Wrestliana

by Toby Litt

  Around this time, the lease on Litt’s pit was given up. Bowthorn and Netherend were eventually handed over to other tenants.

  Mine owning wouldn’t have suited William. William describes himself, around the time he wrote Henry & Mary, as being:

  … dressed in a white flannel suit, nothing the whiter for its frequent visits to the regions below – I mean no allusion to any other world, but simply the lowest parts of this which can boast of much company – the bottom of a Coal Pit.

  Let’s pause for a moment to think what kind of man would visit a coalmine wearing a white flannel suit.

  *

  Bill Hartley and I came out of St James, back into the sunshine.

  I imagined William on that spot – looking down on Whitehaven and out over the sea, Cumbrian November sunshine, meaning grey.

  By marrying, William had ceased to be one thing but hadn’t yet become another. I don’t think he quite knew what to do with himself.

  I found him very sympathetic, at this moment. I was happy for him, but I pitied him, too – because I knew what he had coming. By this time in his life, though William couldn’t have been aware of it, he’d already gone from being a winner to being an also-ran, and soon he would be a loser.

  But that’s too grim an ending for what was probably a very happy day.

  Just as William poetically associated mothers with love, he associated weddings with happiness.

  In the poem I’ve already quoted, ‘The Bells that Hang in the Old Church Tower’, he sketched a country wedding very like the delightful episode that begins D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. It’s one of William’s liveliest, most energetic pieces of writing, and will have to do for his own account of the moment of leaving the church:

  I hear their chime – their merry chime –

  And my thoughts float back to the golden time,

  When the heart was gladsome, it knew not why,

  And pleasure beam’d in each youthful eye,

  As we watch’d the simple country maid,

  In her snow-white bridal dress array’d,

  Borne on her lov’d one’s arm along,

  Through the midst of the idle merry throng,

  Her warm blush starting at each rude jest…**

  * Dad likes to give him his magnificent full name: Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde.

  † Whitehaven, as well as a very pubby place, was also extremely churchy. Visiting sailors had lots of choice where to get drunk and almost as many where to repent.

  ‡ Letter from Edward Wilson, M.A. (1739–1804), canon of Windsor, dated 12 July 1790, quoted in Shuffrey, William Arthur, Some Craven Worthies, London, 1903.

  § I haven’t found a copy, dammit.

  ¶ This was a few yards from the Whitehaven waterfront, on Tangier Street. It is now the Deep Tan Sun Centre.

  || ‘Arlecdon Filly Fair’, Uncollected Literary Remains of William Dickinson, William Dickinson, 1888, p. 156.

  ** Cumberland Pacquet, 12 February 1839.

  13

  MIRTH

  In August 2015, I went for a drink with Jane Hartley, Bill and Margaret’s daughter.

  She’s a few years younger than me, with strawberry blonde hair, fine bones and lively eyes. She teaches art but would like to do nothing but paint.

  We didn’t go to just any pub – this was research. We went to The King’s Arms, Hensingham. The King’s Arms is the pub where William Litt, in 1831, was victualler, or ‘person who is licensed to sell alcohol’.

  This was where, on one of his antique buying trips, my father had proudly announced to the landlord that he was the great-great grandson of William Litt, former proprietor.

  Quietly, he’d been told, ‘I’d be careful mentioning that name round here, if I were you – that man owed a lot of people a lot of money when he left.’

  The implication was, keep talking, mister, and some of those people might try to get some of that money back, off you.

  I had a pint of lager, Jane had a glass of white wine.

  Jane tried mentioning our family connection to the young man behind the bar, but he was more interested in the game of pool in the other room.

  We took our drinks and sat down near the door.

  ‘Well, cheers,’ we said, deadpan.

  Empty apart from us, the lounge bar was a place completely without atmosphere – Sky Sports on the television, walls painted magnolia and, on the way to the loos, a single black and white photograph of the pub a hundred years earlier. I wrote in a notebook: ‘felt like a pair of gerbils in a cardboard box’.

