the aftermath in some admittedly florid but touching language:
On the 26th the last sad phase of this fearful tragedy was completed by the bodies being solemnly interred in the silent grave; and so great was the number of persons and vehicles composing the procession, that although Earsdon Church is four miles from New Hartley, the first rough hearse had arrived at the church before the last had left the colliery. The burial ground attached to the parish church at Earsdon was totally inadequate to the extraordinary requirements made upon it, and provision had consequently to be made outside the church-yard for nearly the whole of the bodies. The ground for the purpose was given by His Grace the Duke of Northumberland. After the bodies had been laid in the graves, there were sorrowing friends anxiously inquiring the exact spot at which were laid those for whom they mourned; and the tender flower and gloomy cypress, planted by the hand and watered with the tear of affection, will bloom there when the memory of those who sleep peacefully beneath shall have passed away from the earth.
Further reading
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Domain squatting
This. “It me,” or whatever. When I first started doing computer stuff I bought charlesharries.com from a scuzzy site that wouldn’t let me transfer it out, so I let it lapse and bought the (much more aesthetic but also much more difficult to say aloud to another person) charlesharri.es.
I’d intended to re-purchase the domain through a Reputable Domain Retailer but it got squatted immediately.
In the end I did get it back once whoever was squatting it realised that I have nearly zero authority on the web.
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Aurora
Saw the aurora last night, for the first time ever. I don’t know what I expected. I waited until the sun was good and set and then I poked my head out the back door just shy of the motion sensor on my neighbour’s flood light. There was a pale haze in the sky, like a long thin cloud. Off to the west, the sky was noticeably pinkish. To the naked eye it all looked sort of blurry, more the suggestion of an aurora than an actual aurora, like in the pictures.
Sam and I hopped in the car and drove out towards Weardale, where the sky gets Dark. All along the road outside of Sunniside and Tow Law we saw people parked up on the verges, faces skyward. We parked up above Wolsingham and took some pictures by the side of the road. I think that by this point the geomagnetic storm or whatever was weakening. We still captured some pretty magical pictures, and it was fun to tool through the countryside in the middle of the night on a Thursday.
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The Bright Sword
by Lev Grossman
Published 2024 670 pages
There’s a lot to like in this tale-telling from post-Roman Britain! Collum is an aspiring knight from the Hebrides who makes the long journey down to Camelot (maybe somewhere around Gloucester?) only to find that Arthur is already dead and the Knights of the Round Table are dead and scattered (mostly dead) in the wake of the Lancelot-Grail cycle. Undeterred, Collum rallies the benchwarmers for a last adventure across the porous boundaries dividing our world from the world of fairies and gods.
This world has much to recommend it! The magical world feels at once erratic but internally consistent, with such a distinct British twang to it that I struggle to believe that Grossman hasn’t spent time here. In the book (as in reality), the past remains eternally present: not something that happened and then got written down—but something that you can walk up to and touch. Standing stones, Roman roads, ruined churches, ancient oaks: these are high fantasy tropes but they’re also common features of dog walks within 25 minutes of our front door. The Bright Sword whisks me away to a dream of Britain, but it also plants me back where I am and reminds me that the place I live has been around for a long, long time.
A handful of nitpicks:
- Much like the world of fairy in which much of this book takes place, things get a little disorganised around the middle. The adventure sort of sputters and reignites, knights are picked off individually, characters swoop in on wings of magic and then dematerialise.
- There are frequent digressions to pad out backstories—at times, it feels, only to underscore someone’s death.
- The role of the Christian God waffles: He shows favour only intermittently and at one point declares that He is forsaking Britain entirely (the consequences of which continue to be felt among its people to this very day).
- Grossman also falls into the trap of belabouring the attractiveness of the main love interest, sometimes to the point of distraction. I’m personally not a fan of that, but maybe some people need to be reminded when a woman is attractive.
- I don’t know. What else?
- There are maybe one too many “twists”. Most of them don’t pay off, like Collum’s fairy heritage; I wish I’d have just been told up front.
- Finally, there were a number of moments in the book where it felt like there was a narrative pause to allow the audience to applaud, which doesn’t make sense because this is a book. They usually do it in superhero movies when a cameo happens. The narrative will work it's way up to a badass manoeuvre and then we'll get a one-line paragraph with a bit of ensuing filler.
The battles are hard-won, though, which I appreciated. Collum is good at fighting but he’s not Chosen One-good.
Overall: a romp. On the strength of the world of this book I wandered into a bookshop made out of a converted Methodist chapel and purchased a 60-year-old copy of The Once and Future King.
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