The Sign of Four, the City In My Head and the Map of Poetry

John Atkinson Grimshaw, The Strand, 1899.


I recently re-read The Sign of Four (or The Sign of the Four) by Arthur Conan Doyle - both the second Sherlock Holmes novel, and the second Sherlock Holmes story ever written (in 1890), before the short stories that made Holmes and Doyle really famous.

The Sign of Four has often (not always) been my favourite of the four Sherlock Holmes novels. Since I moved to London, it has taken on more (or other) significances, and especially since I moved to south London over five years ago. The Sign of Four is a real London book and a great deal of it happens in south London - near where I live, no less. There are key scenes which occur around Nine Elms and Millbank, and when I lived in Stockwell (by Larkhall Park) I was quite delighted by this moment:


Sherlock Holmes was never at fault, however, and he muttered the names as the cab rattled through squares and in and out by tortuous by-streets.

"Rochester Row," said he. "Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on the Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side, apparently. Yes, I thought so. Now we are on the bridge. You can catch glimpses of the river."

We did indeed get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames with the lamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed on, and was soon involved in a labyrinth of streets upon the other side.

"Wordsworth Road," said my companion. "Priory Road. Lark Hall Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Cold Harbour Lane. Our quest does not appear to take us to very fashionable regions."


For a couple of  years I was often in the vicinity of Coldharbour Lane, and it's still not a very fashionable region. I think of The Sign of Four every single time I find myself down there. Such is the power of literature at an impressionable age.

Other scenes take place around Norwood. Conan Doyle lived there for a time, but apparently the evidence suggests that he did not know London as well as you might conclude from the Holmes stories, and that he may have relied quite heavily on maps. This actually makes sense, and it works quite well for the reader. There are some extraordinary set-pieces in the Holmes stories - in The Sign of Four, one that comes to mind is this foggy description on the Strand:


Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light, - sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more.


There is also a very wonderful pursuit along the Thames, among other scenes. I love the south-London-ness of this book, the sense of staying in the "great cesspool" but moving into something wild and vast - north-of-the-river folk still see south London in this way. A lot of the dark deeds of the Holmes tales take place in south London or the southern outskirts of London.

There is something about the "map" quality of The Sign of Four, and the way it careers around London, which I associate very strongly with my own perceptions of the city. I feel like I carry London in my head - a map, but more than a map. In certain areas, it's as though I can see all the layers superimposed at once - past, present and future times, stories, songs, and more. And wherever I am in London, I feel an awareness quivering from other parts of the city - places I know, people I care about, all moving around and past and through each other. The way Doyle wrote, in map-speak combined with dramatic set-pieces, allows readers to fill in the gaps with their own London. I did this with his stories before I ever visited London, and I have continued to do so ever since, with the real London and with my own perceptions of it from the past and present, all layered and still present to each other.

Does this have a relevance to poetry? Well, I think that poetry is a certain kind of free-association combined with great precision, and to me there is something very maplike about it. The connections which turn into the flashpoints of poems are like transport links and connections around the city, often moving with speed to very disparate parts of London. And the map of any given poem - in physical space, emotional space, and time - builds and superimposes like the palimpsest of London in my head.

And for anyone who's stuck with me to the end of this entry - are there poems to accompany these thoughts? I had thought that this might be a moment to discuss London poems, but instead two great poems about maps and water (on one level, and among other things) came to mind. I have linked to them below. Maps and water are actually both very important to The Sign of Four, so this is appropriate. Beyond that, perhaps you will have to try and trace my train of thought with the clues I have left, and if you can do that, I congratulate you, my dear Watson.

DIVING INTO THE WRECK (Adrienne Rich)

MAPPING THE DELTA (George Szirtes) 

D H Lawrence's 'Shadows': "I Am In the Hands of the Unknown God"

I have never been a big fan of D H Lawrence, but that has more to do with the fact that I had to study Love Among the Haystacks in my first year of university than with anything else. I was unimpressed by the gender stereotypes and the professor's comment that little girls adored horses because they were a boyfriend substitute. (I was still riding at the time.)

Anyway, this inspiring poem has gone a long way towards rehabilitating Lawrence for me. It is also perfect for the time of year.

The painting is another John Atkinson Grimshaw, Figure in the Moonlight.



SHADOWS (D H Lawrence)


And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

And if, as weeks go round, in the dark of the moon
my spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom
pervades my movements and my thoughts and words
then I shall know that I am walking still
with God, we are close together now the moon’s in shadow.