  My lager tasted of orange, Jane’s wine of lemon.

  Bill and Margaret’s bungalow is a short drive away. And, all his life, Bill has never lived more than half a mile from where we sat.

  Jane grew up here, too. But she always wanted to get away. A few years ago, Jane fell in love with a man she met on a plane, and moved to Greece to be with him. Now – the relationship over – she was back, and she wasn’t happy. Pubs like The King’s Arms were not where she wanted to be. The Athens lifestyle suited her – I’d seen photos on Facebook. She was missing the sun.

  To cheer us both up, Jane told me the anecdote of how Bill fixed the family TV with a long finger of wood. She spoke of both her parents with very fond exasperation. She didn’t understand why they lived so much in the past.

  I understood.

  I was at the wrong angle, but from where she was sitting, Jane could look over the roundabout at the Sunday School building. This was a large, practical barn with a steep shingled roof and big wooden doors at the near end. You would not notice it, passing through.

  As we’d driven back from St James’s church, earlier that day, Bill had pointed the Sunday School building out. That was where he’d been an apprentice to John Gill, cabinetmaker, undertaker.

  ‘I served part of my time with him,’ Bill said, then told me he quite liked making coffins.

  But Bill and I also both knew that, upstairs in a fair sized room decorated with flags, this was where William had attended, and spoken at, and been the star of the birthday dinners in honour of Lord Lonsdale, the Earl of Lowther.

  As you already know, it was at one of those dinners (though not in the Sunday School) that William met Betty.

  Bill and I had read the long write-ups in the Cumberland Pacquet.

  Everyone who attended seemed to be having the most wonderful fun.

  I asked Jane if she’d like another glass of wine – perhaps a different kind.

  The Lowther birthday dinners were not meant to be simply fun. Their whole point was political. This was about checking and ensuring loyalty. This was about maintaining power. And in this, they were a great success, gaining in popularity every year until 1829.

  At their height, these dinners brought together over two hundred men. Hensingham was the biggest of them, which may be why William started to attend there rather than the Black Lion Inn, Whitehaven. (Or possibly it became the biggest gathering because it was where William was.)

  On the 29th of December, flags went up on public buildings in Whitehaven, and then up the masts of ships in the harbour.

  The most powerful local men would forgather in the early afternoon; dinner would be served at around three and, on some occasions, ‘the party did not separate till time’s iron hand pointed to the commencement of the succeeding day’.

  After the wines and viands of Mr and Mrs Hartley* – always excellent – were consumed, the ‘same standard’ toasts were given. First, ‘the King’, then ‘the Duke of York and the Army’ and ‘the Duke of Clarence and the Navy’, then – the most important one – ‘the health of the Right Hon. the Earl of Lowther’.

  Cheers always resounded.

  After this, speeches would be made and other, sometimes slightly more frivolous toasts offered. In 1822, these included ‘Lady Eleanor Lowther, and may her infant daughter be well battened’, ‘The Wooden walls of Old England’ (meaning the Royal Navy), ‘Success to Trade and Commerce’, ‘Impr
ovement of the Agricultural Interest’ and ‘May the British Constitution and the World Fall Together’.

  In all likelihood, this last was what everyone present believed – that Great Britain was not only the greatest but also the most important country in the world. William had already made this very point in his thunderously patriotic poem ‘Original Song’. It begins with Napoleon’s defeat:

  The long Night of Tyranny fast wears away,

  And Europe, awaking, salutes the new Day;

  Her Blood-dream is gone, and she turns with a Smile,

  To the Day Star of Freedom o’er Britain’s green Isle.

  And, after twenty similarly throbbing lines, it concludes with a proud hope for the future:

  From each gallant Heart may the warm Wish ascend,

  That the Patriot’s Flame through the World may extend,

  That all Sects and Parties may now be combin’d

  Since the Cause of our Nation’s the Cause of Mankind.

