The Fleet

One of the good things about living in Old Europe is that there are plenty of abandoned sewers, and on Sunday I walked much of the route that the Fleet River once flowed. Still flows, in fact, although now it’s a subterranean waterway. The Fleet was a major river in Roman and Anglo-Saxon Britain, with wells and springs dotting its banks: hence Clerkenwell. But by the time we get to our period, it was in a terrible way, a dumping ground for all kinds of waste. Ben Jonson’s ‘On the Famous Voyage’ imagines two part-drunk city boys journeying up the polluted Fleet Ditch from Bridewell to Holborn, perhaps in search of a brothel. Richard Helgerson called Jonson’s verse one of ‘the filthiest, the most deliberately and insistently disgusting poems in the language’, which is praise of a sort. And it is an insistently scatological poem: ‘How dare / Your daintie nostrills … / Tempt such a passage? when each priuies seate / Is fill’d with buttock? And the walls doe sweate / Urine.’ Not unlike a couple of north London pubs I frequent. Anyway, today you can still see the origin of the Fleet on Hampstead Heath in the form of the eighteenth-century ponds, created by damming the Fleet’s two headwaters. The Fleet’s two streams then travel underground, through Dartmouth Park, down Kentish Town, where they join, under Quinn’s: the bright yellow Camden pub, for those of you with local knowledge, itself no friend of daintie nostrills. From there, the Fleet heads to Kings Cross: no obvious signs of it here, although there is a plaque marking Fleet-derived ‘Bagnigge Wells’, where, if you were one of the ratherest things in eighteenth-century London, you might take the waters and the tea. The sign stands behind a bus-stop, opposite a hideous Travelodge on the spot of Nell Gwynne’s former house. (The bus-stop is called ‘Gwynne Place’.) The Fleet then runs on to Farringdon Road, cutting its way under gastropubs full of Guardian journalists, eventually exiting into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge. So far, so underground, but, rather thrillingly, it’s possible to hear the Fleet passing beneath, at one point. There is a grate in the road outside the otherwise forgettable Coach and Horses pub, on Ray Street, just off Farringdon, and if you risk lying down with your ear to the ground, you can hear the amazingly loud sound of the Fleet’s rushing water. ‘All, that they boast of Styx, of Acheron, / Cocytus, Phlegethon, our haue prou’d in one.’ The other chance for Fleet-glimpsing is beneath Blackfriars Bridge. The spot is unmarked, but if you have a low-tide, and if you walk to the right, and lean out as far as you can, you can see, lurking, the hole where the Fleet hits the Thames. It’s hidden away – everyone walks by – but you can see the waters that started off in dainty Hampstead, tumbling out into the Thames.

More Bones and Cheesecake

This image is freaky as all get out (and completely off topic). Barbie has hip and leg "bones." And a skull. If only Richard Brome or A. S. were alive to make a joke about the flesh and the bones. More cool CT scans here.

Cambria

Is Cambria becoming the new Times New Roman? Would this be a good development?

The Faces of Shakespeare

Stanley Wells has the goods on the Cobbe portrait. I personally like to imagine Shakespeare having weight issues as the reason for the fluctuating rotundity of his face in various paintings and carvings.

Iago Marbury

It appears Stephon Marbury is doing his best Iago on the Boston Celtics. Commented Kevin Garnett: "Weird thing is, he kept calling the other guys moors, which is just really messed up," the 12-time all-star said. "I mean, what is that, anyway? He didn't say it like it was a good thing. If he plays good basketball he can do what he wants, but I'm not going to listen to anyone call me or my guys moors."

It's Winter in the New World

From a relative of mine in the midwest, not snow, but ice. Many places without power for a second week.

It's snowing in Old Europe

'If snow be white,' wrote our immortal bard, 'why then her breasts are dun'. Whether this is a line about cooking chicken, or an odd, but early assessment of John Donne, it was doubtless ringing in the ears of the jubilant schoolchildren who covered the hill opposite my garret (pictured below). I could see hundreds of them: fighting, tobogganing, throwing snow balls. Lacking sleds, they improvised with various contraptions: shopping trolleys; real estate agent's boards; old doors. I stepped decorously to the side as one brute hurtled past, screaming something less than Shakespearean.

Last Question Class Extender

I recently stumbled upon this site and have been enjoying it ever since. I can't say I enjoy Last Question Class Extenders any more than my students do.