And if, as autumn deepens and darkens
I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms
and trouble and dissolution and distress
and then the softness of deep shadows folding,
folding around my soul and spirit, around my lips
so sweet, like a swoon, or more like the drowse of a low, sad song
singing darker than the nightingale, on, on to the solstice
and the silence of short days, the silence of the year, the shadow,
then I shall know that my life is moving still
with the dark earth, and drenched
with the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal.

And if, in the changing phases of man’s life
I fall in sickness and in misery
my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead
and strength is gone, and my life
is only the leavings of a life:

and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought forth before, new blossoms of me

then I must know that still
I am in the hands of the unknown God,
he is breaking me down to his own oblivion
to send me forth on a new morning, a new man.

"This Is an Alien City": Amy Lowell's 'A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.'

This is another painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw, depicting Chelsea in London. I think that you can expect to see Grimshaw at least occasionally on this blog when I write about London.

I'm still browing and reading through London: A History in Verse, edited by Mark Ford. This anthology really does capture the spirit of London - its events, places and people - across centuries. It is the dark and the light; I wonder if any other city has so much of each. Unified and scattered, sinister and exhilarating - I think London's poetry may carry its essence even more so than its art or photography, for instance. (But then, I would think that...) What fascinates me is that certain themes seem to flow down the centuries and recur so frequently. These include the city as a brooding, dark personality made up of tiny fluttering voices; the underground nature of London, whether that's the actual London Underground or its hidden and lost rivers; and the use of names, its streets and squares and boroughs, with an almost totemic power.

2012 is by some reckoning the 100th anniversary of the Imagist movement in poetry. This enormously influential movement, which helped to launch modernist poetry, concentrated on "clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images." Its early proponents included Ezra Pound and T E Hulme.

Another poet deeply involved in the Imagist movement was Amy Lowell (1874-1925). She was a highly prolific American poet (and businesswoman) who moved between the US and the UK, working to promote the Imagist movement in American poetry. She is now perhaps best known as a critic and anthologist, and as someone associated with more famous figures, but her poetry is wonderful in its own right and is recognised for its variety and sensuality.

This poem, 'A London Throughfare. 2 A.M.', is a bleak portrayal of the city, very closely observed. This is the city as state of mind, reflecting isolation and radiating hostility. It is easy to imagine that under similar circumstances, another poet (or even the same poet in a different frame of mind) might see the scene as beautiful. The fact that Lowell sees the distant moon as a friend, and the city as alien, is very telling.



A LONDON THROUGHFARE. 2 A.M. (Amy Lowell)


They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another,
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city:
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.

Seven Years In London: Smoke, Mirrors and the Sweet Smell of Road-Tar

This painting is by John Atkinson Grimshaw, a Victorian painter whose works have elements of the Pre-Raphaelites and JMW Turner. He is well known for his cityscapes, including London, Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow, and he is set to become one of my favourite artists, I think. This particular work shows a street in Borough, south London.

On 27 July 2012, as far as I've been able to ascertain (from looking up my old BMI flight reservations), it was seven years since I moved to London - which means that I am only about a month late with this entry. It was an odd day; hardly what I would have expected. Two days earlier I had suffered a mishap at home when a sharp-edged object fell over and left me with a nasty cut on my face. The NHS, bless them, offered me a plastic surgeon, so 27 July found me at St Thomas's Hospital to get stitched up. It was also the day of the Opening Ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympics (perhaps worth an entry in itself, especially if I can find an appropriate poem.) I later watched some of it at home, feeling a bit miserable, but I found the British history section spectacular and moving.

Too many posts about London already, you might be thinking, but it's a well that never runs dry for me. There can never be an end to writing, thinking and dreaming about a great city, as well as just getting out into its streets and experiencing it. When I moved, I thought it likely that I would stay longer than my time in Dublin - three years - but I surpassed that long ago, and I don't have plans to leave. I'm one of those misfits of the world who is more at home in London than anywhere else, it seems.

