Eye - 18 January 2013
From oats to rhythms and rhymes
Oaty connections
In overturning every pebble in Friends’ collective literary rockeries, a host of oats has been found – though not porridge.
Eye was delighted when Owen Everett, of Watford Meeting, drew our attention to John O’Keefe’s eighteenth-century play, Wild Oats.
The British Theatre Guide calls the comedy a ‘romp involving a strolling player, a few Quakers, a smattering of sailors and a complex case of mistaken identity’.
This was not the first time that John O’Keefe had portrayed Friends as he also penned The Young Quaker: A Comedy.
The Guardian describes one of the main characters of Wild Oats as a ‘hypocritical Quaker… who loathes everything to do with the theatre’ but a recent production at the Bristol Old Vic resulted in an interesting example of inadvertent outreach.
Owen elaborated: ‘the director led a public workshop on the Quaker terminology and context, to allow people to better understand the play.’
An educational pack was also produced with historical information on the Religious Society of Friends, the Navy and the life of provincial actors.
Eye moves from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first with the next textual morsel from Tina Helfrich, of Central England Area Meeting, who cites Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates.
She writes: ‘The main character in this novel was adopted and raised by Quakers and throughout the book she considers her actions as a reflection of her parents’ Quaker beliefs.’
The New York Review of Books describes the couple as ‘pacifist, literary, philosophical, perhaps a little overbearing’ and a main child who grows up ‘not at all merry, but quiet, observant, bright, eager to please, anxious, serious and hardworking’.
Described by The Times as ‘a chilling, beautifully written ghost story about the power of the past’, Mudwoman tells the tale of a child abandoned on the muddy banks of the Black Snake River. She goes on to become the first female president of a prestigious Ivy League University, until ghosts from her past cause her life to crack and splinter.
Sailing on The Swarthmore
After delving into the history of the USS Quaker City (4 January) Eye was intrigued by an email from Down Under.
Charles Stevenson – from Adelaide, South Australia – got in touch to tell the tale of another ship, The Swarthmore.
It was the largest iron ship ever built for sailing and operated on the Liverpool-Melbourne run in the 1850s.
Charles writes: ‘Its captain was Thomas Lidbetter, a well-concerned Friend who eventually settled in Tasmania… He ran The Swarthmore on strict total abstinence lines, to the chagrin of some of the sailors, but not the passengers.
‘In a violent gale in seventh month 1854, the ship landed at Tahiti for repairs to a leak. This was a worrying time because 63,000 ounces of gold and 8,000 sovereigns had to be carefully guarded for the five months that the repairs took.
‘On reaching London Lidbetter wrote: “I have reason to be thankful that, under Providence, my efforts have been crowned with success.”’
Roy’s rhymes
More rhythms and rhymes from Roy Payne’s rib-tickling lines:
A musical Friend from The Pales
Bought a harp in the January sales.
Friends said, ‘Where will you play?’
He replied, ‘If I may,
At the first General Meeting for Wales.’
An attender well-known at Bridgend
Thought long of becoming a Friend.
But she dithered and wavered,
Hesitated and havered,
Driving overseers clean round the bend.
The right way to say ‘Almeley’* Meeting
Hinders many a doorkeeper’s greeting.
On discussing it calmly,
I veer towards ‘Almeley’
Though locals consider that cheating.
*to rhyme with ‘family’
