PD Smith

Did you know that Her­man Melville was the first to com­pare London’s fog to pea soup, in 1849? No, I did­n’t either. I found this in Chris­tine Cor­ton’s bril­liant new his­to­ry of the Big Smoke — Lon­don Fog. It was­n’t just a prob­lem in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry either. In the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Joseph Haydn, who was liv­ing in Great Pul­teney Street, com­plained: “There was a fog so thick that one might have spread it on bread. In order to write I had to light a can­dle as ear­ly as 11 o’clock.”

But the fogs of the mid­dle of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry were espe­cial­ly thick, thick­er even than Melville’s pea soup “of a gam­boge colour”. Thomas Miller, a writer, said “it is some­thing like being imbed­ded in a dilu­tion of yel­low peas-pud­ding, just thick enough to get through it with­out being whol­ly choked or com­plete­ly suf­fo­cat­ed. You can see through the yard of it which, at the next stride, you are doomed to swal­low, and that is all.”

It’s thick­ness and over­pow­er­ing smell of car­bon and sul­phur gave it the almost tan­gi­ble den­si­ty of food. HV Mor­ton, in The Heart of Lon­don (1925), sug­gest­ed that the city’s fog even had a local taste: “The fog has a flavour. Many flavours. At Mar­ble Arch I meet a del­i­cate after-taste like mel­on; at Ludgate Hill I taste coke.”

Bob Hope, the Lon­don-born come­di­an, con­tin­ued the food theme, jok­ing that Cal­i­forn­ian smog was “fog with the vit­a­mins removed”. By the way, inter­est­ing­ly Cor­ton notes that the word “smog” was nev­er real­ly used at the time to describe Lon­don’s fog and was only used in ret­ro­spect.

Any­way, I enjoyed Cor­ton’s high­ly orig­i­nal study immense­ly. You can read my review of it on the Guardian’s site.

While writ­ing my mother’s eulo­gy a few months ago, I real­ized that this year is the thir­ti­eth anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of my father’s book, Writ­ers in Sus­sex.

Sad­ly Bernard died at the end of 2005, but it was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence work­ing with him on the book, one I’ll always remem­ber. I had just fin­ished a pho­tog­ra­phy course and he was look­ing for a project to occu­py him dur­ing his ear­ly retire­ment. Togeth­er we hatched a plan for a book that would allow us to explore the beau­ti­ful coun­ty of Sus­sex. Once we had the green light from the pub­lish­er, we began trav­el­ling across the coun­ty, track­ing down the homes of authors who had lived in Sus­sex.

While I pho­tographed the hous­es, dad would talk to the own­ers, neigh­bours and any­one else who might have infor­ma­tion about the local lit­er­ary his­to­ry. He often includ­ed their rem­i­nis­cences in the book. And if our painstak­ing research also led us into a pub (in search of infor­ma­tion, natch) then so much the bet­ter.

Lat­er, when I came to write a book of my own, about the ori­gins of atom­ic weapons, it was strange to recall the impres­sive state­ly home, Uppark, where HG Wells’ moth­er was house-keep­er and where her son was allowed to indulge his pas­sion for read­ing in the great library. Imag­ine Wells, the fan­tastist of the future, liv­ing here!

At Bur­pham, a seclud­ed and ancient vil­lage with­in sight of Arun­del cas­tle, we found no less than three hous­es that had once belonged to authors – the homes of Mervyn Peake, John Cow­per Powys and the bee-keep­er and pop­u­lar author Tick­n­er Edwardes. I’ve always loved Peake’s won­der­ful­ly strange writ­ing and illus­tra­tions. The views near Bur­pham across the riv­er to Arun­del Cas­tle are immense­ly evoca­tive of Gor­meng­hast and its bizarre inhab­i­tants. It’s a mag­i­cal part of the world. Peake is buried in Bur­pham church­yard and a line from one of his poems is on his grave: “To live at all is mir­a­cle enough.”

Recent­ly, I was delight­ed to see that Blake’s Cot­tage had been bought by the Blake Soci­ety and will soon be open to the pub­lic. That would have pleased my dad, as he often took his adult edu­ca­tion stu­dents to see the old flint cot­tage in Fel­pham – “the sweet­est spot on earth”, accord­ing to Blake.

Sad­ly some of the hous­es we pho­tographed have now been demol­ished. Asham House, Bed­ding­ham, where Vir­ginia Woolf lived dur­ing the First World War, has gone. That’s a great shame as it was a beau­ti­ful house. When we vis­it­ed, the air was filled with the sound of ragged crows call­ing to each oth­er across the bare tree tops.

The brick church of St Cuthbert’s in Hove, where the poet Andrew Young was a min­is­ter from 1920, was demol­ished while we were work­ing on the book. I took a pho­to­graph of Bernard among the ruins. As a young man, my dad had been a poet and he loved Young’s poet­ry.

They were good days, full of con­ver­sa­tions about writ­ers and walks across rolling down­land, fueled by dark Sus­sex ales – days I’ll nev­er for­get. Thanks dad.

I dare say you can still pick up a sec­ond-hand copy of our book. My pho­tos from the book (and a few extra ones) are most­ly on Flickr. You can also read the fore­word, writ­ten by anoth­er Sus­sex writer, Christo­pher Fry. I’ve uploaded a pdf file of his orig­i­nal text, typed on his 1917 typewriter, here.

