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I have been writing anecdotes of Keats and Chapman since 1969, and this is intended to be a warts-and-all collection of them. At times I think I have almost just about come within cooee of Myles na Gopaleen's inimitable originals in these stories; mostly I'm embarrassed. But as Keats remarks somewhere, there's no accounting for taste, and you may grin where I cringe. Chapman and the Premier League "Speaking of Manchester United . . ." said Chapman. "I don't believe we were," said Keats, "and I've heard the one about Marcuse." "Hm. Well, they've just paid five million pounds for young Andy Cole." "Yes," said Keats. "He's, um, from Newcastle, you know," said Chapman. Keats said nothing for a moment, then, judging that he had kept his friend waiting long enough, said "Five million, eh?" Chapman, suddenly sullen, silently vowed never to discuss football with Keats again. The Society of Editors Newsletter, February 1995 Chapman's Hamlet Not a lot is known about the stage careers of Keats and Chapman, but certainly Chapman's came to a sad end, and it was all Keats's fault. Chapman was playing Polonius in an otherwise unmemorable performance of Hamlet, and just as he was about to make his first entrance Keats wished him luck. Chapman turned pale and fell from the wings onto the stage, the first of a series of mishaps that ended in Act 3 when he fell over again and brought the arras down. "You fool," said Chapman, red with humiliation and limping badly, when he found Keats, "You should know that you never wish an actor luck!" "Oh, silly me!" said Keats, "Of course! -- you can't make a Hamlet without breaking a leg!" "Ohh," Chapman fumed, and turning on his heel, exeunted ominously. Philosophical Gas, 1993 |
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Cold
Comfort
Keats and Chapman stood for twenty minutes in the rain one wintry evening, waiting for
an omnibus. At last it arrived, and the friends hurried aboard, hoping that the proximity
of their fellow humans would to some degree dispel the cold. It was certainly warmer
inside the bus, but a cracked window and a hole (the purpose of which eluded them)
near their feet directed chill draughts at them, causing them much discomfort. Scythrop 22, April 1971 |
Seeking Mr Shaw
 A gentleman opened the door to them."Are you Shaw?" asked Chapman."Absolutely!" said the gentleman, and bade them enter.
The friends
were soon engaged in a most pleasant and witty conversation with Mr Shaw, in the
course of which he displayed much amusement over their purchase of the
directories."Flaherty", he said, "will get you nowhere."Keats remarked: "And he who has a Tate's is lost."Scythrop 22, April 1971 Ode to Freud
Keats and Chapman once visited Vienna, where they were guests of an elderly friend,
Professor Ottavio Funken, and his charming family. The gracious Funken mansion on
Weltschmerzstrasse rang for days to the happy sounds of cultured talk, refined music of
an intimate nature, and laughing children. The friends had not experienced such
pleasant company for a long time, and their joy in themselves and their surroundings
knew no bounds. But, alas, it was not to last. Scythrop 22, April 1971
Travelling through Germany, at Göttingen Keats and Chapman fell in with an
Australian, and (having extricated themselves) discussed their plans with him. Scythrop 22, April 1971 The Society of Editors Newsletter, February
1979 Stunned Mullet 7, June 1977 Philosophical Gas 22, May 1973 The Times Bicycle Pump Supplement, February
1979
It was a mild, slightly overcast sort of day, with the
chance of snow or
fog at Stirling, but there is always that chance at Stirling, even in summer, and this day
was in mid-winter, the seminar organizers having gone to some trouble to arrange
this.
"If you look back," said Bangsund, "you can see the
Mile End railway
yards and other beauties of Adelaide."
"You watch your bloody driving!" said Sally, then
blushed, but Keats
was pretending to be asleep and Chapman was apparently absorbed in the fine detail of
the Renault's interior appointments, and Rotsler kindly assumed the look of a man who
is used to bad language and has heard everything.
"I never look back," Rotsler said.
Assuming the look of a man who can easily concentrate
on driving and
talking at the same time, Bangsund said "This little place up ahead is called Eagle On
The Hill, and I've never been able to find out why." He then lurched into a prepared
speech, which Sally had heard before, about the possibility that it had something to do
with the Latin word for church, ecclesia ("Greek," murmured Chapman), which
was often corrupted in English place-names to "eagles".
"Actually," said Rotsler, "it really does have something
to do with an
eagle on a hill. Back in 1843 when Tom (later Sir Thomas) Fitch was opening up this
area, laying the foundation for his ruthless rise to power as absolute dictator of the
timber trade -- and eventually, as you well know, Premier of South Australia five times,
but that was after he had got into shipping and banking, of course, and thereby become
respectable in the eyes of the Buffalo crowd (who had only arrived here three
years before him -- but, my! they were the First Settlers, and they really thought they
were something special!) -- one day, probably a day much like this, since it was about
this time of year and there was fog and snow just over the hill, Fitch was out blazing a
bit of a track with his friend Jack Norton (actually the Honorable John Eardley-Norton,
though Fitch did not know that at the time, later Lord Thornbury), and suddenly Fitch
caught sight of something, and he stopped what he was doing, and he said 'Damn my
eyes, Jack, if that's not an eagle over there on that hill!' Norton suggested that it might
be nothing more than a trick of the light -- perhaps a bird-shaped rock or something like
that -- but Fitch was insistent. 'It's an eagle, damn it!' he said. By a pretty natural
process that place became known as 'Fitch's Eagle On The Hill', and that's all there is to
it."