  That cause, of course, was Freedom with a capital F.†

  England in William’s time reminds me far more of America today than England – their pride in their Armed Forces, their confidence in manifest destiny. William speaks more like a president than a humble constituent.

  As Jane and I came out of the King’s Arms, the evening still light – we’d decided we’d rather not stay for a second drink – I looked across at the Sunday School hall. I’d read so many words about what happened there, and part of me wished I could time travel back to the 1800s, to see it all for myself.

  But God, if I’d travelled back as the French Revolution-supporting radical I am, I would have found these long, long jingoistic evenings unbearable. Endless toasts to titled toffs. Public pledges of loyalty. Mass celebrations. Eugh.

  I knew I wasn’t alone in my queasiness. In an online archive of digital newspapers, I had found an amazing speech by William’s first son, William Jnr.‡ He gave it on the evening of the centenary of the birth of the great Scottish poet Burns, January 25th, 1859, in Shrewsbury. William Jnr was Vice-President at the Burns’ society.

  He said, with exquisite point:

  Public dinners we know are common enough everywhere, and they are particularly common in our own neighbourhood, where every scion of an aristocratic family who happens to be born, or to live to cut his eye teeth, or, which is not always a consequence, to get married, furnishes an excuse for such a gathering. I hope I am not speaking irreverently of these things when I say that the motives which draw men together on such occasions are easily understood, and are not always of the most disinterested character. (Hear, hear.) But what is to be said of a meeting like this to-night (cheers), where there can be no fawning on those in power, no profit derived from flattering the titled or the rich, but where a mere sentiment, and that, too, a sentiment so remote as the birth of a Scottish peasant, in a mud hut, a hundred years ago, can call together such an assembly as this I have now the honour to address. (Great cheering.)§

  I winced when I read this. For – just as with William’s account of hare coursing – every line seems a blow aimed directly at his father. All that fawning and flattering, William Jnr seems to be saying, all those speeches and songs, and what did it get you, Dad?

  But William too, as I was aware from the Cumberland Pacquet, had been cheered to the echo. He sat in the midst of mirth.

  As Jane drove me back to her parents’ bungalow, I had the feeling I’d missed something – not just that evening, but more generally.

  In my hours of research, everything had started to shine.

  At about eight o’clock on the 29th of December, 1824, Mr Rigg rose and observed that there was a gentleman in the Sunday School room to whom the attentions of the company were owed – he meant Mr Litt, (Approbation followed.) He proposed Mr Litt’s good health, and thanked him for his excellent song. The toast was done with much approbation.

  William’s drinking song, to the tune of a song called ‘The Life that is easy and free,’ gives us the mirthful scene.

  Mark the prospect before us! how glorious the sight!

  See – our table abounds with good cheer!

  A scene so inviting should make us unite

  And remember the cause why we’re here.

  ’Tis to welcome the day that to LONSDALE gave birth,

  – Aye – and many more such may he see!

  While foes to all discord, and brothers in mirth,

  We still will be jovial and free.

  Then fill up a bumper and let it go round; –

  To this maxim you all will agree: –

  That when LONSDALE we toast let shrill echo rebound,

  That free tribute to worth, three times three!

  After Mr Rigg’s toast, William stood up to speak, and spoke for some time. He spoke, feelingly, of the public and private virtues of Lord Lonsdale. He was listened to, liked.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said William, in conclusion, ‘I again thank you for the loud and flattering manner in which you have been pleased to drink my health, and in doing myself the pleasure of pledging yours in return. I can only observe, that any trifle which it is in my power to contribute towards the hilarity of the meeting, will always be at its command. (Applause.)’

  *

  William has just said his final word. He’s still on his feet. There he stands, smiling, in his long black tailcoat and his clean white shirt, his best waistcoat, his pale neckcloth and his sandy-coloured breeches.