If you’ve enjoyed read­ing this, you might be inter­est­ed in anoth­er piece I wrote on the links between place and writ­ing.

Just back home after a much-need­ed break in Paris. The city of light was more beau­ti­ful than ever in the autumn sun…

If you get the chance, go to Vic­tor Hugo’s apart­ment on the Place des Vos­ges. Fas­ci­nat­ing in itself, but worth it just for the views of the exquis­ite sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry square out­side…

More pho­tos over on Flickr, as ever.

À bientôt…

I’ve spent the last week read­ing and review­ing Bruce Robin­son’s remark­able new book on Jack the Rip­per, They All Love Jack: Bust­ing the Rip­per, which has just been longlist­ed for the 2015 Samuel John­son Prize. It’s a leviathan of a book – more than 800 pages long – and on one lev­el Robin­son has writ­ten a won­der­ful­ly scabrous exposé of the debauched lives of the Vic­to­ri­an aris­toc­ra­cy and upper class­es.

Men like Hen­ry James Fitzroy, Earl of Euston, whom Robin­son describes with typ­i­cal blunt­ness as “a clas­sic pile of shit”, and Prince Albert Vic­tor, son of the Prince of Wales, an “effete lit­tle use­less ped­erast” but not, as some Rip­per­ol­o­gists have sug­gest­ed, a can­di­date for Jack the Rip­per him­self (“non­sense”, growls Robin­son, who claims this the­o­ry is so ludi­crous it had to be an attempt to divert atten­tion from the real per­pe­tra­tor).

Both men were impli­cat­ed in a scan­dal involv­ing young boys at a male broth­el in Cleve­land Street in 1889. The ensu­ing cov­er-up result­ed in a jour­nal­ist and the low-class work­ing boys at the club being sent to jail but the upper class per­pe­tra­tors, the “top nobs”, going free: “the law had to be made a whore to save the roy­al arse”. For Robin­son this is an exam­ple of how the Vic­to­ri­an rul­ing class­es closed ranks to pro­tect their own, dur­ing both this scan­dal and that involv­ing Jack the Rip­per: “If the Crown was under threat – be it from a nan­cy prince or a Mon­ster with a Blade – it was a threat to them all”.

Both the Earl of Euston and Prince Albert Vic­tor were Freema­sons and this secre­tive organ­i­sa­tion is cen­tral to Robinson’s nar­ra­tive: “Mason­ry per­me­ates every fibre of this conun­drum”. He does not claim that the con­ceal­ment of Jack the Rip­per was a Mason­ic con­spir­a­cy and he makes it clear that he is not hos­tile to the Craft: “The Rip­per, and not I, is the ene­my of Freema­son­ry.” Instead he blames “Her Majesty’s exec­u­tive”, who were all Masons: “it was a con­spir­a­cy of the Sys­tem”.

Robin­son believes that hon­est police­men like Detec­tive Inspec­tor Fred­er­ick Abber­line, who exposed the Cleve­land Street broth­el and worked on the Rip­per case, could have eas­i­ly caught the Rip­per if they had been giv­en full access to the evi­dence. But the Sys­tem wouldn’t let Abber­line (who was not a Mason) do his job.

As well as a won­der­ful­ly angry cri­tique of the Vic­to­ri­an Estab­lish­ment, Robin­son’s book is also a foren­si­cal­ly detailed account of a cov­er-up of breath-tak­ing audac­i­ty, a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy to con­ceal one of the worst crimes this coun­try has ever seen. Using the let­ters sent to the police — which unlike many Rip­per­ol­o­gists he believes to be gen­uine — he cre­ates a por­trait of Jack the Rip­per as the “Mason­ic Jok­er” that is gen­uine­ly chill­ing and con­vinc­ing. After years of painstak­ing research, Robin­son has also uncov­ered a new prime sus­pect, the pop­u­lar song­writer Michael May­brick. He makes a pow­er­ful case for his guilt.

It has to be said though that after so many years, all we have is cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence and news­pa­per reports, the lat­ter usu­al­ly dis­missed by his­to­ri­ans as unre­li­able. Most of the police files have mys­te­ri­ous­ly van­ished. (Aha! exclaims Robin­son.)

But his book is a bloody good read. Read it and make your own mind up about what real­ly hap­pened in the dark streets of Whitechapel at the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry.

My review is in today’s Guardian Review.

Apolo­gies for the lack of posts over the last few months, but life has been pret­ty hec­tic for me. We moved house and then my moth­er died, which was all rather trau­mat­ic, as I guess you can imag­ine.
Any­way, I’ve man­aged to get at least a few book shelves up in my new office (you have to get your pri­or­i­ties right, don’t you). Here’s the view from my win­dow, although I do now use a slight­ly more up-to-date word proces­sor than this one…

I’m work­ing hard on Watch­ing the Detec­tives. For a num­ber of rea­sons too bor­ing to explain, this book has tak­en longer than I hoped to research and write. But my pub­lish­er, Blooms­bury, is being very under­stand­ing and I’m back on the case, track­ing down the sleuths. Watch this space, as they say…

In addi­tion to my brief non-fic­tion reviews which I write for the Guardian, I did one for the TLS recent­ly on Iain Gate­ly’s Rush Hour, a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of com­mut­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they don’t put their reviews online, so here’s my ver­sion (which may dif­fer slight­ly from the pub­lished one). Enjoy!