For a moment there was silence, except for the
well-mannered ticking of
the Renault's clock, then Bangsund said "You just made that up, Bill." "Why sure I did!"
said Rotsler, and chuckled. The three passengers in the back seat joined in the laughter,
and from that moment on all five set about constructing an alternate ("Alternative,"
murmured Keats) history of South Australia, largely based on the exploits and dirty
deals of Fitch, Norton and a shadowy figure named Lord Garth. When they reached
Hahndorf, they all adopted German accents and told anecdotes of the much revered and
entirely fictitious Pastor Nitschke, who by faith alone almost succeeded in having South
Australia annexed as a colony by Prussia. At Marble Hill, surveying the ruins of the old
Governors' summer residence, their imagination soared as they vied with each other in
explaining the origin of this strange and beautiful place.
"It's just too much!" said Bangsund, chuckling despite
his urgent need
for a gentlemen's toilet as the party headed back down the freeway. "I never thought this
seminar -- what's it called again?" "A-Con," said Sally. "-- would turn out to be such
fun!" "Your turn, I think," said Keats to Chapman, and Chapman said "From little
A-Cons great hoaxes grow!" and wet his pants laughing, again.Parergon Papers 2, August 1977 Some readers have taken me to task for an apparent spatio-chronological inaccuracy in the second issue of these papers, namely my account of a visit by John Keats and George Chapman to Adelaide. Keats (I am told) died 15 years before the colony of South Australia came into existence, and Chapman died 161 years before Keats was born. There is just no accounting for the literal-mindedness of some people, and there are times when I wonder whether they've ever read science fiction or Ben Jonson in their lives. Ben Jonson? Yes, sir, immortal author of Timber: or, Discoveries, in which (as most of my readers will not need reminding) he said: "For to many things a man should owe but a temporary beliefe, and a suspension of his owne Judgement, not an absolute resignation of himselfe, or a perpetuall captivity." A wise saying, that, and one engraved on the hearts of politicians and sf readers everywhere. But as it happens, I have good authority for Keats's being in Adelaide. the view over the plains, with Adelaide in the middle-distance, and the Gulf in the background, is, according to the poet Keats, "a joy for ever".So there! Besides, Rotsler was with us at the time. Frankly, I find it harder to believe that Bill Rotsler ever visited Adelaide. Probably he does, too. Parergon Papers 5, December 1977 The Last Days of Keats and Chapman "In the classifying of scleractinia," said Keats, "especially with regard to the families Thamnasteridae and Astrocoenidae, should one prefer genotypical to phenotypical criteria? And is it the done thing to use indiscriminately ecological and morphotaxonomic nomenclature?"
"Were you addressing me?" Chapman asked
politely.
"I was," said Keats.
"Ah. Would you mind repeating the question?"
"I couldn't possibly," Keats sighed. "Some of those
words only bear
pronouncing once in a normal lifetime."
"May I ask what you are reading?"
"It is a slim scholarly volume by one Jeremy Benthos,"
said Keats.
"Ah," said Chapman, "author of the famous Coral
Symphony."
"You are thinking surely of the famous
Beethoven."
"I am not," said Chapman. "Benthos is as fond of the
felicitous
homophone, not to mention the infelicitous, as that nasty Bangsund chap who persists
in writing apocryphal anecdotes about us. But Benthos writes apocryphal anecdotes
about life on the ocean floor."
"Which that fellow Foyster refers to as polyp fiction,"
said Keats.
"Yes," said Chapman testily. "He's another one."
"Homonymous bosh," murmured Keats.
"That's precisely the kind of thing I mean!" Chapman
said angrily.
"Irrelevant, out of character, and utterly absurd!"
"We certainly used to get a better class of pun when that
nice Irish chap
Myles was writing about us," said Keats. "Do you recall how we used to make little quips
in Latin? -- even Greek sometimes, if I am not mistaken."
"Ah yes," said Chapman. "'The dacent obscurity of a
larned tongue',
Myles used to call it. But this Bangsund! -- why, he wouldn't know an ipse dixit
from a dog's breakfast!"
"You said it," said Keats.
"Things have never been quite the same since we were
transported to
Australia. It's the climate, I believe. Not so much the heat as the humidity. Rots the
brain."
"Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire . . ."
mused Keats.
"Pardon?"
"I was thinking of those far-off happy days", said Keats,
"when we were
writers ourselves and not mere characters in others' imaginings."
Chapman looked thoughtfully at his friend. "Why," he
said, "why don't
we write ourselves out of Australia? -- indeed, out of Bangsund's reach altogether!"
"Could we?"
"Of course! Why not?"
"It is most tempting," Keats said. "But it seems a little
unkind to leave
the man with no-one to write about."
"He could always go back to writing about himself,"
said Chapman.
Then a mischievous gleam came to his eyes. "I say! I know what we could do! Knowing
the horrid Bangsund's penchant for writing cruel fictions about literary folk, why
shouldn't we present him with two quite impossible people to replace us?"
"It sounds naughty," giggled Keats. "Have you anyone in
mind?"
"I have indeed," said Chapman triumphantly. "Homer
and Noddy!"
"Oh, bravo!" cried Keats, and the friends embraced and
fell about in
helpless glee.
Then, gaily, arm in arm, Keats and Chapman tripped off
into the
sunset.An old, blind man in robe and sandals appeared in the twilight, and with him a small person -- a dwarf perhaps, or a boy.
"Is this the place?" said the old one.
"It is," said Noddy. "The place that launched a thousand
quips, and
bent the hapless powers of idiom."
They sat then, under a gum tree, and wept.Stunned Mullet 4, January 1976 |
 John Bangsund Melbourne, Australia Home |
