Jane Austen

‘A tale is but half told when only one person tells it.’
THE SAGA OF GRETTIR

 

Under the almost crepuscular lighting

in the British Library’s Gallery

endowed by Sir John Ritblat (London

property developer, Tory donor,

philanthropist) among the treasures displayed –

including ‘Beowulf’, the Magna Carta,

Gutenberg’s Bible, Da Vinci’s notebook,

Handel’s ‘Messiah’, the Beatles’ lyrics –

are three pairs of Jane Austen’s spectacles

and a first edition of ‘Paradise Lost’.

 

Close to Bloomsbury’s traffic-congested heart,

about half a mile from the Library,

is Woburn Walk, a short, pedestrianised,

cobbled, late Georgian shopping street,

designed with first and second floor lodgings –

named after Woburn Abbey, the country seat

of the first landlord, the Duke of Bedford.

The poet, William Butler Yeats, has been

blue-plaqued at what is  now Number 5.

 

Number 16 is a small, well established,

family run, Bangladeshi restaurant

with British staples – like papadoms,

prawn vindaloo, chicken tikka masala.

Tonight the two tables by the window

have been pushed together. The seven diners

are Icelanders – enjoying the curries,

and speaking the language of the forty five

sagas, like the one about the outlaw

poet. I wonder what Willie Yeats

and his pals, Tom Eliot and Ezra Pound –

and Milton and Austen for that matter –

would have made of all or any of this,

not least a mongrel bard like me.