I recently read Craig Taylor's Londoners, subtitled The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It and Long for It. Craig Taylor is a Vancouver Islander who has adopted London, just like me (although I hasten to add that he is from Nanaimo, and I am from Victoria. I met him briefly at a publishing networking event a few years ago and we chatted a little, mainly about the ex-pat thing and the Island. He had dared to say something about the class-ridden nature of the publishing industry, which mostly met with embarrassed looks and nervous giggles. I nearly cheered.) Not surprisingly, I found the book totally beguiling - even the commentaries by people who hate the place. There was so much that was familiar in it, but seen through a variety of different lenses. The City boy, the airline pilot, the dominatrix - it was rather odd to find echoes of my own feelings and my London moments in these lives. There were passages which I found incredibly resonant, almost as though they'd been taken straight out of my brain:


Places make the best lovers. You can trust a place more than you can trust a person as a lover. A place is more dependable and it has so much depth and stimulation and provides you with the opportunity to realize yourself. The place reflects you, provides you with stimulation, the ability to realize potential. If it's a good place it makes you feel stronger, makes you cleverer and more powerful. I did a walk with someone from the centre of the City to Soho, just taking a beeline, and on that walk ended up going into the Temple Church in the middle of the Temples so I was back in the twelfth century after already having gone into the Black Friar pub, an Arts and Crafts pub, and walking through the centre of Covent Garden and ending up in a Chinese restaurant having dim sum. Now there are not many people who can give you that much stimulation, but being with a person and having the ability to have that friend, London, as a companion throughout gives you a wonderful extra dimension to anything you do. I think of London as a partner. I'm in love with London and always have been. (Peter Rees, City Planning Officer, City of London)


The trouble with this sort of thing - which I find almost entirely true - is that it can feel as though the city is becoming your primary relationship: basically, not good. But very seductive. If there's such a thing as taking a drug in moderation, that would have to be the way to approach London. (I am told by someone who knows, from past experience, that London is like heroin.) When I went back to Canada for a visit a few months ago, I told an old family friend that London pulls you into its patterns and rhythms and tides so that you find yourself breathing in tune with it. Which is both exciting, and sinister.

There was also a passage in Craig Taylor's introduction, where he describes his own London experience, which was extremely familiar:


I hadn't yet become an urban otter - one of those sleek Londoners who moves through the city with ease. They're the ones who seem slow and graceful but are always covering ground, who cross streets without looking back and forth; who know how to fold a newspaper crisply in the middle of a packed Tube train. (Craig Taylor)


Maybe I flatter myself, but I'm pretty sure I've become an urban otter. The best way to move through London is like breathing, like water is your element. I tread more lightly than I used to and I've found ways to flow through a crowd on an Underground platform without hardly touching anyone (these sometimes involve dislocating your hips from your torso - but it's strangely like a dance.) Passing the six-month point in London is pivotal. At that moment, I started to feel like I had a few friends; I also noticed that I was scanning my environment in a different way, and building a sort of transparent/semi-permeable wall around myself, something which allowed me to be more detached and more involved than ever before. Certainly, after years in London you react quite differently to the news of violent crime just down the street than you do during the first six months.

Another recent acquisition is the poetry anthology London, compiled by Mark Ford. It traces London's history and people and life in poetry, from ancient times to the present. I've only dipped into it so far and look forward to further exploration. London is drenched in poetry and this is how I see it, increasingly. It is both a way to shelter myself from harsh realities, and a way to get further and further in, closer to the heart (or hearts) of the city. This summer, during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, there has been a soundscape installation on the Millenium Bridge called Tales from the Bridge. It samples contemporary and historic literature and poetry to give glimpses of the city - mainly the Thames - through the spoken word. I stopped by to experience it recently, and found it quite intriguing.

I've picked out a few London poems which add to the richness of the city's tapestry, and which have a few familiar echoes, as well.

Tamar Yoseloff's 'London Particular' seems very much to be from the city-as-state-of-mind tradition. Sometimes you can see someone's face wherever you look, and all else fades. This poem captures a good deal of London's bleaker aspects, I think. Strangely, it also made me think of my Finnish grandfather, who I never knew because he died before I was born. He was briefly in London in the 1950s when London experienced one of its last pea-souper fogs (or "London particular"). I could very much see him as the gentleman in this poem.

'London Pastoral' by Tobias Hill, another contemporary London poet, is gentler but still gritty. I recognise its smell: "hallways sweet/with the residue of road-tar." London is such a juxtaposition of the ugly and dirty, and the beautiful; this poem is a good example.

Finally, this strange, sad poem by T E Hulme really touches me. The darkness and the bright glancing sparks of it are very London. Hulme was mainly a critic and sometimes a poet, and died on the front in Belgium in 1917.


THE EMBANKMENT (T E Hulme)

(The Fantasia of a Fallen Gentleman on a Cold, Bitter Night)


Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.