Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire was bought from the agents of Henry VIII by a clothier named Mr Stumpe and converted into a woolen mill. When the antiquary John Aubrey visited in the 1660s the Norman nave still clattered with looms, and Mr Stumpe's great-grandson - Mr Stumpe, Esquire - plugged the beer-barrels in his cellar with wads of illuminated manuscripts. 'The manuscripts flew about like butterflies,' wrote Aubrey in a plangent vanitas. 'All musick bookes, account bookes, copie bookes &c. were covered with old manuscripts... and the glovers of Malmesbury made great havoc of them. Before the late warrs a world of rare manuscripts perished hereabout.'
Presumably the manuscripts were made from vellum. Medieval illuminated calfskin gloves? Quite an accessory and not something you're going to find at Bicester Village.
From In Ruins by Christopher Woodward, which I'm re-reading. I never used to re-read. Is it something that happens when you hit your 40s?
Yes, needing as you do a second opinion, more often than not the opposite of what you expected, re-read the Cossacks last year, attention span expired after page 30.
ReplyDeleteNo disappointments so far, Malty. And scratch 'never': I exaggerated. At the very least, I've read Lord of the Rings between five and ten times and Portrait of the Artist at least twice. Though the list runs out fairly quickly thereafter.
ReplyDeleteWhen you hit 60, you'll find you do little else but reread, if you're like me (apart from all those women novelists I seem to have missed along the way). Too right about changing opinions too, Malty - though I found The Cossacks perfectly bearable..
ReplyDeleteI don't re-read anything except children's books. Is it like music, do you reach an Age of Saturation where you simply can't take anything new any more?
ReplyDelete"Read the print off that book", it was remarked the eighth or ninth time I had the beak in Lord of the Rings, not for the last fifteen years though.
ReplyDeleteStill have the original dog eared copies from thirty years ago of On The Eve and Sketches from a Hunters Album, read a few times in between. If I could find flame proof copies I would take them with me, and Goldfinger.
When I was young, I thought the Nancy Mitford character who said "I have only read one book in my life--White Fang. It was so frightfully good I never wanted to read another" was the last word in hilarious English eccentricity. Sometime in my 50's, I began to see him as a well-grounded symbol of good mental health and evidence-based rationalism.
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