  Let’s freeze-frame him here – hold him still for a few moments. A 39-year-old, father of three boys, former wrestler, future exile. Author of last year’s Wrestliana, and this summer’s Henry & Mary. He is simultaneously at his height and past his best.

  He’s a fine man, isn’t he? Probably a better man than I am.

  Imagining him like this made me wonder – where would I stop time, if I could pause myself like I’ve paused William? Which instant, of all my instants, was best? Was it halfway through that first kiss that turned out to be a last kiss, or that other kiss that was only the first of hundreds? Or in the huge embrace of my father on a Cornish beach or with my mother’s dry hand on my feverish, day-off-school forehead? That ball on its inevitable way across the bumpy Alameda School football pitch, and into the corner of the goal, beyond the keeper’s desperate reach? That word from Mrs Hetherington, my English teacher, about that poem I’d shown her – ‘Superb’. That midgy evening in the Worcester College quad, when that girl looked at me as if I had a halo? That climax to that song by that singer at that gig? That undressing and being undressed. That tent, that room. That being naked and being accepted. That club, that field. That sideways glance at Leigh’s pale hands, in the restaurant the evening I met her. That secret, shared beneath hotel sheets. That second after they’d announced my name as the winner of the short story prize. That moment when I first held Henry in the delivery room. That first glimpse of George, swimming up still in the caul – up through the blue water of the birthing pool. That glance around the dining table, at the happy faces of my friends, who were well fed, still young enough to be hopeful. That minute after Crystal Palace went one–nil up against Manchester United in the FA Cup Final and I jumped up and down with all the other Eagles fans at Wembley Stadium. That relief when I realized the mourning for my mother no longer required absolutely all of me, and that joy still did exist. Or that leaning back from the desk, a story finished. Or that leaning in to the desk, a story just reaching the second page.

  That time when I won.

  * Yes, the family providing the food and drink were called Hartley – although Margaret and Bill aren’t exactly sure which branch of the family they’re from. Sometimes I almost suspect it’s actually Bill and Margaret themselves, and that Bill has successfully made a time machine out of wood.

  † These verses of patriotic thunder date from another Public Dinner, in the Assembly Room, Lancaster, 29 December 1813. There is a great generosity to William’s wishes. He says, ‘let Victory’s Trench be Hostility
’s Grave / And the Foes whom we Spare be the Friends whom we save’. These are sentiments of a national confidence we lost long ago. After the Second World War, we were too exhausted to give ourselves a similar boost. And now? Would William have voted for Brexit? I don’t know. He proudly says,

  This the Triumph of Britain, who opens her Brest,

  That the famish’d may feed, that the weary may rest:

  The Night-Fire of Hope, both to guide and to warm;

  The Life Boat of Europe amidst the wide Storm.

  Is Britain now the ‘Life Boat of Europe’ or rather some pirate vessel sailing Westwards, away from the voices of the drowning?

  ‡ He wasn’t really known as ‘William Jnr’, but I think this is going to be the simplest way to distinguish the many Williams. For example, William Jnr had a son called William (William Jnr Jnr, my great-great-uncle).

  § ‘A Hensingham Gentleman’s Speech at Burns’s Centenary in Shrewsbury’, The Whitehaven News, 3 March 1859.

  14

  SHOWS AND SPORTS

  After the graves in St James churchyard and the King’s Arms, and Bowthorn, Cleator Church, Michael Moon’s bookshop in Whitehaven, and the site where the wrestling was held at Carlisle, and Arlecdon Moor and its haunted churchyard – after the historical visits with Bill, I went to join Roger and Jill Robson for the wrestling.

  I wanted to see more of it. The Academy Shield in Bootle had given me a glimpse. Now I needed to try and understand what William got from it.

  Weeks earlier, Roger had sent me the Wrestling Diary, and I had picked this week in August. It was the high-point of the season, starting with a medium-size show at Ennerdale, then Grasmere, the showiest show, and finally the biggest battle, the all-weights Championship at Keswick.